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Color Revolutions Bulletin, 2015

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[Dec 27, 2017] Russian military to order major research to counter color revolutions

Jun 22, 2015 | rt.com

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has told reporters that the military will sponsor a major research of coups conducted through mass protest – so called 'color revolutions' – to prevent the situations that Russia faced in 1991 and 1993.

"Some people say that the military should not be involved in political processes, some say the direct opposite. We will order a study on the phenomenon of color revolutions and the military's role in their prevention,"

Shoigu told the participants of the Army-2015 political forum Friday.

"We have no right to allow the repetitions of the collapses of 1991 and 1993," he said. "How to do it is another story, but it is clear that we must deal with the situation. We must understand how to prevent this and how to teach the younger generation so that it supported the calm and gradual development of our country."

The minister added that the consequences of color revolutions can be now observed in many Arab nations and also in Serbia. He also said that the Ukrainian crisis that started in 2014 also was "a major tragedy in the row of color revolutions."

In March this year the head of Russia's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev promised that this body would develop a detailed plan of action aimed at preventing color revolutions or any other attempts of forceful change of lawfully elected authorities through mass street protest. He also said that the Security Council had prepared a list of proposed measures that could negate the possible threat, including some steps against "network protest activities" and propaganda work against "romantic revolutionary stereotype."

Also in March, President Vladimir Putin addressed the dangers of color revolutions in his speech to the Interior Ministry.

"The extremists' actions become more complicated," he said. "We are facing attempts to use the so called 'color technologies' in organizing illegal street protests to open propaganda of hatred and strife on social networks."

In the same month, the Interior Ministry drafted a bill containing amendments to the law on rallies that covered car protests and sit-ins. The ministry experts said that the move would circumvent legal ambiguity in the interest of society as a whole.

In November, Putin blasted color revolutions as a main tool used by destructive forces in the geopolitical struggle.

"In the modern world, extremism is used as a geopolitical tool for redistribution of spheres of interest. We can see the tragic consequences of the wave of the so-called color revolutions, the shock experienced by people in the countries that went through the irresponsible experiments of hidden, or sometimes brute and direct interference with their lives,"

the Russian leader said.

In January, a group of Russian conservative activists, uniting war veterans, nationalist bikers and pro-Christian politicians launched an "anti-Maidan" political movement in Moscow to oppose any attempts to thwart the stable development of the country. Its first rallies were held on the same days as some anti-government protests and according to law enforcers the conservatives outnumbered the pro-revolution activists by almost 10-fold.

Read more

[Sep 21, 2016] There are still a lot of "handshakable" (created by kreacks for kreakls) mass media outlets in Russia despite cries of neoliberal MSM about absence of "free press" in Russia

"Handshakable" is Soviet dissidents times term meaning a person not too in bed with "despicable" regime. Now used mainly in satical sense with the meaning almost identical to kreakls" -- useless person with strong opinions about everything and very active on the Internet.
Lyttenburgh, July 21, 2015 at 2:39 am

I've found this little gem 2 days ago and I'm still… "overjoyed" by it.

Despite Manichean claims of the Free and Independent ™ Western Media that in Russia "there are no free press", that everything is controlled by Kremlin and Putin, and only [Radio] Ekho Moskvy, Novaya Gazeta [Newspaper] and Dozhd [TV] are the few remaining honest sources of truth and independent journalism ™, there are still a lot of "handshakable" outlets created for kreakls by kreakls.

In one such handshakeble paper, the "Snob" [well, at least they are honest with themselves and their readers] recently was published this interview with another extremely handshakable, ah, "person", who used to be the Chief Editor of the "KommmersantЪ" paper in it's [even more] handshakable heyday. This particular excerpt seems especially "meaty" (translation is mine):

Snob: And when do you think the era of the "rich cooperators'" of the 90s came to an end?

AV: I think it happened when they arrested Khodorkovsky. Then not only the era of cooperators came to an end, the society in this country was finished also.

Snob: Why is society so easily reconciled with this and it's own end?

AV: And because it could not be otherwise! Because there are no such country – Russia! This is a huge geopolitical mistake … I do not know whose, Lord God's or Darwin's. This country never existed, don't exist now and never will be. This country is bad.

Snob: Even if it is so bad, it does not mean that it doesn't exist.

AV: Well, fuck with it! Here's my answer. Fuck with it, that it exists! I wish it to be healthy! But this is not interesting for me. It is a cancer on the body of the world! What, should I fight with it? I'm not a professor Pirogov, I will not cut out this tumor, I just do not know how. Honestly, I don't know how.

Snob: What are the symptoms of this cancer?

AV: There are two evidences of this cancer. Never in my life Russia and its people had any other national ideas then "we are surrounded by enemies" and "Russia for the Russians!". With such two fundamental attributes there can't be country. This is just savagery. Can you give me somw other Russian national ideas?

Snob: Empire from sea to sea.

AV: This is just "We are surrounded by enemies" and "Russia for the Russians!" in other words. It's just combined in a beautiful word "empire". Nothing else! And with such fundamental principles country of course, some country might even exist, but who needs it? I do not! It is necessary to those inside.

Needless to say, Andrey Vasiliev now is a proud and free emigre.

So, after reading this little interview I got a proverbial train of thoughts going in my head at a top speed,finally arriving to it's destination. Now I can say that I "understand" (as in "understand what makes them tic") all of them – liberasts, Byelarussian zmagars, Ukrainian svidomites, pint-sized Baltic patriots, sausage emigrants forming Brighton Beach Bitching Brigade etc.

But that's the topic for another post

ThatJ, July 21, 2015 at 2:50 am

Does Andrey Vasiliev live in Brighton Beach now?

yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:24 am

No, Vasiliev lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

And, no, he is not Jewish, in case that's what you are trying to get at.

He is of Russian ethnicity.

yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:27 am

Dear Lyttenburgh:

Thanks for this find.

These Fifth Columnists are all the same, aren't they?

For them, the true litmus test was, and always has been, Khodorkovsky.

They longed for a world in which Khodorkovsky owned every single thing in Russia that wasn't nailed down; and everybody else, including these kreakls, just getting crumbs from his table.

But the kreakls receiving bigger crumbs, plus an honored place at the master's side.

Moscow Exile, July 21, 2015 at 3:35 am
I regularly ask Russians – ordinary work-a-day Russians, be they of the working or the professional classes – if they could imagine leaving Russia forever, if they could consider emigrating, never intending to return. They all say they couldn't. They say they'd like to travel, but they always feel they would want to come "home".

I have never yet met one Russian person who speaks as does Vasiliev, no one who says "I hate this place and my fellow countrymen so much: it's a shithole; it's a dump; it's full of morons etc., etc….", though I often hear them speaking loudly and clearly in that way from afar through the bullhorn of the Western mass media.

I ask my children regularly if they would like to live in England. I get a resounding "No!" off them. They speak English fluently now (except the youngest) and say they like visiting the place, that it's "cool" and, curiously enough, all their pals think it's "cool" that they are "half-English". My children do as well, not least because I suspect they can already sense the great advantage that their bilingualism has given them – but they categorically state they are Russian and that Russia is their Motherland, their rodina, the land that "bore" them, their "Mother Russia".

My wife is the same.

None of them are nationalistic, but they are very, very patriotic.

People such as Vasiliev are a small yet vociferous minority that, I suspect, suffers from some psychological aberration.

I am so glad that many of them leap at the first opportunity to fuck off away from here.

Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 3:46 am
The type is not unique to Russia.

America has a whole university set aside for people who hate America. A sort of open-air loonybin.

Your Russian anti-patriots can be corralled and stowed out of sight in the same way, if you wish. Market it right, and they'll do it entirely of their own accord.

yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:55 am
Dear Pavlo: Which open-air university is that? Berkeley?? :)
Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 4:11 am
Naturally.
Moscow Exile, July 21, 2015 at 4:19 am
Why is Berkeley "open-air"?
Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 4:23 am
In that nothing prevents the inmates from escaping but fear of employment.
Moscow Exile , July 21, 2015 at 4:28 am
I should add that I know many who have chosen to leave Russia in search of fame and fortune, education, a better standard of living etc., but none of them left because they loathe the land and its people.

I also have over the years come across a few who have returned: some because, having achieved success, they preferred to live out the rest of their lives in their Mother Russia; others because they could not adapt to an alien culture ("No 'soul' in the USA!" I have often heard such folk say; and others simply because they were homesick.

Interestingly, and unbeknownst to me, my sister emailed my wife last week when I was in the UK and told her that I was clearly "homesick".

I was: for Russia and my wife and children

Home is where the heart is.

[Dec 29, 2015] What Really Caused the Implosion of the Occupy Movement -- An Insider's View

Notable quotes:
"... The author may be too young to know about it. A detailed study of FBI and other infiltrations into various movements through the 50s , 60s, 70s would repay the effort. ..."
"... Perhaps field guides should be written on how to "spot the agent", "spot the plant", "spot the disruptor" etc. ..."
"... "Homeless people make up a significant proportion of participants in the Occupy Movement in cities across the United States, from Los Angeles to Atlanta, where at times they comprise an estimated third of the occupiers… Despite stereotypical beliefs that homeless people are not interested in politics, the homeless actually have perhaps the least to lose and the most to gain from being involved in the Occupy Movement." ..."
"... "[The social composition of the movement is] quite varied. Occupy Oakland, for example, is perhaps 50% black and Latino, whereas occupations in other parts of the country may be mostly white. Some occupations are primarily very poor people, homeless people, etc., others include a lot of white-collar workers. Young 'précaires' [people whose work situation and future prospects are precarious] are certainly among the most numerous participants." ..."
"... Yes, there was a 17-city, coordinated paramilitary crackdown. All in one night. I watched and chronicled the live stream. ..."
"... For about a year I've wondered why NC could be so hard on Syriza while continuing to run that embarrassing Occupy banner at the top of the page. And you're fond of quoting Gandhi, (you lose, you lose, they give up, you win). But while you're losing you're getting beat up. And that's the problem with Americans generally; can't take a punch. Glass jaw. ..."
"... When leadership isn't willing to make that commitment there is no organization. And with no organization we're left with "going postal". Americans are much more adept at that. ..."
"... Unlike the situation in Europe, however, there appears to be little effort among the dispersed elements of the movement in the United States to achieve political power. The stronger effort here is to create a viable alternative to the current corrupt and destructive political/economic system, to step outside it and grow something else again. ..."
"... L'Échaudée: "Would you say that State repression (especially the unified and coordinated raids against the camps) was the main cause of Occupy's decline?" Ken Knabb: "Yes." ..."
"... Yes. And the violent attack on the encampments didn't just disperse the people. Cops destroyed food and food service supplies, shelter, electronic equipment, libraries, and medical and first-aid supplies, much of it likely donated by people not necessarily able to be part of an encampment. For some campers this was maybe most of what they had or, for the homeless and other marginalized people who came to the camps, more than they had. If we do build a movement, if bringing about real change will require people to strike, or boycott, or occupy vacant land or buildings, this kind of community support is crucial. We ought not discount (the "authorities" certainly didn't) the material and psychological impact of this destruction beyond just the local participants; and we need to find more sustainable, less vulnerable ways of providing community support. ..."
"... There is a difference between "color revolution" style events which promote neoliberalism and Occupy style events that oppose it. In case of color revolution style events the participants can rely on all the power of Western embassies, NGO, intelligence agencies and flow of money and equipment. Training of leaders would be provided, "revolutionaries for hire" will emerge, etc. ..."
"... Many of us Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) activists are hampered by having been told implicitly and explicitly for our entire education that we are the leaders of the world when we are at best lieutenants of the 1%. ..."
"... The sort of utopianism on display here is not only callow and tiresome (and precisely why Occupy failed), but also depressing. And if it reflects the level of understanding held by "activists" of the nature of the crisis we face, I am not heartened. ..."
"... I agree completely. This recap is self-absorbed, naive, and absurd - it reminds me in many ways of the business plan of a start-up that has no clear route to actually making money. It's impossible to imagine a movement of people who think like this accomplishing anything, because they have no model for the outcome they want; what they do have is a model for how they want themselves to be. ..."
"... "As a life-long member of the working class I find the suggestion that I need to be schooled in the ways of courageous resistance breathtakingly arrogant" ..."
"... Whatever else you may say about Lenin, his goals, his means, or his beliefs, he had a remarkably clear-eyed and unsentimental view of power and how one goes about getting it and how one goes about holding on to it. ..."
"... From my perspective the Leninist alternative dismisses any interest in a democratically self-organized society. In postulating a disciplined revolutionary party to act in the name of society he completed the final arc in a profoundly undemocratic political trajectory from which the traditional Left has not yet recovered. ..."
"... May be the traditional Left has not yet recovered , but traditional right fully adopted Lenin's methods and organization under color revolution banner. ..."
"... "Occupy" failed because it had no goal, and having no goal, it didn't know how to get there. See: http://goo.gl/m6qmGn ..."
"... It goes on and on, protest after protest. Anti-racial profiling. Anti-union busting. Anti-tuition increases. Anti-school closings. Anti-mortgage fraud. Anti-unsustainable development. Anti-corruption. Anti-this, anti-that, anti-the other thing. ..."
"... For reasons unknown, the Occupy movement seems to take a perverse pride in being leaderless and directionless, preferring to run hither and yon, protesting whatever strikes their fancy. No focus. No plan. No idea. Just protest. ..."
"... The Tea Party has a simple, easily understood focus: Lower taxes. What is Occupy's simple, easily understood focus? ..."
"... The public grows weary of ineffectual, random, aimless protests, and Occupy, which began with such great promise, becomes last week's newspaper. A lost opportunity is a step backward, as people become discouraged and slide into lethargy. ..."
"... Somewhere, in board rooms around the world, the 1% is laughing. ..."
"... Do nothing? I'd be curious to hear what you mean on that. It took incredibly coordinated state action to defuse Occupy, not public weariness. ..."
"... It's unfortunate Occupy was not able to organize in a way to neutralize such action, but at the very least, it pulled back the curtain on the police state specifically and the power of government more generally in a way no one can deny moving forward. That's the spark of hope from the various events of the last few years. The elites want us to believe they are all powerful. But it is actually taking them quite a bit of effort to maintain that illusion. In reality, they are strategically weak and vulnerable. And they know it. ..."
"... Which is why the Democratic party has had to become so blatantly pro-inequality. Even a modest opposition to fascism on their part would ruin the efforts of the past few decades. ..."
Dec 28, 2015 | naked capitalism

Will, December 28, 2015 at 12:06 pm

Leaderlessness is very different than having many leaders. The strongest movements have many leaders that each know/feel when/how to lead and follow and cooperate in turn. Many powerful people, powerful enough to know that power does not mean dominating others in the movement. Such a movement will be much harder to stop than a leaderless one, where the FBI can easily insert its own leaders and derail the whole thing.

The author doesn't address it, but I wouldn't be surprised if many of those emotional bullies he describes were gov't plants. Building a movement full of physically and emotionally powerful people is how to combat such tactics.

different clue, December 28, 2015 at 3:10 pm

The author may be too young to know about it. A detailed study of FBI and other infiltrationism into various movements through the 50s , 60s, 70s would repay the effort.

Perhaps field guides should be written on how to "spot the agent", "spot the plant", "spot the disruptor" etc.

nobody, December 28, 2015 at 10:04 am

Anybody who says, of Occupy, that "everyone went home," doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about.

cf:

"Homeless people make up a significant proportion of participants in the Occupy Movement in cities across the United States, from Los Angeles to Atlanta, where at times they comprise an estimated third of the occupiers… Despite stereotypical beliefs that homeless people are not interested in politics, the homeless actually have perhaps the least to lose and the most to gain from being involved in the Occupy Movement."

(Matthew Charles Cardinale, "U.S.: Homeless Play Key Role in Occupy Movement," from December, 2011.)

**

"[The social composition of the movement is] quite varied. Occupy Oakland, for example, is perhaps 50% black and Latino, whereas occupations in other parts of the country may be mostly white. Some occupations are primarily very poor people, homeless people, etc., others include a lot of white-collar workers. Young 'précaires' [people whose work situation and future prospects are precarious] are certainly among the most numerous participants."

(Ken Knabb, "The Occupy Movement at Its Peak, November 10, 2011)

Yves Smith, December 28, 2015 at 1:45 pm

Yes, there was a 17-city, coordinated paramilitary crackdown. All in one night. I watched and chronicled the live stream.

Occupy had very much depended on "place" as in the actual occupations. They had a great deal of difficult regrouping after that.

In NYC some group continue to do good work, most notably Occupy the SEC and Alternative Banking. Occupy Sandy was VERY important, and some of the many Occupy Homes groups were effective but not give much credit or even notice in the media.


MarcoPolo, December 28, 2015 at 9:48 am

For about a year I've wondered why NC could be so hard on Syriza while continuing to run that embarrassing Occupy banner at the top of the page. And you're fond of quoting Gandhi, (you lose, you lose, they give up, you win). But while you're losing you're getting beat up. And that's the problem with Americans generally; can't take a punch. Glass jaw.

Jesse published a quote from Fredrick Douglas a couple of weeks ago. I can't find it now. But it speaks to that; the commitment and preparation necessary to take the kind of punishment you must. When leadership isn't willing to make that commitment there is no organization. And with no organization we're left with "going postal". Americans are much more adept at that.

Consider this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6YNlI8T4RE

Ché Pasa

Credit Yotam Marom and Alternet where this piece was posted on 23 Dec 15.

Ché Pasa, December 28, 2015 at 10:14 am

Interesting that I didn't see any recognition that Podemos has won electoral victory in Spain (May have missed it, long article and all). Podemos grew directly out of the Indignato movement which was a precursor and model for the Occupy movement in the US and latterly around the world.

Whether Podemos will go the way of Syriza and basically become the leftish face of neo-fascism and colonialism remains to be seen. They say they learned from the Greek tragedy and they won't make the same mistakes Syriza did, but power does strange things to its holders and implementers.

The occupied squares were cleared by police in Madrid and the rest of Spain, sometimes over and over again and with as much violence as the police displayed in the United States and elsewhere, but the movement did not die in Spain. It dispersed and in dispersion, it built a politically potent element that now has control of the Spanish government - at least in theory. We'll see what happens when "reality" sets in.

The movement was not destroyed, it was dispersed in the US as well. Hundreds of localized programs and projects grew out of the dispersal of the Occupy movement, many of which continue and grow. The dispersal of the movement was akin to the broadcast of seeds over fields.

Unlike the situation in Europe, however, there appears to be little effort among the dispersed elements of the movement in the United States to achieve political power. The stronger effort here is to create a viable alternative to the current corrupt and destructive political/economic system, to step outside it and grow something else again.

That's more in tune with the anarchist roots of the movement than trying to obtain control of government.

nobody

The secret truth is that Occupy Wall Street was supposed to work. And this is how it was supposed to work:

"A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future… The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people's assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.

"The time has come to deploy this emerging stratagem against the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.

"On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

"Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand?… something all Americans, right and left, yearn for and can stand behind."

And what happened to that idea? David Graeber and his friends derailed it:

"Two days later, at the Outreach meeting we were brainstorming what to put on our first flyer. Adbusters' idea had been that we focus on "one key demand." [sic] This was a brilliant idea from a marketing perspective, but from an organizing perspective, it made no sense at all. We put that one aside almost immediately. There were much more fundamental questions to be hashed out. Like: who were we? Who did want to appeal to? Who did we represent?"

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/david-graeber-on-playing-by-the-rules-%E2%80%93-the-strange-success-of-occupy-wall-street.html

nobody

Yotam Marom: "But the truth is, it wasn't the state…"

**

L'Échaudée: "Would you say that State repression (especially the unified and coordinated raids against the camps) was the main cause of Occupy's decline?"

Ken Knabb: "Yes."

http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/occupy-looking-back.htm

marym

Yes. And the violent attack on the encampments didn't just disperse the people. Cops destroyed food and food service supplies, shelter, electronic equipment, libraries, and medical and first-aid supplies, much of it likely donated by people not necessarily able to be part of an encampment. For some campers this was maybe most of what they had or, for the homeless and other marginalized people who came to the camps, more than they had. If we do build a movement, if bringing about real change will require people to strike, or boycott, or occupy vacant land or buildings, this kind of community support is crucial. We ought not discount (the "authorities" certainly didn't) the material and psychological impact of this destruction beyond just the local participants; and we need to find more sustainable, less vulnerable ways of providing community support.

different clue, December 28, 2015 at 2:54 pm

Weren't the very first few days of Occupy Wall Street conducted by semi-spontaneous contemporary young people in part responding to a slogan written and a call issued by Kalle Lasn of Adbusters Magazine ( "Occupy Wall Street") called-for to happen on a particular day? This is just sketchy memory to be sure. And it became worth much more than one day's involvement.

But after the very first few days, I read somewhere that David Graeber and other older-generation holdover-anarchist-nostalgiasts crashed the movement and infiltrated the leadership and degraded it into a live-action display of "this is what Anarchism looks like". If that is part of the problem of what happened, then younger people will have to analyse that very carefully and if they have another upsurge, they will have to rigidly exclude and reject any David Graberoid self-actualizing/validation-seeking aging Anarchist Nostalgiasts from any contact whatsoever from a genuine upsurge-of-the-young movement.

They might also do some careful thinking about what they actually DO want, and WHY they want it . . . in actionable specificity.

Jim

So what is the lesson from this type of response by the national security state?

It may be worthwhile to take a more careful look at successful occupation strikes.

For example, Solidarity in Poland, after 30 years of average citizen political defeats, managed, through a carefully thought-out and premeditated assertion of power to occupy the Lenin Shipyard, in August of 1980, and to also create an interfactory strike committee which at the beginning consisted of 20 supporting enterprises that insured lateral lines of communication between the occupying sites within the entire Baltic coastal region–in order to ultimately accomplish was was thought of as impossible–the achievement of a self-governing trade union independent of the party state.

When the strike was initially announced at the Lenin Shipyard Walesa said the following:

"I declare an occupation strike. I have been given the trust of the workers. We are occupying the shipyard. We aren't going anywhere until we're sure we've gotten what we wanted. We're staying. This is an occupation strike. I'll be the last one to leave."

They had a single strategic goal with some 20 additional demands backed by a self-created institutional structure (with significant leverage) that was able to protect its citizens and leadership within the shipyard from the State during the time of occupation.

Serious politics with extremely high stakes that managed, for a time, to shift the balance of power, within Poland–and people who participated in this success talked about how their personal fear, in the process of this democratic assertion of power, began to dissipate.

likbez

There is a difference between "color revolution" style events which promote neoliberalism and Occupy style events that oppose it. In case of color revolution style events the participants can rely on all the power of Western embassies, NGO, intelligence agencies and flow of money and equipment. Training of leaders would be provided, "revolutionaries for hire" will emerge, etc.

Occupy was against the most powerful state in the world without any substantial external support.

See

ElViejito December 28, 2015 at 12:40 pm
I would distill my history of activism since the 60's by claiming that the new society will grow within the cracks of the old. I turned from working on "the revolution" a long time ago and now focus on small, achievable projects that have a potential for lasting and making a difference – a progressive forum that brings in speakers to a monthly potluck, a progressive film festival that encourages wide-ranging political discussion, a small think tank consisting of volunteers researching local issues (tax increment financing, anyone?).

Many of us Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) activists are hampered by having been told implicitly and explicitly for our entire education that we are the leaders of the world when we are at best lieutenants of the 1%. For dealing with the rest of the (non-PMC) world, I recommend the strategy suggested by Lois Mark Stalvey in The Education of a WASP: (Loosely quoting from memory) Go to meetings run by minorities (or non PMC-types), do not take over the meeting or offer advice – just be there and help with whatever project they are working on; develop relationships.

Experience being the minority. Later, when you have become accepted as a member of the group, only make suggestions and proposals that promote progressive values and build on the group's already existing values. Always be respectful of the group and its members. This is the best training for dealing with the world and building connected centers of resistance.

GlobalMisanthrope, December 28, 2015 at 12:48 pm

Sorry everybody, but I'm going to go against the grain here. Putting to one side the intolerably wise-whimsical tone, I read this piece as hagiography posing as critique. (It's mortifying to read, especially the struggle as raison d'ętre trope where he's totally cribbing and doesn't even seem to know it, even though this has been put forth as recently as this year to much fanfare and criticism by Ta-Nehisi Coates. No, he thinks he made it up. Yikes!)

Human history is disheveled, spasmodic attempts by those of us who would really rather get on with our lives to stop the ruthless from making that impossible. This battle rages and recedes over and over, sometimes for centuries. Just look how the revolutions of Christianity and capitalism completely reshaped the world and in both cases for good and for bad. Good grief, son. Read a book.

What's more, if you need Gestalt therapy to evoke fear in your heart, then you either aren't paying attention or are on the safe side of the fray. The rest of us are daily made aware that power and powerlessness are not cosmetic and that those are the forces that shape our lives while we try to live in them as best we can. And yet we find the courage to smile at our children. As a life-long member of the working class I find the suggestion that I need to be schooled in the ways of courageous resistance breathtakingly arrogant. I am not charmed.

The sort of utopianism on display here is not only callow and tiresome (and precisely why Occupy failed), but also depressing. And if it reflects the level of understanding held by "activists" of the nature of the crisis we face, I am not heartened.

SRL, December 28, 2015 at 12:59 pm

I agree. Although I supported Occupy, it really had nothing to teach me.

Nick, December 28, 2015 at 3:40 pm

I agree completely. This recap is self-absorbed, naive, and absurd - it reminds me in many ways of the business plan of a start-up that has no clear route to actually making money. It's impossible to imagine a movement of people who think like this accomplishing anything, because they have no model for the outcome they want; what they do have is a model for how they want themselves to be. Naturally, it turns out after a while that they all have different models for how they want themselves to be, and then it breaks up like an unstable bunch of polyamorists who can't stand the constant negotiating anymore.

I'm trying to imagine a leader of the civil rights movement writing a post-mortem like this, and simply can't.

animalogic, December 28, 2015 at 6:59 pm

Thank you, GlobalMisanthrope, I agree.

Credit where due, the author has reached out for some knowledge of both self and circumstances, however, that knowledge is symptomatic of someone lost in the the land of PC idealism.

Frankly, the "bad conscience" is alive and well in these ones. Callow indeed. In the face of one of the most vicious oligarchies in history, these amateurs fret and fight over the simple VALIDITY of leadership.

Perhaps, I should not be unfair: after all, how could people cultivated lifelong in the playroom of PC/Identity politics ever gain the knowledge, let alone the INSTINCTS. sufficient to fight our oligarchs ?

Indeed, PC/identity politics has been one of the oligarchs greatest assets over the last few decades:

1. PC etc has usefully SPLIT workers etc into descrete, often contradictory, even isolated, movements. Divide and conquer politics.

2. PC etc has DISTRACTED effort away from core economic issues onto social/cultural ones, which have little to no real bearing on their wealth/power. Or does anyone really believe that the real elites give a SHIT whether (say) gay people marry or not ?

3. PC etc has given them a wonderful stick with which conservatives can beat their "liberal" enemies. Can we not admit that PC often slips over into the ludicrous ?

4. And, in some ways best of all, PC encourages a fearful self censoring citizenry. Indeed, the author is a perfect example of a guilt ridden, confused, trivial modern citizen…really, anything to fear there ? Lol.

Roll on the crypto (?)fascist state….

Ulysses , December 28, 2015 at 10:39 pm

"As a life-long member of the working class I find the suggestion that I need to be schooled in the ways of courageous resistance breathtakingly arrogant"

Well said!

sid_finster, December 28, 2015 at 4:53 pm

Y'all really really need to study the works of V.I. Lenin.

Whatever else you may say about Lenin, his goals, his means, or his beliefs, he had a remarkably clear-eyed and unsentimental view of power and how one goes about getting it and how one goes about holding on to it.

Jim, December 28, 2015 at 6:40 pm

Sid,

From my perspective the Leninist alternative dismisses any interest in a democratically self-organized society. In postulating a disciplined revolutionary party to act in the name of society he completed the final arc in a profoundly undemocratic political trajectory from which the traditional Left has not yet recovered.

likbez,

"In postulating a disciplined revolutionary party to act in the name of society he completed the final arc in a profoundly undemocratic political trajectory from which the traditional Left has not yet recovered."

May be "the traditional Left has not yet recovered", but traditional right fully adopted Lenin's methods and organization under "color revolution" banner.

sandra, December 29, 2015 at 12:37 am

We came out of the sixties with the idea that those people who pushed political and anti-war meetings into internal conflict that was intolerable to sit through were often undercover government agents. Sorry, it has happened and has been documented from the sixties and into the present. If it is a natural phenomenon that political movements move though that stage of participants attacking each other to the detriment of everyone, it is something that calls out for recognition as an historical phenomenon that is repeated, and that wider perspective is necessary somewhere in your analysis. The occupy movement may have been short-lived and crushed by the power of the state. But it was successful in my experience beyond our imaginings.

Your movement redefined everything that happened afterward. It is absolutely accepted that we live in an oligarchy, that wall street has destroyed the economy, that the banks are corrupt and the government is in their orbit. Your visceral reactions to the corruption that surrounds us made a profound mark upon the country's understanding of itself. Do not underestimate that. The thinking about what to do next had not yet evolved.

The corrupt capitalists are still in power and still control the major media, but they have lost the country. Sorry but there is no constituency there anymore to support their views. They must lie to us and trick us, as those in power have done. They must skew the elections. The path ahead was not clear to you or to us when your dramatic movement sprang up. And it is not clear now that we know these truths. We know how far away the power structure is from our values. And that is where we stand.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

"Occupy" failed because it had no goal, and having no goal, it didn't know how to get there. See: http://goo.gl/m6qmGn

Here is a quote from the above June 2012 article:

It goes on and on, protest after protest. Anti-racial profiling. Anti-union busting. Anti-tuition increases. Anti-school closings. Anti-mortgage fraud. Anti-unsustainable development. Anti-corruption. Anti-this, anti-that, anti-the other thing.

For reasons unknown, the Occupy movement seems to take a perverse pride in being leaderless and directionless, preferring to run hither and yon, protesting whatever strikes their fancy. No focus. No plan. No idea. Just protest.

The Tea Party has a simple, easily understood focus: Lower taxes. What is Occupy's simple, easily understood focus?

The business and political leaders, against whom Occupy protests, have learned one thing: Do nothing. Occupy will protest and then they will be gone, and we can resume business as usual.

The public grows weary of ineffectual, random, aimless protests, and Occupy, which began with such great promise, becomes last week's newspaper. A lost opportunity is a step backward, as people become discouraged and slide into lethargy.

Somewhere, in board rooms around the world, the 1% is laughing.

washunate, December 29, 2015 at 10:11 am

Do nothing? I'd be curious to hear what you mean on that. It took incredibly coordinated state action to defuse Occupy, not public weariness.

It's unfortunate Occupy was not able to organize in a way to neutralize such action, but at the very least, it pulled back the curtain on the police state specifically and the power of government more generally in a way no one can deny moving forward. That's the spark of hope from the various events of the last few years. The elites want us to believe they are all powerful. But it is actually taking them quite a bit of effort to maintain that illusion. In reality, they are strategically weak and vulnerable. And they know it.

Which is why the Democratic party has had to become so blatantly pro-inequality. Even a modest opposition to fascism on their part would ruin the efforts of the past few decades.

[Dec 24, 2015] Obama s foreign policy goals get a boost from plunging oil prices

Notable quotes:
"... At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States. ..."
The Washington Post

Plunging crude oil prices are diverting hundreds of billions of dollars away from the treasure chests of oil-exporting nations, putting some of the United States' adversaries under greater stress.

After two years of falling prices, the effects have reverberated across the globe, fueling economic discontent in Venezuela, changing Russia's economic and political calculations, and dampening Iranian leaders' hopes of a financial windfall when sanctions linked to its nuclear program will be lifted next year.

At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States.

"Cheap oil hurts revenues for some of our foes and helps some of our friends. The Europeans, South Koreans and Japanese - they're all winners," said Robert McNally, director for energy in President George W. Bush's National Security Council and now head of the Rapidan Group, a consulting firm. "It's not good for Russia, that's for sure, and it's not good for Iran."

... ... ...

In Iran, cheap oil is forcing the government to ratchet down expectations.

The much-anticipated lifting of sanctions as a result of the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program is expected to result in an additional half-million barrels a day of oil exports by the middle of 2016.

But at current prices, Iran's income from those sales will still fall short of revenue earned from constrained oil exports a year ago.

Moreover, low prices are making it difficult for Iran to persuade international oil companies to develop Iran's long-neglected oil and gas fields, which have been off limits since sanctions were broadened in 2012.

"Should Iran come out of sanctions, they will face a very different market than the one they had left in 2012," Amos Hochstein, the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, said in an interview. "They were forced to recede in a world of over $100 oil, and sanctions will be lifted at $36 oil. They will have to work harder to convince companies to come in and take the risk for supporting their energy infrastructure and their energy production."

Meanwhile, in Russia, low oil prices have compounded damage done by U.S. and European sanctions that were designed to target Russia's energy and financial sectors. And when Iran increases output, its grade of crude oil will most likely go to Europe, where it will compete directly with Russia's Urals oil, McNally said.

Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.

[Dec 24, 2015] Obama's foreign policy goals get a boost from plunging oil prices

Notable quotes:
"... At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States. ..."
The Washington Post

Plunging crude oil prices are diverting hundreds of billions of dollars away from the treasure chests of oil-exporting nations, putting some of the United States' adversaries under greater stress.

After two years of falling prices, the effects have reverberated across the globe, fueling economic discontent in Venezuela, changing Russia's economic and political calculations, and dampening Iranian leaders' hopes of a financial windfall when sanctions linked to its nuclear program will be lifted next year.

At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States.

"Cheap oil hurts revenues for some of our foes and helps some of our friends. The Europeans, South Koreans and Japanese - they're all winners," said Robert McNally, director for energy in President George W. Bush's National Security Council and now head of the Rapidan Group, a consulting firm. "It's not good for Russia, that's for sure, and it's not good for Iran."

... ... ...

In Iran, cheap oil is forcing the government to ratchet down expectations.

The much-anticipated lifting of sanctions as a result of the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program is expected to result in an additional half-million barrels a day of oil exports by the middle of 2016.

But at current prices, Iran's income from those sales will still fall short of revenue earned from constrained oil exports a year ago.

Moreover, low prices are making it difficult for Iran to persuade international oil companies to develop Iran's long-neglected oil and gas fields, which have been off limits since sanctions were broadened in 2012.

"Should Iran come out of sanctions, they will face a very different market than the one they had left in 2012," Amos Hochstein, the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, said in an interview. "They were forced to recede in a world of over $100 oil, and sanctions will be lifted at $36 oil. They will have to work harder to convince companies to come in and take the risk for supporting their energy infrastructure and their energy production."

Meanwhile, in Russia, low oil prices have compounded damage done by U.S. and European sanctions that were designed to target Russia's energy and financial sectors. And when Iran increases output, its grade of crude oil will most likely go to Europe, where it will compete directly with Russia's Urals oil, McNally said.

Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.

[Dec 23, 2015] The antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee

Notable quotes:
"... the antipathy the Russian kreakly ..."
"... the Russian intelligentsia ..."
marknesop.wordpress.com
Moscow Exile, December 20, 2015 at 3:09 am
Russian "oppositionist" tweets – don't you just love 'em?

Colonel Matt Lee receiving instructions from his superiors

No doubt the person who posted the above tweet thinks Psaki, Harf, Trudeau, Rear-Admiral Kirby et al. have all been unfairly tested by this Russian FSB colonel Matt Lee and he should not have been allowed to take part in the Dept. of State press briefings because he is an agent of the Dark Lord, whilst the above mentioned Dept. of State spokespersons are all on the side of righteousness.

marknesop , December 20, 2015 at 11:38 am
I do love them, actually. For anyone who is not stupid, the antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee and anyone like him who questions the pat and Manichean State Department narrative bespeaks an admiration for the way the United States government operates. Quite apart for an unhealthy devotion to 'Murkan nationalism and a clear belief that when America seizes something, it should be grateful because it is a compliment if America wants it, it is a preview of how they would govern if they had power. Russia's 'intellectuals' are great admirers of the disinformation and manipulation of the public consciousness with which the State Department gets about its daily work.

It is noteworthy that Matt Lee has never at any time expressed any gratuitous admiration for Russia or Putin or the way Russia conducts global affairs. He merely questions the State Department when its lies get too big or when it purports something as incontestable fact which it has gleaned from social media and Syrian activists. But the Russian intelligentsia view him as an impediment to a unipolar world ruled by America The Great And Good.

[Dec 23, 2015] Sensational government session in a European country. A historic precedent

You probably need to read the whole transcribed dialog to understand that the current situation in Ukrainian government. Here are just small except.
southfront.org

AVAKOV: You said that the cabinet of ministers itself was heading the corruption

SAAKASHVILI: …what do you mean I'm softer? Yes, your Martinenko is a criminal

... ... ...

00:46 AVAKOV: Then get the damn out of here if you don't give a damn

00:48 Poroshenko: Arsen Borisovich, I'm…

00:50 SAAKASHVILI: I'm calling you to politeness

00:53 AVAKOV: Shut up

... ... ...

1:13 AVAKOV: Shut up, you corrupt governor

... ... ....

1:39 AVAKOV: When we are speaking about the whole list of things that have been said

1:42 AVAKOV: Of course privatization

1:44 AVAKOV: Of course a total privatization

1:46 AVAKOV: including OPZ [Odessa Port Plant]

... ... ...

2:32 SAAKASHVILI: And I'm not going… not going to tolerate some corrupt minister

2:36 SAAKASHVILI: who, the entire country knows he's a thief

... ... ...

2:46 AVAKOV: I need to punch him or something?

2:47 POROSHENKO: I'm… I'm adjourning the meeting

2:51 AVAKOV: F4cking faggot!

2:52 POROSHENKO: Arsen… AVAKOV: Damn bastard!

2:55 SAAKASHVILI: Thief!

2:57 AVAKOV: Yes, a thief [irony]

2:58 SAAKASHVILI: So, you will be in a jail, or just because you are…

3:01 AVAKOV: Piss off!

3:02 SAAKASHVILI: We are going to restore the country and you'll be in a jail

... ... ...

OneFrame
This is incredible that that the functioning of the state cabinet behaves like this. Incredible the results the US delivers to the world. Very sad. I feel for the people of Ukraine and their suffering. This would not be happening if the coup had not happened. Sakashvilli is a wanted man in his own country and should not be in Ukraine. He should have been sent back to Georgia to face the charges. Unbelievable.

aprescoup

Afghanistan a basket case; Iraq a basket case; Libya a basket full of jihadi terrorists; Syria, if not for the Russian aid, would be ISIS central and a basket case, and then this example of American values playing out in the basket case of Ukraine...

WTF?!

[Dec 23, 2015] The antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee

Notable quotes:
"... the antipathy the Russian kreakly ..."
"... the Russian intelligentsia ..."
marknesop.wordpress.com
Moscow Exile, December 20, 2015 at 3:09 am
Russian "oppositionist" tweets – don't you just love 'em?

Colonel Matt Lee receiving instructions from his superiors

No doubt the person who posted the above tweet thinks Psaki, Harf, Trudeau, Rear-Admiral Kirby et al. have all been unfairly tested by this Russian FSB colonel Matt Lee and he should not have been allowed to take part in the Dept. of State press briefings because he is an agent of the Dark Lord, whilst the above mentioned Dept. of State spokespersons are all on the side of righteousness.

marknesop , December 20, 2015 at 11:38 am
I do love them, actually. For anyone who is not stupid, the antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee and anyone like him who questions the pat and Manichean State Department narrative bespeaks an admiration for the way the United States government operates. Quite apart for an unhealthy devotion to 'Murkan nationalism and a clear belief that when America seizes something, it should be grateful because it is a compliment if America wants it, it is a preview of how they would govern if they had power. Russia's 'intellectuals' are great admirers of the disinformation and manipulation of the public consciousness with which the State Department gets about its daily work.

It is noteworthy that Matt Lee has never at any time expressed any gratuitous admiration for Russia or Putin or the way Russia conducts global affairs. He merely questions the State Department when its lies get too big or when it purports something as incontestable fact which it has gleaned from social media and Syrian activists. But the Russian intelligentsia view him as an impediment to a unipolar world ruled by America The Great And Good.

[Dec 23, 2015] The Neocons - Masters of Chaos

Notable quotes:
"... It's now clear that if Obama had ordered a major bombing campaign against Assad's military in early September 2013, he might have opened the gates of Damascus to a hellish victory by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists or the even more brutal Islamic State, since these terrorist groups have emerged as the only effective fighters against Assad. ..."
"... By late September 2013, the disappointed neocons were acting out their anger by taking aim at Putin. They recognized that a particular vulnerability for the Russian president was Ukraine and the possibility that it could be pulled out of Russia's sphere of influence and into the West's orbit. ..."
"... But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself." In other words, the new neocon hope was for "regime change" in Kiev and Moscow. [See Consortiumnews.com's " Neocons' Ukraine/Syria/Iran Gambit. "] ..."
"... Putin also had sidetracked that possible war with Iran by helping to forge an interim agreement constraining but not eliminating Iran's nuclear program. So, he became the latest target of neocon demonization, a process in which the New York Times and the Washington Post eagerly took the lead. ..."
"... As the political violence in Kiev escalated – with the uprising's muscle supplied by neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine – neocons within the Obama administration discussed how to "midwife" a coup against Yanukovych. Central to this planning was Victoria Nuland, who had been promoted to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and was urging on the protesters, even passing out cookies to protesters at Kiev's Maidan square. ..."
"... When the coup went down on Feb. 22 – spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias who seized government buildings and forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives – the U.S. State Department quickly deemed the new regime "legitimate" and the mainstream U.S. media dutifully stepped up the demonization of Yanukovych and Putin. ..."
"... Although Putin's position had been in support of Ukraine's status quo – i.e., retaining the elected president and the country's constitutional process – the crisis was pitched to the American people as a case of "Russian aggression" with dire comparisons made between Putin and Hitler, especially after ethnic Russians in the east and south resisted the coup regime in Kiev and Crimea seceded to rejoin Russia. ..."
"... Pressured by the Obama administration, the EU agreed to sanction Russia for its "aggression," touching off a tit-for-tat trade war with Moscow which reduced Europe's sale of farming and manufacturing goods to Russia and threatened to disrupt Russia's natural gas supplies to Europe. ..."
"... While the most serious consequences were to Ukraine's economy which went into freefall because of the civil war, some of Europe's most endangered economies in the south also were hit hard by the lost trade with Russia. Europe began to stagger toward the third dip in a triple-dip recession with European markets experiencing major stock sell-offs. ..."
Oct 17, 2014 | consortiumnews.com

If you're nervously watching the stock market gyrations and worrying about your declining portfolio or pension fund, part of the blame should go to America's neocons who continue to be masters of chaos, endangering the world's economy by instigating geopolitical confrontations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Of course, there are other factors pushing Europe's economy to the brink of a triple-dip recession and threatening to stop America's fragile recovery, too. But the neocons' "regime change" strategies, which have unleashed violence and confrontations across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and most recently Ukraine, have added to the economic uncertainty.

This neocon destabilization of the world economy began with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 under President George W. Bush who squandered some $1 trillion on the bloody folly. But the neocons' strategies have continued through their still-pervasive influence in Official Washington during President Barack Obama's administration.

The neocons and their "liberal interventionist" junior partners have kept the "regime change" pot boiling with the Western-orchestrated overthrow and killing of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the proxy civil war in Syria to oust Bashar al-Assad, the costly economic embargoes against Iran, and the U.S.-backed coup that ousted Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February.

All these targeted governments were first ostracized by the neocons and the major U.S. news organizations, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, which have become what amounts to neocon mouthpieces. Whenever the neocons decide that it's time for another "regime change," the mainstream U.S. media enlists in the propaganda wars.

The consequence of this cascading disorder has been damaging and cumulative. The costs of the Iraq War strapped the U.S. Treasury and left less government maneuvering room when Wall Street crashed in 2008. If Bush still had the surplus that he inherited from President Bill Clinton – rather than a yawning deficit – there might have been enough public money to stimulate a much-faster recovery.

President Obama also wouldn't have been left to cope with the living hell that the U.S. occupation brought to the people of Iraq, violent chaos that gave birth to what was then called "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" and has since rebranded itself "the Islamic State."

But Obama didn't do himself (or the world) any favors when he put much of his foreign policy in the hands of Democratic neocon-lites, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Bush holdovers, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus. At State, Clinton promoted the likes of neocon Victoria Nuland, the wife of arch-neocon Robert Kagan, and Obama brought in "liberal interventionists" like Samantha Power, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

In recent years, the neocons and "liberal interventionists" have become almost indistinguishable, so much so that Robert Kagan has opted to discard the discredited neocon label and call himself a "liberal interventionist." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's True Foreign Policy 'Weakness.'"]

Manipulating Obama

Obama, in his nearly six years as president, also has shied away from imposing his more "realistic" views about world affairs on the neocon/liberal-interventionist ideologues inside the U.S. pundit class and his own administration. He has been outmaneuvered by clever insiders (as happened in 2009 on the Afghan "surge") or overwhelmed by some Official Washington "group think" (as was the case in Libya, Syria, Iran and Ukraine).

Once all the "smart people" reach some collective decision that a foreign leader "must go," Obama usually joins the chorus and has shown only rare moments of toughness in standing up to misguided conventional wisdoms.

The one notable case was his decision in summer 2013 to resist pressure to destroy Syria's military after a Sarin gas attack outside Damascus sparked a dubious rush to judgment blaming Assad's regime. Since then, more evidence has pointed to a provocation by anti-Assad extremists who may have thought that the incident would draw in the U.S. military on their side. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Was Turkey Behind Syrian Sarin Attack?"]

It's now clear that if Obama had ordered a major bombing campaign against Assad's military in early September 2013, he might have opened the gates of Damascus to a hellish victory by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists or the even more brutal Islamic State, since these terrorist groups have emerged as the only effective fighters against Assad.

But the neocons and the "liberal interventionists" seemed oblivious to that danger. They had their hearts set on Syrian "regime change," so were furious when their dreams were dashed by Obama's supposed "weakness," i.e. his failure to do what they wanted. They also blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin who brokered a compromise with Assad in which he agreed to surrender all of Syria's chemical weapons while still denying a role in the Sarin attack.

By late September 2013, the disappointed neocons were acting out their anger by taking aim at Putin. They recognized that a particular vulnerability for the Russian president was Ukraine and the possibility that it could be pulled out of Russia's sphere of influence and into the West's orbit.

So, Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to sound the trumpet about Ukraine, which he called "the biggest prize."

But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself." In other words, the new neocon hope was for "regime change" in Kiev and Moscow. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Neocons' Ukraine/Syria/Iran Gambit."]

Destabilizing the World

Beyond the recklessness of plotting to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia, the neocon strategy threatened to shake Europe's fragile economic recovery from a painful recession, six years of jobless stress that had strained the cohesion of the European Union and the euro zone.

Across the Continent, populist parties from the Right and Left have been challenging establishment politicians over their inability to reverse the widespread unemployment and the growing poverty. Important to Europe's economy was its relationship with Russia, a major market for agriculture and manufactured goods and a key source of natural gas to keep Europe's industries humming and its houses warm.

The last thing Europe needed was more chaos, but that's what the neocons do best and they were determined to punish Putin for disrupting their plans for Syrian "regime change," an item long near the top of their agenda along with their desire to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," which Israel has cited as an "existential threat."

Putin also had sidetracked that possible war with Iran by helping to forge an interim agreement constraining but not eliminating Iran's nuclear program. So, he became the latest target of neocon demonization, a process in which the New York Times and the Washington Post eagerly took the lead.

To get at Putin, however, the first step was Ukraine where Gershman's NED was funding scores of programs for political activists and media operatives. These efforts fed into mass protests against Ukrainian President Yanukovych for balking at an EU association agreement that included a harsh austerity plan designed by the International Monetary Fund. Yanukovych opted instead for a more generous $15 billion loan deal from Putin.

As the political violence in Kiev escalated – with the uprising's muscle supplied by neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine – neocons within the Obama administration discussed how to "midwife" a coup against Yanukovych. Central to this planning was Victoria Nuland, who had been promoted to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and was urging on the protesters, even passing out cookies to protesters at Kiev's Maidan square.

According to an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland didn't think EU officials were being aggressive enough. "Fuck the EU," she said as she brainstormed how "to help glue this thing." She literally handpicked who should be in the post-coup government – "Yats is the guy," a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who would indeed become prime minister.

When the coup went down on Feb. 22 – spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias who seized government buildings and forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives – the U.S. State Department quickly deemed the new regime "legitimate" and the mainstream U.S. media dutifully stepped up the demonization of Yanukovych and Putin.

Although Putin's position had been in support of Ukraine's status quo – i.e., retaining the elected president and the country's constitutional process – the crisis was pitched to the American people as a case of "Russian aggression" with dire comparisons made between Putin and Hitler, especially after ethnic Russians in the east and south resisted the coup regime in Kiev and Crimea seceded to rejoin Russia.

Starting a Trade War

Pressured by the Obama administration, the EU agreed to sanction Russia for its "aggression," touching off a tit-for-tat trade war with Moscow which reduced Europe's sale of farming and manufacturing goods to Russia and threatened to disrupt Russia's natural gas supplies to Europe.

While the most serious consequences were to Ukraine's economy which went into freefall because of the civil war, some of Europe's most endangered economies in the south also were hit hard by the lost trade with Russia. Europe began to stagger toward the third dip in a triple-dip recession with European markets experiencing major stock sell-offs.

The dominoes soon toppled across the Atlantic as major U.S. stock indices dropped, creating anguish among many Americans just when it seemed the hangover from Bush's 2008 market crash was finally wearing off.

Obviously, there are other reasons for the recent stock market declines, including fears about the Islamic State's victories in Syria and Iraq, continued chaos in Libya, and exclusion of Iran from the global economic system – all partly the result of neocon ideology. There have been unrelated troubles, too, such as the Ebola epidemic in western Africa and various weather disasters.

But the world's economy usually can withstand some natural and manmade challenges. The real problem comes when a combination of catastrophes pushes the international financial system to a tipping point. Then, even a single event can dump the world into economic chaos, like what happened when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.

It's not clear whether the world is at such a tipping point today, but the stock market volatility suggests that we may be on the verge of another worldwide recession. Meanwhile, the neocon masters of chaos seem determined to keep putting their ideological obsessions ahead of the risks to Americans and people everywhere.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

[Dec 19, 2015] The Exception

Notable quotes:
"... "Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt, and that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous Carly won the sound bite of the century award with that one! ..."
"... I voted for this turd because you Rightwingnut Fuckheads gave me the option of McCain the first time and Romney the second time. ..."
Zero Hedge

FireBrander

I expect the lies....but the level of lies when it comes to "fighting ISIS" is off-the-fucking-charts!...and no one calls him on it!

>The USA/NATO Created ISIS.

>The USA/NATO is using ISIS to oust ASSAD because he's too friendly with Russia/Iran.

>The USA/NATO FUNDS ISIS via Turkey.

Obama: "ISIS is a seriously threat, they are contained and we will destroy ISIS"

Bill Clintons' mouth has got to be gaping; and I'm sure thoroughly impressed that Obama could tell a whopper like that without question...NOT ONE REPUBLICAN at the debate even called Obama on ISIS!

Neil Patrick Harris

You gotta wonder how much money they promised him when he leaves office.

Peter Pan

Unfortunately Obama is beyond being a threat. He ( and whoever is pulling on his strings) is an actual attack on America.

FireBrander

"Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt, and that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous" Carly won the sound bite of the century award with that one!

..and the new budget bill will fully fund ALL OF IT's desires....

FireBrander

I voted for "this turd" because you Rightwingnut Fuckheads gave me the option of McCain the first time and Romney the second time.

You're welcome for my vote saving you from those fuckheads...McCain would have nuked the planet by now and Romney would have handed the country to his VC friends and you'd be living in a "dorm" putting together iPhones.

Romney criticised Obama in one of the debates because "The number of battleships in our fleet is the lowest since the 50's"...battleships? Romney, you stupid fuck, it's 20xx you moron...battleships are pretty irrelevent in today's "theater of war"...Obama held it together and replied, I give the Admirals EVERYTHING THEY ASK FOR...and Romney dropped it.

Great ZH piece on Romney; what a piece of shit:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-17/rip-truman-show-bubble-finance-...

[Dec 17, 2015] The Putin-Did-It Conspiracy Theory

Notable quotes:
"... It was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, not Vladimir Putin, who pushed the EU agreement and miscalculated the consequences, as the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel has reported . Putin's only role in that time frame was to offer a more generous $15 billion aid package to Ukraine, not exactly a war-like act. ..."
February 15, 2015 | readersupportednews.org

The actually "incontrovertible" facts about the Ukraine crisis are these: The destabilization of President Viktor Yanukovych's elected government began in November 2013 when Yanukovych balked at a proposed association agreement promoted by the European Union. He sought more time after the sticker shock of learning from Kiev economic experts that the deal would cost Ukraine $160 billion in lost revenue by cutting trade with Russia.

It was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, not Vladimir Putin, who pushed the EU agreement and miscalculated the consequences, as the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel has reported. Putin's only role in that time frame was to offer a more generous $15 billion aid package to Ukraine, not exactly a war-like act.

Yanukovych's decision to postpone action on the EU association prompted angry demonstrations in Kiev's Maidan square, largely from western Ukrainians who were hoping for visa-free travel to the EU and other benefits from closer ties. Putin had no role in those protests – and it's insane to think that he did.

In February 2014, the protests grew more and more violent as neo-Nazi and other militias organized in the western city of Lviv and these 100-man units known as "sotins" were dispatched daily to provide the muscle for the anti-Yanukovych uprising that was taking shape. It is frankly nutty to suggest that Putin was organizing these militias. [See Consortiumnews.com's "When Is a Putsch a Putsch."]

Evidence of Coup Plotting

By contrast, there is substantial evidence that senior U.S. officials were pushing for a "regime change" in Kiev, including an intercepted phone call and various public statements.

In December 2013, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, a neocon holdover, reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European aspirations." In early February, she discussed with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt who the new leaders of Ukraine should be. "Yats is the guy," she declared, referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Who's Telling the Big Lie on Ukraine?"]

The Maidan uprising gained momentum on Feb. 20, 2014, when snipers around the square opened fire on police and protesters touching off a violent clash that left scores of people dead, both police and protesters. After the sniper fire and a police retreat - carrying their wounded - the demonstrators surged forward and some police apparently reacted with return fire of their own.

But the growing evidence indicates that the initial sniper fire originated from locations controlled by the Right Sektor, extremists associated with the Maidan's neo-Nazi "self-defense" commandant Andriy Parubiy. Though the current Ukrainian government has dragged its feet on an investigation, independent field reports, including a new one from BBC, indicate that the snipers were associated with the protesters, not the Yanukovych government as was widely reported in the U.S. media a year ago.

The worsening violence led Yanukovych to agree on Feb. 21 to a deal guaranteed by three European countries. He accepted reduced powers and agreed to early elections so he could be voted out of office. Yet, rather than permit that political settlement to go forward, neo-Nazis and other Maidan forces overran government buildings on Feb. 22, forcing Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives.

The U.S. State Department quickly deemed this coup regime "legitimate" and Nuland's choice, Yatsenyuk, emerged as Prime Minister, with Parubiy put in charge of national security.

In other words, there is plenty of evidence that the Ukraine crisis was started by the EU through its mishandling of the association agreement, then was heated up by the U.S. government through the work of Nuland, Pyatt and other officials, and then was brought to a boil by neo-Nazis and other extremists who executed the coup.

[Dec 17, 2015] Neocon Influence on Angela Merkel

February 21, 2007 | Dialog International
Is Angela Merkel getting bad advice from Washington neocons through their representative in Berlin? Now we read that Jeff Gedmin - the head of the Aspen Institute in Berlin - is meeting on a regular basis with the Chancellor to instruct her on the Bush administration's line:

Angela Merkel relies on the advice of Jeffrey Gedmin, specially dispatched to Berlin to assist her by the Bush clan. This lobbyist first worked at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) [2] under Richard Perle and Mrs. Dick Cheney. He enthusiastically encouraged the creation of a Euro with Dollar parity exchange rate. Within the AEI, he led the New Atlantic Initiative (NAI), which brought together all the America-friendly generals and politicians in Europe. He was then involved in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and wrote the chapter on Europe in the neocon programme. He argued that the European Union should remain under NATO authority and that this would only be possible by "discouraging European calls for emancipation." [3] Finally he became the administrator of the Council of the Community of Democracies (CCD), which argues in favour of a two-speed UN, and became director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin [4]. Subsequently he turned down the offer from his friend John Bolton [5] of the post of deputy US ambassador to the UN so as to be able to devote himself exclusively to Angela Merkel.

Elsewhere we read that Chancellor Merkel receives daily briefings from the neocon stalwart Gedmin:

Gedmin "brieft" die Kanzlerin täglich: Er hat damit die Rolle inne, die bei der Stasi die Führungsoffiziere hatten. Wenn wir uns noch Demokratie nennen wollen, dann muss Merkel gezwungen werden, die Inhalte dieser täglichen "Briefings" dem Land offenzulegen. In anderen Ländern gibt es dafür Gesetze, die "Freedom of Information Act" heissen.

Could this be true? I hope not. Gedmin is known for his columns in the conservative daily Die Welt where he reports on the marvelous successes the Iraq War. And who can forget Gedmin's column during last summer' s Israel/Lebanon War where he wrote about how Hezbollah fighters drank the blood of their victims in Lebanon? If Angela Merkel is looking for good advice, there are much more honest and intelligent resources than Jeff Gedmin.

[Dec 17, 2015] Why Merkel betrays Europe and Germany

Note that the quality of translation from German of this article is low.
Notable quotes:
"... Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ..."
"... Bild and Die Welt ..."
"... In 2003, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder opposed the Anglo-American intervention in Ira q. Angela Merkel then published a courageous article in the Washington Post ..."
"... As Stanley Payne, the famous American historian said about Spain (or any western democracy) that now politicians are not elected but chosen by apparatus, agencies and visible hands of the markets ..."
"... Merkel is publicly supported by Friede Springer , widow of West German press baron, Axel Springer , whos publishing conglomerate, the Springer Group secretly received around $7 million from the CIA in the early 1950s. ..."
"... She is counseled by Jeffrey Gedmin. Gedmin is a regular columnist in Die Welt , a publication of the Springer Group. After becoming administrator of the Council of the Community of Democracies and director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin in 2001, Gedmin devoted himself exclusively to Merkel . Gedmin was too involved in the infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and wrote the chapter on Europe in the neocon programme. He argued that the European Union should remain under NATO authority and that this would only be possible by discouraging European calls for emancipation . ..."
"... In a few years, Merkel has destroyed European solidarity, annihilated the German nuclear power plants (an old American obsession too), impoverished Germans and their once efficient Rheinisch and solitary economy, backed the mad dog American diplomacy and created along with an irresponsible American administration (irresponsible because America will never win this kind of conflict) a dangerous crisis against Russia than can end on a war or a scandalous European partition. ..."
Mar 06, 2015 | PravdaReport

One must understand the reasons of Angela Merkel's behaviour. She obeys America and her Israeli mentor ('Israel is Germany's raison d'ętre'???), she threatens and mistreats Europe; she attacks Russia and now she builds a new sanitary cordon (like in 1919) in order to deconstruct Eurasia and reinforce American agenda in our unlucky continent. Now Merkel advocates for the rapid adoption on the most infamous and perilous treaty of commerce in history, the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). Dr Roberts has recently explained the meaning of 'Fast Track' expression and a courageous Guardian, last 27th may, has exposed the corruption of American Congress on this incredible yet terrible matter.

Why is Merkel so pro-American and anti-European?

Let us explain with the data we know the reasons of such nihilist and erratic behaviour.

Angela Merkel was then publicly supported by two press groups. Firstly, she was able to count on the support of Friede Springer, who had inherited the Axel Springer group (180 newspapers and magazines, including Bild and Die Welt). The group's journalists are required to sign an editorial agreement which lies down that they must work towards developing transatlantic links and defending the state of Israel. The other group is Bertelsmann.

Angela Merkel radically rejects European independence

In 2003, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder opposed the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq. Angela Merkel then published a 'courageous' article in the Washington Post in which she rejected the Chirac-Schröder doctrine of European independence, affirmed her gratitude and friendship for "America" and supported this scandalous and ridiculous war. I quote some lines of this interesting act of submission to her American lords:

Yet Merkel won the elections in 2007. She announced the abolition of graduated income tax, proposing that the rate should be the same for those who only just have what is necessary and those who live in luxury: maybe this is the a result of her Christian education?

The outgoing Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, severely criticized this proposal in a televised debate. The CDU's lead was decimated, and in the actual election, the CDU polled 35% of the votes and the SPD 34%, the remainder being spread amongst a number of small parties. The Germans didn't want Schröder any longer, but nor did they want Merkel. I repeat that she was imposed more than elected. As Stanley Payne, the famous American historian said about Spain (or any western democracy) that now politicians are 'not elected but chosen' by apparatus, agencies and 'visible hands' of the markets

These last weeks, "Mother" Merkel tries to re-launch the proposed merger of the North American Free Trade Area and the European Free Trade Area, thereby creating a "great transatlantic market" to use the words once pronounced by Sir Leon Brittan, a famous paedophile involved in scandals and bribes since, and mysteriously found dead a couple of months ago.

Let us se now some of their connections:

We have never been so far from 'emancipation' now in Europe, and never been so near to a war with Russia and maybe (in order to satisfy American gruesome appetite) with Central Asia and China. In France, 61% of the people who had witnessed the war asserted in 1945 that we were saved by the Russian Army. Now, thanks to American propaganda backed by European collaborators, we are hardly 10% to know that fact. The rest is misled by propaganda, media, TV and films. Daniel Estulin speaks of a remade, of a re-fabricated past by US television and media agencies.

In a few years, Merkel has destroyed European solidarity, annihilated the German nuclear power plants (an old American obsession too), impoverished Germans and their once efficient Rheinisch and solitary economy, backed the 'mad dog' American diplomacy and created along with an irresponsible American administration (irresponsible because America will never win this kind of conflict) a dangerous crisis against Russia than can end on a war or a scandalous European partition.

See also: Germany Americanizes Europe

[Dec 12, 2015] Guyenot Who are the Neocons

Notable quotes:
"... The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.) ..."
"... Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either. ..."
"... He points out dual-citizen (Israel / USA) members and self proclaimed Zionists throughout cabinet level positions in the US government, international banking and controlling the US military. In private writings and occasionally in public, Neocons admit that America's war policies are actually Israel's war goals. (Examples provided.) ..."
"... American Jewish Committee ..."
"... Contemporary Jewish Record ..."
"... If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying . And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren ..."
"... Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech. ..."
"... believes that Truth is harmful to the common man and the social order and should be reserved for superior minds. ..."
"... nations derive their strength from their myths , which are necessary for government and governance. ..."
"... national myths have no necessary relationship with historical reality: they are socio-cultural constructions that the State has a duty to disseminate . ..."
"... to be effective, any national myth must be based on a clear distinction between good and evil ; it derives its cohesive strength from the hatred of an enemy nation. ..."
"... deception is the norm in political life ..."
"... Office of Special Plans ..."
"... The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy. ..."
"... the "chosen people" myth (God likes us best, we are better than you) ..."
"... the Holy Land myth (one area of real estate is more holy than another) ..."
"... General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran". ..."
"... Among them are brilliant strategists ..."
"... They operate unrestrained by the most basic moral principles upon which civilization is founded. They are undisturbed by compassion for the suffering of others. ..."
"... They use consciously and skillfully use deception and "myth-making" to shape policy ..."
"... They have infiltrated the highest levels of banking, US military, NATO and US government. ..."
Peak Prosperity

Mememonkey pointed my to a 2013 essay by Laurent Guyenot, a French historian and writer on the deep state, that addresses the question of "Who Are The Neoconservatives." If you would like to know about that group that sends the US military into battle and tortures prisoners of war in out name, you need to know about these guys.

First, if you are Jewish, or are a GREEN Meme, please stop and take a deep breath. Please put on your thinking cap and don't react. We are NOT disrespecting a religion, spiritual practice or a culture. We are talking about a radical and very destructive group hidden within a culture and using that culture. Christianity has similar groups and movements--the Crusades, the KKK, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, etc.

My personal investment: This question has been a subject of intense interest for me since I became convinced that 9/11 was an inside job, that the Iraq war was waged for reasons entirely different from those publically stated. I have been horrified to see such a shadowy, powerful group operating from a profoundly "pre-moral" developmental level-i.e., not based in even the most rudimentary principles of morality foundational to civilization.

Who the hell are these people?!

Goyenot's main points (with a touch of personal editorializing):

1. The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.)

Neoconservativism is essentially a modern right wing Jewish version of Machiavelli's political strategy. What characterizes the neoconservative movement is therefore not as much Judaism as a religious tradition, but rather Judiasm as a political project, i.e. Zionism, by Machiavellian means.

This is not a religious movement though it may use religions words and vocabulary. It is a political and military movement. They are not concerned with being close to God. This is a movement to expand political and military power. Some are Christian and Mormon, culturally.

Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either.

He points out dual-citizen (Israel / USA) members and self proclaimed Zionists throughout cabinet level positions in the US government, international banking and controlling the US military. In private writings and occasionally in public, Neocons admit that America's war policies are actually Israel's war goals. (Examples provided.)

2. Most American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and do NOT share the perspective of the radical Zionists.

The neoconservative movement, which is generally perceived as a radical (rather than "conservative") Republican right, is, in reality, an intellectual movement born in the late 1960s in the pages of the monthly magazine Commentary, a media arm of the American Jewish Committee, which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945. The Forward, the oldest American Jewish weekly, wrote in a January 6th, 2006 article signed Gal Beckerman: "If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren".

3. Intellectual Basis and Moral developmental level

Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech.

Other major points:

4. The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy.

[The]Pax Judaica will come only when "all the nations shall flow" to the Jerusalem temple, from where "shall go forth the law" (Isaiah 2:1-3). This vision of a new world order with Jerusalem at its center resonates within the Likudnik and neoconservative circles. At the Jerusalem Summit, held from October 12th to 14th, 2003 in the symbolically significant King David Hotel, an alliance was forged between Zionist Jews and Evangelical Christians around a "theopolitical" project, one that would consider Israel… "the key to the harmony of civilizations", replacing the United Nations that's become a "a tribalized confederation hijacked by Third World dictatorships": "Jerusalem's spiritual and historical importance endows it with a special authority to become a center of world's unity. [...] We believe that one of the objectives of Israel's divinely-inspired rebirth is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, foretold by the Prophets". Three acting Israeli ministers spoke at the summit, including Benjamin Netanyahu, and Richard Perle.

Jerusalem's dream empire is expected to come through the nightmare of world war. The prophet Zechariah, often cited on Zionist forums, predicted that the Lord will fight "all nations" allied against Israel. In a single day, the whole earth will become a desert, with the exception of Jerusalem, who "shall remain aloft upon its site" (14:10).

With more than 50 millions members, Christians United for Israel is a major political force in the U.S.. Its Chairman, pastor John Haggee, declared: "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West, [...] a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ".

And Guyenot concludes:

Is it possible that this biblical dream, mixed with the neo-Machiavellianism of Leo Strauss and the militarism of Likud, is what is quietly animating an exceptionally determined and organized ultra-Zionist clan? General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran".

Is it just a coincidence that the "seven nations" doomed to be destroyed by Israel form part of the biblical myths? …[W]hen Yahweh will deliver Israel "seven nations greater and mightier than yourself […] you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them."

My summary:

[Dec 11, 2015] Caught On Tape Ukraine Premier Assaulted In Parliament

Notable quotes:
"... lawmaker Oleh Barna walked over to him with a bunch of red roses and then grabbed him around the waist and groin, lifting him off his feet and dragging him from the rostrum. ..."
"... As The FT reports, ..."
Zero Hedge
& Fighting broke out in parliament among members of Ukraine's ruling coalition on Friday after a member of President Petro Poroshenko's bloc physically picked up Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk and pulled him from the podium.

Yatseniuk was defending his embattled government's record when lawmaker Oleh Barna walked over to him with a bunch of red roses and then grabbed him around the waist and groin, lifting him off his feet and dragging him from the rostrum.

Members of Yatseniuk's People Front party waded in, pushing Barna and throwing punches, sparking a brawl in the assembly.

You just can't make this up...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/2zgTl6-KWqg

The PM later said there were "a lot of morons," so he would not comment on the incident.

* * *

As The FT reports,

Ukraine's parliament has indefinitely postponed a vote of no-confidence in the government of Arseniy Yatseniuk, but not without highlighting the fragility of the country's pro-western coalition.

Citing a flurry of corruption scandals and the lacklustre pace of reforms, an increasing number of MPs - even within the ruling majority - have in recent weeks called for the ousting of Mr Yatseniuk via a no-confidence vote on Friday.

Ukraine's western backers, namely the US and EU, feared such a move could plunge the war-torn and recession-ravaged country into a deep political crisis as it continues to battle Russian-backed separatists in eastern regions - and jeopardise a $40bn international bailout led by the International Monetary Fund.

Such concerns are believed to have been expressed by US vice president Joe Biden in closed door discussions during a visit to Kiev early this week in which he publicly called for political unity, swifter reforms and deeper anti-corruption efforts.

And this is the nation's government who US-taxpayer-backed IMF just forgave their debt, implicitly backing them, and entering The Cold War...

Instead, the IMF is backing Ukrainian policy, its kleptocracy and its Right Sector leading the attacks that recently cut off Crimea's electricity. The only condition on which the IMF insists is continued austerity. Ukraine's currency, the hryvnia, has fallen by a third this years, pensions have been slashed (largely as a result of being inflated away), while corruption continues unabated.

Despite this the IMF announced its intention to extend new loans to finance Ukraine's dependency and payoffs to the oligarchs who are in control of its parliament and justice departments to block any real cleanup of corruption.

For over half a year there was a semi-public discussion with U.S. Treasury advisors and Cold Warriors about how to stiff Russia on the $3 billion owed by Ukraine to Russia's Sovereign Wealth Fund. There was some talk of declaring this an "odious debt," but it was decided that this ploy might backfire against U.S. supported dictatorships.

In the end, the IMF simply lent Ukraine the money.

By doing so, it announced its new policy: "We only enforce debts owed in US dollars to US allies." This means that what was simmering as a Cold War against Russia has now turned into a full-blown division of the world into the Dollar Bloc (with its satellite Euro and other pro-U.S. currencies) and the BRICS or other countries not in the U.S. financial and military orbit.

[Dec 09, 2015] Declassified CIA Manual Shows How US Uses Bureaucracy to Destabilize Governments

www.zerohedge.com
Submitted by Jake Anderson via TheAntiMedia.org,

When most people think of CIA sabotage, they think of coups, assassinations, proxy wars, armed rebel groups, and even false flags - not strategic stupidity and purposeful bureaucratic ineptitude. However, according to a declassified document from 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which later became the CIA, used and trained a curious breed of "citizen-saboteurs" in occupied nations like Norway and France.

The World War II-era document, called Simple Sabotage Field Manual, outlines ways in which operatives can disrupt and demoralize enemy administrators and police forces. The first section of the document, which can be read in its entirety here, addresses "Organizations and Conferences" - and how to turn them into a "dysfunctional mess":

On its official webpage, the CIA boasts about finding innovative ways to bring about sabotage, calling their tactics for destabilization "surprisingly relevant." While they admit that some of the ideas may seem a bit outdated, they claim that "Together they are a reminder of how easily productivity and order can be undermined."

In a second section targeted at manager-saboteurs, the guide lists the following tactical moves:

Finally, the guide presents protocol for how saboteur-employees can disrupt enemy operations, too:

The CIA is proud of its Kafkaesque field manual and evidently still views it as an unorthodox but effective form of destabilizing enemy operations around the world. Of course, so too might an anarchist or revolutionary look at such tactics and view them in the context of disrupting certain domestic power structures, many of which are already built like a bureaucratic house of cards.

It seems if any country should refrain from showcasing how easy it is to disrupt inefficient federal agencies, however, it would be the United States.

[Dec 04, 2015] The Neoconservative Movement is Trotskyism

"... Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy. ..."
"... Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back. ..."
"... These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather…they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement. ..."
"... As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world. ..."
"... In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies-policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had. ..."
"... For example, when two top AIPAC officials-Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman-were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them. ..."
"... Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel. ..."
January 22, 2013 | Veterans Today

Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy.

We have to keep in mind that America and much of the Western world were scared to death of Bolshevism and Trotskyism in the 1920s and early 30s because of its subversive activity.

Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back.

These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather…they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement.

... ... ...

As it turns out, neoconservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute are largely extensions of Trotskyism with respect to foreign policy. Other think tanks such as the Bradley Foundation were overtaken by the neoconservative machine back in 1984.

Some of those double agents have been known to have worked with Likud-supporting Jewish groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, an organization which has been known to have "co-opted" several "non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq."

Philo-Semitic scholars Stephen Halper of Cambridge University and Jonathan Clarke of the CATO Institute agree that the neoconservative agendas "have taken American international relations on an unfortunate detour," which is another way of saying that this revolutionary movement is not what the Founding Fathers signed up for, who all maintained that the United States would serve the American people best by not entangling herself in alliances with foreign entities.

As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world.

Moreover, former secretary of defense Robert Gates made it clear to the United States that the Israelis do not and should not have a monopoly on the American interests in the Middle East. For that, he was chastised by neoconservative Elliott Abrams.

In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies-policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had.

... ... ...

Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel.

The FBI has numerous documents tracing Israel's espionage in the U.S., but no one has come forward and declared it explicitly in the media because most political pundits value mammon over truth.

For example, when two top AIPAC officials-Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman-were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them.

In the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel is a major country that pops up quite often. This is widely known among CIA and FBI agents and U.S. officials for years.

One former U.S. intelligence official declared, "There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States.

They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations. People here as liaisons… aggressively pursue classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable."

[Dec 03, 2015] On That Video Where Some Egyptians Allegedly Say Obama Is Insane And On Drugs And Should Be Removed From Office

EconoSpeak

An old and close, but very conservative and increasingly out of touch with reality friend of mine posted a video some days ago on Facebook. He indicated that he thought it was both funny and also insightful. It seemed highly suspicious to me, so I googled it and found that the person who uploaded it onto you tube stated in the comments on it that it is a spoof. Here is a link that discusses why it is known it is a spoof as well as linking to the video itself and its comments. It has reportedly been widely distributed on the internet by many conservatives who think it is for real, and when I pointed out it is a spoof, my friend defriended me from Facebook. I am frustrated.

So, for those who do not view it, it purports to show a talk show in Egypt where a brief clip of Obama speaking last May to graduating military officers about how climate change is and will be a serious national security issue, something the Pentagon has claimed. He did not say it was the most serious such issue, and at least in the clip he said nothing about Daesh/ISIS/ISIL, although of course he has said a lot about it and not only has US drones attacking it but reportedly we have "boots on the ground" now against them in the form of some Special Ops.

So, the video then goes back to the supposed talk show where they are speaking in Arabic with English subtitles. According to these subtitels, which are partly accurate translations but also wildly inaccurate in many places (my Arabic is good enough that I have parsed out what is what there) the host asks, "Is he insane?" A guest suggests he is on drugs. Another claims he just does what Michelle says and that his biceps are small. Finally a supposed retired general pounds the table and denounces him over Libya policy (that part is for real, although his name is never mentioned) and suggests that Americans should act to remove him from office. Again, conservative commentators have found hilarious and very insightful, with this even holding among commenters to the video aware that it is a mistranslated spoof. Bring these guys on more. Obviously they would be big hits on Fox News.

So, I would like to simply comment further on why Egyptians would be especially upset about Libya, but that them being so against the US is somewhat hypocritical (I also note that there is reason to believe that the supposed general is not a general). Of course Libya is just to the west of Egypt with its eastern portion (Cyrenaica under Rome) often ruled by whomever was ruling Egypt at various times in the past. So there is a strong cultural-historical connection. It is understandable that they would take Libyan matters seriously, and indeed things in Libya have turned into a big mess.

However, the move to bring in outside powers to intervene against Qaddafi in 2011 was instigated by an Egyptian, Abu Moussa. This was right after Mubarak had fallen in the face of massive demonstrations in Egypt. Moussa was both leader of the Arab League and wanting to run for President of Egypt. He got nowhere with the latter, but he did get somewhere with getting
the rest of the world to intervene in Libya. He got the Arab League to support such an intervention, with that move going to the UN Security Council and convincing Russia and China to abstain on the anti-Qaddafi measure. Putin has since complained that those who intervened, UK and France most vigorously with US "leading from behind" on the effort.went beyond the UN mandate. But in any case, Qaddafi was overthrown, not to be replaced by any stable or central power, with Libya an ongoing mess that has remained fragmented since, especially between its historically separate eastern and western parts, something I have posted on here previously.

So, that went badly, but Egyptians blaming the US for this seems to me to be a bit much, pretty hypocritical. It happens to be a fact that the US and Obama are now very unpopular in Egypt. I looked at a poll from a few months ago, and the only nations where the US and Obama were viewed less favorably (although a few not polled such as North Korea) were in order: Russia, Palestinian Territories, Belarus, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan, with me suspecting there is now a more favorable view in Iran since the culmination of the nuclear deal. I can appreciate that many Egyptians are frustrated that the US supported an election process that did not give them Moussa or El-Baradei, but the Muslim Brotherhood, who proceeded to behave badly, leading to them being overthrown by an new military dictatorship with a democratic veneer, basically a new improved version of the Mubarak regime, with the US supporting it, if somewhat reluctantly.

Yes, this is all pretty depressing, but I must say that ultimately the Egyptians are responsible for what has gone down in their own nation. And even if those Egyptian commentators, whoever they actually are, are as angry about Obama as they are depicted as being, the fact is that Obama is still more popular there than was George W. Bush at the same time in his presidency, something all these US conservatives so enamored of this bizarre video seem to conveniently forget.

Addenda, 5:10 PM:

1) The people on that video come across almost like The Three Stooges, which highlights the comedic aspect that even fans of Obama are supposed to appreciate, although it does not add to the credibility of the remarks of those so carrying on like a bunch of clowns.

2) Another reason Egyptians may be especially upset about the situation in Libya is that indeed Daesh has a foothold in a port city not too far from the Egyptian border in Surt, as reported as the top story today in the NY Times.

3) Arguably once the rest of the world got in, the big problem was a failure to follow through with aiding establishing a central unified government, although that was always going to be a problem, something not recognized by all too many involved, including Abu Moussa. As it was once his proposal got going, it was then Sec. of State Hillary Clinton who was the main person leading the charge for the US to get in over the reluctance of Obama. This was probably her biggest mistake in all this, even though most Republicans think the irrelevant sideshow of the unfortunate incident in Benghazi is the big deal.

4) Needless to say, Republican views at the time of the intervention were just completely incoherent, as symbolized at one point by Senator Lindsey Graham, who within the space of a single sentence simultaneously argued for the US to do nothing and also to go in full force with the proverbial "boots on the ground."

Further Addendum, 7:10 PM:

One of the pieces of evidence given that supposedly shows that the video is a spoof is that the supposed retired Brigadier General Mahmoud Mansour cannot be found if one googles his name, except in connection with this video. There are some other Egyptians named Mansour who show up, but this guy does not. However, it occurs to me that he might be for real, but simply obscure. After all, Brigadier is the lowest rank of General, one star, with Majors being two star, Lieutenants being three star (even though Majors are above Lieutenants), and with four and five star not having any other rank assigned to them. Furthermore, Egypt has a large military that has run the country for decades, so there may well be a lot of these Brigadier Generals, with many of them amounting to nothing. So, if he is for real, his claim to fame will be from jumping up and down, pounding on a table and calling for the overthrow of the POTUS.

Barkley Rosser

[Dec 01, 2015] US Intervention Before And After

Zero Hedge
WhackoWarner

Before death in Libya....Ghadaffi's crime was in "not playing along and selling out". Kinda like Iraq and all. They all should just hand over everything and say thanks...but they did not . There is disinfo on both sides, But the "madman" and people who actually live there never seem to make the NYTimes.

"For 40 years, or was it longer, I can't remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert, I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child. Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union.

I did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people's committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more. They told Americans and other visitors, that they needed "democracy" and "freedom" never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we've had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination - from thieves who would steal from us.

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.

Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light. When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself...

In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth yet continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.

Kirk2NCC1701
"they hate us for our freedoms"

No, "They hate us for our freebombs" that we keep delivering.

Suppose you lived in a town that was run by a ruthless Mafioso boss. Sure he was ruthless to troublemakers and dissenters, but if you went about your business (and paid your taxes/respects to him), life was simple but livable, and crime was negligible.

Now imagine that a crime Overlord came from another country and decided to wreck the town, just to remove your Mafioso Don. In the process, your neighborhood and house were destroyed, and you lost friends and family.

Now tell me that YOU would not make it YOUR life's mission to bring these War Criminals to justice -- by any and all means necessary. And tell me that these same Criminals could not have foreseen all this. Now say it again - but with a straight face. I dare you. I fucking double-dare you!

Max Cynical
US exceptionalism!
GhostOfDiogenes
The worst one, besides Iraq, is Libya.

The infrastructure we destroyed there is unimaginable.

Sure Iraq was hit the worst, and much has been lost there....but Libya was a modern arab oasis of a country in the middle of nothing.

We destroyed in a few days what took decades to build.

This is why I am not proud of my country, nor my military.

In fact, I would like to see Nuremberg type trials for 'merican military leaders and concentration gulags for the rest of enlisted. Just like they did to Germany.

Its only proper.

GhostOfDiogenes
The USA did this murder of Libya and giving ownership to the people who did '911'? What a joke. http://youtu.be/aJURNC0e6Ek
Bastiat
Libya under Ghadaffi: universal free college education, free healthcare, free electricity. interest free loans. A very bad example of how a nation's wealth is to be distributed!
CHoward
The average American has NO idea how much damage is being done in this world - all in the name of Democracy. Unbelivable and truly pathetic. Yet - most sheeple still believe ISIS and others hate us because of our "freedoms" and i-pods. What bullshit.
Bioscale
Czech public tv published a long interview in English with Asad, it was filmed in Damascus some days ago.Very unusual thing, actually. Terrorism being transported by US, Turkey and France to Syria is being openly debated. http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/svet/1628712-asad-pro-ct-rebelove-jsou-...

Overfed

Compare and contrast Assad, giving an interview very well in a second language, with O'bomb-a, who can't even speak to school children without a teleprompter. Sad.

Razor_Edge

Along with President Putin, Dr al Assad is consistently the most sane, rational and clearly honest speaker on the tragedy of Syria. By contrast, our satanic western leaders simply lie outrageously at all times. How do we know? Their lips are moving. They also say the most absurd things.

We in the west may think that at the end of the day, it's not going to harm us, so why discomfort ourselves by taking on our own elites and bringing them down. But I believe that an horrific future awaits us, one we richly deserve, because we did not shout stop at this ocean of evil bloodshed being spilt in our names. We pay the taxes that pay for it, or at least in my countrys case, (traditional policy of military neutrality), we facilitate the slaughter (troop transports through Shannon airport), or fail to speak out for fear it may impact FDI into Ireland, (largest recipient of US FDI in the world).

We are our brothers keepers, and we are all one. It is those who seek to separate us to facilitate their evil and psychopathic lust for power and money, who would have us beieve that "the other" is evil. Are we really so simple minded or riven by fear that we cannot see through the curtain of the real Axis of Evil?

Demdere

Israeli-neocon strategy is to have the world's economy collapse at the point of maximum war and political chaos.

Then they can escape to Paraguay. Sure as hell, if they stay here, we are going to hang them all. Treasonous criminals for the 9/11 false flag operation.

By 2015, every military and intelligence service and all the think tanks have looked at 9/11 carefully. Anyone who looks at the evidence sees that it was a false flag operation, the buildings were destroyed via explosives, the planes and evil Arab Muslims were show. Those agencies reported to their civilian leaders, and their civilian leaders spread the information through their societies.

So all of the politically aware people in the world, including here at home, KNOW that 9/11 was a false flag operation, or know that they must not look at the evidence. Currently, anyone who disagrees in MSM is treated as invisible, and I know of no prominent bloggers who have even done the bits of extention of 'what it must mean' that I have done.

But it certainly means high levels of distrust for the US and for Israel. It seems to me that World Domination is not possible, because the world won't let you, and the means of opposition are only limited by the imaginations of the most creative, intelligent and knowledgable people. We don't have any of those on our side any more.

L Bean

In their farcical quest to emulate the Roman empire...

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant - Tacitus

They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.

[Nov 30, 2015] Russia Bans Soros Foundation As A Threat To National Security And Constitutional Order Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... "A lot of what we do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA" Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy. Although it promotes itself as a "non-governmental organization", NED receives at least 90% of its funding from the US Congress, earmarked to USAID. ..."
"... Around that time, Soros Foundation 'appeared' in our country and started usual advertising and promises how they will give money to 'promising' projects made by young people. Of course, we had an amazing thing (it was really hard to make a printed computer magazine while having civil war and sanctions, heh) and were certain that we would easily qualify for grant. We got rejected. A guy printing black and white A4 pamphlet saying shit about government got the money. ..."
www.zerohedge.com
AlaricBalth

"A lot of what we do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA" Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy. Although it promotes itself as a "non-governmental organization", NED receives at least 90% of its funding from the US Congress, earmarked to USAID.

JRobby

Maybe the USSA will do the same with "The Council On Foriegn Relations"??

What would we call it when a controlling faction of the USSA Government outlawed itself and declared itself a threat to national security and Constitutional order?

Schizophrenia?

Government need...

That's an organization that needs to go. I know some of its membership in NYC. . . It's not evil, per se, but it places self-enrichment above ethics. That, and since they all have fancy degress and like to pass their resumes around the table, they naturally believe they know better than the little people what's best for the little peons.

nmewn

"In a statement released on Monday, prosecutors said the activities of the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation were a threat to the foundations of Russia's Constitutional order and national security. They added that the Justice Ministry would be duly informed about these conclusions and would add the two groups to Russia's list of undesirable foreign organizations."

Yet here, somehow, he is still a major donor to the National Socialist Democrat Party and BlackLiesMatter.

The world, as I once knew it, has been completely turned upside down...lol.

#SafePlace!

/////

Now wut little trolls...how could that possibly offend you? I mean outside of me being absolutely correct about this worthless POS all these years ;-)

conscious being

I'm suprised it took this long.

Quinvarius

Looks like buying Russian politicians is not so easy. The West however is is craven and corrupt. This is huge set back for Obama's transvestite, looter, gay, racist agenda of destroying civilization.

blentus

So, there I was, 18 years old, and living in a shitty civil war torn country. Not giving a fuck about anything, me and few of my friends managed to print a computer magazine and keep it going for a while. It was impossible to make money with it, and we never did it for the money anyway. It was a good 'distraction' from everything around us, and it also helped other curious kids. This was before Internet became popular/accessible, so good information was not so easy to obtain.

Around that time, Soros Foundation 'appeared' in our country and started usual advertising and promises how they will give money to 'promising' projects made by young people. Of course, we had an amazing thing (it was really hard to make a printed computer magazine while having civil war and sanctions, heh) and were certain that we would easily qualify for grant.

We got rejected. A guy printing black and white A4 pamphlet saying shit about government got the money.

I was lucky enough to learn early how these pieces of shit work.

Every time I hear phrase 'NGO' my brain simply translates it to 'cunts'. Can't help it.

smacker

Something tells me that some very smart people in Moscow have been carefully studying who is creating all this global unrest.

Russia's actions to kick out "Soros Open Society" and the "US National Endowment for Democracy" - neither of which have anything to do with what their names suggest - is to prevent Russia becoming another victim.


[Nov 28, 2015] Remaking the Middle East: How the US Grew Tired and Less Relevant

Notable quotes:
"... In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is a warmonger on the level of George W. Bush's top staff, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology , according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times . Cheney was an "Iron-ass", who "had his own empire … and marched to his own drummer," H.W. Bush said, while calling Rumsfeld "an arrogant fellow" who lacked empathy. Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths? ..."
"... comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations' foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently. ..."
"... In essence, Obama carried on with much of what W. Bush had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country's less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush's final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of ISIS among others, but that is for another discussion. ..."
"... In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that "might makes right", and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neo-conservatives during W. Bush's era. ..."
"... The folly of W. Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon's over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. ..."
"... The Russian military campaign in Syria, which was halfheartedly welcomed by the US. has signaled a historic shift in the Middle East. Even if Russia fails to turn its war into a major shift of political and economic clout, the mere fact that other contenders are now throwing their proverbial hats into the Middle East ring, is simply unprecedented since the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956. ..."
"... It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already under way, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold. ..."
November 14, 2015 | original.antiwar.com
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is often perceived as one of the "good ones" – the less hawkish of top American officials, who does not simply promote and defend his country's military adventurism but reaches out to others, beyond polarizing rhetoric.

His unremitting efforts culminated partly in the Iran nuclear framework agreement in April, followed by a final deal, a few months later. Now, he is reportedly hard at work again to find some sort of consensus on a way out of the Syria war, a multi-party conflict that has killed over 300,000 people. His admirers see him as the diplomatic executor of a malleable and friendly US foreign policy agenda under President Obama.

In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is a warmonger on the level of George W. Bush's top staff, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology, according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times. Cheney was an "Iron-ass", who "had his own empire … and marched to his own drummer," H.W. Bush said, while calling Rumsfeld "an arrogant fellow" who lacked empathy. Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths?

If one is to fairly examine US foreign policies in the Middle East, for example, comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations' foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently.

In essence, Obama carried on with much of what W. Bush had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country's less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush's final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of ISIS among others, but that is for another discussion.

Obama has even gone a step further when he recently decided to keep thousands of US troops in Afghanistan well into 2017, thus breaking US commitment to withdraw next year. 2017 is Obama's last year in office, and the decision is partly motivated by his administration's concern that future turmoil in that country could cost his Democratic Party heavily in the upcoming presidential elections.

In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that "might makes right", and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neo-conservatives during W. Bush's era.

Nevertheless, much has changed as well, simply because American ambitions to police the world, politics and the excess of $600 billion a year US defense budget are not the only variables that control events in the Middle East and everywhere else. There are other undercurrents that cannot be wished away, and they too can dictate US foreign policy outlooks and behavior.

Indeed, an American decline has been noted for many years, and Middle Eastern nations have been more aware of this decline than others. One could even argue that the W. Bush administration's rush for war in Iraq in 2003 in an attempt at controlling the region's resources, was a belated effort at staving off that unmistakable decay – whether in US ability to regulate rising global contenders or in its overall share of global economy.

The folly of W. Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon's over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. That misconception carries on to this day, where military spending is already accounting for about 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, itself nearly a third of the country's overall budget.

However, those who are blaming Obama for failing to leverage US military strength for political currency refuse to accept that Obama's behavior hardly reflects a lack of appetite for war, but a pragmatic response to a situation that has largely spun out of US control.

The so-called "Arab Spring", for example, was a major defining factor in the changes of US fortunes. And it all came at a particularly interesting time.

First, the Iraq war has destroyed whatever little credibility the US had in the region, a sentiment that also reverberated around the world.

Second, it was becoming clear that the US foreign policy in Central and South America – an obstinate continuation of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which laid the groundwork for US domination of that region – has also been challenged by more assertive leaders, armed with democratic initiatives, not military coups.

Third, China's more forceful politics, at least around its immediate regional surroundings, signaled that the US traditional hegemony over most of East and South East Asia are also facing fierce competition.

Not only many Asian and other countries have flocked to China, lured by its constantly growing and seemingly more solid economic performance, if compared to the US, but others are also flocking to Russia, which is filling a political and, as of late, military vacuum left open.

The Russian military campaign in Syria, which was halfheartedly welcomed by the US. has signaled a historic shift in the Middle East. Even if Russia fails to turn its war into a major shift of political and economic clout, the mere fact that other contenders are now throwing their proverbial hats into the Middle East ring, is simply unprecedented since the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956.

The region's historians must fully understand the repercussions of all of these factors, and that simply analyzing the US decline based on the performance of individuals – Condoleezza Rice's hawkishness vs. John Kerry's supposed sane diplomacy – is a trivial approach to understanding current shifts in global powers.

It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already under way, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold.

For now, the Middle East will continue to pass through this incredibly difficult and violent transition, for which the US is partly responsible.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is a media consultant, an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press).

[Nov 23, 2015] Tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination

Notable quotes:
"... By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to "bring needed change to Washington." ..."
"... He's very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on "Super Tuesday" with all those southern states voting. I can't see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump. ..."
"... And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that's at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what's to stop Trump from then running as an independent? ..."
"... Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting "death panels!", whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting "Benghazi!", and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn't serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that? ..."
"... ... with Trump in the race, all of those states-which are more red than they were in '08-are likely out for Democrats. Swing states like Colorado and Virginia are clear toss-ups. There are few states that Romney or McCain won where Trump, as the Republican nominee, wouldn't be in the running, and an analysis of other key states shows that Trump's in far better position than his detractors would like to admit. If Trump were to win every state that Romney won, Trump would stand today at 206 electoral votes, with 55 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Similarly, Trump does not necessarily lose in a single toss-up state versus Hillary Clinton and, in fact, is seemingly competitive in many. ..."
"... Which all means that the election comes down to Florida and Ohio, two states where Trump has significant advantages. In Florida (29 electoral votes), he is a part-time resident and is polling better than the state's former governor and sitting U.S. senator. ... ..."
"... A brokered convention, maybe? Even Romney would have a shot. ..."
"... Top-tier presidential campaigns are preparing for the still-unlikely scenario that the nomination fight goes all the way to the 2016 Republican National Convention. ..."
"... There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1976, but the strength of the GOP field, when coupled with the proliferation of super PACs, increases the chances that several candidates could show up in Cleveland next July with an army of delegates at their backs ..."
"... Since the November 13 attacks, every poll-in Florida, two in New Hampshire, and three nationwide-shows Trump maintaining or expanding his lead against his primary opponents. Poor Ben Carson, only recently Trump's chief rival, is losing energy like, well, you know who. In the Fox NH poll, it's Trump at 27, Rubio 13, Cruz 11, and Carson down there at 9 percent alongside Jeb! ..."
"... Play it out: an outsider who's dismissed by his party's elite, comes into the race and overwhelms a large, much more experienced group of candidates in a series of state primaries, both increasing his margins and improving as a candidate as he goes long. All the time riding a crisis that seems made for his candidacy. Does that sound like a sure loser? ... ..."
"... While the investigation into US bombing waste is keyed on who padded the figures rather than the ineptitude of bombing in any use other than taking out property owners to get the greedy to say uncle . The shame of Paris is attributable to the US war machine and every issue requires more money for the pentagon. ..."
"... No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today! Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame. ..."
"... The Devil's Chessboard ..."
Nov 23, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs said... November 23, 2015 at 06:49 AM
(!Trump watch.)

Thinking About the Trumpthinkable
http://nyti.ms/1jeD39I
NYT - Paul Krugman - Nov 22

Alan Abramowitz reads the latest WaPo poll and emails:

'Read these results (#) and tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination? I've been very skeptical about this all along, but I'm starting to change my mind. I think there's at least a pretty decent chance that Trump will be the nominee.

Here's why I think Trump could very well end up as the nominee:

1. He's way ahead of every other candidate now and has been in the lead or tied for the lead for a long time.

2. The only one even giving him any competition right now is Carson who is even less plausible and whose support is heavily concentrated among one (large) segment of the base-evangelicals.

3. Rubio, the great establishment hope now, is deep in third place, barely in double digits and nowhere close to Trump or Carson.

4. By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to "bring needed change to Washington."

5. He is favored on almost every major issue by Republican voters including immigration and terrorism by wide margins. The current terrorism scare only helps him with Republicans. They want someone who will "bomb the shit" out of the Muslim terrorists.

6. There is clearly strong support among Republicans for deporting 11 million illegal immigrants. They don't provide party breakdown here, but support for this is at about 40 percent among all voters so it's got to be a lot higher than that, maybe 60 percent, among Republicans.

7. If none of the totally crazy things he's said up until now have hurt him among Republican voters, why would any crazy things he says in the next few months hurt him?

8. He's very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on "Super Tuesday" with all those southern states voting. I can't see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump.

9. And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that's at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what's to stop Trump from then running as an independent?'

Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting "death panels!", whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting "Benghazi!", and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn't serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that?

#- Washington Post-ABC News poll, Nov. 16-19, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-nov-16-19-2015/1880

Dan Kervick -> pgl... November 23, 2015 at 10:42 AM

My guess is that if people dug deeper into the support for Trump, they would find that there is a certain percentage of Republicans who have supported Trump because he was a business man - the only one in the pack - not because they wanted another crazy xenophobic racist wingnut. Now that Trump has gone full wingnut, they are frustrated with the mess they have created for themselves.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Dan Kervick...

Here's Why Donald Trump
Really Could Be Elected President http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/donald-trump-could-be-president via @VanityFair
David Burstein - October 22

... with Trump in the race, all of those states-which are more red than they were in '08-are likely out for Democrats. Swing states like Colorado and Virginia are clear toss-ups. There are few states that Romney or McCain won where Trump, as the Republican nominee, wouldn't be in the running, and an analysis of other key states shows that Trump's in far better position than his detractors would like to admit. If Trump were to win every state that Romney won, Trump would stand today at 206 electoral votes, with 55 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Similarly, Trump does not necessarily lose in a single toss-up state versus Hillary Clinton and, in fact, is seemingly competitive in many.

Virginia is trending blue, but could be a toss-up, particularly given the tale of Dave Brat, whose success in 2014 could be read as a harbinger of Trump. Colorado will have high Republican turnout, given that it is home to what's likely to be one of the country's most contested Senate races-which could make it more competitive than it should be, considering Trump's comments about Latinos. Depending on how well Trump shows in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, they too could be in play. In two of the remaining states, Wisconsin and Nevada, any Democratic nominee will have an upper hand-particularly Clinton.

But Trump will be able to effectively contest, particularly in a place like Wisconsin, with working-class white voters who elected Scott Walker three times in four years. Finally, Pennsylvania, which has been leaning ever-more blue and will likely go blue this year, will nonetheless require Clinton to spend some resources and time there-taking away from her efforts in other swing states.

Which all means that the election comes down to Florida and Ohio, two states where Trump has significant advantages. In Florida (29 electoral votes), he is a part-time resident and is polling better than the state's former governor and sitting U.S. senator. ...

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Long time, still, from now to the GOP convention. (Curiously, less every week, however.)

Some GOPsters (including Bush, Rubio, various others) know in their hearts that eventually Trump & Carson will fade, or be dumped, and *their* star will ascend. Sure.

A brokered convention, maybe? Even Romney would have a shot.

NH primary poll puts non-candidate Romney first http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/21/gop-voters-would-prefer-romney/WiU9f86jd19UkXYQfb2yxM/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe - Nov 22

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
Could the GOP Really See a Brokered Convention
in 2016? http://natl.re/CLXxxf via @NRO
Joel Gehrke - May 14, 2015

Ask around and you'll hear a consistent theme from political strategists in the Republican party: The 2016 primary is wide open. "It is by far the most interesting presidential year since I've been involved [in Republican politics]," says Steve Munisteri, a senior adviser to Senator Rand Paul.

How interesting? Top-tier presidential campaigns are preparing for the still-unlikely scenario that the nomination fight goes all the way to the 2016 Republican National Convention.

There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1976, but the strength of the GOP field, when coupled with the proliferation of super PACs, increases the chances that several candidates could show up in Cleveland next July with an army of delegates at their backs. "It's certainly more likely now than it's been in any prior election, going back to 1976," Thor Hearn, the general counsel to George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, tells National Review. "I don't put it as a high likelihood, but it's a much more realistic probability than it's been in any recent experience." ...

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Believe It: Trump Can Defeat Hillary
http://www.thenation.com/article/believe-it-trump-can-defeat-hillary/
The Nation - Leslie Savan - November 20, 2015

The Paris attacks have made the demagogue even stronger.

Tt hurts to put these words in print, but… Ann Coulter may be right. Shortly after the Paris attacks began last Friday, she tweeted, "They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight."

Stephen Colbert agrees. He told us this week to get used to saying "President Trump"-and led his studio audience to repeat the words in unison and then pretend to barf.

Yes, it's hard to stomach. America's most entertaining demagogue winning the GOP primaries and then the general? It can't happen here, can it?

Democrats have been expressing absolute incredulity at the possibility, and quietly chuckling to themselves about the Clinton landslide to come if Donald is his party's nominee. The Huffington Post has banned Trump from its politics section and relegated him to Entertainment, as if there he'd be no more than a joke.

The problem is that our liberal incredulity mirrors that of the Republican establishment, which refuses to believe that their front-runner of five straight months could possibly win their nomination. Now even after the carnage in Paris, Beltway pundits are telling themselves that the base will sober up and turn toward "experienced" pols like Rubio or Bush and away from the newbie nuts. As the always-wrong Bill Kristol said of this latest terrorism crisis, "I think it hurts Trump and Carson, honestly."

But, honestly, it's only strengthened Trump. Since the November 13 attacks, every poll-in Florida, two in New Hampshire, and three nationwide-shows Trump maintaining or expanding his lead against his primary opponents. Poor Ben Carson, only recently Trump's chief rival, is losing energy like, well, you know who. In the Fox NH poll, it's Trump at 27, Rubio 13, Cruz 11, and Carson down there at 9 percent alongside Jeb!

It's easy to laugh at GOPers in denial, but progressives who pooh-pooh Trump's chances of beating Hillary may be whistling past the graveyard of American democracy.

A post-Paris Reuters/Ipsos poll asked 1,106 people which candidate, from the entire 2016 field, could best tackle terrorism, and respondents put Trump and Clinton on equal footing, at 20 percent each.

Not good-when it comes to taking on terrorists, a reality-show "carnival barker" who's never served in the military nor held elected office is tied with a decidedly hawkish former secretary of state?

Play it out: an outsider who's dismissed by his party's elite, comes into the race and overwhelms a large, much more experienced group of candidates in a series of state primaries, both increasing his margins and improving as a candidate as he goes long. All the time riding a crisis that seems made for his candidacy. Does that sound like a sure loser? ...

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Media hype, more Americans died, most did not want to, from gun violence this past weekend......

While the investigation into US bombing waste is keyed on "who padded the figures" rather than the ineptitude of bombing in any use other than taking out property owners to get the greedy to say "uncle". The shame of Paris is attributable to the US war machine and every issue requires more money for the pentagon.

847328_3527
But they're still ... "jealous of our freedom" right?
sgt_doom

"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s, but they never attacked innocent women and children indiscriminately," he said.

No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today!

Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame.

Recommended reading (to better understand why the USA is known as the Great Satan):

The Devil's Chessboard, by David Talbot

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+devil%27s+chessboard&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=78875381302&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2565125617248777980&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_34lcz93rcf_e_p4

logicalman
Funny how these fucks can come out and say this kind of shit and get away with it. The fucker's basically pleading guilty to murder, FFS.
Ms No
They didn't kill anybody in South America my ass.... The school of Americas, Operation Condor, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatamala, El Salvador .... who the hell are they kidding? The CIA has always been covered and nobody ever cared.
Perimetr Perimetr's picture
"If there's blame to be put. . ."

It's on the CIA for running its global terrorist operations, funded by the $1 trillion dollars a year coming from its Afghanistan heroin operation.

Noplebian

US Gives Their Proxy Army ISIS 45 Minute Warning Before Air Strikes......

http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/11/us-gives-their-prox...

blindman

sirs and madams,
.
"Christmas celebration this year is going to be a charade because the whole world is at war. We are close to Christmas. There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage war.

It's all a charade. The world has not understood the way of peace. The whole world is at war. A war can be justified, so to speak, with many, many reasons, but when all the world as it is today, at war, piecemeal though that war may be-a little here, a little there-there is no justification.

What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst of which we are living now? What shall remain? Ruins, thousands of children without education, so many innocent victims, and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers."

Francis I
.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2015/11/here-is-british-banned-...

Dinero D. Profit

Ladies and gentlemen of ZH.

In history, what must be, will be.

The discovery of America by Europe had to happen. The savages had to be eliminated and The Revolutionary War had to happen. Slavery had to begin, and after it, segregation had to begin, but, what must be, will be, slavery and segregation had to end. Old School colonization of poor nations had to happen. The Boer War had to happen. The Spanish American War had to happen. The Main had to be sunk. WWI had to happen. Calvary charges had to end. Totalitarian Communism had to happen. Germany's 20's depression had to happen, reactionary jingoism had to happen, and Kristallnacht and the Reichstag fire had to happen. The Allies had to win WWII, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to be publicity stunts, and the Cold War had to begin. JFK had to be wacked, the Vietnam War had to happen, the FED still was happening. Civil Rights laws had to be passed. Recognition of China had to happen, going off the gold standard had to happen, and Nixon had to be kicked out of office. Corporate Globalization had to begin. After Carter an actor had to be President. Unions had to be stifled. Perestroika and glasnost had to happen. The Berlin Wall had to come down. The MIC had to find another enemy, and suddenly 9/11 had to happen. …

Over population has to happen, poisoning the environment has to happen, and the NWO has to happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, the NWO is here, and there is nothing you can do, and nothing you could have done to stop it.

Edit. I see none of our supposed enemies 'truth bombing' 9/11, 7/7, and the 13th Paris attacks. I see no trade embagoes, I see no arguments in the Security Council over the illegality of US/Nato bombing in Syria.

blindman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_79...
Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy
Posted: 08/03/2015 11:48 am EDT
.
On July 28, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:

It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell." ...
.
it is the money "system", man.

blindman

corporations and hoodwink powers ride on the indifference of the damned, the silence of the dead and doomed.

Dinero D. Profit

The Satus Quo can rely upon the loyalty of their employees, Congress, the military, the military industrial contractors, their workers and family members, the crime control establishment, all Uniersity professors and employees, and every employee of all publically traded companies, and every person employed by the MSM.

The dead and doomed are irrelevant. If you have an establishment job, you'll obey and ask no vital questions.

Dick Buttkiss
Sunnis and Shiites hate each other far more than they hate Christians, Jews, or anyone else. If it weren't for oil, the USG wouldn't give a flyiing fuck if they anihilated each other. Instead, it conspires with them in ways far beyond its ability to comprehend, much less navigate. Thus is the US ship of state heading for the shoals of its destruction, the only question being how much of the country and the outside world it takes down with it.
ross81
thats bullshit Western propaganda that Shiites hate Sunnis and vice versa. In the same way that the Brits stirred up Protestant hatred of Catholics in Ulster for centuries, the US/Israel/Saudi does the same with Sunnis vs Shiites on a much bigger scale in the Middle East. Divide and Conquer.
geno-econ
This is getting scary in that one or two more attacks will result in travel freezes, flow of Middle East oil and result in huge increase in military as well as Homeland security costs. A depression or economic collapse a real possibility Perhaps time for a Peace Conference of all interested parties. The US started this shit and should be the first to call for a Peace Conference. Macho talk will only make things worse.
moonmac
We can print trillions out of thin air at the drop of a hat but we can't kill a small group of terrorists. Got it!
sgt_doom
Or, we pour billions of dollars every year into the CIA, NSA, and DIA, and only a poor old fart such as myself can figure out that Bilal Erdogan is the ISIS connection to oil trading (Turkish president, Erdogan's son) and Erdogan's daughter is with ISIS?
GRDguy
Ex-CIA boss gets it wrong, again.

"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

should be:

"When you have a small group of financial sociopaths willing to lie-to, steal-from and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

and you'll probably be punished, jailed or shot for tryin' to protect yourself and your family.

Ban KKiller
War profiteer. That is it. Along wth James Comey, James Clapper, Jack Welch and the list is almost endless...
BarnacleBill
"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

Simply take out the word "their", and the description perfectly fits the CIA, MI6 and their like. For them, it's all a business deal, nothing more - a massive slum-clearance project. Destroy people's houses, provide accommodation and food, ship them somewhere else; do it again and again until the money-printing machine conks out. It's money for old rope.

http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2015/11/slum-clearance-on-massive-scale.html

And, yes, we're all vulnerable. The man got that right.

Duc888
"You get the politicians you deserve."

CIA types are appointed, not elected.

Duc888
I do not know if there are any Catherine Austin Fitts fans on this web site but this is definitely worth the time. The FEDGOV came after her non stop for 6 years when she worked for HUD under Bush Sr. If nothing else this lady is tenacious. In this presentation she uncorks exactly HOW the deep black budgets are paid for...and it ain't your tax dollars. What she uncovered while at HUD was simply amazing..... and she made an excellent point. At the top... it's NOT "fraud" because that's how it was all deigned right from the get go after wwII. It brings to mind the funny computer saying....."it's a feature, not a bug". She digs right into how the CIA was funded... Truly amazing stuff. ...of course the dick head brigade will come along here and deride her because of the conference she is speaking at.... well, who the fuck cares, her presentation is excellent and filled with facts. Yes it is 1 hour 20 minutes long but imho it is well worth the watch...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0mimIp8mr8

Dragon HAwk
After reading all these posts my only question is why does the CIA allow Zero Hedge to Exist ?

except of course to collect names...

[Nov 23, 2015] Imagine a U.S. presidential candidate who met with the Russian government and repeatedly accused them of being too soft on President Obama By Mark Weisbrot

Notable quotes:
"... Imagine a U.S. presidential candidate who met with the Russian government and repeatedly accused them of being too soft on President Obama. A candidate who told Russias foreign minister of the need to set limits on the White Houses misbehavior, and that the Russians silence on the abusive mistreatment [Russia] suffered at the hands of the Obama administration had encouraged more of the same. ..."
"... Mauricio Macri, a right-wing businessman from one of the countrys richest families, is running for president in elections this Sunday. According to leaked documents from the U.S. Embassy, published by WikiLeaks, this is the conversation he had with the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. State Department official in charge of Latin America. He was very concerned that Washington was too soft on Argentina and was encouraging abusive treatment of the U.S. at the hands of the Argentine government. ..."
"... From 2003-2015, according to the IMF, the real (inflation-adjusted) Argentine economy grew by about 78 percent. (There is some dispute over this number, but not enough to change the overall picture.) This is quite a large increase in living standards, one of the biggest in the Americas. Unemployment fell from more than 17.2 percent to 6.9 percent (IMF). The government created the largest conditional cash transfer program in the Americas for the poor. From 2003 to the second half of 2013 (the latest independent statistics available), poverty fell by about 70 percent and extreme poverty by 80 percent. (These numbers are based on independent estimates of inflation.) ..."
"... In the last four years, growth has slowed, inflation has been higher, and a black market has developed for the dollar. Some of this has been due to a number of unfavorable external shocks: the regional economy will have negative growth this year (Argentinas will be slightly positive); ..."
www.cepr.net
http://www.cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/warning-signs-on-the-road-to-change-in-argentina

November 20, 2015

Warning Signs on the Road to "Change" in Argentina
By Mark Weisbrot

Imagine a U.S. presidential candidate who met with the Russian government and repeatedly accused them of being "too soft" on President Obama. A candidate who told Russia's foreign minister of the "need to set limits" on the White House's "misbehavior," and that the Russians' "silence" on the "abusive mistreatment [Russia] suffered" at the hands of the Obama administration "had encouraged more of the same."

Would Americans trust such a candidate? OK, that's a rhetorical question. But in Argentina, it's real.

Mauricio Macri, a right-wing businessman from one of the country's richest families, is running for president in elections this Sunday. According to leaked documents from the U.S. Embassy, published by WikiLeaks, this is the conversation he had with the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. State Department official in charge of Latin America. He was very concerned that Washington was "too soft" on Argentina and was encouraging "abusive treatment" of the U.S. at the hands of the Argentine government.

The analogy is not perfect, since the current Russian government has never played a major role -- or any role, for that matter -- in wrecking the U.S. economy and creating a Great Depression here. But the U.S. Treasury Department, which was the International Monetary Fund's decider during Argentina's severe depression of 1998-2002, did indeed exert an enormous influence on the policies that prolonged and deepened that depression. Argentines are not holding a grudge, but neither would they want the U.S. to again play a major role in their politics or economic policy.

But there are other reasons to worry about Macri's intentions that hit closer to home. In his conversations with U.S. officials, in 2009, he referred to the economic policies of the Kirchners -- Néstor Kirchner, who was president from 2003-2007, and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was elected in 2007 -- as "a failed economic model." He has made similar statements during the campaign, and although he has often been vague, he has indicated that he wants something very different, and considerably to the right of current economic policy.

It is worth looking at this much-maligned record of the Kirchners, especially since Daniel Scioli, who is the candidate of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her "Front for Victory" alliance, represents some continuity with "Kirchnerismo." Macri's coalition is called "Cambiemos," or "Let's Change."

From 2003-2015, according to the IMF, the real (inflation-adjusted) Argentine economy grew by about 78 percent. (There is some dispute over this number, but not enough to change the overall picture.) This is quite a large increase in living standards, one of the biggest in the Americas. Unemployment fell from more than 17.2 percent to 6.9 percent (IMF). The government created the largest conditional cash transfer program in the Americas for the poor. From 2003 to the second half of 2013 (the latest independent statistics available), poverty fell by about 70 percent and extreme poverty by 80 percent. (These numbers are based on independent estimates of inflation.)

But these numbers do not describe the full magnitude of the achievement. As I describe in my book, "Failed: What the 'Experts' Got Wrong About the Global Economy" (Oxford University Press, 2015), Néstor Kirchner took office as the economy was beginning to recover from a serious depression, and it took great courage and tenacity to stand up to the IMF and its allies, negotiate a sustainable level of foreign debt (which involved sticking to a large default), and implement a set of macroeconomic policies that would allow for this remarkable recovery. It was analogous to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's leadership during the U.S. Great Depression, and like Roosevelt, Kirchner had the majority of the economics profession against him -- as well as the media. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner also had to fight a number of battles to continue Argentina's economic progress.

In the last four years, growth has slowed, inflation has been higher, and a black market has developed for the dollar. Some of this has been due to a number of unfavorable external shocks: the regional economy will have negative growth this year (Argentina's will be slightly positive); Argentina's biggest trading partner, Brazil, is in recession and has seen its currency plummet; and in 2014 a New York judge of questionable competence made a political decision to block Argentina from making debt payments to most of its creditors. So, despite the overall track record of 12 years of Kirchnerismo delivering a large increase in living standards and employment, and successful poverty reduction, there are significant problems that need to be fixed.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for president of the United States in the midst of a recession and inflation passing 13 percent. He, too, promised change and he delivered it -- and ushered in an era of sharply increased inequality and other social, political, and economic maladies from which America is still suffering. Just look at his proud progeny in the Republican presidential debates.

Macri probably does not have Reagan's talent as an actor and communicator to radically transform Argentina and reverse most of the gains of the last 13 years. But it seems likely from the interests that he represents, and his political orientation, that Argentina's poor and working people will bear the brunt of any economic adjustment. And there is a serious risk that by following right-wing "fixes" for the economy, he could launch a cycle of self-defeating austerity and recession of the kind that we have seen in Greece and the eurozone.

The Kirchners also reversed the impunity of military officers responsible for mass murder and torture during the dictatorship, and hundreds have been tried and convicted for their crimes. Macri has dismissed these unprecedented human rights achievements as mere political showmanship. His party also voted against marriage equality, which was passed anyway, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage.

"Let's Change" is an appealing slogan, but the question is "change to what?"

[Nov 23, 2015] The Crisis of World Order

It's the same PNAC propaganda all over again.
Notable quotes:
"... From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis. ..."
"... Youd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS. ..."
"... Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security. ..."
"... ... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul: ..."
"... And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy. ..."
"... It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board ..."
"... Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. ..."
"... A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan ( ..."
"... ), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ... ..."
"... Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN ..."
"... Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB ..."
"... doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance. (Wikipedia) ..."
Nov. 20, 2015 | WSJ

...Europe was not in great shape before the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks. The prolonged Eurozone crisis eroded the legitimacy of European political institutions and the centrist parties that run them, while weakening the economies of key European powers. The old troika-Britain, France and Germany-that used to provide leadership on the continent and with whom the U.S. worked most closely to set the global agenda is no more. Britain is a pale shadow of its former self. Once the indispensable partner for the U.S., influential in both Washington and Brussels, the mediator between America and Europe, Britain is now unmoored, drifting away from both. The Labor Party, once led by Tony Blair, is now headed by an anti-American pacifist, while the ruling Conservative government boasts of its "very special relationship" with China.

... ... ...

There is a Russian angle, too. Many of these parties, and even some mainstream political movements across the continent, are funded by Russia and make little secret of their affinity for Moscow. Thus Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has praised "illiberalism" and made common ideological cause with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Germany, a whole class of businesspeople, politicians, and current and former government officials, led by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, presses constantly for normalized relations with Moscow. It sometimes seems, in Germany and perhaps in all of Europe, as if the only person standing in the way of full alliance with Russia is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Now the Syrian crisis has further bolstered Russia's position. Although Europeans generally share Washington's discomfort with Moscow's support for Mr. Assad and Russia's bombing of moderate Syrian rebels, in the wake of the Paris attacks, any plausible partner in the fight against Islamic State seems worth enlisting. In France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy has long been an advocate for Russia, but now his calls for partnership with Moscow are echoed by President François Hollande, who seeks a "grand coalition" with Russia to fight Islamic State.

Where does the U.S. fit into all this? The Europeans no longer know, any more than American allies in the Middle East do. Most Europeans still like Mr. Obama. After President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, Europeans have gotten the kind of American president they wanted. But in the current crisis, this new, more restrained and intensely cautious post-Iraq America has less to offer than the old superpower, with all its arrogance and belligerence.

The flip side of European pleasure at America's newfound Venusian outlook is the perception, widely shared around the world, that the U.S. is a declining superpower, and that even if it is not objectively weaker than it once was, its leaders' willingness to deploy power on behalf of its interests, and on behalf of the West, has greatly diminished. As former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer recently put it, the U.S. "quite obviously, is no longer willing-or able-to play its old role."

Mr. Fischer was referring specifically to America's role as the dominant power in the Middle East, but since the refugee crisis and the attacks in Paris, America's unwillingness to play that role has reverberations and implications well beyond the Middle East. What the U.S. now does or doesn't do in Syria will affect the future stability of Europe, the strength of trans-Atlantic relations and therefore the well-being of the liberal world order.

This is no doubt the last thing that Mr. Obama wants to hear, and possibly to believe. Certainly he would not deny that the stakes have gone up since the refugee crisis and especially since Paris. At the very least, Islamic State has proven both its desire and its ability to carry out massive, coordinated attacks in a major European city. It is not unthinkable that it could carry out a similar attack in an American city. This is new.

... ... ...

In 2002, a British statesman-scholar issued a quiet warning. "The challenge to the postmodern world," the diplomat Robert Cooper argued, was that while Europeans might operate within their borders as if power no longer mattered, in the world outside Europe, they needed to be prepared to use force just as in earlier eras. "Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle," he wrote. Europeans didn't heed this warning, or at least didn't heed it sufficiently. They failed to arm themselves for the jungle, materially and spiritually, and now that the jungle has entered the European garden, they are at a loss.

With the exercise of power barely an option, despite what Mr. Hollande promises, Europeans are likely to feel their only choice is to build fences, both within Europe and along its periphery-even if in the process they destroy the very essence of the European project. It is this sentiment that has the Le Pens of Europe soaring in the polls.

What would such an effort look like? First, it would require establishing a safe zone in Syria, providing the millions of would-be refugees still in the country a place to stay and the hundreds of thousands who have fled to Europe a place to which to return. To establish such a zone, American military officials estimate, would require not only U.S. air power but ground forces numbering up to 30,000. Once the safe zone was established, many of those troops could be replaced by forces from Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, but the initial force would have to be largely American.

In addition, a further 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops would be required to uproot Islamic State from the haven it has created in Syria and to help local forces uproot it in Iraq. Many of those troops could then be replaced by NATO and other international forces to hold the territory and provide a safe zone for rebuilding the areas shattered by Islamic State rule.

At the same time, an internationally negotiated and blessed process of transition in Syria should take place, ushering the bloodstained Mr. Assad from power and establishing a new provisional government to hold nationwide elections. The heretofore immovable Mr. Assad would face an entirely new set of military facts on the ground, with the Syrian opposition now backed by U.S. forces and air power, the Syrian air force grounded and Russian bombing halted. Throughout the transition period, and probably beyond even the first rounds of elections, an international peacekeeping force-made up of French, Turkish, American and other NATO forces as well as Arab troops-would have to remain in Syria until a reasonable level of stability, security and inter-sectarian trust was achieved.

Is such a plan so unthinkable? In recent years, the mere mention of U.S. ground troops has been enough to stop any conversation. Americans, or at least the intelligentsia and political class, remain traumatized by Iraq, and all calculations about what to do in Syria have been driven by that trauma. Mr. Obama's advisers have been reluctant to present him with options that include even smaller numbers of ground forces, assuming that he would reject them. And Mr. Obama has, in turn, rejected his advisers' less ambitious proposals on the reasonable grounds that they would probably be insufficient.

This dynamic has kept the president sneering at those who have wanted to do more but have been reluctant to be honest about how much more. But it has also allowed him to be comfortable settling for minimal, pressure-relieving approaches that he must know cannot succeed but which at least have the virtue of avoiding the much larger commitment that he has so far refused to make.

The president has also been inclined to reject options that don't promise to "solve" the problems of Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. He doesn't want to send troops only to put "a lid on things."

In this respect, he is entranced, like most Americans, by the image of the decisive engagement followed by the victorious return home. But that happy picture is a myth. Even after the iconic American victory in World War II, the U.S. didn't come home. Keeping a lid on things is exactly what the U.S. has done these past 70 years. That is how the U.S. created this liberal world order.

In Asia, American forces have kept a lid on what had been, and would likely be again, a dangerous multisided conflict involving China, Japan, Korea, India and who knows who else. In Europe, American forces put a lid on what had been a chronic state of insecurity and war, making it possible to lay the foundations of the European Union. In the Balkans, the presence of U.S. and European troops has kept a lid on what had been an escalating cycle of ethnic conflict. In Libya, a similar international force, with even a small American contingent, could have kept the lid on that country's boiling caldron, perhaps long enough to give a new, more inclusive government a chance.

Preserving a liberal world order and international security is all about placing lids on regions of turmoil. In any case, as my Brookings Institution colleague Thomas Wright observes, whether or not you want to keep a lid on something really ought to depend on what's under the lid.

At practically any other time in the last 70 years, the idea of dispatching even 50,000 troops to fight an organization of Islamic State's description would not have seemed too risky or too costly to most Americans. In 1990-91, President George H.W. Bush, now revered as a judicious and prudent leader, sent half a million troops across the globe to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, a country that not one American in a million could find on a map and which the U.S. had no obligation to defend. In 1989, he sent 30,000 troops to invade Panama to topple an illegitimate, drug-peddling dictator. During the Cold War, when presidents sent more than 300,000 troops to Korea and more than 500,000 troops to Vietnam, the idea of sending 50,000 troops to fight a large and virulently anti-American terrorist organization that had seized territory in the Middle East, and from that territory had already launched a murderous attack on a major Western city, would have seemed barely worth an argument.

Not today. Americans remain paralyzed by Iraq, Republicans almost as much as Democrats, and Mr. Obama is both the political beneficiary and the living symbol of this paralysis. Whether he has the desire or capacity to adjust to changing circumstances is an open question. Other presidents have-from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton-each of whom was forced to recalibrate what the loss or fracturing of Europe would mean to American interests. In Mr. Obama's case, however, such a late-in-the-game recalculation seems less likely. He may be the first president since the end of World War II who simply doesn't care what happens to Europe.

If so, it is, again, a great irony for Europe, and perhaps a tragic one. Having excoriated the U.S. for invading Iraq, Europeans played no small part in bringing on the crisis of confidence and conscience that today prevents Americans from doing what may be necessary to meet the Middle Eastern crisis that has Europe reeling. Perhaps there are Europeans today wishing that the U.S. will not compound its error of commission in Iraq by making an equally unfortunate error of omission in Syria. They can certainly hope.

Mr. Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" and, most recently, "The World America Made."

Selected Skeptical Comments
anne said... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM
https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan

Branko Milanovic ‏@BrankoMilan

From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis.

Strobe Talbott @strobetalbott

A clarion call by @BrookingsFP's Bob Kagan. Hope (& bet) POTUS has read it. Would-be successors should as well. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-world-order-1448052095

9:03 AM - 21 Nov 2015

anne said in reply to anne... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM

https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/668114578866221056

Branko Milanovic‏ @BrankoMilan

You'd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security.


Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to anne...

Neoconservativism Is Down But Not Out of the 2016 Race

http://bloom.bg/1EpwSou
via @Bloomberg - February 18, 2015

... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul:

'Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in the New Republic this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.'

(The story also notes, prematurely, that the careers of older neocons like Wolfowitz are "permanently buried in the sands of Iraq.")

Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. He was part of the Project for a New American Century, a now-defunct think tank that spanned much of the second Bush presidency and supported a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." PNAC counted Kagan, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, and Jeb Bush among its members. In 1998, some of its members-including Wolfowitz, Kagan, and Rumsfeld-signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton asking him to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan (#), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ...

*- Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN

#- Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

(I may be a HRC supporter but Neocons still make me anxious.)

'doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance.' (Wikipedia)


[Nov 21, 2015] US Congresswoman Introduces Bill To Stop Illegal War On Assad; Says CIA Ops Must Stop

"Any candidate who supports a safe no-fly zone in Syria, must admit that US/Coalition ground/air troops are need to enforce [it]
Nov 21, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington's Syria strategy.

In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington's effort to oust Assad "counterproductive" and "illegal" before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "sworn enemies."

In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting "World War III."

For those who missed it, here's the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHkher6ceaA

[Nov 20, 2015] Hillarys Heavy Obligations to Wall Street Money and The Banks Favorite Candidates

jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them.

Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola

People are discouraged and disillusioned after almost thirty years of distorted governance, specially in the aftermath of the 'Hope and Change' which quickly became 'Vain Hope for Change.' Most cannot admit that their guys were in the pockets of Big Defense, Big Pharma, Big Energy, and Wall Street.

The real question about Hillary comes down to this. Can you trust her to do what she says she will do, the right things for her putative constituents and not her big money donors and paymasters, once she takes office?

Or will that poor family who left the White House 'broke' and then mysteriously obtained a fortune of over $100 million in the following years, thanks to enormous payments for 'speeches' from large financial firms and huge donations to their Trust once again take care of the hand that pays them the most?

This is not to say that there is a better alternative amongst the leading Republican candidates, who have been and are still under the same types of payment arrangements, only with different people signing the checks.

Or we could skip the middlemen entirely and just directly elect one of New York's most prominent of their narcissist class directly, instead of another witless stooge of big money, and hope for something different? And how will that likely work out for us?

It is an exceptionally hard time to be a human being in this great nation of ours.

And so what ought we to do? Wallow in cynicism and the sweet sickness of misanthropy and despair? Vote strictly on the hope of our own narrow self-interest no matter the broader and longer term consequences, and then face the inevitable blowback from injustice and repression?

Give up on our grandchildren and children because we are too tired and interested in our own short term comfort? Too filled with selfishness, anger and hate to see straight, and do anything but turn ourselves into mindless animals to escape the pain of being truly human? Do no thinking, and just follow orders? This latter impulse has taken whole nations of desperate people into the abyss.

Or do we stop wallowing in our specialness and self-pity, and 'stand on the shoulders of giants' and confront what virtually every generation and every individual has had to wrestle with since the beginning of recorded time?

Do we fall, finally stricken with grief in our blindness, on the road to Damascus and say at long last, 'Lord, what then wilt thou have me to do?'

This is the question that circumstance is posing to us. And hopefully we will we heed the answer that has been already given, to be 'steadfast, unshaken, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in Him our labor is not in vain.'

And the touchstone of the alloy of our actions is love.

And so we have before us what Franklin Roosevelt so aptly characterized as our own 'rendezvous with destiny.'


Related:
Wall Street Is Running the World's Central Banks
Wall Street's Favorite Presidential Candidates

[Nov 16, 2015] Bankrupt British Empire Keeps Pushing To Overthrow Putin

Notable quotes:
"... Lyndon LaRouche has observed that anybody acting according to this British agenda with the intention of coming out on top is a fool, since the British financial-political empire is bankrupt and its entire system is coming down. ..."
"... EU: British imperial interests are intent on destroying Prime Minister Putins bid for the Presidency, and throwing Russia into deadly political turmoil. ..."
"... In her testimony, Diuk came off like a reincarnation of a 1950s Cold Warrior, raving against the Russian government as authoritarian, dictators, and so forth. She said, The trend lines for freedom and democracy in Russia have been unremittingly negative since Vladimir Putin took power and set about the systematic construction of a representation of their interests within the state. She announced at that point that the elections would be illegitimate: [T]he current regime will likely use the upcoming parliamentary elections in December 2011 and presidential election in March 2012 with the inevitable falsifications and manipulations, to claim the continued legitimacy of its rule. ..."
"... The British-educated Nadia Diuk is vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy, from which perch she has spread Cold War venom against Putin and the Russian government. ..."
"... Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald Deibert, two top profilers of the Russian Internet, noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08. ..."
"... NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny (inset), the online anti-corruption activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations. Addressing crowds on the street, Navalny sounds more like Mussolini than a proponent of democracy. A Russian columnist found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic. Shown: the Dec. 24 demonstration in Moscow. ..."
January 1, 2012 | http://schillerinstitute.org/russia/2012/0122_overthrow_putin.html
This article appears in the January 20, 2012 issue of Executive Intelligence Review and is reprinted with permission.

[PDF version of this article]

January 9, 2012 -Organizers of the December 2011 "anti-vote-fraud" demonstrations in Moscow have announced Feb. 4 as the date of their next street action, planned as a march around the city's Garden Ring Road on the 22nd anniversary of a mass demonstration which paved the way to the end of the Soviet Union. While there is a fluid situation within both the Russian extraparliamentary opposition layers, and the ruling circles and other Duma parties, including a process of "dialogue" between them, in which ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin is playing a role, it is clear that British imperial interests are intent on-if not actually destroying Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's bid for reelection as Russia's President in the March 4 elections-casting Russia into ongoing, destructive political turmoil.

Lyndon LaRouche has observed that anybody acting according to this British agenda with the intention of coming out on top is a fool, since the British financial-political empire is bankrupt and its entire system is coming down.

Review of the events leading up to the Dec. 4, 2011 Duma elections, which the street demonstrators demanded be cancelled for fraud, shows that not only agent-of-British-influence Mikhail Gorbachov, the ex-Soviet President, but also the vast Project Democracy apparatus inside the United States, exposed by EIR in the 1980s as part of an unconstitutional "secret government,"[1] have been on full mobilization to block the current Russian leadership from continuing in power.

Project Democracy

Typical is the testimony of Nadia Diuk, vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), before the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs last July 26. The NED is the umbrella of Project Democracy; it functions, inclusively, through the International Republican Institute (IRI, linked with the Republican Party) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI, linked with the Democratic Party, and currently headed by Madeleine Albright).

Diuk was educated at the U.K.'s Unversity of Sussex Russian studies program, and then taught at Oxford University, before coming to the U.S.A. to head up the NED's programs in Eastern Europe and Russia beginning 1990. She is married to her frequent co-author, Adrian Karatnycky of the Atlantic Institute, who headed up the private intelligence outfit Freedom House[2] for 12 years. Her role is typical of British outsourcing of key strategic operations to U.S. institutions.

EU: British imperial interests are intent on destroying Prime Minister Putin's bid for the Presidency, and throwing Russia into deadly political turmoil.

In her testimony, Diuk came off like a reincarnation of a 1950s Cold Warrior, raving against the Russian government as "authoritarian," "dictators," and so forth. She said, "The trend lines for freedom and democracy in Russia have been unremittingly negative since Vladimir Putin took power and set about the systematic construction of a representation of their interests within the state." She announced at that point that the elections would be illegitimate: "[T]he current regime will likely use the upcoming parliamentary elections in December 2011 and presidential election in March 2012 with the inevitable falsifications and manipulations, to claim the continued legitimacy of its rule."

Diuk expressed renewed hope that the disastrous 2004 Orange Revolution experiment in Ukraine could be replicated in Russia, claiming that "when the protests against authoritarian rule during Ukraine's Orange Revolution brought down the government in 2004, Russian citizens saw a vision across the border of an alternative future for themselves as a Slavic nation." She then detailed what she claimed were the Kremlin's reactions to the events in Ukraine, charging that "the leaders in the Kremlin-always the most creative innovators in the club of authoritarians-have also taken active measures to promote support of the government and undermine the democratic opposition...."

Holos Ameryky

The British-educated Nadia Diuk is vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy, from which perch she has spread "Cold War" venom against Putin and the Russian government.

While lauding "the democratic breakthroughs in the Middle East" in 2011, Diuk called on the Congress to "look to [Eastern Europe] as the source of a great wealth of experience on how the enemies of freedom are ever on the alert to assert their dominance, but also how the forces for freedom and democracy will always find a way to push back in a struggle that demands our support."

In September, Diuk chaired an NED event featuring a representative of the NED-funded Levada Center Russian polling organization, who gave an overview of the then-upcoming December 4 Duma election. Also speaking there was Russian liberal politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who predicted in the nastiest tones that Putin will suffer the fate of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. In this same September period, Mikhail Gorbachov, too, was already forecasting voting irregularities and a challenge to Putin's dominance.

The NED, which has an annual budget of $100 million, sponsors dozens of "civil society" groups in Russia. Golos, the supposedly independent vote-monitoring group that declared there would be vote fraud even before the elections took place, has received NED money through the NDI since 2000. Golos had a piecework program, paying its observers a set amount of money for each reported voting irregularity. NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny-the online anti-corruption activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations-since 2006, when he and Maria Gaidar (daughter of the late London-trained shock therapy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar) launched a youth debating project called "DA!" (meaning "Yes!" or standing for "Democratic Alternative"). Gorbachov's close ally Vladimir Ryzhkov, currently negotiating with Kudrin on terms of a "dialogue between the authorities and the opposition," also received NED grants to his World Movement for Democracy.

Besides George Soros's Open Society Foundations (formerly, Open Society Institute, OSI), the biggest source of funds for this meddling, including funding which was channeled through the NDI and the IRI, is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Officially, USAID has spent $2.6 billion on programs in Russia since 1992. The current acknowledged level is around $70 million annually, of which nearly half is for "Governing Justly & Democratically" programs, another 30% for "Information" programs, and only a small fraction for things like combatting HIV and TB. On Dec. 15, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon announced that the Obama Administration would seek Congressional approval to step up this funding, with "an initiative to create a new fund to support Russian non-governmental organizations that are committed to a more pluralistic and open society."

Awaiting McFaul

White House/Pete Souza

The impending arrival in Moscow of Michael McFaul (shown here with his boss in the Oval Office), as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, is seen by many there as an escalation of Project Democracy efforts to destabilize the country.

People from various parts of the political spectrum in Russia see the impending arrival of Michael McFaul as U.S. Ambassador to Russia as an escalation in Project Democracy efforts to destabilize Russia. McFaul, who has been Barack Obama's National Security Council official for Russia, has been working this beat since the early 1990s, when he represented the NDI in Russia at the end of the Soviet period, and headed its office there.

As a Russia specialist at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Hoover Institution, as well as the Carnegie Endowment, and an array of other Russian studies think tanks, McFaul has stuck closely to the Project Democracy agenda. Financing for his research has come from the NED, the OSI, and the Smith-Richardson Foundation (another notorious agency of financier interests within the U.S. establishment). He was an editor of the 2006 book Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough, containing chapters by Diuk and Karatnycky.

In his own contribution to a 2010 book titled After Putin's Russia,[3] McFaul hailed the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine-which was notoriously funded and manipulated from abroad-as a triumph of "people's political power from below to resist and eventually overturn a fraudulent election."

Before coming to the NSC, one of McFaul's many positions at Stanford was co-director of the Iran Democracy Project. He has also been active in such projects as the British Henry Jackson Society which is active in the drive to overthrow the government of Syria.

The Internet Dimension

The December 2011 street demonstrations in Moscow were organized largely online. Participation rose from a few hundred on Dec. 5, the day after the election, to an estimated 20,000 people on Bolotnaya Square Dec. 10, and somewhere in the wide range of 30,000 to 120,000 on Academician Sakharov Prospect Dec. 24.

Headlong expansion of Internet access and online social networking over the past three to five years has opened up a new dimension of political-cultural warfare in Russia. An EIR investigation finds that British intelligence agencies involved in the current attempts to destabilize Russia and, in their maximum version, overthrow Putin, have been working intensively to profile online activity in Russia and find ways to expand and exploit it. Some of these projects are outsourced to think tanks in the U.S.A. and Canada, but their center is Cambridge University in the U.K.-the heart of the British Empire, home of Bertrand Russell's systems analysis and related ventures of the Cambridge Apostles.[4]

The scope of the projects goes beyond profiling, as can be seen in the Cambridge-centered network's interaction with Russian anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, a central figure in the December protest rallies.

While George Soros and his OSI prioritized building Internet access in the former Soviet Union starting two decades ago, as recently as in 2008 British cyberspace specialists were complaining that the Internet was not yet efficient for political purposes in Russia. Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism produced a Soros-funded report in 2008, titled "The Web that Failed: How opposition politics and independent initiatives are failing on the Internet in Russia." The Oxford-Reuters authors regretted that processes like the Orange Revolution, in which online connections were crucial, had not gotten a toehold in Russia. But they quoted a 2007 report by Andrew Kuchins of the Moscow Carnegie Center, who found reason for optimism in the seven-fold increase in Russian Internet (Runet) use from 2000 to 2007. They also cited Robert Orttung of American University and the Resource Security Institute, on how Russian blogs were reaching "the most dynamic members of the youth generation" and could be used by "members of civil society" to mobilize "liberal opposition groups and nationalists."

Scarcely a year later, a report by the digital marketing firm comScore crowed that booming Internet access had led to Russia's having "the world's most engaged social networking audience." Russian Facebook use rose by 277% from 2008 to 2009. The Russia-based social networking outfit Vkontakte.ru (like Facebook) had 14.3 million visitors in 2009; Odnoklassniki.ru (like Classmates.com) had 7.8 million; and Mail.ru-My World had 6.3 million. All three of these social networking sites are part of the Mail.ru/Digital Sky Technologies empire of Yuri Milner,[5] with the individual companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore locations.

The Cambridge Security Programme

Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald Deibert, two top profilers of the Russian Internet, noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08.

Two top profilers of the Runet are Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski, who assessed its status in their essay "Control and Subversion in Russian Cyberspace."[6] At the University of Toronto, Deibert is a colleague of Barry Wellman, co-founder of the International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA).[7] Rohozinski is a cyber-warfare specialist who ran the Advanced Network Research Group of the Cambridge Security Programme (CSP) at Cambridge University in 2002-07. Nominally ending its work, the CSP handed off its projects to an array of organizations in the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), including Rohozinski's SecDev Group consulting firm, which issues the Information Warfare Monitor.

The ONI, formally dedicated to mapping and circumventing Internet surveillance and filtering by governments, is a joint project of Cambridge (Rohozinski), the Oxford Internet Institute, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and the University of Toronto.

Deibert and Rohozinski noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08. They cited official estimates that 38 million Russians were going online as of 2010, of whom 60 had broadband access from home; the forecast number of Russia-based Runet users by 2012 was 80 million, out of a population of 140 million. Qualitatively, the ONI authors welcomed what they called "the rise of the Internet to the center of Russian culture and politics." On the political side, they asserted that "the Internet has eclipsed all the mass media in terms of its reach, readership, and especially in the degree of free speech and opportunity to mobilize that it provides."

This notion of an Internet-savvy core of the population becoming the focal point of Russian society is now being hyped by those who want to push the December demonstrations into a full-scale political crisis. Such writers call this segment of the population "the creative class," or "the active creative minority," which can override an inert majority of the population. The Dec. 30 issue of Vedomosti, a financial daily co-owned by the Financial Times of London, featured an article by sociologist Natalya Zubarevich, which was then publicized in "Window on Eurasia" by Paul Goble, a State Department veteran who has concentrated for decades on the potential for Russia to split along ethnic or other lines.

Zubarevich proposed that the 31% of the Russian population living in the 14 largest cities, of which 9 have undergone "post-industrial transformation," constitute a special, influential class, as against the inhabitants of rural areas (38%) and mid-sized industrial cities with an uncertain future (25%). Goble defined the big-city population as a target: "It is in this Russia that the 35 million domestic users of the Internet and those who want a more open society are concentrated."

The Case of Alexei Navalny

In the "The Web that Failed" study, Oxford-Reuters authors Floriana Fossato, John Lloyd, and Alexander Verkhovsky delved into the missing elements, in their view, of the Russian Internet. What would it take, they asked, for Runet participants to be able to "orchestrate motivation and meaningful commitments"? They quoted Julia Minder of the Russian portal Rambler, who said about the potential for "mobilization": "Blogs are at the moment the answer, but the issue is how to find a leading blogger who wants to meet people on the Internet several hours per day. Leading bloggers need to be entertaining.... The potential is there, but more often than not it is not used."


Creative Commons
Creative Commons/Bogomolov.PL

NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny (inset), the online "anti-corruption" activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations. Addressing crowds on the street, Navalny sounds more like Mussolini than a proponent of democracy. A Russian columnist found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic. Shown: the Dec. 24 demonstration in Moscow.

It is difficult not to wonder if Alexei Navalny is a test-tube creation intended to fill the missing niche. This would not be the first time in recent Russian history that such a thing happened. In 1990, future neoliberal "young reformers" Anatoli Chubais and Sergei Vasilyev wrote a paper under International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) auspices, on the priorities for reform in the Soviet Union. They stated that a certain personality was missing on the Soviet scene at that time: the wealthy businessman. In their IIASA paper, Chubais and Vasilyev wrote: "We now see a figure, arising from historical non-existence: the figure of a businessman-entrepreneur, who has enough capital to bear the investment responsibility, and enough technological knowledge and willingness to support innovation."[8]

This type of person was subsequently brought into existence through the corrupt post-Soviet privatization process in Russia, becoming known as "the oligarchs." Was Navalny, similarly, synthesized as a charismatic blogger to fill the British subversive need for "mobilization"?

Online celebrity Navalny's arrest in Moscow on Dec. 5, and his speech at the Academician Sakharov Prospect rally on Dec. 24 were highlights of last month's turmoil in the Russian capital. Now 35 years old, Navalny grew up in a Soviet/Russian military family and was educated as a lawyer. In 2006, he began to be financed by NED for the DA! project (see above). Along the way-maybe through doing online day-trading, as some biographies suggest, or maybe from unknown benefactors-Navalny acquired enough money to be able to spend $40,000 (his figure) on a few shares in each of several major Russian companies with a high percentage of state ownership. This gave him minority-shareholder status, as a platform for his anti-corruption probes.

It must be understood that the web of "corruption" in Russia is the system of managing cash flows through payoffs, string-pulling, and criminal extortion, which arose out of the boost that Gorbachov's perestroika policy gave to pre-existing Soviet criminal networks in the 1980s. It then experienced a boom under darlings of London like Gaidar, who oversaw the privatization process known as the Great Criminal Revolution in the 1990s. As Russia has been integrated into an international financial order, which itself relies on criminal money flows from the dope trade and strategically motivated scams like Britain's BAE operations in the Persian Gulf, the preponderance of shady activity in the Russian economy has only increased.

Putin's governments inherited this system, and it can be ended when the commitment to monetarism, which LaRouche has identified as a fatal flaw even among genuinely pro-development Russians, is broken in Russia and worldwide. The current bankruptcy of the Trans-Atlantic City of London-Eurozone-Wall Street system means that now is the time for this to happen!

Yale Fellows

In 2010, Navalny was accepted to the Yale World Fellows Program, as one of fewer than 20 approved candidates out of over a thousand applicants. As EIR has reported, the Yale Fellows are instructed by the likes of British Foreign Office veteran Lord Mark Malloch-Brown and representatives of Soros's Open Society Foundations.[9] What's more, the World Fellows Program is funded by The Starr Foundation of Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, former chairman and CEO of insurance giant American International Group (AIG), the recipient of enormous Bush Jr.-Obama bailout largesse in 2008-09; Greenberg and his C.V. Starr company have a long record of facilitating "regime change" (aka coups), going back to the 1986 overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Navalny reports that Maria Gaidar told him to try for the program, and he enjoyed recommendations from top professors at the New Economic School in Moscow, a hotbed of neoliberalism and mathematical economics. It was from New Haven that Navalny launched his anti-corruption campaign against Transneft, the Russian national oil pipeline company, specifically in relation to money movements around the new East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline. The ESPO has just finished the first year of operation of its spur supplying Russian oil to China.

Navalny presents a split personality to the public. Online he is "Mr. Openness." He posts the full legal documentation of his corruption exposés. When his e-mail account was hacked, and his correspondence with U.S. Embassy and NED officials about funding him was made public, Navalny acknowledged that the e-mails were genuine. He tries to disarm interviewers with questions like, "Do you think I'm an American project, or a Kremlin one?"

During the early-January 2012 holiday lull in Russia, Navalny engaged in a lengthy, oh-so-civilized dialogue in Live Journal with Boris Akunin (real name, Grigori Chkhartishvili), a famous detective-story author and liberal activist who was another leader of the December demonstrations, about whether Navalny's commitment to the slogan "Russia for the Russians" marks him as a bigot who is unfit to lead. Addressing crowds on the street, however, Navalny sounds like Mussolini. Prominent Russian columnist Maxim Sokolov, writing in Izvestia, found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic.

Navalny may well end up being expendable in the view of his sponsors. In the meantime, it is clear that he is working from the playbook of Gene Sharp, whose neurolinguistic programming and advertising techniques were employed in Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004.[10] Sharp, a veteran of "advanced studies" at Oxford and 30 years at Harvard's Center for International Affairs, is the author of The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Power and Struggle, which advises the use of symbolic colors, short slogans, and so forth.

While at Yale, Navalny also served as an informant and advisor for a two-year study conducted at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, one of the institutions participating in the OpenNet Initiative, launched out of Cambridge University in the U.K. The study produced a profile titled "Mapping the Russian Blogosphere," which detailed the different sections of the Runet: liberal, nationalist, cultural, foreign-based, etc., looking at their potential social impact.

Allen Douglas, Gabrielle Peut, David Christie, and Dorothea Bunnell did research for this article.


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[Nov 15, 2015] Machiavelli claim that in politics no one knows who you are but how you appear

Notable quotes:
"... More obviously, it's about "the discerning few" (as the editors of one edition of The Prince say in a footnote) versus the gullible many. ..."
crookedtimber.org
from the OP:

This shift from the visually immediate to the distant and the abstract-one can see it in Machiavelli's claim that in politics, no one knows who you are but how you appear; in Hobbes's notion of the Leviathan-would be a recurring theme in Wolin's analysis

Interesting. That Machiavelli line ("everyone sees how you appear, few touch what you are") could be read that way. More obviously, it's about "the discerning few" (as the editors of one edition of The Prince say in a footnote) versus the gullible many.

Anyway, v. nice post.

[Nov 14, 2015] Iraqi warmonger Ahmad Chalabi dies

Notable quotes:
"... Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician accused of providing false information that led to the United States toppling longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion, died on Tuesday of a heart attack, state television and two parliamentarians said. ..."
"... "The neo-cons wanted to make a case for war and he [Chalabi] was somebody who is willing to provide them with information that would help their cause," Ali Khedery, who was the longest continuously-serving American official in Iraq in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, told Al Arabiya News. ..."
Nov 03, 2015 | Al Arabiya News

Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician accused of providing false information that led to the United States toppling longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion, died on Tuesday of a heart attack, state television and two parliamentarians said.

Attendants found the controversial lawmaker, 71, dead in bed in his Baghdad home, according to parliament official Haitham al-Jabouri.

... ... ...

During his heyday, the smooth-talking Chalabi was widely seen as the man who helped push the U.S. and its main ally Britain into invading Iraq in 2003, with information that Saddam's government had weapons of mass destruction, claims that were eventually discredited.

... ... ...

Chalabi had also said Saddam - known for his secularist Baathist ideology - had ties with al-Qaeda.

After Saddam's fall by U.S.-led coalition forces, Chalabi returned from exile in Britain and the United States. Despite having been considered as a potential candidate for the powerful post of prime minister in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's 24-year reign, the politician never managed to rise to the top of Iraq's stormy, sectarian-driven political landscape.

His eventual fallout with his former American allies also hurt his chances of becoming an Iraqi leader.

"The neo-cons wanted to make a case for war and he [Chalabi] was somebody who is willing to provide them with information that would help their cause," Ali Khedery, who was the longest continuously-serving American official in Iraq in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, told Al Arabiya News.

[Nov 14, 2015] Why The Neocons Hate The Donald

Notable quotes:
"... The President, as commander in chief, shapes US foreign policy: indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky , you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you. ..."
"... PAUL: … How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You can not be a conservative if youre going to keep promoting new programs that youre not going to pay for. ..."
"... Here, in one dramatic encounter, were two worldviews colliding: the older conservative vision embodied by Rand Paul, which puts domestic issues like fiscal solvency first, and the internationalist stance taken by what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans , and now goes under the neoconservative rubric, which puts the maintenance and expansion of Americas overseas empire – dubbed world leadership by Rubios doppelganger, Jeb Bush – over and above any concerns over budgetary common sense. ..."
"... Rubios proposed military budget – $696 billion – represents a $35 billion increase over what the Pentagon is requesting ..."
"... Pauls too-clever-by-half legislative maneuvering may have effectively exposed Rubio – and Sen. Tom Cotton, Marcos co-pilot on this flight into fiscal profligacy – as the faux-conservative that he is, but it evaded the broader question attached to the issue of military spending: what are we going to do with all that shiny-new military hardware? Send more weapons to Ukraine? Outfit an expeditionary force to re-invade Iraq and venture into Syria? This brings to mind Madeleine Albrights infamous remark directed at Gen. Colin Powell: Whats the point of having this superb military youre always talking about if we cant use it? ..."
"... Speaking of Trumpian hot air: Paul showed up The Donald for the ignorant blowhard he is by pointing out, after another of Trumps jeremiads aimed at the Yellow Peril, that China is not a party to the trade deal, which is aimed at deflecting Beijing. That was another shining moment for Paul, who successfully juxtaposed his superior knowledge to Trumps babbling. ..."
"... If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, one-hundred percent, and I cant understand how anybody would be against it. ..."
"... Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the isolationist populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybodys bills? Why are we fighting everybody elses wars? Its a bad deal! ..."
"... This is why the neocons hate Trumps guts even more than they hate Paul. The former, after all, is the frontrunner. What the War Party fears is that Trumps contradictory mixture of bluster – bigger, better, stronger! – and complaints that our allies are taking advantage of us means a victory for the dreaded isolationists at the polls. ..."
"... its election season, the one time – short of when were about to invade yet another country – when the American people are engaged with the foreign policy issues of the day. And what we are seeing is a rising tide of disgust with our policy of global intervention – in a confused inchoate sense, in the case of Trump, and in a focused, self-conscious, occasionally eloquent and yet still slightly confused and inconsistent way in the case of Sen. Paul. Either way, the real voice of the American heartland is being heard. ..."
"... Trump has rocked the boat and raised some issues and viewpoints that none of the other bought and paid for candidates would ever have raised. Has he changed the national discussion on these issues? At least he woken some people up. ..."
"... The sentence of We relied on the stupidity of the American voter resonates. ..."
"... What you did, was you fell for the oldest press trick in the book. Its called: out of context . Thats is where they play back only a segment of what someone says, only a part of what they want you to hear, so you will draw the wrong conclusion. What Trump said {had you listened to ALL of what he said} was that he was going to TAKE ISILS OIL. Oil is the largest source of revenue for them {then comes the CIA money}. If you were to remove their oil revenues from them, they would be seriously hurting for cash to fund their machine. I dont have a problem with that. ..."
"... The thing about understanding the attack on The Donald is understanding what he is NOT. Namely he is not CFR connected ..."
"... The attacks on Trump have been relentless yet he is still maintaining his position in the polls. ..."
"... The goal is to have a CFR candidate in both the GOP and Dem fold. Although Hillary is not a CFR member ostensibly Slick Willie has been for more than 20 years and his Administration was rife with them...Hello Rubin and Glass Steagal!!..as is Chelsea... a newly elected member. ..."
"... [American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant. ..."
"... Yes, I have also seen the new golden boy regaled in the media. Lets see where he goes. I wonder if anyone represents the American people any better than the corrupt piece of dried up persimmon that is Hillary? ..."
"... With JEB polling in single digits and hopelessly befuddled, Rubio is the Great Hispanic Hope of the establishment Republocrats. He is being well-pimped, is all. Paul is clearly more intelligent, more articulate, and more well-informed; Trump is more forceful and popular (but independent!). Neither suits an establishment that wants to hold the reins behind the throne. ..."
Nov 14, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Submitted by Justin Raimondo via Anti-War.com,

Most Americans don't think much about politics, let alone foreign policy issues, as they go about their daily lives. It's not that they don't care: it's just that the daily grind doesn't permit most people outside of Washington, D.C. the luxury of contemplating the fate of nations with any regularity. There is one exception, however, and that is during election season, and specifically – when it comes to foreign policy – every four years, when the race for the White House begins to heat up. The President, as commander in chief, shapes US foreign policy: indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you.

The most recent episode of the continuing GOP reality show, otherwise known as the presidential debates, certainly gave us a glimpse of what we are in for if the candidates on that stage actually make it into the Oval Office – and, folks, it wasn't pretty, for the most part. But there were plenty of bright spots.

This was supposed to have been a debate about economics, but in the Age of Empire there is no real division between economic and foreign policy issues. That was brought home by the collision between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul about half way through the debate when Rubio touted his child tax credit program as being "pro-family." A newly-aggressive and articulate Rand Paul jumped in with this:

"Is it conservative to have $1 trillion in transfer payments – a new welfare program that's a refundable tax credit? Add that to Marco's plan for $1 trillion in new military spending, and you get something that looks, to me, not very conservative."

Rubio's blow-dried exterior seemed to fray momentarily, as he gave his "it's for the children" reply:

"But if you invest it in your children, in the future of America and strengthening your family, we're not going to recognize that in our tax code? The family is the most important institution in society. And, yes…

"PAUL: Nevertheless, it's not very conservative, Marco."

Stung to the quick, Rubio played what he thought was his trump card:

"I know that Rand is a committed isolationist. I'm not. I believe the world is a stronger and a better place, when the United States is the strongest military power in the world.

"PAUL: Yeah, but, Marco! … How is it conservative … to add a trillion-dollar expenditure for the federal government that you're not paying for?

"RUBIO: Because…

"PAUL: … How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You can not be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs that you're not going to pay for.

(APPLAUSE)"

Here, in one dramatic encounter, were two worldviews colliding: the older conservative vision embodied by Rand Paul, which puts domestic issues like fiscal solvency first, and the "internationalist" stance taken by what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans, and now goes under the neoconservative rubric, which puts the maintenance and expansion of America's overseas empire – dubbed "world leadership" by Rubio's doppelganger, Jeb Bush – over and above any concerns over budgetary common sense.

Rubio then descended into waving the bloody shirt and evoking Trump's favorite bogeyman – the Yellow Peril – to justify his budget-busting:

"We can't even have an economy if we're not safe. There are radical jihadists in the Middle East beheading people and crucifying Christians. A radical Shia cleric in Iran trying to get a nuclear weapon, the Chinese taking over the South China Sea…"

If the presence of the Islamic State in the Middle East precludes us from having an economy, then those doing their Christmas shopping early this year don't seem to be aware of it. As for the Iranians and their alleged quest for nuclear weapons, IAEA inspectors are at this very moment verifying the complete absence of such an effort – although Sen. Paul, who stupidly opposed the Iran deal, is in no position to point this out. As for the fate of the South China Sea – if we could take a poll, I wonder how many Americans would rather have their budget out of balance in order to keep the Chinese from constructing artificial islands a few miles off their own coastline. My guess: not many.

Playing the "isolationist" card got Rubio nowhere: I doubt if a third of the television audience even knows what that term is supposed to mean. It may resonate in Washington, but out in the heartland it carries little if any weight with people more concerned about their shrinking bank accounts than the possibility that the South China Sea might fall to … the Chinese.

Ted Cruz underscored his sleaziness (and, incidentally, his entire election strategy) by jumping in and claiming the "middle ground" between Rubio's fulsome internationalism and Paul's call to rein in our extravagant military budget – by siding with Rubio. We can do what Rubio wants to do – radically increase military expenditures – but first, he averred, we have to cut sugar subsidies so we can afford it. This was an attack on Rubio's enthusiasm for sugar subsidies, without which, avers the Senator from the state that produces the most sugar, "we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point we're at the mercy of a foreign country for food security." Yes, there's a jihadist-Iranian-Chinese conspiracy to deprive America of its sweet tooth – but not if President Rubio can stop it!

Cruz is a master at prodding the weaknesses of his opponents, but his math is way off: sugar subsidies have cost us some $15 billion since 2008. Rubio's proposed military budget – $696 billion – represents a $35 billion increase over what the Pentagon is requesting. Cutting sugar subsidies – an unlikely prospect, especially given the support of Republicans of Rubio's ilk for the program – won't pay for it.

However, if we want to go deeper into those weeds, Sen. Paul also endorses the $696 billion figure, but touts the fact that his proposal comes with cuts that will supposedly pay for the hike. This is something all those military contractors can live with, and so everybody's happy, at least on the Republican side of the aisle, and yet the likelihood of cutting $21 billion from "international affairs," never mind $20 billion from social services, is unlikely to garner enough support from his own party – let alone the Democrats – to get through Congress. So it's just more of Washington's kabuki theater: all symbolism, no action.

Paul's too-clever-by-half legislative maneuvering may have effectively exposed Rubio – and Sen. Tom Cotton, Marco's co-pilot on this flight into fiscal profligacy – as the faux-conservative that he is, but it evaded the broader question attached to the issue of military spending: what are we going to do with all that shiny-new military hardware? Send more weapons to Ukraine? Outfit an expeditionary force to re-invade Iraq and venture into Syria? This brings to mind Madeleine Albright's infamous remark directed at Gen. Colin Powell: "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

In this way, Paul undermines his own case against global intervention – and even his own eloquent argument, advanced in answer to Rubio's contention that increasing the military budget would make us "safer":

"I do not think we are any safer from bankruptcy court. As we go further, and further into debt, we become less, and less safe. This is the most important thing we're going to talk about tonight. Can you be a conservative, and be liberal on military spending? Can you be for unlimited military spending, and say, Oh, I'm going to make the country safe? No, we need a safe country, but, you know, we spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined."

I have to say Sen. Paul shone at this debate. His arguments were clear, consistent, and made with calm forcefulness. He distinguished himself from the pack, including Trump, who said "I agree with Marco, I agree with Ted," and went on to mouth his usual "bigger, better, stronger" hyperbole that amounted to so much hot hair air.

Speaking of Trumpian hot air: Paul showed up The Donald for the ignorant blowhard he is by pointing out, after another of Trump's jeremiads aimed at the Yellow Peril, that China is not a party to the trade deal, which is aimed at deflecting Beijing. That was another shining moment for Paul, who successfully juxtaposed his superior knowledge to Trump's babbling.

This obsession with China's allegedly malign influence extended to the next round, when foreign policy was again the focus. In answer to a question about whether he supports President Obama's plan to send Special Operations forces to Syria, Ben Carson said yes, because Russia is going to make it "their base," oh, and by the way: "You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians." Unless he's talking about these guys, Carson intel seems a bit off.

Jeb Bush gave the usual boilerplate, delivered in his preferred monotone, contradicting himself when he endorsed a no-fly zone over Syria and then attacked Hillary Clinton for not offering "leadership" – when she endorsed the idea practically in unison with him. Bush added his usual incoherence to the mix by averring that somehow not intervening more in the region "will have a huge impact on our economy" – but of course the last time we intervened it had a $2 trillion-plus impact in terms of costs, and that's a conservative estimate.

Oddly characterizing Russia's air strikes on the Islamic State as "aggression" – do our air strikes count as aggression? – the clueless Marie Bartiromo asked Trump what he intends to do about it. Trump evaded the question for a few minutes, going on about North Korea, Iran, and of course the Yellow Peril, finally coming out with a great line that not even the newly-noninterventionist Sen. Paul had the gumption to muster:

"If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, one-hundred percent, and I can't understand how anybody would be against it."

Bush butted in with "But they aren't doing that," which is the Obama administration's demonstrably inaccurate line, and Trump made short work of him with the now undeniable fact that the Islamic State blew up a Russian passenger jet with over 200 people on it. "He [Putin] cannot be in love with these people," countered Trump. "He's going in, and we can go in, and everybody should go in. As far as the Ukraine is concerned, we have a group of people, and a group of countries, including Germany – tremendous economic behemoth – why are we always doing the work?"

Why indeed.

Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the "isolationist" populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybody's bills? Why are we fighting everybody else's wars? It's a bad deal!

This is why the neocons hate Trump's guts even more than they hate Paul. The former, after all, is the frontrunner. What the War Party fears is that Trump's contradictory mixture of bluster – "bigger, better, stronger!" – and complaints that our allies are taking advantage of us means a victory for the dreaded "isolationists" at the polls.

As for Carly Fiorina and John Kasich: they merely served as a Greek chorus to the exhortations of Rubio and Bush to take on Putin, Assad, Iran, China, and (in Trump's case) North Korea. They left out Venezuela only because they ran out of time, and breath. Fiorina and Kasich were mirror images of each other in their studied belligerence: both are aspiring vice-presidential running mates for whatever Establishment candidate takes the prize.

Yes, it's election season, the one time – short of when we're about to invade yet another country – when the American people are engaged with the foreign policy issues of the day. And what we are seeing is a rising tide of disgust with our policy of global intervention – in a confused inchoate sense, in the case of Trump, and in a focused, self-conscious, occasionally eloquent and yet still slightly confused and inconsistent way in the case of Sen. Paul. Either way, the real voice of the American heartland is being heard.

Bumpo

Im not so sure. If you see it in context with Trump's other message to make Mexico pay for the border fence. If you take the Iraq war on the face of it - that is, we came in to rescue them from Saddam Hussein - then taking their oil in payment is only "fair". It's hard to tell if he is playing a game, or actually believes the US company line, though. I think he isn't letting on. At least I hope so. And that goes double for his "Support" of Israel.

Joe Trader

@greenskeeper we get it, you get butt-hurt extremely easily

The thing about Donald Trump and oil - is that a few years ago, he said all that Saudi Arabia had to do was start pumping oil, and down it would go to $25. Guess what sweet cheeks - His prediction is coming true and the presidency could really use a guy like him who knows what he's doing.

MalteseFalcon

Say what you like about Trump. 'He is a baffoon or a blowhard'. 'He can't be elected president'.

But Trump has rocked the boat and raised some issues and viewpoints that none of the other bought and paid for 'candidates' would ever have raised. Has he changed the national discussion on these issues? At least he woken some people up.

illyia

oh.my.gawd. a rational adult series of comments on zero hedge: There is hopium for the world, after all.

Just must say: Raimondo is an incredibly good writer. Very enjoyable to read. I am sure that's why he's still around. He make a clear, concise argument, presents his case with humor and irony and usually covers every angle.

I wonder about people like him, who think things out so well... versus, say, the bloviator and chief?

P.S. don't blame me, i did not vote for either of them...

Oracle of Kypseli

The sentence of "We relied on the stupidity of the American voter" resonates.

TheObsoleteMan

What you did, was you fell for the oldest press trick in the book. It's called: "out of context". That's is where they play back only a segment of what someone says, only a part of what they want you to hear, so you will draw the wrong conclusion. What Trump said {had you listened to ALL of what he said} was that he was going to TAKE ISIL'S OIL. Oil is the largest source of revenue for them {then comes the CIA money}. If you were to remove their oil revenues from them, they would be seriously hurting for cash to fund their machine. I don't have a problem with that.

palmereldritch

The thing about understanding the attack on The Donald is understanding what he is NOT. Namely he is not CFR connected:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/trump-catches-attention-of...

The attacks on Trump have been relentless yet he is still maintaining his position in the polls.

I expected a take out on Ben Carson, his next closest competitor to move up a CFR-aligned Globalist like Shrubio or Cruz given their fall-back JEBPNAC is tanking so bad...but not this early. They must be getting desperate...so desperate they are considering Romney?!

If it becomes 'Reagan/Bush Redux' again with Trump/Cruz, I hope The Donald has enough sense to say NO! or, if elected, be very vigilant knowing you are Reagan and you have the GHW Bush equivalent standing there to replace you...and we know how that unfolded early in Reagan's first term...NOT GOOD

EDIT: The goal is to have a CFR candidate in both the GOP and Dem fold. Although Hillary is not a CFR member ostensibly Slick Willie has been for more than 20 years and his Administration was rife with them...Hello Rubin and Glass Steagal!!..as is Chelsea... a newly elected member.

So that red vote I just got...was that you Hill?

Pure Evil

The point is Justin seems to believe the Iranians have no intention of building a nuclear bomb ever. I've read a lot of this guy's writing ever since he first came out on his own website and when he wrote for AsiaTimesOnline. He's always had the opinion that the Iranians are not building a nuclear bomb and have no intention to do so. He spews the same talking points about how they've never attacked anyone in over two hundred years.

Well that's because previously they were under the control of the Ottoman empire and that didn't break up until after WW1. I think he's got a blind spot in this regard. You can't tell me that even the Japanese aren't secretly building nuclear weapons since China is becoming militarily aggressive. And, stop being a prick. Your micro-aggressing against my safe place LTER and I'm gonna have to report you for "hurtful" speech.

Raymond_K._Hessel

You ignorant slut.

https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-...

20 years plus of this accusation. Cia and dia both said no mil program.

If you have evidence summon it. Offering your suspicion as evidence is fucking absurd.

And if the israelis werent hell bent on taking the rest of palestine and brutalizing the natives (which, by and large, they actually are) that would sure wet some of the anti isrsel powder.

But no / they want lebensraum and years of war for expansion and regional total hegemony.

Thrn they can ethnically cleanse the historical inhabitants while everyones busy watching white european christisns kill each other, and muslims, as isis keeps not attacking israel or even isrseli interests.

Youre not dumb, you just reached conclusions that are very weakened of not refuted by evidence you wont even consider.

https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-...

Bazza McKenzie

If you examine the policy detail Trump has provided, there is more substance there than any of the others. Add to that he has a long record of successful management, which none of the others have.

You don't manage successfully without self control. The persona he presents in politics at present may give the impression of a lack of self control, yet that persona and the policies which are/were verboten to the political class have quickly taken him to the top of the pack and kept him there.

If you apply to Trump the saying "judge people by what they do, not what they say", his achievements out of politics and now in politics show he is a more capable person than any of the others and that he is successful at what he sets out to do.

As the economy for most Americans continues to worsen, which is baked in the cake, who is going to look to the public a more credible person to turn it around, Clinton? Trump? one of the others? The answer is pretty obvious.

European American

"I cannot take Trump seriously."

It's not about Trump as President, a year from now. Who knows if he'll even be in the picture by then. It's ALL about Trump, RIGHT NOW. He's exposing the underbelly of a vile, hideous Z-creature that we, here at ZH have seen for some time, but the masses, those who haven't connected enought dots, yet, are getting a glimpse of something that has been foreign in politics, up until now. Everytime Trump is interviewed, or tweets or stands at the debates, another round is shot over the bow, or beak, of the monster creature that has been sucking the life out of humanity for decades, centuries, eons. As long as he's standing and he can pull it off, that is what this phenomenon is all about...one day at a time....shedding light where the stench of darkness has been breeding corruption for the last millenium.

MASTER OF UNIVERSE

Neocons hate because their collective ethos is that of a single misanthrope that crafted their existence in the first place. In brief, neocons are fascist narrow minded automatons not really capable of a level of consciousness that would enable them to think critically, and independently, of the clique orthodoxy that guides their myopic thinking, or lack thereof. Neocons have no history aside from Corporatism, and Fascism.

Escrava Isaura

American Decline: Causes and Consequences

Grand Area (after WW-2) to be under US control: Western Hemisphere, the Far East, the former British empire - including the crucial Middle East oil reserves - and as much of Eurasia as possible, or at the very least its core industrial regions in Western Europe and the southern European states. The latter were regarded as essential for ensuring control of Middle East energy resources.

It means: Africa resources go to Europe. Asia resources go to Japan. South America resources go to US.

Now (2019) the Conundrum: Where will China get the resources needed for its survival? And Russia is not Africa.

"[American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant." ? Zbigniew Brzezinski

Bazza McKenzie

Through either ignorance or malice the author repeats Rand Paul's statement about Trump's comments re China and the TPP.

Trump explicitly said the TPP provides a back door opportunity for China, thus noting he understands China is not an initial signatory to TPP.

The backdoor opportunity occurs in 2 ways. The ability for TPP to expand its signatory countries without going back to the legislatures of existing signatory countries AND the fact that products claiming to be made in TPP countries and eligible for TPP arrangements don't have to be wholly made in those countries, or perhaps even mainly made in those countries. China will certainly be taking advantage of that.

The fact that Paul does not apparently understand these points, despite being a Senator, displays an unfortunate ignorance unless of course he was just attempting to score a political point despite knowing it to be false.

Paul at least made his comment in the heat of the moment in a debate. Raimondo has had plenty of time to get the facts right but does not. How much of the rest of his screed is garbage?

socalbeach

I got the impression Trump thought China was part of the trade deal from this quote:

"Yes. Well, the currency manipulation they don't discuss in the agreement, which is a disaster. If you look at the way China and India and almost everybody takes advantage of the United States - China in particular, because they're so good. It's the number-one abuser of this country. And if you look at the way they take advantage, it's through currency manipulation. It's not even discussed in the almost 6,000-page agreement. It's not even discussed."

If China isn't part of the agreement, then what difference does it make whether or not currency manipulation is discussed? Your answer is that Trump meant they could be added to the agreement later, as in this previous quote of his:

"The TPP is horrible deal. It is a deal that is going to lead to nothing but trouble. It's a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone."

If that's the case, Trump didn't explain himself well in this instance.

Johnny Horscaulk

Johnny Horscaulk's picture

http://www.vdare.com/articles/why-so-much-jewish-fear-and-loathing-of-do...

Neocons should not be used as a synonym for 'militarist.'

That subset was absolutely a Jewish-Zionist movement originating at the U of Chicago whether you know the history or not. Its also obvious just verboden to discuss. Not because its false, but because its true.

Neocons aren't conservative - they are zioglobalists with primary concern for Israel.

There are several groups of militarists in the deep state, but the Israel Firster faction is predominant.

Fucking obviously.

Arthur

Gee I guess we should back Iran and Isis. Must be some great jewish conspiricy that keeps you impovrished, that or maybe you are just a moron.

Johnny Horscaulk

Idiot, the us, and israel ARE backing isis. Go back to watching fox news - this is all way over your willingness to spend time reading about. You clearly have an internet connection - but you utter palpable nonsense.

OldPhart

Arthur

When/where I grew up I'd never met a jew. I think there was one black family in the two hundred fifty square miles of the town, population 2,200 in 1976. I knew jackshit other than they were greased by nazis back in WWII.

Moved out of the desert to Orlando, Flawed?-Duh. Met a lot of regular jews. Good people, best man's dad and mom had tattoo'd numbers on thier arms. To me, their just regular people that have some other sort of religion that christianity is an offshoot from.

What I've learned is that Zionism is lead by a relative few of the jewish faith, many regular jews resent it as an abomination of jewish faith. Zionists are the self-selected political elite and are in no way keepers of the jewish faith. They are the equivalent, in Israel, to the CFR here. Oddly, they also comprise many of the CFR seats HERE.

Zionists do not represent the jews any more than Jamie Diamond, Blythe Masters, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates represent ordinary Americans. Somehow, over time, Zionists came to wield massive influence within our government and corporate institutions.

Those are the simple facts that I have been able to glean from piles of research that are massively biased in both directions.

It's not a jewish conspiracy that keeps many impoverished, it's the Zionists that keep many impoverished, at war, divided, ignorant, and given bread and circuses. Not jews.

Perhaps you should spend a few years doing a little independent research of your own before belittling something you obviously have no clue about.

Johnny Horscaulk

That rhetorical ballet aside, Israel has far far too much influence on us policy, and that is so because of wildly disproportionate Jewish... As such... Political, financial, media, etc power. And they - AS A GROUP -act in their in-group interests even when resulting policy is not in this country's interest - demanding, with 50 million Scoffield JudeoChristians that Israels interests be of utmost value...

And heres the kicker - as defined by an Israel under likud and shas, parties so odious they make golden dawn look leftist, yet get no msm criticism for being so.

Its never 'all' any group - but Israels influence is excessive and deleterious, and that is due to jewish power and influence, with the xian zios giving the votes. Framed this way, it isnt 'Zionism' - it is simply a powerful minority with deep loyalty to a tiny foreign state warping us policy - and media coverage.

MEFOBILLS

Arthur,

Iran is formerly Persia, and its people are predominantly Shia. Shia's are considered apostates by Sunni's. Isis is Sunni. Sunnis get their funding via the Petrodollar system.

Persians changed their name to Iran to let northern Europeans know they were Aryans. Persians are not Arabs.

Neo-Con's are Jewish and they have fellow travelers who are non jewish. Many of their fellow travelers are Sayanim or Zionist Christians. So, Neo-Con ideology is no longer specifically Jewish, but it certainly has Jewish antecedents.

Your comment is full of illogic, is misinformed, and then you have the laughable temerity to call out someone else as a moron.

I Write Code

The only place "neocons" still exist is at ZH. Whatever Wikipedia says about it, the term had virtually no currency in the US before 2001, and had pretty much ceased to have any influence by about 2005.

Is Rubio sounding like an interventionist? Yes. Does he really know what he's talking about? Unclear. Is Trump sounding like a non-interventionist? Yes. Does he really know what he's talking about? Almost certainly not. Trump is the non-interventionist who wants to bomb the shit out of ISIS.

Rand didn't do anything to embarass himself at the latest debate, but he also didn't stand out enough to make up for many past errors. Give him a few years, maybe he'll grow up or something.

But the harder question is, what *should* the US do about stuff? Should we cowboy on alone, or pull back because none of the other kids want to help us. Can't we make common cause with Russia and France at this point? I mean instead of Iran and Turkey? The biggest problem is of course Obama - whatever various national interests at this point, nobody in the world thinks they can trust Nobel boy as far as they can spit a rat. Would anyone want to trust Rubio or Trump? Would you?

Johnny Horscaulk

Nonsense - read this for background beginning with the philosopher Strauss. It has a fixed meaning that was subjected to semantic drift in the media. It came to be conflated with 'militarist' and the conservative thing was a misnomer they were communists who wanted to use American power for israel.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html

Only on zh is absolutely absurd to claim.

TheObsoleteMan

After listening to the press for the last week, I have come to a conclusion concerning Mr. Bush: The party big wigs have decided he can not win and are distancing their support for him.

Their new golden boy? Marco Rubio. The press in the last week has barely mentioned Bush, but every breath has been about "the young Latino". "He's rising in the polls".

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that on radio and the TV. They also had him on Meet The Press last Sunday. Just thought I'd mention it. I can't stand Rubio. When he ran for Senate down here a few years ago, he road to Washington on the Tea Party's back. As soon as he got there, he did what all good politicians do: Dumped their platform and forgot all about them. Scumbag.

neilhorn

Yes, I have also seen the new "golden boy" regaled in the media. Let's see where he goes. I wonder if anyone represents the American people any better than the corrupt piece of dried up persimmon that is Hillary?

Raymond_K._Hessel

Trump picks cruz as veep, offends moderate and lefty independents and latinos on the immigration stuff, kisses Likuds ass (2 million right wing batshit jews out of 8 million israeli voters in asia dominate us foreign policy via nutty, aipac, adl, jinsa, conf of pres, etc etc etc)

And he loses to hillary. The gop can not win this election. Sorry - but admit the direness of our situation - shitty candidates all and one of the very worst and most essentially disingenuous- will win because women and minorities and lefties outnumber right leaning white males.

This is super obviously the political situation.

So - how do we 'prepare' for hillary? She is more wars, more printing, more wall st, more israel just like everyone but sanders who is nonetheless a crazy person and arch statist though I respect his at least not being a hyperinterventionist mic cocksucker.

But fucking hillary clinton gets in.

What does it mean apart from the same old thing?

Red team blue team same thing on wars, banks, and bending the knee to batshit psycho bibi.

cherry picker

I don't think Americans are really ready for Bill to be the First Man, do you? I don't think Americans think about that aspect of Hillary becoming Pres.

Personally, I hope she doesn't get in. There are many other women that are capable who could fit the bill, if the US is bound and determined to have a female president.

neilhorn

"indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you."

The post-constitutional era is the present time. Congress is stifled by politics while the rest of us only desire that the rights of the people are protected. The President has never been granted the right to take our nation to war. Other presidents have usurped that power and taken the power to themseves. Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all taken on the right to kill anyone who defied the right of the presidency. However, when the people ever abrogated their right to wage war it was only in response to a police state being established that threatened those who opposed the power of the established authority. Congress, the representatives of the people, has the right to declare war. Congress is also obligated to represent the people who elected them. When will we find a representative who has the backbone to stop the suicidal tendencies of the structures of power?

Captain Obvious.

Don't set store by any politician. They were all sent as a group to suck Israeli dick. Yes, dear Donald too. They will tell you what they think you want to hear.

Raymond_K._Hessel

Ivanka converted to judaism and all - was that for the grooms parents or genuine? Or a dynastic thing?

Wahooo

Another hit piece today in Barrons:

"Donald Trump is trying hard to look presidential these days. Too bad he's using Herbert Hoover as a role model. Hoover, of course, is best remembered as having been president during the stock market crash of 1929 that presaged the Great Depression. What helped turn a normal recession into a global economic disaster was the spread of protectionism, starting with the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which resulted in retaliation even before Hoover signed the bill in 1930."

If I recall my history, in 1927 amidst what everyone knew was already bubble stock market, the Fed dropped rates substantially. This was done against the protests of President Coolidge, his secretary of treasury, and many other politicians and business tycoons at the time. It ushered in a stock market bubble of massive proportions and the coming bust. Protectionism had little to do with it.

Faeriedust

Right. The "protectionism" meme is a piece of corporate persiflage that's been duly trotted out every time someone suggests even SLIGHTLY protecting our decimated economy. According to Wiki: "the general view is that while it had negative results, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was not one of the main causes of the Great Depression because foreign trade was only a small sector of the U.S. economy."

Faeriedust

Well, what REALLY caused the Depression were the bills from WWI. Every nation in Europe had spent years of GNP on the War through debt, all the debts were due, and nobody could afford to pay them. So they loaded the whole pile on Germany, and then screamed when Germany literally could NOT make its payments, and then played extend-and-pretend for a decade. Which eventually caused the Credit-Anstallt collapse, and then everything finally fell like a house of cards.

Very like today, but the current run of bills were run up by pure financial frivolity and corruption. Although one could say that fighting a war that killed 1/4 of all European males of fighting age was an exercise in frivolity and corruption on the part of Europe's senile ruling elites. Nobody was willing to divide a shrinking pie equitably; they all thought it would be better to try grabbing The Whole Thing. Rather like world powers today, again.

CAPT DRAKE

educated, responsible position in a fortune 200company, and yes, will be voting for trump. why? sick to death of the existing elites, and the way they run things. a trump vote is a protest vote. a protest against the neocons and all their types that have caused so much misery around the world.

NoWayJose

If Trump is the Republucan nominee, you can bet that he will point out a lot of things Hillary has done. You know several others in the field will say nothing bad about Hillary. (A la Romney).

Not sure why Rubio still has support - Rand clobbered him on spending, including his new entitlement, and add Rubio's position on amnesty.

Faeriedust

With JEB polling in single digits and hopelessly befuddled, Rubio is the Great Hispanic Hope of the establishment Republocrats. He is being well-pimped, is all. Paul is clearly more intelligent, more articulate, and more well-informed; Trump is more forceful and popular (but independent!). Neither suits an establishment that wants to hold the reins behind the throne.

thesoothsayer

The Military Industrial Complex became entrenched after Eisenhower left office and they murdered Kennedy. Since then, they have taken over. We cover the world to spread our seeds and enrich our corporations. Our government does not protect the people, it protects the corporations, wall street. That is the reality.

dizzyfingers

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/11/trump-was-right-about-tpp-benefitting-china

Trump Was Right About TPP Benefiting China

[Nov 08, 2015] Legendary US Army Commander Says Russia Would Annihilate US In Head-To-Head Battle

Notable quotes:
"... And why is the US seeking a battle with Russia anyway? This is completely absurd....are the neo-cons/neo-libs this fucked up? ..."
"... Having said the above, the prevailing view on the ground in Moscow is that it will be NATO that pre-emptively attacks Russia, hence the refurbishing and re-provisioning of their network of Civil Defence shelters, info via Brother in Law (BNP Paribas Moscow). ..."
"... US/EU GDP approaches 40 trillion dollars. Russia has fallen down below 2 trillion due to the drop in oil prices. 25 to 1 disparity. ..."
"... US population 330 million. EU population 504 million. Russian population 142 million. 6-1 disparity. ..."
"... Carter says Russia, China potentially threaten global order. WTF! These idiots really believe America rules the world! Every country should fear us and do as we say. No other country should EVER dare to challenge our oligarchy. Good for Russia and China for finally saying enough. We patrol the South China Sea like it's our own f***ing bathtub. If China did that to us in the Gulf of Mexico we would already be at war. The GLOBAL F***ING ORDER? Who made us kings of the world? ..."
"... If the neocons think they can bring war to soil mere miles away from Russia and not get a nuclear response if they start losing or we breach a russian boder, theyre insane. Unfortunately one look at current policy confirms that yes, indeed, theyre insane. ..."
"... Any negative assessment of US military capability originating from within the military-industrial complex, must necessarily be considered suspect. First, that assessment would be considered highly classified, unless it was pre-approved and deliberately released to scare more money out of already fleeced taxpayers. Second, .Gov used the same propaganda in our decades-long cold war with the USSR to justify massive spending and involvement in global conflicts. Profligate spending and profligate lies leave them with no credibility. ..."
Zero Hedge
Cochore

The Saker wrote a very insightful post on this matter a while back

US political culture and propaganda has deeply ingrained in the minds of those exposed to the corporate media the notion that weapons or technologies win wars. This is not so. Or, not really so.

Yes, when the difference in technologies is very big AND very wide, meaning a full generational change across most key weapon systems, this can help. But not one weapon system alone, and not when the difference in quality is marginal.

Furthermore, a simpler, more "primitive" weapon which totally outclassed on the testing range can suddenly become much better suited to real combat then some techno-marvel. This is, by the way, one of the biggest problems with US weapons. Here is how they are designed:

You take all the latest and most advanced technologies, put them together, then create a new "superior" design, then design a new mission profile to fit that design, then sell (figuratively and literally) the new concept to Congress, especially to those Congressmen who come from the districts where production is planned - and, voilŕ, you have your brand new top of the line US weapon. And the costs? Who cares?! Just print some more money, and that's it.

Russian weapons are designed in a totally different way:

Take a mission profile, determine a need, then take all the cheapest, simplest and most reliable technologies available and combine them into your weapon system, then have that prototype tested in military units, then modify the weapons system according to the military's reaction and then produce it.

In other words, US weapons are designed my engineers and produced by businessmen and politicians, they are not really designed for war at all. Russian weapons, in contrast, are ordered by the military and created by design bureaus and they have only one objective: real, dirty and ugly warfare.

This is why the good old MiG-29 could fly better with its old fashioned hydraulics then the F-18s with fly-by-wire. It was never that the Russians could not built fly-by-wire aircraft (the SU-27 already had it), but that for the MiG-29 design goals, it was not needed.

What I am getting at here is two things: a) US weapons are not nearly as good as their marketing and b) "older" Russian weapons are often much better for actual warfighting.

Let's say the US delivers large quantities of Javelin's to the junta. So what? All that Russia will have to do in reaction is deliver 9M133 Kornets to the Novorussians. Can you guess which system is both cheaper and better?

When the US gave the junta counter-battery radars what did Russia do? The same thing. Now both sides have them.

Now here comes the key question: which of the two sides relies more on armor and artillery? Exactly - the junta.

When confronted with a problems, Americans love to do to things: throw money at it and throw technological "solutions" at it. This never works, but that is what they are good at.

The fact is that even in the 21st century what wins wars is not money or fancy gear, but courage, determination, moral strength, willpower and the rage which seizes you when faced with brute, ugly evil.

LINK to full article

Occident Mortal

Russia does have some technological advantages over the U.S. though.

Russian missile technology is superior.

The S-400 surface to air defence system is two generations better than anything else in the world.

Russian missiles are superior too. Their ICMB's fly random path trajectories. They are the masters of multiple engine rockets.

Only the Russians have the ability to put a man in space.

America is a little self deluded and they too often extrapolate their warplane technology advantage into a blanket technology advantage. That's just not the case.

Perimetr

"Well now, it seems entirely possible that the US may have to fight a conventional war against the Russians . . ."

Sorry, exactly how long do you think a war with Russia would remain CONVENTIONAL?

As soon a one side or the other started to lose, what do you think would happen? They will surrender?

Demdere

Guys, do not believe anyone who says that any part of any system is managable. Saying "I can win a war" is the same as saying "I can see the future and inside other men's minds". No you an't. You are throwing dice every time, and war is a very negative-sum game, most players don't even break even. Both can easily lose very badly, far more han they ever could have conceviablely won. I believe all modern wars have been of thar variety.

The cost of bad government keeps increasing. The cost of sufficient firepower to cause a 1% loss of GDP is within the budget of a religious cult with intelligence service ties. We spend more than 25$ of our GDP on policing, monitoring, checking, verifying. The overhead of our military is at least 10% of GDP, our industry would kill for that kind of cost advantage. The costs of dishonest are so huge.

runswithscissors

And why is the US seeking a "battle" with Russia anyway? This is completely absurd....are the neo-cons/neo-libs this fucked up?


V for ...

Yep. The new Bolsheviks are criminally insane.

1033eruth

The US? No, Uncle Fraud is trying to get Americans to condone and approve another war through constant media manipulation.

Every major war needs public approval. It doesn't happen until the media maneuvers American zombies into acceptance.

Kent State was the beginning of the end of the Vietnam war. The losses we were incurring were too great for the public to accept. Which also helps to explain why we have switched over to remote control and drone warfare. We can still spend ocean carriers of money which the American public overlooks as a cost for "safety" and the loss of life is minimized therefore less backlash.

Tell me why this hasn't occurred to you?

booboo

More scarey bullshit to whip up more support for spending trillions on another armored up coffin, flying battleship or space shotgun, not that I am under any illusion that the U.S. would win but God Damn, if you don't start a fucking war then you won't have to fight a war.

Blankone

Yes, this. And it works well because all sides lap it up. The MIC has the politicians push the agenda and fear. TPTB have the MSM push it and the sheep eat it up like always. The Putin fan club jumps on the band wagon because its the fantasy they wish was true.

JustObserving
Russia Would "Annihilate" US In Head-To-Head Battle

No wonder the Nobel Prize Winner is pushing Putin into a new world war. CIA created ISIS blows up Russian passenger jet. F-15s sent to Turkey to attack Russian jets. Obama continues to attack oil to bankrupt Russia.

US deploys F-15s to Syria, targeting Russian jets

By Thomas Gaist, 7 November 2015

The US will send a squadron of F-15C fighter jets to Turkey's Incirlik air base, the US Defense Department (DOD) announced on Friday. The nature of the US war planes, which are specifically designed for dogfighting with other highly advanced fighter jets, indicates that the deployment carries a significance far beyond what its small scale would suggest.

The F-15 line of combat jets was developed in response to the unveiling in 1967 of the Soviet Union's MiG-25 "Foxbat" interceptor.

Because they are designed for air-to-air combat against other major powers, the US has, until now, seen no need to deploy the F-15C model to its Middle Eastern and Central Asian war theaters, where the opposing forces have no warplanes.

The sudden deployment, coming less than two months after Russia began sending its own SU-30 fighters to its new airbase at Latakia, makes clear that the jets have been deployed in response to Moscow's air campaign.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11/07/syri-n07.html

Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/nov/09/us-iran-r...

Dark Daze

I dispute that the F-15 was ever intended as a dogfighter. It is fast, much faster than the SU-30 and it can carry an impressive bomb load, but I believe the original design was rapid penetration of enemy defenses and air to ground, not air superiority. All that of course comes only when the F-15 is loaded down with not only fuselage conformant fuel tanks but drop tanks as well, reducing it's effectiveness. When you compare thrust, aerodynamics, stand off weapons and sheer manoevering capability the SU-30 wins hands down. The only air-to-air weapon the F-15's have been retrofitted with that even comes close to the air-to-air that the Russians have is the British Meteor, but that has never been tested. It is a Mach 4 weapon so the SU-30 couldn't outrun it or out climb it, but I remain to be convinced about it's capabilities.

The larger problem for the Americans is that they are stationing their F-15's at Incirlik, which is only 15 minutes from Latakia. Incirlikk was a poor choice for them to be stationing those units when the stated intention was to fly missions against ISIS. If the Syrians/Russians detect the F-15's coming south instead of going east they will have only a few moments to decide on whether to launch S-400's against them, and in an environment that might have a heigntened level of intensity that is a danger. Needless to say, an S-400 launced against an F-15 will take the later out in seconds and no amount of chaffe of manoevering with change that scenario. Check mate.

Blankone

Check mate? They are moving that close to the Russian bases to squeeze Russia and occupy the area. It is a sign they have no fear of Russia being willng to confront.

Dark Daze

Either that or a sign of sheer stupidity and a willingness to sacrifice men and material.

Talleyrand

Russia is not going to attack the Baltic states. Russia is not going to invade Poland. Russia is not going to attack the anachronism that is NATO.

On the other hand, invading Russia has, historically, proven to be a bad idea.

cowdiddly

Just more of this Russophobia boogeyman bullshit to get more funds appropriated for their sick toys and paychecks so they can continue getting their butt kicked all over the globe by anyone more powerful than Somalia.

Parrotile

Jack, Russia has no reason to "invade Europe" since Europe has nothing of immediate benefit to Russia. Having said that Russia will certainly not "telegraph" their intentions by troop movements, and will certainly use their rather capable missile tech to "soften up" EU defences should the opportunity arise. Air defence needs runways, and armies need reliable bulk transport (motorways / rail), the key locations of which (marshalling yards / major intersections) are well known to Russia.

They will not just "roll over the border" and say "come and get us" to the West.

Having said the above, the prevailing view "on the ground" in Moscow is that it will be NATO that pre-emptively attacks Russia, hence the refurbishing and re-provisioning of their network of Civil Defence shelters, info via Brother in Law (BNP Paribas Moscow).

tarabel

Let's review here...

NATO is larger than it ever was before, and Russia is much smaller and weaker than the USSR/Warsaw Pact.

Soviet armor is not parked in central Germany any more.

Vladimir Putin complains endlessly about NATO forces being forward deployed to his border regions.

Virtually every single member of the US military and many cadres from other NATO nations have years of real world battlefield experience, while only a small number of Russians have been shot at.

US/EU GDP approaches 40 trillion dollars. Russia has fallen down below 2 trillion due to the drop in oil prices. 25 to 1 disparity.

US population 330 million. EU population 504 million. Russian population 142 million. 6-1 disparity.

Russian "breakout" from nuclear treaties that limited weapons to an approximate 1-1 parity means that they are stronger in nuclear weapons than the United States, but the nuclear forces of the UK and France mean that the West still possesses a slight but shrinking superiority here

And now you understand why Russia has officially and unilaterally renounced the solemn old Soviet declaration of "no first use" of nuclear weapons. Any conventional war between the West and Russia will end in ruin for Russia even if they can make some hay early on. The economic and population disparities are far too wide for Putin to prevail or even defend his country-- unless he goes nuclear. It is the only type of warfighting in which the sides are remotely equal.

The West has no need or interest in going nuclear on Russia in the event of hostilities. No matter what sort of initial success Russian armies may achieve in the early stages of a war that starts next door to their depots, the economic power of the West is far too much for him to overcome with conventional means.

Draw your own conclusions as to who needs to light the first Roman Candle.

rejected

"Virtually every single member of the US military and many cadres from other NATO nations have years of real world battlefield experience, while only a small number of Russians have been shot at."

Yes,,, but fighting who? Vietnam, a real war, was too long ago. The veterans are old so their experience will be of no use.

The Iraqi's were surrendering so fast it was slowing down the advance on Baghdad.

Libya,,, bombed into a failed state,,, other than the Marines having to defend the gun running US Ambassador there was no fighting.

In Syria our Ally "moderate terrorists" are / was doing the grunt work against Assad.

And we're still fighting (losing) the cave dwellers of Afghanistan 15 years later. In fact they are now advancing against the puppet US government.

Russia will never attack the West but the West will attack Russia because the West is broke. That GDP your referring to was purchased by central bank printing.

The Russian Army will be defending their nation, Nato/US Armies will be trying to establish an empire.

Who do you think will have the most incentive.

HyeM

This is all propaganda.... they're using words like "Annihilate" to terrify the public and get an even larger budget for the military-industrial complex to benefit them and their friends in the defense industry. For the last 80 years we were going to be "Annihilated", first by the Soviet Army, and now this crap.

rbg81

I remember freshman ROTC lectures back in 1979. The USSR was poised to invade West Germany via the Fulda Gap--they could come over at any minute. Ivan was ten feet tall. Blah, blah, blah. Then, after the Berlin Wall fell, two generations of scary propaganda looked like a big joke. Nothing ever changes.

I Write Code

Anybody interested, please click on the link and read the Politico article yourself.

This ZH posting completely misrepresents what the article says.

The article is really about McMaster and the good news that he's still in the game at the Pentagon.

And in two out of three scenarios the US beats Russia, apparently even in this expeditionary scenario.

Now, the whole thing is absurd. The idea that the US and Russia would end up firing major weapons at each other is a mutual nightmare. And the idea that the US would pit a small force against Russia, right against Russian territory, and expect to win, is doubly absurd.

But the Politico article is actually worth reading anyway, and for that, thank you ZH.

rejected

Great!!! Our team wins!

Could have went any way....

V for ...

Fairness, justice, freedom. These are more than words. They are deeds. That was the pledge of the U.S. Military code before it was overtaken by dual citizens like the Wolfowitz Doctrine, Project for a New American Century; those who declare to be the 'chosen ones', and use my country, my people's blood and treasure.

Get off your knees, US Military Code. I have no interest in the failures of dual citizens, and nor should you. My country, tis of thee. Foreigners should fund their own fight.

This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

Then this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKvvOFIHs4k

Temerity Trader

"Carter says Russia, China potentially threaten global order." WTF! These idiots really believe America rules the world! Every country should fear us and do as we say. No other country should EVER dare to challenge our oligarchy. Good for Russia and China for finally saying enough. We patrol the South China Sea like it's our own f***ing bathtub. If China did that to us in the Gulf of Mexico we would already be at war. The GLOBAL F***ING ORDER? Who made us kings of the world?

These guys are sick. We need to pull our fleets and troops out and go home and stay there. Let China and Russia deal with Japan, Taiwan and Syria. Guaranteed these guys will get us into a major war soon. Obama is too weak to fight the MIC. They fill his head with crap about how no country should dare to challenge us.

Americans cannot tolerate large losses. They expect to always kick ass and suffer few losses. The new missile technology has changed all that. Watch the reaction when one of our aircraft carriers goes to the bottom from a dozen simultaneous missile strikes. The oligarchs know they can count on Joe Sixpack believing all their propaganda spewing forth and set his 300lb ass in his living room chair saying, "Let's go kick China and Russia's asses."

seek

If the neocons think they can bring war to soil mere miles away from Russia and not get a nuclear response if they start losing or we breach a russian boder, they're insane. Unfortunately one look at current policy confirms that yes, indeed, they're insane. Just pray they only target political and financial centers when the missiles fly. Might leave us in a better place.

lasvegaspersona

Eisenhower said war is man's greatest folly and those who pursue it or fail to prevent it are a black mark on all of humanity

...wonder if these military geniuses have read THAT military history...

V for ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

Eisenhower warned about a new thing in his time, something called a military industrial complex.

The modern Zionist talks about the MIC being a conspiracy theory, but Eisenhower said it would have 'grave implications', and we 'must guard against ...the military industrial complex...never let it endanger our liberties...'.

Charles Offdensen

What a bullshit article. If the US were to truly go all out war and not give a damn about public opinion, which is media driven for the purpose of tying our hands visa vie Amercan public feeling and emotions, we would by any stretch of the means and definition wipe the floor with any country any where.

The problem is that most people don't realize or care to understand what it takes to win a war. Since when did the enemy give a rats ass about how they killed us. They don't, so why should we care about them or the civilians who have been so brutalized to the point of pure survival who only want the pain to stop no matter who delivers it. And that includes their slave masters which has been discussed ad nausium her at ZH.

Ask yourself. Do you really think people who have been raped and brutalized are going to be better off if we play nice or are they going to do whatever it takes to survive and that means not giving a shit about anyone else but you.

War is hell. There are no two ways about it. But do you sacrifice your objective just to win the hearts and minds of those that would probably shoot you because they can't tell which way is up or down? Especially those from a distinction all third world and seventh century mentality.

To win you have to do what is necessary regardless of judgment because judgment is what defeats us in battle.

The horror!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o6tV1yfEPTk

For the record I tried!!!

V for ...

Blood is thicker than water. The dual citizens think they have captured the USA. I know they have a tiger by the tail.

'they' serve money first by their hideous Talmud, and 'they' are going to die by it.

'they' enjoyed the protection of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, yet strive to destroy those American ways.

F'ck 'em. Don't worry about them.. Let them die in their desert sandpit.

Dark Daze

There was a time, not so long ago, when the US at least tried to maintain the illusion that they were the 'good guys'. Of course history paints an entirely different picture. As I have written many times, from Latin America, South America, China, South East Asia, Africa and now the middle east, the US has overthrown, bombed, murdered, screwed over, enslaved and otherwise brutalised most of the worlds population. Let's not forget that it was less than 40 years from the American Revolution when the US started it's wars of conquest by trying to invade Canada while Britain was tied up with Napoleon.

Glad to see that there is at leasrt one American who makes no bones about his/her true intentions, which is total world domination. Unfortunately for you, you're economy is wrecked, your banks and government are bankrupt, you have no gold left, your population is seething in it's anger and you're vaunted war machine is phoney. So go ahead, try the Chinese or the Russians on for size and see what happens.

docinthehouse

If Russia and China were smart, they would improve theirr own country's infrastructure and let the West continue to rot of its own accord. You get what you accept Ameirca and the west have becomes slaves to debt and a tolerance of freeloading. You get what you accept.

Setarcos

Er! Russia and China ARE improving their infrastructures, Russia especially since sanctions gave a strong impetus.

Have you seen the new bridge being built to Crimea and what a about Sochi, the new technology centre near Moscow, revitalized Vladivostok and the new Cosmodrom, for instance.

Agricultural production is way up and manufacturing is being ramped up.

marcusfenix

as an aside to this piece there was another interesting disclosure regarding the growing gaps in capabilities the US would have to overcome if Washington ever engaged Russia in a conventional war.

namely the cruise missile strikes from the Caspian flotilla, while they did not make a difference in the course of the battle in Syria they did show that Russia has a capability that the US Navy does not and could put them at a serious disadvantage in any engagement. it wasn't the missiles themselves though they did show a vast improvement in Russian long range guided missile capabilities but how they were delivered that is cause for concern in DC.

unlike the US navy which relies exclusively on larger blue water destroyers for it's long range cruise missile delivery, the missiles fired from the Caspian sea were launched from much smaller, faster and more agile corvettes. long range strike capability from a package that is much harder to find, track, target and hit than the US navy's guided missile and aegis destroyers.

this capability has countless advantages but Washington never pursued it's development and apparently did not expect Moscow to either. but now not only did Moscow do just that they proved to the world that they can use it in combat in essence rendering the entire US navy's carrier fleet obsolete. consider this small of a ship, under 90 tons, can position itself anywhere up to 900 miles away and fire up to 12 LRAS missiles from areas where larger ships and even subs simply can not operate. all while still retaining blue water mission capabilities.

it is simply smaller, faster, more flexible, more cost effective and smarter than anything the US navy has to offer. these corvettes are relatively easy to produce and maintain and can be built in large numbers on short notice, they are hard to hunt and hard to kill and can sink carriers from hundreds of miles away.

instead of investing in practical, usable tech like this DC sinks one trillion dollars in the F-35 which still isn't near production and is already obsolete. as one US air force general testified before congress the Russians have had the ability to overcome the Lightnings stealth capabilities for at least 15 years now and in a dog fight it would get shredded by even a 1960's Mig 21 because it is to under powered to generate attack angels and "turns like a garbage truck".

now I wonder how many guided missile corvettes could one trillion dollars buy?

Flankspeed60

Any negative assessment of US military capability originating from within the military-industrial complex, must necessarily be considered suspect. First, that assessment would be considered highly classified, unless it was pre-approved and deliberately released to scare more money out of already fleeced taxpayers. Second, .Gov used the same propaganda in our decades-long cold war with the USSR to justify massive spending and involvement in global conflicts. Profligate spending and profligate lies leave them with no credibility.

tool

Exactly talking their own book fear mongering to increase their allocated budget and by god they will find away to spend every last cent. Remember the recent Afghan compressed natural gas outlet should have cost 500k actually cost billions!

V for ...

Why? November 22 1963. A coup d'etat.

Jack defied the moneychangers, and Israel's want of nuclear weapons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

[Nov 06, 2015] Obama Cracked Jokes While the Rest of the World Mourned

The current American administration will go down in history as one of the most weak and unprofessional with no affinity for etiquette and good manners.
Notable quotes:
"... Where Mr. Obama failed, other Western and world leaders expressed their condolences-British Prime-Minister David Cameron, Polish President Andzej Duda, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping among them. ..."
"... The Kremlin isn't worrying why Barack Obama didn't send condolences, reported Interfax. "Probably, this should not be explained by the Kremlin," said Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary to the Russian President, answering why there was no official telegram from Mr. Obama. Mr. Peskov said there were "a lot" of messages from other world leaders. ..."
"... Russia's national news service Information Agency outed Mr. Obama as "the only world leader that did not express his condolences [to Russia] on the air catastrophe A-321." ..."
"... "This is personal," wrote Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, adding "the current American administration will go down in history as one of the most weak and unprofessional with no affinity for etiquette and good manners." ..."
11/05/15 | Observer

On November 2, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in New York, President Barack Obama poked fun of the Republicans, joking that if they cannot handle CNBC moderators how could they possibly handle Russia's Vladimir Putin?

"Every one of these candidates says, 'Obama's weak, Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's gonna straighten out.' …and then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators!" Mr. Obama said.

"I mean, let me tell you: if you can't handle those guys," he continued, laughing, "I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you."

While Mr. Obama had his fun, he neglected to mention more serious matters-the Russian plane crash over the Sinai peninsula on October 31 that took the lives of all 224 passengers on board.

Where Mr. Obama failed, other Western and world leaders expressed their condolences-British Prime-Minister David Cameron, Polish President Andzej Duda, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping among them.

On his Twitter page, Mr. Cameron wrote: "PM expresses condolences to President Putin over Sinai plane crash. Britain shares Russia's pain and grief."

Mr. Hollande wrote: "[A]fter the occurred tragedy [President] sends his condolences to President Putin and expresses his solidarity with the Russian people.."

Even Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko took to Twitter with the following: "I express my personal condolences to all the families of those perished in the catastrophe of the Russian passenger plane over Egypt."

Not Mr. Obama.

The Kremlin isn't worrying why Barack Obama didn't send condolences, reported Interfax. "Probably, this should not be explained by the Kremlin," said Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary to the Russian President, answering why there was no official telegram from Mr. Obama. Mr. Peskov said there were "a lot" of messages from other world leaders.

Secretary of State John Kerry expressed condolences on behalf of "all American people" to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov-that was all, said Putin's press secretary.

Russia's national news service Information Agency outed Mr. Obama as "the only world leader that did not express his condolences [to Russia] on the air catastrophe A-321."

"This is personal," wrote Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, adding "the current American administration will go down in history as one of the most weak and unprofessional with no affinity for etiquette and good manners."

[Nov 05, 2015] History That Makes Us Stupid

The American Century's not what most Americans think it is. Historians need to set them straight.
Notable quotes:
"... comforting fantasies go unchallenged and lodge themselves ever more deeply in the public consciousness. So the "Good War" remains ever good, with the "Greatest Generation" ever great. ..."
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Today it's race, class, gender, and sexuality that claim pride of place. The effect, whether intended or not, is that comforting fantasies go unchallenged and lodge themselves ever more deeply in the public consciousness. So the "Good War" remains ever good, with the "Greatest Generation" ever great.

[Nov 02, 2015] The End of the President Erdogans AKP Era in Turkey – Part I

Notable quotes:
"... By T. Sabri Öncü ( [email protected] ), an economist based in Istanbul, Turkey. ..."
"... Sounds like "Neo-Ottomanism" is of the same genera as "Neo-Liberalism." ..."
November 1, 2015 | naked capitalism
Lambert here: AKP stands for Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi in Turkish, which translates to Justice and Freedom Party. I admit that I don't know much about Turkey's domestic politics - which is why we're very glad to have this very timely post - but Erdogan's newly built palace (images here) seems like a fine operational definition of "wretched excess"; Erdogan's making that Ukrainian dude with the private zoo in his palace, Viktor Yanukovych, look like a mendicant monk.

By T. Sabri Öncü ([email protected]), an economist based in Istanbul, Turkey.

The worst terrorist attack in the history of the Republic of Turkey took place on October 10, 2015 in Ankara. The Ankara massacre. Two suicide bombers killed 102 of the participants in a Peace and Democracy rally and hundreds were wounded.

Why did this happen?

To give some answers, let us go back to 2002.

Turkey's ruling Sunni Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), took power in 2002. From 2002 until 2015, it had won four general elections in a row and secured enough seats in the national assembly to form a single party government in the first three.

Although the AKP won about 50% of the votes in the third of these elections that happened in 2011, it has been in decline since then. And, in the last general election that took place on June 7, 2015, it failed to secure enough seats to form the government on its own. However, the AKP is still the ruling party, at least practically, because it is the only party in the caretaker government until the coming "repeat" election on November 1. The other parties either refused to join the interim government or left it after a while.

A milestone between the 2011 and 2015 general elections was the presidential election of August 10, 2014. Despite the ongoing decline of the AKP, its leader and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won 51.8% of the vote in the first round to become the first elected Turkish President. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, the joint candidate for the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and Nationalist Action Party (MHP) received 38.4% whereas Selahattin Demirtaş, the candidate of the mainly Kurdish nationalist People's Democracy Party (HDP), received 9.8%.

However, this election was of very low turnout by Turkish standards, essentially because İhsanoğlu is a known Islamist also. When a devotedly secularist section of the CHP voters resented İhsanoğlu and boycotted the election, the participation turned out to be a measly 74%. This was the lowest turnout since the coup d'état of 1980; even lower than the 79% turnout of the 2002 election that took place after a major economic collapse in 2001.

But the main event of this presidential election was the 9.8% vote the HDP candidate Demirtaş received. The 10% national threshold imposed by the 1980 military junta has been in place since the 1983 general election and no Kurdish party had ever been able to cross that threshold until June 7, 2015.

Indeed, in the 2002 election, that is, when the AKP took power, only three parties (AKP, CHP and MHP) managed to cross the threshold. With the 2007 election, a fourth party started to appear in the national assembly because the Kurdish parties and their leftist allies managed to bypass the threshold through candidates entering the elections as independents and then reassembling a party in the national assembly. However, despite that they usually secured between 5% and 7%, this trick always led to their underrepresentation in the assembly, because a big chunk of the votes on the independents were wasted.

When Demirtaş received 9.8%, indicating a high probability of crossing the 10% threshold, the HDP entered the 2015 general election as a party rather than as a collection of independent candidates. The significance of this was that had they crossed the threshold, they would have had a much larger representation in the national assembly.

And they crossed the threshold in the June 7 general election, receiving an unexpected 13%. When the HDP got 80 representatives and pushed the AKP below 276 by 18 in a 550 member national assembly, the AKP rule was over, at least legally.

This was a defining moment in the history of the Republic of Turkey.

Coming out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, the Republic of Turkey inherited the Empire's diverse identities and added a new one.

A major identity divide in the Empire had been along the religious lines: Muslim versus non-Muslim. However, there has been a conscious cleansing of the country from non-Muslims since the early 20th century and, as a result, this divide is currently about 99% to 1%, although it was more like 70% to 30% in the beginning.

The new identity the Republic added was that of the secular. So the new and more important religious divide in the country is the pious versus secular divide created by the founders of the Republic (although the origins of this goes way back). Of course, the founders were secularists, and their interest was to engineer a secular, capitalist nation-state along the lines of most advanced capitalist states of the West. Named after their charismatic leader, and the first president of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal, their ideology is called Kemalism.

Interestingly, they defined the nation of this nation-state – that is, the Turkish nation – based on religious identities. Who we call Turkish today – if by that we mean the citizens of the Republic of Turkey – are essentially the grandchildren of the (mostly Sunni) Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, many of whom sought refuge in current-day Turkey from other parts of the Empire to avoid religious persecution. They can be from any of the many ethnicities in the former Empire as long as their grandparents were or became (preferably Sunni) Muslims.

But, the mostly Sunni Kurds (themselves a collection of many ethnicities) have never bought this definition. And, despite that Sunni Islam has been the "unofficial" religion of this "secular" Republic from the beginning, the Alevites – some of whom are Kurdish – remained, although their number decreased some as percentage.

To sum up, the most notable current identity divides include – but are not limited to – Turkish versus Kurdish, Sunni versus Alevite and pious versus secular.

Lastly, there is the military, out of which most founders of the Republic including Mustafa Kemal came. Until recently, the military had been viewed by many as guardian of the secular Republic. It took power three times: in 1960, 1971 and 1980, although there had been a number of other coup attempts also. Seen as an arch-rival, the military had been "attacked" by the AKP government as of 2010 in the courts captured by the Islamists. Many of its high ranking officers got jailed for a variety of (as recently confessed by President Erdogan, mostly made-up) reasons and the institution has been weakened. Despite this, however, whether the military is now fully under the AKP control is debatable for a variety of reasons including that there still are many Kemalists in its ranks.

Although the conflict between Turks and Kurds goes way before the start of the Republic, the most recent armed conflict started in 1984. Since then, the Turkish military and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have been fighting on and off (most intensely in the early 1990s) and the total death toll is at the order of tens of thousands. In a nutshell, this is the so-called "Kurdish question" in Turkey

The PKK (founded in 1978) is an armed organization considered by many including the Turkish Government to be a terrorist organization. The HDP (founded in 2013), on the other hand, defines itself as a leftist and anti-nationalist party. Further, there are many non-Kurds in the party. However, many consider the HDP as the political wing of the PKK and whether this perception is reality or not is hotly debated in the country.

Enter President Erdoğan and Prime Minister Davutoğlu.

A darling of the West until about three years ago, Erdoğan and the AKP have evidently been running a programme whose objectives were not so obvious to some. That this had been the case can easily be deduced from the recent confessions of many nationally prominent figures – mostly liberal intellectuals – who had been ardent supporters of Erdoğan and the AKP until recently. Over the last year, it has seemed as though not a single day passed without one such figure coming out and claiming that he or she had been cheated by Erdoğan and/or the AKP.

The existence of the programme became obvious to all shortly after Erdoğan won the presidential election. This was because Erdoğan's handpicked heir – former Foreign and current Prime Minister – Ahmet Davutoğlu publicly named it on August 21, 2014: the "restoration programme." According to Davutoğlu and his aides, the term does not refer to restoring the Ottoman Empire but to repairing the republic, democracy, foreign policy and a model of the economy that had been "injured" for the past 92 years.

But, what did happen 92 years ago?

Well, the Ottoman Empire ended and the Republic of Turkey was founded.

Indeed, in 2001, a year before the AKP took power, the then academic Davutoğlu published a book, "Strategic Depth," that set out the basics of this programme, so why these liberal intellectuals feel cheated is difficult to understand.

According to the Davutoğlu doctrine, Turkey is one of those countries which are "central powers." Because of its Ottoman legacy, Turkey is a Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Balkan, Caucasian, Caspian, Central Asian, Gulf and Black Sea country. It can exercise influence in all these regions and thus become a global strategic player. Or so said Davutoğlu in his "Strategic Depth." And his now badly failed "zero problem policy with neighbours" was about Turkey's capitalising on its soft power potential culminating from its historic and cultural links with all these regions, as well as its "democratic institutions" and "thriving market economy"

Given these and that Davutoğlu appeared to be objecting to the Huntingtonian theory of clash of civilisations, his doctrine had often been labelled as neo-Ottomanism. But this label was incorrect because Ottomanism was a nineteenth-century liberal political movement whose objective was to form a civic Ottoman national identity overarching ethnic, linguistic and religious identities. Any careful reading of Davutoğlu's book could have revealed that his doctrine had nothing to do with any form of Ottomanism. Furthermore, his objection to Huntington's theory was not to that there was a clash of civilisations. He agreed with Huntington there. Where he differed was that Islam was the better civilisation. Put differently, his doctrine was not neo-Ottomanism but pan-Islamism.

It now appears clear even to many of his unquestioning former supporters as well as Western powers such as the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) that not only Davutoğlu but also Erdoğan agreed with Huntington's clash of civilizations thesis. Except that Erdoğan also believed in superiority of the Islamic civilization. It now appears clear to them also that becoming the leader of the Muslim world and (there are even rumours that) caliph of the Sunni Muslims were two of Erdoğan's three major fantasies.

Of course, these two fantasies have always been beyond Erdoğan's reach, if only for the simple reason that they are based on a third fantasy that Davutoğlu invented: the unifying character of the Ottoman Empire. Ask any Arab or Balkan nation who had lived under the Ottoman rule to see how they feel about the Empire. And there are strong rivals such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and even ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS), and Syria, Iraq and Libya are in shambles, so forth. No doubt, Davutoğlu's "zero problem policy with neighbours" eventually deformed into his current foreign policy of "honourable loneliness."

Erdoğan's third major fantasy was becoming the sultan of Turkey. This was a potentially realizable fantasy because, after his presidency, all he needed was to get the constitution changed to introduce a presidential system which would decorate him with executive powers. Had this happened, he could have become the effective sultan to continue the restoration process through which Turkey would become some sort of repressive Islamic state (which would be even more repressive than Turkey is currently).

For this, the AKP had to win at least 330 deputies in the national assembly.

And Erdoğan had a fear. Had the AKP failed to form a single party government, several legal cases could have been filed against him at the Supreme Council of Judges for a host of reasons with severe criminal consequences.

To avoid this, the AKP had to win at least 276 deputies in the national assembly.

Now, I can offer some answers to the first question I asked, that is, why the Ankara massacre happened. And I will do that in the next part, after the November 1 election.


JTMcPhee, November 1, 2015 at 7:41 am

Sounds like "Neo-Ottomanism" is of the same genera as "Neo-Liberalism."

And given how individual motivations that, for people who actually have the skills and talents and incentives to be actual Power Players in the world, all resolve to "way more for me, and as near as possible nothing for the rest of you," no surprise that the "neo" kleptocratic agenda is everywhere in the ascendant.

Erdoğan's palace, Obama's Presidential Library and Theme Park, the well documented excesses and thieveries and frauds of the ruling class pretty much everywhere - all of a piece. And where's the organizing principle and flag, for the 99% to form up and organize around? Our Betters are all reading out of the same implacable insatiable playbook– where's the book for people who just seek decency, comity, and a "modest competence" for themselves and their children, who diligently and intelligently in the Hope of Change, minimize their "footprints" (so there's more slack for the Few to consume and use up)?


PlutoniumKun, November 1, 2015 at 12:23 pm

There has been a huge boom in Turkey under Erdogan, although its a moot point as to how much he can take credit for it – certainly Turkey was a major beneficiary of QE, etc. My understanding is that he and his party was a major facilitator for the construction industry, including most notoriously of all, pretty much handing over one of the last public parks in Istanbul to a shopping mall developer.


PlutoniumKun, November 1, 2015 at 1:15 pm

Possibly. But Erdogans political base is rural and small town regular folks – the type of people who keep their cards close to their chests. Its entirely possible that this was a classic case of voters being unwilling to admit to pollsters who they will vote for. And also a case that people may reluctantly feel they should vote for a corrupt strongman over the alternative of possible chaos. Reminds me a bit of the UK election where pollsters and commentators got it very badly wrong.

Its interesting though that nobody seems to be alleging fraud (so far) – seems that Turkey has a pretty robust voting system.


susan the other, November 1, 2015 at 1:48 pm

It is clear that politix in Turkey is chaos. God only knows what the freedom and justice freaks are looking to gain. Erdogan is on the outs with everyone; NATO, Russia, the Saudis, the USA and etc. That can only mean one thing: there is no consensus and therefore there is no government. And Erdogan is just vamping around on the stage until he wears out his fishnets and high heels.

Sabri Oncu -> Synoia, November 2, 2015 at 5:55 am

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are not rivals for the new Caliphate. They are rivals for regional hegemony. So, I was combining two things together. Given that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran are rivals of Turkey, Turkey cannot be the leader of the Muslim world. At least these three will not accept Turkey's leadership. As for the Caliphate ISIL is the competitor. But, more importantly, Arabs will not accept a Turkish as their caliph. That was what I had in mind. But, the article is already quite long even as it is so I was economizing, I guess.

Synoia, November 1, 2015 at 4:23 pm

It is not clear that Erdogan and the Saudi's are rivals for the new Caliphate.

The Saudi's will aim for the religious capital (Mecca) and the Turks the Legislative Capital as under the Ottomans, and the Rules will exchange family member in marriage as is common among royalty.

Ergogan's planace looks like it if fit for a Caliph.

Turkish Observer,

When I read articles online about this recent election people keep referring to Erdogan as having "savvy" or making some sort of "gambit".

Perhaps you could say this, if it was in any way a fair competition. But nothing about this election was fair.

Only days before the election, the government appointed trustees to 22 different companies that were part of a holding company that wasn't so keen on the government. This included two television stations and two newspapers. Immediately after seizing control of them, in clear violation of the constitution of Turkey which prohibits the seizing of media regardless of whether or not it helped enable a crime, they fired all employees who had refused loyalty to the new trustees. The next editions of these newspapers did a 180 coming out in full support of AKP and the ruling party.

The amount of media time spent on covering AKP rallies/political events was far greater in all state media than that given to the other three main parties. I believe in previous elections, and most probably this one as well, the ratio is something like 90% of all campaign airtime was given to their party.

In addition, President Erdogan repeatedly abused his power as president. This position is one that is supposed to be unpartisan and ceremonial, but instead he has turned every public appearance into an occasion to gain support for the AKP.

The ruling government has continued to systematically dismantle bastions of opposition: whether they be found in industrial, financial or media sectors. They have attacked academics, fomented assaults of media channels and stations by armed groups, and refused to provide adequate protection for opposition rallies and events.

They continue to spread lies, disinformation and enflame racial hatred on pro-government media outlets. Several weeks ago, the result of this were three or four nights of militant-nationalist rallies across different areas of Turkey including Istanbul. One of the chilling calls heard by myself and others was "we don't want war, we want genocide" while they occasionally destroyed a kurdish-looking business or stabbed/beat a kurdish-looking person to death. These were government sanctioned outbursts. If the opposition tried to rally for peace, within 30min plain clothes police officers and riot police would stop them. But rallies for genocide? Completely acceptable in Erdogan's Turkey – you could even see some of the security forces smiling.

What comes next will be more of the same, but I can only imagine what will happen when the economy here starts to crumble…

I expect all or some of the following to happen in the next year politically:

  • - further attacks on the HDP, perhaps pushing them below 10% and using this as an opportunity to get to the 330 seat level needed to change the constitution
  • - the withering away of the militant nationalist MHP, as supporters and politicians within this party have fewer differences with the policies and positions of the AKP. Perhaps a split, with half of the members crossing the aisle to the AKP.
  • - attacks on media interests/financial interests of the CHP, so that any presidential system becomes a two party one, where one party always wins (guess which). (you can expect some problems to arise with IS Bank, if they want this outcome)

Financially:

  • - continued fall in visitor/tourist numbers
  • - further contraction of industrial production as the sanctity or property rights a revealed to be a farce
  • - a complete collapse of the construction sector, if and only if the FED starts to hike rates
  • - lira reaching 4 to the dollar by May

Socially:

  • - exodus of anyone who can get out of Turkey, a significant brain drain
  • - greater conservatism within society, the imposition of more moral/social controls
  • - a dramatic increase in the breadth and width of the conflict between the Turkish military and PKK. (if and only if the HDP is dismantled as a political outlet)

[Nov 02, 2015] Turkey election Erdo an's AKP wins outright majority – as it happened Discussion

Yes another case of a global trend of resurgence of nationalism in action... Turkey now pretend for the role of of the leader of Islamic world and that paradoxically it is nationalism that stimulates shift toward more militant Islamism.
Notable quotes:
"... The only ones who had anything to gain from the bombings were AKP. That's undeniable. But, its not proof, sadly. ..."
"... The 'play caliphate jibe' was a reference to his support for ISIS and to the growing importance of religious custom in Turkey and its influence everywhere, including on law. ..."
"... BREAKING NEWS: Tonight scenes of joy in Raqqa, Mosul and Palmira...Daesh men are in a good mood...anyone knows the reason? ..."
"... Superstition prevails in some islamic and Christian states nowadays. ..."
"... That would explain why so many AK trolls have mobilised under the comments section of every major news agency. But doesn't quite explain where the AKP got its extra 1 million votes in Istanbul where the CHP took over 280k of the 268k votes lost by the HDP and MHP. ..."
"... Turkey has strong hand, many, many refugees eager to get to Europe. At the same time, it is a country which is not without its own internal problems, not least the old contradiction between Islam and modernization. One thing remains certain, Turkey is the key state in the Near East and will be courted more than ever by the USA and EU. ..."
"... The problem isn't those celebrating, it's the way the AKP party has sold itself as the party that God wants people to vote for. ..."
"... Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sends Erdogan his congratulations from Raqqa ..."
"... Interesting how a country that couldn't count how many were killed in the Ankara suicide attack for 3 days counted 54million votes in 3 hours. ..."
"... http://www.prisonplanet.com/breaking-germanys-dw-reports-isis-supply-lines-originate-in-natos-turkey.html ..."
"... I live in Turkey and I can tell you that here is a culture of submission and complacency about any kind of real change-they will vote out of fear, vote out of intentional ignorance of the reality of things. At least half the nation are happy to live in a cloud of lies and delusion, sadly ..."
"... However it seems like this taking a lot of money from Saudi and somehow Turkish nationalist does not see it as a problems . ..."
"... This is like when Netanyahu's party won the Israeli election that followed after they incited Rabin's murder. Warmonger violence is rewarded by the voters. Unless Erdogan shows unexpected moderation, this is a grave development. ..."
"... I don't think you understand the point I am making, I never said his goal is peace with the Kurds. His goal was to win back the votes he lost in June and he did that. He got the nationalist vote back by bombing the crap out of the PKK and threatening the PYD in Syria. ..."
"... Where in all this do you get the idea that I am an AKP supporter. I am criticizing the man saying he capitalized on the deaths of soldiers to win back the important nationalist vote. Him winning in this fashion is a terrible thing, he will change the constitution and plant himself on his throne. Erdogan now has more power over Turkey than Ataturk ever did. HE is basically Putin with a moustache. ..."
"... Erdogan sweeps to power on the back of security and safety fears. His claim of intervention against Daesh (a shame) and the PKK (real); coupled with his silencing of the media critics (real); made a tremendous difference. Expect Daesh to have the welcome mat out for the black market deals - trucks and weapons and supplies for oil and concentration on the PKK and YPK. ..."
"... Turkey, whether they know it or not, voted for a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship and ethnic war. The crumbling economic performance and the religious agenda parallel the path of Morsi in Egypt ... but here Erdogan has already neutered any threat from the military with all the treason trials. ..."
"... The war against the PKK was obviously a calculated risk. Voters usually rally behind the status quo in troubled times. The terror attacks reinforced this message. ..."
"... Yes, yet another disaster. The recent farcical goings on in Portugal, the swing to the right in Poland and Denmark and a seemingly ever increasing necessity to deal with despots and dictators. ..."
"... That is cos Erdogan controls the pools in Turkey just as the Tories controlled the polls in Britain. To get the right-wing vote out they have the polls announcing that the election is in doubt. Modern Capitalism doesn't just own the media. It owns the polls too. ..."
"... Because left is so attracted to internationalist and multi cultural garbage that lost its appeal to average people . Left used to stand for workers and better working conditions ,but now stands for pure weirdness! ..."
"... If there has been no ballot rigging, then the Turks are no different from the Americans who voted for Bush the second time or the British who voted Cameron a second time. People will vote for oligarchs and authoritarians when they are fearful or full of hate. ..."
"... I am not so sure about turkey. A country that embrace Kemal attaturk and consider him as national hero but goes against his Reforms. Attaturk changed the Arabic alphabet to Latin and closed many masques to undermine Arabic influence there but turkey now is infested with Isis and Arabic culture. I simply do not get it. ..."
"... This result is a disaster for the EU. Erdogan has Merkel and her acolytes across Europe over a barrel, and will drive a hard bargain for agreeing to help stem the migrant/refugee flood. ..."
"... America has gone along with the strategy of forming ISIS to overthrow Assad, from the very beginning. The goal was to have these mostly criminals do the dying and when they achieve overthrowing Assad, send an army to clean them out and become heroes. But reality has a way of working itself out, then ISIS got out of hand. ..."
"... Indeed. As an ardent, self-enriching neoliberal, Erdogan's hardly a threat to the West. And it probably suits the West's strategic interests better for Turkey to remain a mild Islamist democracy than for it to return to Kemalism. ..."
"... Needless to say the socialist regime of the 50s in Iran taken out by Britain and the US of the time for oil reasons was a much better vehicle for metropolitan aspirations than the shah's conservative and authoritarian regime, because the whole country, including the rural poor outside Tehran had much more of a stake in in it. A tragedy indeed. ..."
"... The west, come on, who are you exactly talking about? The west supports Saudi tyranny and their jihadi underlings, Erdogan is doing the west's bidding in Syria, and played along in Libya. ..."
"... EU supported jihadis to destroy Libya and Syria, I hope you can handle a few chanting God is great. ..."
"... Erdogan: BFF of ISIS, Nemesis of Kurds. Yep, America's ally. Feckin' perfect. Business as usual. ..."
"... Geopolitically, Turkey is an ally and partner in NATO. Turkey is a training ground and safe zone for moderate jihadis. Turkey hates Syria and agrees with Obama that Assad must go . The Guardian agrees with all these positions. Ergo the victory is legitimate . Just ask Portugal ..."
"... There will soon be comments describing AK party supporters as poor, uneducated, religious nutters from enlightened Europeans. With everything going in Turkey, Erdogan is popular because out of all the candidates he is the one the Turks think will offer economic prosperity. I think that is what matters the most to majority of voters I guess. ..."
"... Nationalism is reaction itself. It doesn't need PKK or whatever. Was Lukashenko observing these elections? Balls to them ..."
"... Erdogan was a polarising figure in Turkish politics he won't lose heavily (in fact he actually won more votes through his cynical act of social imperialism) because the political opposition to him is too incompetent and cliquey (ie non are interested in broadening their political support beyond their base, MHP for instance call Alevites heretics and want a death list of all Kurdish activists, CHP are uninterested in courting religious Turks or Kurds, HDP is still a nationalist party despite its liberal pretentions) to beat Erdogan and it seems my predictions have come true. ..."
www.theguardian.com

Candide60 -> AdemMeral 1 Nov 2015 16:29

The institutionalized religion AKP built is a dangerous tool in the hands of those who have absolute power, or any power, and no real pragmatism, nor any desire to govern all citizens fairly and equally. If you research human rights records of Turkey, you will find out how much abuse is perpetrated in the name of religion, in the name of sect, in the name of gender, in the name of party affiliation.

Having superficial knowledge of these matters and claiming to speak for all Turks, what is best for Turks is wrong. Voting for a party formed by thieves, that is perpetrating abuses, corruption, killing its own citizens, and claiming there isn't any alternative is a lame excuse. When there is no alternative, one creates its choices.

Hesham Abdelhafez -> Alfie Silva 1 Nov 2015 16:28

Just like that! where are the democracy of the "civilised" west gone? so all these talks about democracy and human rights that the western media gave us headache are all crap!

AdemMeral -> Alfie Silva 1 Nov 2015 16:25

Erdogan is not Islamist. Erbakan was. Nobody can touch republic in Turkey. Even a hint of it and Erdogan is history.

In fact Gulen was the most dangerous one and he had good people in the army. But he is history now.

missythecat -> AdemMeral 1 Nov 2015 16:13

I agree with you that the the opposition in Turkey isn't doing a great job. But this doesn't justify why one should vote for erdogan. This is really interesting, I always wanted to understand why people vote for him. Are you really not aware that he and his party members are actually breaking the law and acting against the constitution by spending public funds for their personal or the AKP's gain?

Are you really not aware that while people of Turkey suffer from unemployment, poor education and poverty, he can somehow spend our money on a palace, luxury cars, etc. and his wife can close a luxury boutique in Brussels to shop privately?

Are you really not aware that his relatives somehow always manage to land on the government's juicy construction projects? Are you really not aware that everyone who is against him is silenced by force (e.g. journalists)? Are we really talking about the same country and the same person?

Necati Geniş -> laticsfanfromeurope 1 Nov 2015 16:12

"Reports"..? By whom ? You must have followed the news about the co-operation of US an Turkish Air Forces.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/world/middleeast/isis-is-target-of-turkish-bombing-raids.html?_r=0

JimMcBride 1 Nov 2015 16:10

they learned elections from the U.S.A. and U.K. The winners are decided before the elections. What Turkey did not learn was to have the patience to make the elections to be a product of the will of the people which would then mean there would be less trouble with the electorate and very little need to control them with harsh measures since they would have more confidence that their votes actually counted and they could make a difference at the next election..

when you remove all hope of voting in a change you create more trouble for yourself.

littlewoodenblock -> Necati Geniş 1 Nov 2015 15:45

So prove him wrong, my friend. I would love to see some definitive evidence. But it is not there. What we have everytime is some AKP jerk atanding up and saying its PKK before the police have even opened the case to investigate! Davutoglu even came up with the stupid suggestion that PKK and ISIS were partners in the Ankara bombing!

The only ones who had anything to gain from the bombings were AKP. That's undeniable. But, its not proof, sadly.

littlewoodenblock -> AdemMeral 1 Nov 2015 15:40

The 'play caliphate jibe' was a reference to his support for ISIS and to the growing importance of religious custom in Turkey and its influence everywhere, including on law.

Whether sharia law is where Turkey arrives is unlikely, i agree, but the country will certainly not become more liberal ...

laticsfanfromeurope 1 Nov 2015 15:39

BREAKING NEWS: Tonight scenes of joy in Raqqa, Mosul and Palmira...Daesh men are in a good mood...anyone knows the reason?

RossNewman -> Gazzy312 1 Nov 2015 15:37

Mein Kampf was also quite popular there not so long ago, where it was a best seller.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/29/turkey.books

As result I don't find this news surprising.

Candide60 1 Nov 2015 15:36

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Joseph Stalin

Erdogan is a dictator using religion to brainwash masses, a corrupt evil man surrounded by weak, corrupt, ignorant yes men and women.


missythecat -> AdemMeral 1 Nov 2015 15:16

Democracy? Republic? They've already been crushed by Erdogan. He is a lonely lunatic leaving in his something thousand room palace. Please don't troll here. On another note, yes, the only few remaining newspapers which haven't been raided by erdogan yet, do talk about the YSK's dodgy play with the numbers (Cumhuriyet and Sozcu) go and do some reading.

Hesham Abdelhafez 1 Nov 2015 15:10

shut up hypocrite western! you don't open your fucking mouse after what you did to Egypt and supporting a bloody military coup and inviting the criminal in Europe!


andresh -> Alfie Silva 1 Nov 2015 15:07

Superstition prevails in some islamic and Christian states nowadays.

Mmmoke 1 Nov 2015 14:58

Taking in more than 4 million refugees and still getting the same party voted in with a majority, is a testament to the greatness of the Turkish people. Bless them. And Europe, USA who caused the crisis, complain about a few thousand refugees. Shame.

Gazzy312 1 Nov 2015 14:39

Really disgusted with some of the Guardians coverage always trying to imply that Erdogan will try to rig. He is popular in Turkey you need to accept that, this is the reason the Millitary which hate him dare not launch a coup against him.

littlewoodenblock -> Ilker Camci 1 Nov 2015 14:39

Interestingly AKP overtook MHP in the fascist-look-a-like competition. So much so that 4% of its vote increase this election came directly from MHP!

Ozgen Killi -> Necati Geniş 1 Nov 2015 14:26

That would explain why so many AK trolls have mobilised under the comments section of every major news agency. But doesn't quite explain where the AKP got its extra 1 million votes in Istanbul where the CHP took over 280k of the 268k votes lost by the HDP and MHP.

BlueJayWay -> Ilker Camci 1 Nov 2015 14:23

Yeah, the reality of keeping that Islamist clown Erdogan and his fascist goons in power. This election reeks of fraud. How can the votes have been counted that quickly?

andresh 1 Nov 2015 14:21

Erdogan has allowed new recruits to reach IS through the "porous border". He sent supplies for IS. He ordered the security forces to look the other way when young Turkish students from Adiyaman organized the terrorists mass murdres in Sucuk, Ankara and Diyarbakir. At the same time he ordered killing the Kurds in Diyarbakir and tried to precent the YPG from liberating the Kurdish Syria from IS. Erdogan is a criminal.

ID9179442 RJSWinchester 1 Nov 2015 14:19

Turkey has strong hand, many, many refugees eager to get to Europe. At the same time, it is a country which is not without its own internal problems, not least the old contradiction between Islam and modernization. One thing remains certain, Turkey is the key state in the Near East and will be courted more than ever by the USA and EU.

littlewoodenblock Peter Conti 1 Nov 2015 14:18

Dont joke, at the beginning of a football match a minutes silence was held for the victims of the ankara bombings and AKP supporters started chanting "Allah Akbar!"
Sick Fucks

SHA2014 -> abf310866 1 Nov 2015 14:06

Just two lines of proof:
1. Turkey has renewed the fight against PKK one of the most effective anti-IS firces in Northern Syria.
2. Instead of assisting civilians in Kobani when it was under siege by IS, Turkey closed the borders to any refugees.
3. Where do you think all these foreigners who go to fight for IS from Europe pass through? It is Turkey of course. There is no apparent attempt to stop this traffic.
There is other evidence also.

YouHaveComment -> abf310866 1 Nov 2015 14:05

The problem isn't those celebrating, it's the way the AKP party has sold itself as the party that God wants people to vote for.

That's bad news for democracy. It's also bad news for the secular space and religious freedom that allows people of any faith or none to be members of the same community.

GoloManner Trabzonlu 1 Nov 2015 14:04

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sends Erdogan his congratulations from Raqqa

Abu Al-Izz Hanoun -> killerontheroad 1 Nov 2015 13:56

By the way ISIS consider Erdogan and his party Kafirs and vow to fight them. ..just in case you were wondering.

1ClearSense 1 Nov 2015 13:56

Will US now support both Erdoganite Turks and YPG/PKK Kurds while they fight each other?

andresh -> decisivemoment 1 Nov 2015 13:55

Allah Akbar! Stop fascism! It was the turkish security forces that allowed young supporters of IS from adiyaman to stage the murderes if Sucuk, Ankara and Diyarbakir. Erdogan is a cynical murderer, inciting violence to remain i power.

thatshowitgoes -> abf310866 1 Nov 2015 13:54

Put it this way. The bank robbers leave from your house, go to rob the bank with guns you have given them, then come back to your house with the loot - you support the bank robbers. Or perhaps you think Turkey has no control of its borders, in which case I invite you to swan in without a visa next time you go on holiday and see how far you get.

Trabzonlu 1 Nov 2015 13:53

As predicted, HDP and PKK have shot themselves in the foot by backing violence instead of peace and their actions have led to this AKP majority, no one should be surprised by the result. As you can see, free and fair elections seem reason enough for violence in the Kurdish areas as per usual, quite how these people dream of governing a Kurdistan is beyond me. Hopefully this government will finally grow some balls and eliminate these PKK terrorists once and for all - the people have voted, time to shut this threat down unilaterally and with determination.

Super Tramp 1 Nov 2015 13:53

The good have lost by the hands of fraud. Foxy smile of the triumph of ignorance, brutality and lies.. Such a dystopia it is; watching my beautiful country helpless while it's evolving to the 3rd world for the last decade. now this is the end of the way of secularism. me and my bereaved youthfulness lets have another bottle of wine isnt it a perfect day for the losers?


RJSWinchester 1 Nov 2015 13:52

"Democracy" wrapped in Erdogan's iron fist.

Ozgen Killi 1 Nov 2015 13:52

Interesting how a country that couldn't count how many were killed in the Ankara suicide attack for 3 days counted 54million votes in 3 hours.

decisivemoment 1 Nov 2015 13:51

It's not necessarily that bad a result. Under the circumstances it's hardly surprising the party promising law and order would gain seats, but they have not gained enough to amend the constitution and the HDP has made it past Turkey's ridiculously high threshold and secured their place in parliament.

Growing pains, certainly, but not primitivism. With this somewhat conditional seal of approval -- authority to govern without having to form a coalition with crazies, but not so much authority as to silence mainstream opposition and use the constitution to promote authoritarianism -- we'll have to see what Erdogan does.

thatshowitgoes -> abf310866 1 Nov 2015 13:48

http://www.prisonplanet.com/breaking-germanys-dw-reports-isis-supply-lines-originate-in-natos-turkey.html

istanbul10 -> siff 1 Nov 2015 13:23

I live in Turkey and I can tell you that here is a culture of submission and complacency about any kind of real change-they will vote out of fear, vote out of intentional ignorance of the reality of things. At least half the nation are happy to live in a cloud of lies and delusion, sadly

Afshin Peyman -> SHA2014 1 Nov 2015 13:22

Was it the sultanate was corrupt and backward ?

That is why young Turks and attaturk tried to change the system and replace it with modern and secular government?

However it seems like this taking a lot of money from Saudi and somehow Turkish nationalist does not see it as a problems .

ChristineH 1 Nov 2015 13:21

Does anyone know how such a huge and populous country as Turkey counts its votes so quickly? Only article I could find was about people counting votes by tractor headlights, having voted at the side of the road, which makes the speed even more surprising.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/villagers-vote-on-road-in-turkeys-northwestern-district.aspx?pageID=238&nid=90576&NewsCatID=341

newageblues 1 Nov 2015 13:17

This is like when Netanyahu's party won the Israeli election that followed after they incited Rabin's murder. Warmonger violence is rewarded by the voters. Unless Erdogan shows unexpected moderation, this is a grave development.

Mr_HanMan -> littlewoodenblock 1 Nov 2015 13:13

I don't think you understand the point I am making, I never said his goal is peace with the Kurds. His goal was to win back the votes he lost in June and he did that. He got the nationalist vote back by bombing the crap out of the PKK and threatening the PYD in Syria. After the Suruc bombing the killing of the two police officers by the PKK wasn't the first time the PKK killed during the supposed ceasefire. They shot and killed soldiers in Diyarbakir last year and the government back then did nothing. The only reason they did something now was to get back the nationalist vote. So it's all one big dirty game and the PKK were in on it, or they are just too stupid to realise this as their actions harmed the HDP.

Where in all this do you get the idea that I am an AKP supporter. I am criticizing the man saying he capitalized on the deaths of soldiers to win back the important nationalist vote. Him winning in this fashion is a terrible thing, he will change the constitution and plant himself on his throne. Erdogan now has more power over Turkey than Ataturk ever did. HE is basically Putin with a moustache.

Edmund Allin -> RayMullan 1 Nov 2015 13:08

186,000 ballot boxes. About 750,000 independent (i.e. opposition) observers. 57m voters, of whom apparently 45mn turned up. 45mn/186,000 = 241 votes per ballot box. Easy enough.

owl905 1 Nov 2015 13:06

Erdogan sweeps to power on the back of security and safety fears. His claim of intervention against Daesh (a shame) and the PKK (real); coupled with his silencing of the media critics (real); made a tremendous difference. Expect Daesh to have the welcome mat out for the black market deals - trucks and weapons and supplies for oil and concentration on the PKK and YPK.

Turkey, whether they know it or not, voted for a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship and ethnic war. The crumbling economic performance and the religious agenda parallel the path of Morsi in Egypt ... but here Erdogan has already neutered any threat from the military with all the treason trials.

Putin and al-Baghdadi are probably thinking the Cheshire Cat got into their mirror this morning.

Stechginster -> Trancedesk 1 Nov 2015 13:04

Merkel, the architect of one catastrophe, will shortly usher in another, as she promotes the entry of Turkey into the EU, in return for Erdogan's assistance.

I should turn this into a drinking game… no, she won't. She made some positive noise about supporting Turkey in the accession process, what was actually on the table were visa waivers for Turkish travellers visiting the EU and (likely, although unofficially) delaying the publication of a negative report on Turkish human rights violations.


SHA2014 -> Michael Yeovil 1 Nov 2015 13:02

The war against the PKK was obviously a calculated risk. Voters usually rally behind the status quo in troubled times. The terror attacks reinforced this message.

ErnaMsw 1 Nov 2015 12:57

At least Turkey won't become a presidential republic. With 96.48% of votes now counted, HDP stands at 10.47% and is guaranteed to pass the threshold.

ChemicalArif 1 Nov 2015 12:53

Quite hilarious reading the comments from most BTL posters... Simple fact is, the AKP has been a "popular" government in Turkey for the last decade and even won the majority of votes in the last election. Did urbane elite seriously think that they were going to be ousted from power by a fractured, dysfunctional opposition? Beggars belief.

Of course the urbane city dwelling elite can always take to the streets to protest the result, much like the Egyptians did. Democracy is only palatable when the city dweller's preferred candidate is elected to power...

Tim Gray 1 Nov 2015 12:52

A very disturbing result, it is difficult to believe the vote or that the ruling party hasn't had a hand in the unrest across the country since the voters rejected AKP in the last election. Turkey's government will now use this result as a green light to continue its war against the Kurds, attack trade unions, women and those opposed to this conservative, nationalist government.

Stechginster -> jharz15 1 Nov 2015 12:50

The Turkish people I personally know would share that opinion, but young Turkish expats and the young people in the big cities such as Istanbul and Ankara are far more liberal than the average Turkish voter in the east. I don't think it was necessarily rigged, in uncertain times, many people vote for stability (the devil you know..) over anything else.

irem demir 1 Nov 2015 12:44

Majority of Turks are not secular, modern or democratic. But there are still so many open minded people living in Turkey, unlike in other muslim countries. But sadly this didn't really help the future of the country.

Phil Porter Trancedesk 1 Nov 2015 12:42

Yes, yet another disaster. The recent farcical goings on in Portugal, the swing to the right in Poland and Denmark and a seemingly ever increasing necessity to deal with despots and dictators.

TonyBlunt Phoenix9061210 1 Nov 2015 12:41

That is cos Erdogan controls the pools in Turkey just as the Tories controlled the polls in Britain. To get the right-wing vote out they have the polls announcing that the election is in doubt. Modern Capitalism doesn't just own the media. It owns the polls too.

Afshin Peyman gregmitchell87 1 Nov 2015 12:38

Because left is so attracted to internationalist and multi cultural garbage that lost its appeal to average people .
Left used to stand for workers and better working conditions ,but now stands for pure weirdness!

Michael Yeovil 1 Nov 2015 12:35

So six months the AKP Government obtained it's worst ever result to it's best . In that six months, the worst terror attack on the country happened, civil war was resumed with the PKK, inflation rose to it's worse rate since the AKP came to power, unemployment rose, - but then the AKP obtain the best ever result it is obtained !

Make of that what you will !!

GordonBrownStain 1 Nov 2015 12:35

The Poles voted for a shower of ignorant pricks and so did us Brits, that's democracy, the Muslims are no different from us after all

Simon100 1 Nov 2015 12:34

If there has been no ballot rigging, then the Turks are no different from the Americans who voted for Bush the second time or the British who voted Cameron a second time. People will vote for oligarchs and authoritarians when they are fearful or full of hate.

Trancedesk -> studious1 1 Nov 2015 12:34

And to think we were entertaining Turkey joining the EU not that long ago.

Erdogan is now in an even stronger position, and will demand entry in return for helping Merkel deal with the consequences of her idiocy.

Afshin Peyman 1 Nov 2015 12:33

I am not so sure about turkey. A country that embrace Kemal attaturk and consider him as national hero but goes against his Reforms. Attaturk changed the Arabic alphabet to Latin and closed many masques to undermine Arabic influence there but turkey now is infested with Isis and Arabic culture. I simply do not get it.

Trancedesk 1 Nov 2015 12:32

This result is a disaster for the EU. Erdogan has Merkel and her acolytes across Europe over a barrel, and will drive a hard bargain for agreeing to help stem the migrant/refugee flood. Merkel, the architect of one catastrophe, will shortly usher in another, as she promotes the entry of Turkey into the EU, in return for Erdogan's assistance. Western Europe, the cradle of Western civilisation, is doomed and we should probably leave.

glad2baway 1 Nov 2015 12:30

Well, if that is democracy then we have to sometimes accept that this is bad news. I am surprised at the result. What does Turkey do now? Have a revolution just because lots of people don't like the result? As the saying goes, people get the governments they deserve. So something has gone badly wrong somewhere.

1ClearSense -> TeeJayzed Addy 1 Nov 2015 12:29

America has gone along with the strategy of forming ISIS to overthrow Assad, from the very beginning. The goal was to have these mostly criminals do the dying and when they achieve overthrowing Assad, send an army to clean them out and become heroes. But reality has a way of working itself out, then ISIS got out of hand.

djhurley -> SUNLITE 1 Nov 2015 12:27

Indeed. As an ardent, self-enriching neoliberal, Erdogan's hardly a threat to the West. And it probably suits the West's strategic interests better for Turkey to remain a mild Islamist democracy than for it to return to Kemalism.

Mr_HanMan -> littlewoodenblock 1 Nov 2015 12:26

Lets go back, the bombing in Suruc happened, the HDP and PKK blamed the AKP and then went on a killing spree of Turkish police officers and soldiers. Then in cities in the south east HDP members declaring autonomy, trenches being dug in the middle of the streets using machinery owned by the local government authority (HDP).

No matter which way you look at it the PKK is the reason why the HDP lost a lot of votes. To add any operation done against the PYD in Syria is a boost for the AKP when it comes to the nationalist vote.

GreatUncleEuphoria -> GreatUncleEuphoria 1 Nov 2015 12:26

Needless to say the socialist regime of the 50s in Iran taken out by Britain and the US of the time for oil reasons was a much better vehicle for metropolitan aspirations than the shah's conservative and authoritarian regime, because the whole country, including the rural poor outside Tehran had much more of a stake in in it. A tragedy indeed.

1ClearSense -> littlewoodenblock 1 Nov 2015 12:22

The west, come on, who are you exactly talking about? The west supports Saudi tyranny and their jihadi underlings, Erdogan is doing the west's bidding in Syria, and played along in Libya.

GreatUncleEuphoria -> Paul Easton 1 Nov 2015 12:22

Iran is, broadly. split between a metropolitan urban and ( urbane ) group, and a religious rural, provincial and suburban group, like Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. The Islamic revolution traded the influence of the former for the latter, like the brief rule in Egypt of the MBrotherhood.

riceuten64 birdcv 1 Nov 2015 12:20

He's a gradualist. He will make it more and more difficult, say, to drink alcohol, as he has already done. He will put pressure on the few remaining independent news outlets. He will further censor the internet. He will change electoral systems to suit the AKP. He has already made his wish for an Executive Presidency clear.

1ClearSense -> LittleMsGggrrrrr 1 Nov 2015 12:19

EU supported jihadis to destroy Libya and Syria, I hope you can handle a few chanting God is great.

TeeJayzed -> Addy 1 Nov 2015 12:18

Erdogan: BFF of ISIS, Nemesis of Kurds. Yep, America's ally. Feckin' perfect. Business as usual.

DiplomaticImmunity 1 Nov 2015 12:17

Geopolitically, Turkey is an "ally and partner" in NATO. Turkey is a training ground and "safe zone" for "moderate" jihadis. Turkey hates Syria and agrees with Obama that "Assad must go". The Guardian agrees with all these positions. Ergo the victory is "legitimate". Just ask Portugal


littlewoodenblock -> atkurebeach 1 Nov 2015 12:12

Rubbish. AKP reignited the war with Kurds to polarise the nation and it is AKP that locked cities down for days on end, who is killing kurds with out any legal process whatsoever, it is allegedly AKP supporters that are threatening on television opposition journalists with violence. Then when that violence occurs im exactly the way threatened the supporter - a ministerial candidate - is not even questioned by police, by he took the stage with Davutoglu just 2 days ago.

AKP is allegedly courting mercenaries and thugs to achieve its aims ...

AKP is attacking kurds in northern syria and iraq because they are too strong and they are closing the gap across the Euphrates and further west - AKP have made it very clear they will not tolerate that. Why, i wonder. ISIS supply lines allegedly.

And you are still taliking about PKK.

Hilarious

littlewoodenblock -> Paul Easton 1 Nov 2015 12:06

Civil war, terrorism, providing water to Cyprus, making the parliamentary election about him, the President, silencing fully opposition media, blaming the wests fear of a strong turkey to explain economic woes ... When you have complete control you can achieve what you want easily.

The Turks are not fools, they are being lied to blatantly and they are scared

Lathan Ismail 1 Nov 2015 12:04

There will soon be comments describing AK party supporters as poor, uneducated, religious nutters from "enlightened" Europeans. With everything going in Turkey, Erdogan is popular because out of all the candidates he is the one the Turks think will offer economic prosperity. I think that is what matters the most to majority of voters I guess.

Down2dirt -> atkurebeach 1 Nov 2015 11:56

Nationalism is reaction itself. It doesn't need PKK or whatever. Was Lukashenko observing these elections? Balls to them

Newcurrency 1 Nov 2015 11:49

There is no ethnic pressure above Kurds for at least 10 years. You are the ones who turned our country into a bloodbath -- Killing innocent teachers, newly graduated doctors, officer's wifes who's only fault is sitting in their house, know your facts before you talk about peace.

Don't expect people to support a man who talks of peace while his brother is in mountains fighting with states army.

Newcurrency 1 Nov 2015 11:42

I cant believe why major media sites like guardian is backing up a separatist like Selahattin Demirtaş. Do you really think a man who threatens people with violent street acts if hdp cant pass the election threshold is a peace talker ? The Tsipras of Turkey ? Don't mock with peoples intellegence...

KK47 1 Nov 2015 11:42

Few days ago I was berated by some posters for pointing out that though Erdogan was a polarising figure in Turkish politics he won't lose heavily (in fact he actually won more votes through his cynical act of social imperialism) because the political opposition to him is too incompetent and cliquey (ie non are interested in broadening their political support beyond their base, MHP for instance call Alevites heretics and want a death list of all Kurdish activists, CHP are uninterested in courting religious Turks or Kurds, HDP is still a nationalist party despite its liberal pretentions) to beat Erdogan and it seems my predictions have come true.

Now here's my next prediction - watch for a more aggressive/militaristic approach towards Syria by the Turkish government.

[Oct 30, 2015] The Deciders by John Hay

Notable quotes:
"... The cast of characters includes President George W. Bush; L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the first civilian administrator of postwar Iraq; Douglas Feith, Bush's undersecretary of defense for policy; Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's deputy secretary of defense; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard B. Cheney (and Cheney's proxy in these events); Walter Slocombe, who had been President Clinton's undersecretary of defense for policy, and as such was Feith's predecessor; Richard Perle, who was chairman of Bush's defense policy board; and General Jay Garner, whom Bremer replaced as the leader of postwar Iraq. ..."
"... Regarding the de-Baathification order, both Bremer and Feith have written their own accounts of the week leading up to it, and the slight discrepancy between their recollections is revealing in what it tells us about Bremer-and consequently about Wolfowitz and Libby for having selected him. At first blush, Bremer and Feith's justifications for the policy appear to dovetail, each comparing postwar Iraq to postwar Nazi Germany. Bremer explains in a retrospective Washington Post op-ed, "What We Got Right in Iraq," that "Hussein modeled his regime after Adolf Hitler's, which controlled the German people with two main instruments: the Nazi Party and the Reich's security services. We had no choice but to rid Iraq of the country's equivalent organizations." For his part, Feith goes a step further, reasoning in his memoir War and Decision that the case for de-Baathification was even stronger because "The Nazis, after all, had run Germany for a dozen years; the Baathists had tyrannized Iraq for more than thirty." ..."
"... Simply put, Bremer was tempted by headline-grabbing policies. He was unlikely to question any action that offered opportunities to make bold gestures, which made him easy to influence. Indeed, another quality of Bremer's professional persona that conspicuously emerges from accounts of the period is his unwillingness to think for himself. ..."
"... What's even more surprising is how Bremer doesn't hide his intellectual dependence on Slocombe. ..."
"... Slocombe that "Although a Democrat, he has maintained good relations with Wolfowitz and is described by some as a 'Democratic hawk,'" a remark that once again places Wolfowitz in close proximity to Bremer and the disbanding order. ..."
October 27, 2015 | The American Conservative

In May 2003, in the wake of the Iraq War and the ousting of Saddam Hussein, events took place that set the stage for the current chaos in the Middle East. Yet even most well-informed Americans are unaware of how policies implemented by mid-level bureaucrats during the Bush administration unwittingly unleashed forces that would ultimately lead to the juggernaut of the Islamic State.

The lesson is that it appears all too easy for outsiders working with relatively low-level appointees to hijack the policy process. The Bay of Pigs invasion and Iran-Contra affair are familiar instances, but the Iraq experience offers an even better illustration-not least because its consequences have been even more disastrous.

The cast of characters includes President George W. Bush; L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the first civilian administrator of postwar Iraq; Douglas Feith, Bush's undersecretary of defense for policy; Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's deputy secretary of defense; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard B. Cheney (and Cheney's proxy in these events); Walter Slocombe, who had been President Clinton's undersecretary of defense for policy, and as such was Feith's predecessor; Richard Perle, who was chairman of Bush's defense policy board; and General Jay Garner, whom Bremer replaced as the leader of postwar Iraq.

On May 9, 2003, President Bush appointed Bremer to the top civilian post in Iraq. A career diplomat who was recruited for this job by Wolfowitz and Libby, despite the fact that he had minimal experience of the region and didn't speak Arabic, Bremer arrived in Baghdad on May 12 to take charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA. In his first two weeks at his post, Bremer issued two orders that would turn out to be momentous. Enacted on May 16, CPA Order Number 1 "de-Baathified" the Iraqi government; on May 23, CPA Order Number 2 disbanded the Iraqi army. In short, Baath party members were barred from participation in Iraq's new government and Saddam Hussein's soldiers lost their jobs, taking their weapons with them.

The results of these policies become clear as we learn about the leadership of ISIS. The Washington Post, for example, reported in April that "almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers." In June, the New York Times identified a man "believed to be the head of the Islamic State's military council," Fadel al-Hayali, as "a former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi military intelligence agency of President Saddam Hussein." Criticism of de-Baathification and the disbanding of Iraq's army has been fierce, and the contribution these policies made to fueling extremism was recognized even before the advent of the Islamic State. The New York Times reported in 2007:

The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents.

This year the Washington Post summed up reactions to both orders when it cited a former Iraqi general who asked bluntly, "When they dismantled the army, what did they expect those men to do?" He explained that "they didn't de-Baathify people's minds, they just took away their jobs." Writing about the disbanding policy in his memoir, Decision Points, George W. Bush acknowledges the harmful results: "Thousands of armed men had just been told they were not wanted. Instead of signing up for the new military, many joined the insurgency."

... ... ...

In his memoir, Bremer names the officials who approached him for his CPA job. He recounts telling his wife that:

I had been contacted by Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and by Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense. The Pentagon's original civil administration in 'post-hostility' Iraq-the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, ORHA-lacked expertise in high-level diplomatic negotiations and politics. … I had the requisite skills and experience for that position.

Regarding the de-Baathification order, both Bremer and Feith have written their own accounts of the week leading up to it, and the slight discrepancy between their recollections is revealing in what it tells us about Bremer-and consequently about Wolfowitz and Libby for having selected him. At first blush, Bremer and Feith's justifications for the policy appear to dovetail, each comparing postwar Iraq to postwar Nazi Germany. Bremer explains in a retrospective Washington Post op-ed, "What We Got Right in Iraq," that "Hussein modeled his regime after Adolf Hitler's, which controlled the German people with two main instruments: the Nazi Party and the Reich's security services. We had no choice but to rid Iraq of the country's equivalent organizations." For his part, Feith goes a step further, reasoning in his memoir War and Decision that the case for de-Baathification was even stronger because "The Nazis, after all, had run Germany for a dozen years; the Baathists had tyrannized Iraq for more than thirty."

Regarding the order itself, Bremer writes,

The day before I left for Iraq in May, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith presented me with a draft law that would purge top Baathists from the Iraqi government and told me that he planned to issue it immediately. Recognizing how important this step was, I asked Feith to hold off, among other reasons, so I could discuss it with Iraqi leaders and CPA advisers. A week later, after careful consideration, I issued this 'de-Baathification' decree, as drafted by the Pentagon.

In contrast, Feith recalls that Bremer asked him to wait because "Bremer had thoughts of his own on the subject, he said, and wanted to consider the de-Baathification policy carefully. As the new CPA head, he thought he should announce and implement the policy himself."

The notion that he "carefully" considered the policy in his first week on the job, during which he also travelled halfway around the globe, is highly questionable. Incidentally, Bremer's oxymoronic statement-"a week later, after careful consideration"-mirrors a similar formulation of Wolfowitz's about the disbanding order. Speaking to the Washington Post in November 2003, he said that forming a new Iraqi army is "what we're trying to do at warp speed-but with careful vetting of the people we're bringing on."

Simply put, Bremer was tempted by headline-grabbing policies. He was unlikely to question any action that offered opportunities to make bold gestures, which made him easy to influence. Indeed, another quality of Bremer's professional persona that conspicuously emerges from accounts of the period is his unwillingness to think for himself. His memoir shows that he was eager to put Jay Garner in his place from the moment he arrived in Iraq, yet he was unable to defend himself on his own when challenged by Garner, who-according to Bob Woodward in his book State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III-was "stunned" by the disbanding order. Woodward claims that when Garner confronted Bremer about it, "Bremer, looking surprised, asked Garner to go see Walter B. Slocombe."

What's even more surprising is how Bremer doesn't hide his intellectual dependence on Slocombe. He writes in his memoir:

To help untangle these problems, I was fortunate to have Walt Slocombe as Senior Adviser for defense and security affairs. A brilliant former Rhodes Scholar from Princeton and a Harvard-educated attorney, Walt had worked for Democratic administrations for decades on high-level strategic and arms control issues.

In May 2003, the Washington Post noted of Slocombe that "Although a Democrat, he has maintained good relations with Wolfowitz and is described by some as a 'Democratic hawk,'" a remark that once again places Wolfowitz in close proximity to Bremer and the disbanding order. Sure enough, in November 2003 the Washington Post reported:

The demobilization decision appears to have originated largely with Walter B. Slocombe, a former undersecretary of defense appointed to oversee Iraqi security forces. He believed strongly in the need to disband the army and felt that vanquished soldiers should not expect to be paid a continuing salary. He said he developed the policy in discussions with Bremer, Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. 'This is not something that was dreamed up by somebody at the last minute and done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad. It was discussed,' Slocombe said. 'The critical point was that nobody argued that we shouldn't do this.'

Given that the president agreed to preserve the Iraqi army in the NSC meeting on March 12, Slocombe's statement is evidence of a major policy inconsistency. In that meeting, Feith, at the request of Donald Rumsfeld, gave a PowerPoint presentation prepared by Garner about keeping the Iraqi army; in his own memoir, Feith writes, "No one at that National Security Council meeting in early March spoke against the recommendation, and the President approved Garner's plan." But this is not what happened. What happened instead was the reversal of Garner's plan, which Feith attributes to Slocombe and Bremer:

Bremer and Slocombe argued that it would better serve U.S. interests to create an entirely new Iraqi army: Sometimes it is easier to build something new than to refurbish a complex and badly designed structure. In any event, Bremer and Slocombe reasoned, calling the old army back might not succeed-but the attempt could cause grave political problems.

Over time, both Bremer and Slocombe have gone so far as to deny that the policies had any tangible effects. Bremer claimed in the Washington Post that "Virtually all the old Baathist ministers had fled before the decree was issued" and that "When the draftees saw which way the war was going, they deserted and, like their officers, went back home." Likewise Slocombe stated in a PBS interview, "We didn't disband the army. The army disbanded itself. … What we did do was to formally dissolve all of the institutions of Saddam's security system. The intelligence, his military, his party structure, his information and propaganda structure were formally disbanded and the property turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority."

Thus, according to Bremer and Slocombe's accounts, neither de-Baathification nor disbanding the army achieved anything that hadn't already happened. When coupled with Bremer's assertion of "careful consideration in one week" and Wolfowitz's claim of "careful vetting at warp speed," Bremer and Slocombe's notion of "doing something that had already been done" creates a strong impression that they are hiding something or trying to finesse history with wordplay. Perhaps Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran provides the best possible explanation for this confusion in his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, when he writes, "Despite the leaflets instructing them to go home, Slocombe had expected Iraqi soldiers to stay in their garrisons. Now he figured that calling them back would cause even more problems." Chandrasekaran adds, "As far as Slocombe and Feith were concerned, the Iraqi army had dissolved itself; formalizing the dissolution wouldn't contradict Bush's directive." This suggests that Slocombe and Feith were communicating and that Slocombe was fully aware of the policy the president had agreed to in the NSC meeting on March 12, yet he chose to disregard it.

♦♦♦

Following the disastrous decisions of May 2003, the blame game has been rife among neoconservative policymakers. One of those who have expended the most energy dodging culpability is, predictably, Bremer. In early 2007, he testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the Washington Post reported: "Bremer proved unexpectedly agile at shifting blame: to administration planners ('The planning before the war was inadequate'), his superiors in the Bush administration ('We never had sufficient support'), and the Iraqi people ('The country was in chaos-socially, politically and economically')."

Bremer also wrote in May 2007 in the Washington Post, "I've grown weary of being a punching bag over these decisions-particularly from critics who've never spent time in Iraq, don't understand its complexities and can't explain what we should have done differently." (This declaration is ironic, given Bremer's noted inability to justify the disbanding policy to General Garner.) On September 4, 2007, the New York Times reported that Bremer had given the paper exculpatory letters supposedly proving that George W. Bush confirmed the disbanding order. But the Times concluded, "the letters do not show that [Bush] approved the order or even knew much about it. Mr. Bremer referred only fleetingly to his plan midway through his three-page letter and offered no details." Moreover, the paper characterized Bremer's correspondence with Bush as "striking in its almost nonchalant reference to a major decision that a number of American military officials in Iraq strongly opposed." Defending himself on this point, Bremer claimed, "the policy was carefully considered by top civilian and military members of the American government." And six months later Bremer told the paper, "It was not my responsibility to do inter-agency coordination."

Feith and Slocombe have been similarly evasive when discussing President Bush's awareness of the policies. The Los Angeles Times noted that "Feith was deeply involved in the decision-making process at the time, working closely with Bush and Bremer," yet "Feith said he could not comment about how involved the president was in the decision to change policy and dissolve the army. 'I don't know all the details of who talked to who about that,' he said." For his part, Slocombe told PBS's "Frontline,"

What happens in Washington in terms of how the [decisions are made]-'Go ahead and do this, do that; don't do that, do this, even though you don't want to do it'-that's an internal Washington coordination problem about which I know little. One of the interesting things about the job from my point of view-all my other government experience basically had been in the Washington end, with the interagencies process and setting the priorities-at the other end we got output. And how the process worked in Washington I actually know very little about, because the channel was from the president to Rumsfeld to Bremer.

It's a challenge to parse Slocombe's various statements. Here, in the space of two sentences, he claims both that his government experience has mostly been in Washington and that he doesn't know how Washington works. As mentioned earlier, he had previously told the Washington Post that the disbanding order was not "done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad"-in other words, the decision was made in Washington. The inconsistency of his accounts from year to year, and even in the same interview, adds to an aura of concealment.

This further illustrates the disconnect between what was decided by the NSC in Washington in March and by the CPA in Iraq in May. In his memoir, Feith notes that although he supported the disbanding policy, "the decision became associated with a number of unnecessary problems, including the apparent lack of interagency review."

... ... ...

John Hay is a former executive branch official under Republican administrations.

[Oct 29, 2015] President Carter Rips Cheney Over Iraq: 'His Batting Average Is Abysmally Low'

Notable quotes:
"... If you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything and his prediction of what is going to happen, reasons for going over there and obviously this is not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there, to call for a change in policy in Iraq. ..."
"... One measure of the impact of the Iraq War is the precipitous drop in public support for the United States in Muslim countries. Jordan, a key U.S. ally, saw popular approval for the United States drop from 25 percent in 2002 to 1 percent in 2003. In Lebanon during the same period, favorable views of the United States dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, and in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, favorable views plummeted from 61 percent to 15 percent. ..."
"... One of the cell's members, Younis Elian Abu Jarir, a taxi driver whose job was to ferry the group around, stated in a confession offered as evidence in court that they convinced me of the need for holy war against the Jews, Americans, Italians, and other nationalities that participated in the occupation of Iraq. ..."
forums.allaboutjazz.com
Saundra Hummer

February 26th, 2007, 05:07 PM

.

^^^^^^^

President Carter Rips Cheney Over Iraq: 'His Batting Average Is Abysmally Low'

Last week, Vice President Cheney attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) for supporting Iraq redeployment. He charged that their plan would "validate the al Qaeda strategy."

Today, former President Jimmy Carter rejected Cheney's charges, stating that calls for a change of policy in Iraq are "not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there." He added, "If you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything."

Click on the following URL to view.

Watch it:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/25/carter-cheney/

Digg It!

Transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Vice President Cheney this week has been very harsh on those kinds of measures in the Congress.

[CHENEY CLIP]: If we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we'll do is validate the al Qaeda strategy. The al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people.

CARTER: If you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything and his prediction of what is going to happen, reasons for going over there and obviously this is not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there, to call for a change in policy in Iraq.

^^^^^
.


Saundra Hummer

February 26th, 2007, 05:34 PM

.

.........

Iraq 101:
The Iraq Effect
The War in Iraq and Its Impact on the War on Terrorism - Pg. 1

All right, no more excuses, people. After four years in Iraq, it's time to get serious. We've spent too long goofing off, waiting to be saved by the bell, praying that we won't get asked a stumper like, "What's the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?" Okay, even the head of the House intelligence committee doesn't know that one. All the more reason to start boning up on what we-and our leaders-should have learned back before they signed us up for this crash course in Middle Eastern geopolitics. And while we're at it, let's do the math on what the war really costs in blood and dollars. It's time for our own Iraq study group. Yes, there will be a test, and we can't afford to fail.

March 01 , 2007

By Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank
Research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law. Bergen is also a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.

"If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." So said President Bush on November 30, 2005, refining his earlier call to "bring them on." Jihadist terrorists, the administration's argument went, would be drawn to Iraq like moths to a flame, and would perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world.

The president's argument conveyed two important assumptions: first, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to U.S. interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists. However, the White House has never cited any evidence for either of these assumptions, and none appears to be publicly available.

The administration's own National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism: implications for the United States," circulated within the government in April 2006 and partially declassified in October, states that "the Iraq War has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists...and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

Yet administration officials have continued to suggest that there is no evidence any greater jihadist threat exists as a result of the Iraq War. "Are more terrorists being created in the world?" then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rhetorically asked during a press conference in September. "We don't know. The world doesn't know. There are not good metrics to determine how many people are being trained in a radical madrasa school in some country." In January 2007 Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in congressional testimony stated that he was "not certain" that the Iraq War had been a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and played down the likely impact of the war on jihadists worldwide: "I wouldn't say there has been a widespread growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq. I really wouldn't."

Indeed, though what we will call "The Iraq Effect" is a crucial matter for U.S. national security, we have found no statistical documentation of its existence and gravity, at least in the public domain. In this report, we have undertaken what we believe to be the first such study, using information from the world's premier database on global terrorism. The results are being published for the first time by Mother Jones, the news and investigative magazine, as part of a broader "Iraq 101" package in the magazine's March/April 2007 issue.

<< Breaking The Army << >> The Iraq Effect Pg. 2 >> Iraq Effect (continued)
Our study shows that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.

We are not making the argument that without the Iraq War, jihadist terrorism would not exist, but our study shows that the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the Al Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.

In our study we focused on the following questions:

Has jihadist terrorism gone up or down around the world since the invasion of Iraq?
What has been the trend if terrorist incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan (the military fronts of the "war on terrorism") are excluded?
Has terrorism explicitly directed at the United States and its allies also increased?
In order to zero in on The Iraq Effect, we focused on the rate of terrorist attacks in two time periods: September 12, 2001, to March 20, 2003 (the day of the Iraq invasion), and March 21, 2003, to September 30, 2006. Extending the data set before 9/11 would risk distorting the results, because the rate of attacks by jihadist groups jumped considerably after 9/11 as jihadist terrorists took inspiration from the events of that terrible day.

We first determined which terrorist organizations should be classified as jihadist. We included in this group Sunni extremist groups affiliated with or sympathetic to the ideology of Al Qaeda. We decided to exclude terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups, as they depend largely on factors particular to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Our study draws its data from the MIPT-RAND Terrorism database (available at terrorismknowledgebase.org), which is widely considered to be the best publicly available database on terrorism incidents. RAND defines a terrorist attack as an attack on a civilian entity designed to promote fear or alarm and further a particular political agenda. In our study we only included attacks that caused at least one fatality and were attributed by RAND to a known jihadist group. In some terrorist attacks, and this is especially the case in Iraq, RAND has not been able to attribute a particular attack to a known jihadist group. Therefore our study likely understates the extent of jihadist terrorism in Iraq and around the world.

Our study yields one resounding finding: The rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.

And even when attacks in both Afghanistan and Iraq (the two countries that together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of deaths since the invasion of Iraq) are excluded, there has still been a significant rise in jihadist terrorism elsewhere--a 35 percent increase in the number of jihadist terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan and Iraq, from 27.6 to 37 a year, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities from 496 to 554 per year.

Of course, just because jihadist terrorism has risen in the period after the invasion of Iraq, it does not follow that events in Iraq itself caused the change. For example, a rise in attacks in the Kashmir conflict and the Chechen separatist war against Russian forces may have nothing to do with the war in Iraq. But the most direct test of The Iraq Effect--whether the United States and its allies have suffered more jihadist terrorism after the invasion than before--shows that the rate of jihadist attacks on Western interests and citizens around the world (outside of Afghanistan and Iraq) has risen by a quarter, from 7.2 to 9 a year, while the yearly fatality rate in these attacks has increased by 4 percent from 191 to 198.

One of the few positive findings of our study is that only 18 American civilians (not counting civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan) have been killed by jihadist groups since the war in Iraq began. But that number is still significantly higher than the four American civilians who were killed in attacks attributed to jihadist groups in the period between 9/11 and the Iraq War. It was the capture and killing of much of Al Qaeda's leadership after 9/11 and the breakup of its training camp facilities in Afghanistan--not the war in Iraq--that prevented Al Qaeda from successfully launching attacks on American targets on the scale it did in the years before 9/11.

Also undermining the argument that Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are being distracted from plotting against Western targets are the dangerous, anti-American plots that have arisen since the start of the Iraq War. Jihadist terrorists have attacked key American allies since the Iraq conflict began, mounting multiple bombings in London that killed 52 in July 2005, and attacks in Madrid in 2004 that killed 191. Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London bombers, stated in his videotaped suicide "will," "What have you witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq." There have been six jihadist attacks on the home soil of the United States' NATO allies (including Turkey) in the period after the invasion of Iraq, whereas there were none in the 18 months following 9/11; and, of course, the plan uncovered in London in August 2006 to smuggle liquid explosives onto U.S. airliners, had it succeeded, would have killed thousands.

Al Qaeda has not let the Iraq War distract it from targeting the United States and her allies. In a January 19, 2006 audiotape, Osama bin Laden himself refuted President Bush's argument that Iraq had distracted and diverted Al Qaeda: "The reality shows that that the war against America and its allies has not remained limited to Iraq, as he claims, but rather, that Iraq has become a source and attraction and recruitment of qualified people.... As for the delay in similar [terrorist] operations in America, [the] operations are being prepared, and you will witness them, in your own land, as soon as preparations are complete."

Ayman al Zawahiri echoed bin Laden's words in a March 4, 2006, videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera calling for jihadists to launch attacks on the home soil of Western countries: "[Muslims have to] inflict losses on the crusader West, especially to its economic infrastructure with strikes that would make it bleed for years. The strikes on New York, Washington, Madrid, and London are the best examples.

One measure of the impact of the Iraq War is the precipitous drop in public support for the United States in Muslim countries. Jordan, a key U.S. ally, saw popular approval for the United States drop from 25 percent in 2002 to 1 percent in 2003. In Lebanon during the same period, favorable views of the United States dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, and in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, favorable views plummeted from 61 percent to 15 percent. Disliking the United States does not make you a terrorist, but clearly the pool of Muslims who dislike the United States has grown by hundreds of millions since the Iraq War began. The United States' plummeting popularity does not suggest active popular support for jihadist terrorists but it does imply some sympathy with their anti-American posture, which means a significant swath of the Muslim population cannot be relied on as an effective party in counter-terrorism/insurgency measures. And so, popular contempt for U.S. policy has become a force multiplier for Islamist militants.

The Iraq War has also encouraged Muslim youth around the world to join jihadist groups, not necessarily directly tied to Al Qaeda but often motivated by a similar ideology. The Iraq War allowed Al Qaeda, which was on the ropes in 2002 after the United States had captured or killed two-thirds of its leadership, to reinvent itself as a broader movement because Al Qaeda's central message--that the United States is at war with Islam--was judged by significant numbers of Muslims to have been corroborated by the war in Iraq. And compounding this, the wide dissemination of the exploits of jihadist groups in Iraq following the invasion energized potential and actual jihadists across the world.

How exactly has The Iraq Effect played out in different parts of the world? The effect has not been uniform. Europe, the Arab world, and Afghanistan all saw major rises in jihadist terrorism in the period after the invasion of Iraq, while Pakistan and India and the Chechnya/Russia front saw only smaller increases in jihadist terrorism. And in Southeast Asia, attacks and killings by jihadist groups fell by over 60 percent in the period after the Iraq War. The strength or weakness of The Iraq Effect on jihadist terrorism in a particular country seems to be influenced by four factors: (1) if the country itself has troops in Iraq; (2) geographical proximity to Iraq; (3) the degree of identification with Iraq's Arabs felt in the country; and (4) the level of exchanges of ideas or personnel with Iraqi jihadist groups. This may explain why jihadist groups in Europe, Arab countries, and Afghanistan were more affected by the Iraq War than groups in other regions. Europe, unlike Kashmir, Chechnya, and Southeast Asia for example, contains several countries that are part of the coalition in Iraq. It is relatively geographically close to the Arab world and has a large Arab-Muslim diaspora from which jihadists have recruited.

European intelligence services are deeply concerned about the effect of the Iraq War. For example, Dame Eliza Mannigham-Buller, the head of Britain's MI5, stated on November 10, 2006, "In Iraq, attacks are regularly videoed and the footage is downloaded onto the Internet [and] chillingly we see the results here. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and damage our economy...30 that we know of. [The] threat is serious, is growing, and, I believe, will be with us for a generation." Startlingly, a recent poll found that a quarter of British Muslims believe that the July 7, 2005, London bombings were justifiable because of British foreign policy, bearing out Dame Eliza's concern about a new generation of radicals in the United Kingdom.

While Islamist militants in Europe are mobilized by a series of grievances such as Palestine, Afghanistan, the Kashmir conflict, and Chechnya, no issue has resonated more in radical circles and on Islamist websites than the war in Iraq. This can be seen in the skyrocketing rate of jihadist terrorist attacks around the Arab world outside of Iraq. There have been 37 attacks in Arab countries outside of Iraq since the invasion, while there were only three in the period between 9/11 and March 2003. The rate of attacks in Arab countries jumped by 445 percent since the Iraq invasion, while the rate of killings rose by 783 percent. The November 9, 2005 bombings of three American hotels in Amman, Jordan, that killed 60, an operation directed by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq network, was the most direct manifestation of The Iraq Effect in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has seen an upsurge in jihadist terrorism since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There were no jihadist terrorist attacks between 9/11 and the Iraq War but 12 in the period since. The reason for the surge in terrorism was a decision taken by Al Qaeda's Saudi branch in the spring of 2003 to launch a wave of attacks (primarily at Western targets) to undermine the Saudi royal family. These attacks were initiated on May 12, 2003 with the bombing of Western compounds in Riyadh, killing 34, including 10 Americans. While Saudi authorities believe that planning and training for the operation predated the war in Iraq, the timing of the attack, just weeks after the U.S invasion is striking.

The fact that the Iraq War radicalized some young Saudis is underlined by studies showing that more Saudis have conducted suicide operations in Iraq than any other nationality. For instance, Mohammed Hafez, a visiting professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, in a study of the 101 identified suicide attackers in Iraq from March 2003 to February 2006, found that more than 40 percent were Saudi. This jihadist energy was not just transferred over the Saudi border into Iraq. It also contributed to attacks in the Kingdom. The group that beheaded the American contractor Paul Johnson in Riyadh in June 2004 called itself the "Al Fallujah brigade of Al Qaeda" and claimed that it had carried out the killing in part to avenge the actions of "disbelievers" in Iraq. In January 2004 Al Qaeda's Saudi affiliate launched Al Battar, an online training magazine specifically directed at young Saudis interested in fighting their regime. The achievements of jihadists in Iraq figured prominently in its pages. Indeed, a contributor to the first issue of Al Battar argued that the Iraq War had made jihad "a commandment" for Saudi Arabians " the Islamic nation is today in acute conflict with the Crusaders."

The Iraq War had a strong impact in other Arab countries too. Daily images aired by Al Jazeera and other channels of suffering Iraqis enraged the Arab street and strengthened the hands of radicals everywhere. In Egypt, the Iraq War has contributed to a recent wave of attacks by small, self-generated groups. A Sinai-based jihadist group carried out coordinated bombing attacks on Red Sea resorts popular with Western tourists at Taba in October 2004, at Sharm el-Sheikh in July 2005, and at Dahab in April 2006, killing a total of more than 120.

One of the cell's members, Younis Elian Abu Jarir, a taxi driver whose job was to ferry the group around, stated in a confession offered as evidence in court that "they convinced me of the need for holy war against the Jews, Americans, Italians, and other nationalities that participated in the occupation of Iraq." Osama Rushdi, a former spokesman of the Egyptian terrorist group Gamma Islamiyya now living in London, told us that while attacks in the Sinai were partly directed at the Egyptian regime, they appeared to be primarily anti-Western in motivation: "The Iraq War contributed to the negative feelings of the Sinai group. Before the Iraq War, most Egyptians did not have a negative feeling towards American policy. Now almost all are opposed to American policy."

Since the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan has suffered 219 jihadist terrorist attacks that can be attributed to a particular group, resulting in the deaths of 802 civilians. The fact that the Taliban only conducted its first terrorist attacks in September 2003, a few months after the invasion of Iraq, is significant. International forces had already been stationed in the country for two years before the Taliban began to specifically target the U.S.-backed Karzai government and civilians sympathetic to it. This points to a link between events in Iraq and the initiation of the Taliban's terrorist campaign in Afghanistan.

True, local dynamics form part of the explanation for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the use of terrorism, particularly suicide attacks, by the Taliban is an innovation drawn from the Iraqi theater. Hekmat Karzai, an Afghan terrorism researcher, points out that suicide bombings were virtually unknown in Afghanistan until 2005. In 2006, Karzai says, there were 118 such attacks, more than there had been in the entire history of the country. Internet sites have helped spread the tactics of Iraqi jihadists. In 2005 the "Media Committee of the Al Qaeda Mujahideen in Afghanistan" launched an online magazine called Vanguards of Kharasan, which includes articles on what Afghan fighters can learn from Coalition and jihadist strategies in Iraq. Abdul Majid Abdul Majed, a contributor to the April 2006 issue of the magazine, argued for an expansion in suicide operations, citing the effectiveness of jihadist operations in Iraq.

Mullah Dadullah, a key Taliban commander, gave an interview to Al Jazeera in 2006 in which he explained how the Iraq War has influenced the Taliban. Dadullah noted that "we have 'give and take' with the mujahideen in Iraq." Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who is writing bin Laden's biography, told us that young men traveled from the Afghan province of Khost to "on-the-job training" in Iraq in 2004. "They came back with lots of CDs which were full of military actions against U.S. troops in the Mosul, Fallujah, and Baghdad areas. I think suicide bombing was introduced in Afghanistan and Pakistan after local boys came back after spending some time in Iraq. I met a Taliban commander, Mullah Mannan, last year in Zabul who told me that he was trained in Iraq by Zarqawi along with many Pakistani tribals."

Propaganda circulating in Afghanistan and Pakistan about American "atrocities" and jihadist "heroics" has also energized the Taliban, encouraging a previously somewhat isolated movement to see itself as part of a wider struggle. Our study found a striking correlation in how terrorist campaigns intensified in Iraq and Afghanistan. The rate of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan gathered pace in the summer of 2005, a half year after a similar increase in Iraq, and in 2006 the rate of attacks in both countries rose in tandem to new, unprecedented levels.

While the Iraq War has had a strong effect on the rise in terrorism in Afghanistan, it appears to have played less of a role on jihadists operating in Pakistan and India, though terrorism did rise in those countries following the invasion of Iraq. (Of course, neither Pakistan nor India has foreign troops on its soil, which accounts, in part, for the high terrorism figures in Afghanistan.) The rate of jihadist attacks rose by 21 percent while the fatality rate rose by 19 percent. There were 52 attacks after the Iraq invasion, killing 489 civilians, while there were 19 in the period before, killing 182. The local dynamics of the Kashmir conflict, tensions between India and Pakistan, and the resurfacing of the Taliban in eastern Pakistan likely played a large role here. That said, there is evidence that the Iraq War did energize jihadists in Pakistan. Hamid Mir says, "Iraq not only radicalized the Pakistani tribals [near the Afghan border] but it offered them the opportunity for them to go to Iraq via Iran to get on-the-job training."

There is also evidence that the Iraq War had some impact in other areas of Pakistan. In the summer of 2004, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the head of the Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, told followers in Lahore, "Islam is in grave danger, and the mujahideen are fighting to keep its glory. They are fighting the forces of evil in Iraq in extremely difficult circumstances. We should send mujahideen from Pakistan to help them." And Pakistan, inasmuch as it has become Al Qaeda's new base for training and planning attacks, has become the location where significant numbers of would-be jihadists--including some young British Pakistanis such as the London suicide bombers, radicalized in part by the Iraq War--have traveled to learn bomb-making skills.

In Russia and Chechnya, the Iraq War appears to have had less of an impact than on other jihadist fronts. This is unsurprising given the fact that jihadist groups in the region are preoccupied by a separatist war against the Russian military. Whilst following the invasion of Iraq there was a rise in the number of attacks by Chechen groups that share a similar ideology with Al Qaeda, the total rate of fatalities did not go up. The Iraq War does seem to have diverted some jihadists from the Russian/Chechen front: Arab fighters who might have previously gone to Chechnya now have a cause at their own doorstep, while funds from Arab donors increasingly have gone to the Iraqi jihad.

Southeast Asia has been the one region in the world in which jihadist terrorism has declined significantly in the period since the invasion of Iraq. There was a 67 percent drop in the rate of attacks (from 10.5 to 3.5 attacks per year) in the post-invasion period and a 69 percent drop in the rate of fatalities (from 201 to 62 fatalities per year). And there has been no bombing on the scale of the October 2002 Bali nightclub attack that killed more than 200. However, jihadist terrorism in Southeast Asia has declined in spite, not because of, the Iraq War. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was deeply unpopular in the region, as demonstrated by the poll finding that only 15 percent of Indonesians had a favorable view of the United States in 2003. But the negative impact of the Iraq War on public opinion was mitigated by U.S. efforts to aid the region in the wake of the devastating tsunami of December 2004--Pew opinion surveys have shown that the number of those with favorable views towards the United States in Indonesia crept above 30 percent in 2005 and 2006.

However, the main reason for the decline of jihadist terrorism in Southeast Asia has been the successful crackdown by local authorities on jihadist groups and their growing unpopularity with the general population. The August 2003 capture of Hambali, Jemaa Islamiya's operational commander, was key to degrading the group's capacity to launch attacks as was the arrest of hundreds of Jemaa Islamiya and Abu Sayyaf operatives in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore in the years after the October 2002 Bali bombings. Those arrested included most of those who planned the Bali attacks, as well as former instructors at Jemaa Islamiya camps and individuals involved in financing attacks. And in November 2005 Indonesian security services killed Jemaa Islamiya master bomber Azhari bin Husin in a shoot-out. The second wave of Bali attacks in 2005 killed mostly Indonesians and created a popular backlash against jihadist groups in Indonesia, degrading their ability to recruit operatives. And Muslim leaders such as Masdar Farid Masudi, the deputy leader of the country's largest Islamic group, condemned the bombings: "If the perpetrators are Muslims, their sentences must be multiplied because they have tarnished the sacredness of their religion and smeared its followers worldwide."

Iraq Effect (continued)
Our survey shows that the Iraq conflict has motivated jihadists around the world to see their particular struggle as part of a wider global jihad fought on behalf of the Islamic ummah, the global community of Muslim believers. The Iraq War had a strong impact in jihadist circles in the Arab world and Europe, but also on the Taliban, which previously had been quite insulated from events elsewhere in the Muslim world. By energizing the jihadist groups, the Iraq conflict acted as a catalyst for the increasing globalization of the jihadist cause, a trend that should be deeply troubling for American policymakers. In the late 1990s, bin Laden pushed a message of a global jihad and attracted recruits from around the Muslim world to train and fight in Afghanistan. The Iraq War has made bin Laden's message of global struggle even more persuasive to militants. Over the past three years, Iraq has attracted thousands of foreign fighters who have been responsible for the majority of suicide attacks in the country. Those attacks have had an enormous strategic impact; for instance, getting the United Nations to pull out of Iraq and sparking the Iraqi civil war.

Emblematic of the problem is Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman who on November 9, 2005, near the town of Baquba in central Iraq, detonated a bomb as she drove past an American patrol. In the bomb crater, investigators found travel documents that showed that she had arrived in Iraq from Belgium just a few weeks earlier with her Moroccan-Belgian husband Hissam Goris. The couple had been recruited by "Al Qaeda in Iraq." Goris would die the following day, shot by American forces as he prepared to launch a suicide attack near Fallujah.

The story of Muriel Degauque and her husband is part of a trend that Harvard terrorism researcher Assaf Moghadam terms the "globalization of martyrdom." The London suicide bombings in July 2005 revealed the surprising willingness of four British citizens to die to protest the United Kingdom's role in the Coalition in Iraq; Muriel Degauque, for her part, was willing to die for the jihadist cause in a country in which she was a stranger.

This challenges some existing conceptions of the motivations behind suicide attacks. In 2005 University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape published a much-commented-upon study of suicide bombing, "Dying to Win," in which he used a mass of data about previous suicide bombing campaigns to argue that they principally occurred "to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland." (Of course, terrorism directed against totalitarian regimes rarely occurs because such regimes are police states and are unresponsive to public opinion.) Pape also argued that while religion might aggravate campaigns of suicide terrorism, such campaigns had also been undertaken by secular groups, most notably the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, whose most spectacular success was the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female suicide attacker in 1991.

Pape's findings may explain the actions and motivations of terrorist groups in countries such as Sri Lanka, but his principal claim that campaigns of suicide terrorism are generally nationalist struggles to liberate occupied lands that have little to do with religious belief does not survive contact with the reality of what is going on today in Iraq. The most extensive suicide campaign in history is being conducted in Iraq largely by foreigners animated by the deeply-held religious belief that they must liberate a Muslim land from the "infidel" occupiers.

While Iraqis make up the great bulk of the insurgents, several studies have shown that the suicide attackers in Iraq are generally foreigners, while only a small proportion are Iraqi. (Indeed, the most feared terrorist leader in Iraq until his death earlier this year, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was a Jordanian.) The Israeli researcher Reuven Paz, using information posted on Al Qaeda-linked websites between October 2004 and March 2005, found that of the 33 suicide attacks listed, 23 were conducted by Saudis, and only 1 by an Iraqi. Similarly, in June 2005 the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute of Washington, D.C. found by tracking both jihadist websites and media reports that of the 199 Sunni extremists who had died in Iraq either in suicide attacks or in action against Coalition or Iraqi forces, 104 were from Saudi Arabia and only 21 from Iraq. The rest were predominantly from countries around the Middle East. And Mohammed Hafez in his previously cited study of the 101 "known" suicide bombers in Iraq found that while 44 were Saudi and 8 were from Italy (!), only 7 were from Iraq.

In congressional testimony this past November, CIA Director General Michael Hayden said that "an overwhelming percentage of the suicide bombers are foreign." A senior U.S. military intelligence official told us that a worrisome recent trend is the rising number of North Africans who have joined the ranks of foreign fighters in Iraq, whose number General Hayden pegged at 1,300 during his November congressional testimony. A Saudi official also confirmed to us the rising number of North Africans who are being drawn into the Iraq War.

The globalization of jihad and martyrdom, accelerated to a significant degree by the Iraq War, has some disquieting implications for American security in the future. First, it has energized jihadist groups generally; second, not all foreign fighters attracted to Iraq will die there. In fact there is evidence that some jihadists are already leaving Iraq to operate elsewhere. Saudi Arabia has made a number of arrests of fighters coming back from Iraq, and Jordanian intelligence sources say that 300 fighters have returned to Jordan from Iraq. As far away as Belgium, authorities have indicated that Younis Lekili, an alleged member of the cell that recruited Muriel Degauque, had previously traveled to fight in Iraq, where he lost his leg. (Lekili is awaiting trial in Belgium.)

German, French, and Dutch intelligence officials have estimated that there are dozens of their citizens returning from the Iraq theater, and some appear to have been determined to carry out attacks on their return to Europe. For example, French police arrested Hamid Bach, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, in June 2005 in Montpellier, several months after he returned from a staging camp for Iraq War recruits in Syria. According to French authorities, Bach's handlers there instructed him to assist with plotting terrorist attacks in Italy. Back in France, Bach is alleged to have bought significant quantities of hydrogen peroxide and to have looked up details on explosives and detonators online. (Bach is awaiting trial in France.)

This "blowback" trend will greatly increase when the war eventually winds down in Iraq. In the short term the countries most at risk are those whose citizens have traveled to fight in Iraq, in particular Arab countries bordering Iraq. Jamal Khashoggi, a leading Saudi expert on jihadist groups, told us that "while Iraq brought new blood into the Al Qaeda organization in Saudi Arabia, this was at a time when the network was being dismantled. Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia could not accommodate these recruits so they sent them to Iraq to train them, motivate them, and prepare them for a future wave of attacks in the Kingdom. It is a deep worry to Saudi authorities that Saudis who have gone to Iraq will come back." That's a scenario for which Khashoggi says Saudi security forces are painstakingly preparing.

Several U.S. citizens have tried to involve themselves in the Iraq jihad. In December an American was arrested in Cairo, Egypt, accused of being part of a cell plotting terrorist attacks in Iraq. And in February 2006 three Americans from Toledo, Ohio, were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill U.S. military personnel in Iraq. According to the FBI, one of these individuals, Mohammad Zaki Amawi, was in contact with an Arab jihadist group sending fighters to Iraq and tried unsuccessfully to cross the border into Iraq. However, to date there is no evidence of Americans actually fighting in Iraq so the number of returnees to the United States is likely to be small. The larger risk is that jihadists will migrate from Iraq to Western countries, a trend that will be accelerated if, as happened following the Afghan jihad against the Soviets, those fighters are not allowed to return to their home countries.

Already terrorist groups in Iraq may be in a position to start sending funds to other jihadist fronts. According to a U.S. government report leaked to the New York Times in November 2006, the fact that insurgent and terrorist groups are raising up to $200 million a year from various illegal activities such as kidnapping and oil theft in Iraq means that they "may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside Iraq." Indeed, a letter from Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al Zawahiri, to Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in July 2005 contained this revealing request: "Many of the [funding] lines have been cut off. Because of this we need a payment while new lines are being opened. So if you're capable of sending a payment of approximately one hundred thousand we'll be very grateful to you."

The "globalization of martyrdom" prompted by the Iraq War has not only attracted foreign fighters to die in Iraq (we record 148 suicide-terrorist attacks in Iraq credited to an identified jihadist group) but has also encouraged jihadists to conduct many more suicide operations elsewhere. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there has been a 246 percent rise in the rate of suicide attacks (6 before and 47 after) by jihadist groups outside of Iraq and a 24 percent increase in the corresponding fatality rate. Even excluding Afghanistan, there has been a 150 percent rise in the rate of suicide attacks and a 14 percent increase in the rate of fatalities attributable to jihadists worldwide. The reasons for the spread of suicide bombing attacks in other jihadist theaters are complex but the success of these tactics in Iraq, the lionization that Iraqi martyrs receive on jihadist websites, and the increase in feelings of anger and frustration caused by images of the Iraq War have all likely contributed significantly. The spread of suicide bombings should be of great concern to the United States in defending its interests and citizens around the world, because they are virtually impossible to defend against.

The Iraq War has also encouraged the spread of more hardline forms of jihad (the corollary to an increase in suicide bombing). Anger and frustration over Iraq has increased the popularity, especially among young militants, of a hardcore takfiri ideology that is deeply intolerant of divergent interpretations of Islam and highly tolerant of extreme forms of violence. The visceral anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Shiism widely circulated among the Internet circles around ideologues such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada (both Jordanian-Palestinian mentors to Abu Musab al Zarqawi) and Al Qaeda's Syrian hawk, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, are even more extreme, unlikely as it may sound, than the statements of bin Laden himself.

Our study shows just how counterproductive the Iraq War has been to the war on terrorism. The most recent State Department report on global terrorism states that the goal of the United States is to identify, target, and prevent the spread of "jihadist groups focused on attacking the United States or its allies [and those groups that] view governments and leaders in the Muslim world as their primary targets." Yet, since the invasion of Iraq, attacks by such groups have risen more than sevenfold around the world. And though few Americans have been killed by jihadist terrorists in the past three years it is wishful thinking to believe that this will continue to be the case, given the continued determination of militant jihadists to target the country they see as their main enemy. We will be living with the consequences of the Iraq debacle for more than a decade.

Special thanks to Mike Torres and Zach Stern at NYU and Kim Cragin and Drew Curiel at RAND.

<< The Iraq Effect Pg.5 << >> The Data: The Iraq War and Jihadist Terrorism >>
Go on-site for sources, charts, etc. Just click on the following URLs:
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[Oct 22, 2015] Russians are concerned with the possibility of organizing Maidan in their country by Western intelligence and internal neoliberal fifth column

Looks like color revolutions became less effective in xUSSR space as more and more people started to understand the mechanics and financial source of "pro-democracy" (aka pro-Washington) protesters. BTW what a skillful and shameless presstitute is this Shaun Walker
Notable quotes:
"... The State Department funding of NGOs in Ukraine promoting the right kind of democracy to the tune of $5 billion is a matter of record, courtesy of Fuck the EU Nuland. ..."
"... As for CIA involvement, the director of the CIA has visited Ukraine at least twice in 2014 - once under a false identity. If the head of the equivalent Russian organisation had made similar visits, that would be a problem, no? ..."
"... Just because some Russians are paranoid about US interference, that doesnt mean they are wrong. ..."
"... International Observer: The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs ..."
"... This article contains unacceptable, apparently carefully wrapped up, distortions of what is happening in Russia. A piece of journalism which tell us something about the level of propaganda that most mainstream media in our free west have set up in the attempt to organize yet another coup, this time under the thick walls of the Kremlin. This newspaper seem to pursue this goal, as it shows to have taken sides: stand by NATO and of course the British interests. If this implies misguiding the readers on what is taking place in Russia\Ukraine or elsewhere (Syria for example) well...thats too bad, the answer would be. Goals justify the means...so forget about honesty, fair play and truthfullness. If it needs to be a war (we have decided so, because it is convenient) then... lies are not lies...but clever tools that we are allowed to use in order to destroy our enemy. ..."
"... The patriots are most probably a neurotic sort of reaction to what most Russians now perceive to be an attempt from NSA, CIA..and more in general of the US/EU geo-political strategies (much more of the US, of course, as the EU and Britain simply follow the instructions) to dismantle the present Russian system (the political establishment first and then the ARMY). ..."
"... Contrary to what is happening here in the west (where all media seem to the have joined the club of the one-way-thinking against Russia), some important media of that country do have a chance to criticize Putin and his policies. ..."
"... a minority can express their opinion, as long as they do not attempt to overthrow the parliament, which is an expression of Russian people. ..."
"... I will generalize here - if by those you mean the West you are mistaken. The vast majority of its populace are carrying a huge burden of personal debt - it is the bank that owns their houses and new autos. There is a tiny stratum that indeed is wildly wealthy, frequently referred to as the 1%, but in fact is much less numerous. ..."
"... If you scrap off the BS from this article they do have a point, because it has been a popular tactic of a certain country to change another countries government *Cough* America *Cough* by organising protests/riots within a target country ..."
"... if that doesnt work they escalate that to fire fights and if that doesnt work they move onto say Downing a aeroplane and very quickly claiming its the other side fault without having any evidence or claim they have WMDs well anything to try to take the moral high ground on the situation even thou they caused the situation usual for selfish, arrogant and greedy reasons. ..."
"... Wow, this is quite an assertion that Russians are poorer than Indians. I have been to India and I have been to Russia and I dont like using anecdotes to make a point. I can tell you that I have never seen as much poverty as in India. ..."
"... Also, I doubt youve visited many small and lesser known cities in Russia. Its as if the Soviet Union had just collapsed and they were forgotten. Worse, actually. ..."
"... Werent the Maidan protests anti-democracy since they used violence to remove a democratically elected leader? Just another anti-ruskie hit piece from the Guardian. ..."
"... In the US you only get 2 choices - it may be twice as many as you get with a dictatorship but its hardly democracy. ..."
"... Also the election of the coup government was unconstitutional under article 111 of the Ukraines own Constitution (Goggle - check for yourself). This is an undisputed and uncomfortable fact which the US and the EU never mention (never) when drawn on the issue. ..."
"... Since the day one the West and the GDR used nazis for their laboratories, clandestine and civil services...State owned museums still refuse to give back artwork to their rightful owners that were robbed during 1930-45. ..."
"... A more interesting story would have been the similarities between this anti maidan group in Russia and Maidan in Kiev. Both have have their military arm, are dangerous and violent, and both very nationalistic and right wing. Both appear to have strong links to politicians as well. Such an analysis might show that Russian and Ukrainian nationalist groups have more in common than they would like to believe. ..."
"... A very important difference is the Russians are defending their elected government. The Ukrainians were hired by the West to promote a coup detat against an elected government, this against the will of the majority in Ukraine and only 3 months from general election in the country. The coup was indeed a way of stopping the elections. ..."
"... Oh I see Russia has re-entered the media cross hairs in a timely fashion. I wonder whats going to happen in the coming weeks. ..."
"... And the US will continue to murder innocent civilians in the Middle East, Northern Africa and wherever else it wants to plant its bloody army boots. And will also continue to use its NGOs and CIA to foment colour revolutions in other countries, as it did in Ukraine ..."
"... What kind of democracy is the US when you have a federal agency spying on everything you do and say? Do you think they are just going to sit on what information they think they get? ..."
"... Yes. Decisions should be made in Kiev, but why are they being made in Washington then? ..."
"... Potroshenko was elected with a turnout of 46%. Of this he scored say over half, hardly a majority ..."
"... "Under the slogan of fighting for democracy there is instead total fear, total propaganda, and no freedom." ..."
"... After witnessing what happened during Maidan, and subsequently to Ukraine, I understand some Russians reluctance to see a similar scenario played out in Russia. That being: am also wary of vISISantism. ..."
"... As for the anti-Maidan quotes - of course that was organised. Nuland:, for crying out loud. Kerry and others were there, Brennan was there. Of course the Western powers were partly involved. And it wasnt peaceful protests, it was violence directed against elected officials, throwing Molotov cocktails at policemen. It culminated in the burning alive of 40+ people in Odessa. ..."
"... Professor Gregory has, dishonestly, arrived at his 15% figure by taking the minimum figure for Crimea for both turnout and for voters for union, calling them the maximum, and then ignoring Sevastopol. He has also pretended the report is based on the "real results," when it seems to be little more than the imprecise estimates of a small working group who were apparently against the idea of the referendum in the first place. ..."
"... This is not an unexpected result. EU and US governments are going out of way to stir peoples opinion in the former Soviet republics. ..."
"... There were students from Lviv who were given college credit for being at Maidan. ..."
"... There are specific politicians who rejected participation in normal political process but chosen street riots instead. ..."
"... Is the US training and funding the Ukraine opposition? Nuland herself claimed in December that the US had spent $5 billion since the 1990s on democratization programs in Ukraine. On what would she like us to believe the money had been spent? ..."
"... All of this stems from the stupid EU meddling in Ukraine. We shouldnt get involved in the EUs regime change agenda. Time to leave the EU. ..."
"... Putinbot = someone who has a different opinion to you ..."
"... How about the reporting on the indiscriminate slaughter of Eastern Ukrainians by Kievs government troops and Nazi battalions?? ..."
"... pro-democracy protesters? like ISIL, Right Sector, UÇK? They are right ..."
January 15, 2015 | The Guardian

Patriotic group formed to defend Russia against pro-democracy protesters by Shaun Walker

The group, which calls itself anti-Maidan,: Thursday it would fight any attempts to bring Russians on to the streets to protest against the government. Its name is a reference to the Maidan protests in Kiev last year that eventually led to the toppling of former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych.

"All street movements and color revolutions lead to blood. Women, children and old people suffer first", Dmitry Sablin, previously a long-standing MP from President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, who recently became a senator in Russia's upper house of parliament.

"It is not acceptable for the minority to force its will upon the majority, as happened in Ukraine," he added. "Under the slogan of fighting for democracy there is instead total fear, total propaganda, and no freedom."

jgbg -> RunLukeRun, 16 Jan 2015 06:36

BINGO....well done. You've got Neo Nazi's, US Aid, CIA infiltrators, indiscriminate slaughter and Nazi battalions....all in just 8 sentences. great job

I guess these are exactly the sort of people who will enrich the EU:

Nazis on the march in Kiev this month

Would you like to claim that the Azov and Aidar battalions aren't a bunch of Nazis?

Here's a Guardian article about Azov.

The State Department funding of NGOs in Ukraine "promoting the right kind of democracy" to the tune of $5 billion is a matter of record, courtesy of "Fuck the EU" Nuland.

As for CIA involvement, the director of the CIA has visited Ukraine at least twice in 2014 - once under a false identity. If the head of the equivalent Russian organisation had made similar visits, that would be a problem, no?

TuleCarbonari -> garethgj 16 Jan 2015 06:21

Yes, he should leave Syria to paid mercenaries. Do you really want us to believe you still don't know those fighters in Syria are George Soros' militias? Come on man, go get yourself informed.

jgbg -> Strummered 16 Jan 2015 06:19

You can't campaign for greater democracy, it's dangerous, it's far too democratic.

The USA cannot pay people to campaign in Russia to have the right kind of democracy i.e. someone acceptable to the US government at the helm. Instead of funding anti-government NGOs in other countries, perhaps the USA should first spend the money fixing the huge inequalities and other problems in their own country.

jgbg -> Glenn J. Hill 16 Jan 2015 06:12

What???? Have you been smoking?? Sorry but your Putin Thugs are NOT funded by my country.

I think he is referring the the NGOs which have spent large sums of money on "promoting democracy" in Georgia and Ukraine. Many of these are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and the US State Department. Some have funding from organisations which are in turn, funded by George Soros. These organisations were seen to back the Rose Revolution in Georgia and both revolutions in Ukraine. Georgia ended up with a president who worked as a lawyer in a US firm linked to the right wing of the Republican Party. Ukraine has a prime minister who was brought up in the USA and a president whom a US ambassador to Ukraine described as "our insider" (in a US Embassy cable leaked by Wikileaks).

The funding of similar organisations in Russia (e.g. Soldiers' Mothers) has been exposed since a law was brought in, requiring foreign funded NGOs to register and publish annual accounts.

Just because some Russians are paranoid about US interference, that doesn't mean they are wrong.

Anette Mor -> Hektor Uranga 16 Jan 2015 06:09

He was let out to form a party and take part in Moscow mayor election. He got respectable 20%. But shown no platform other than anti- corruption. There is anti-corruption hysteria in Russia already. People asked for positive agenda. He got none. The party base disintegrated. The court against him was because there was a case filed. I can agree the state might found this timely. But we cannot blame on Russian state absence of positive position in Navalny himself. He is reactive on current issues but got zero vision. Russia is a merit based society.

They look for brilliance in the leader. He is just a different caliber. Can contribute but not lead. His best way is to choose a district and stand for a parliament seat. The state already shown his is welcomed to enter big politics. Just need to stop lookibg to abroad for scripts. The list of names for US sanction was taking from his and his mates lists. After such exposure he lost any groups with many Russians.

Anette Mor -> notoriousANDinfamous 16 Jan 2015 05:50

I do not disregard positive side of democracy or negative side of dictatorship. I just offer a different scale. Put value of every human life above any ideology. The west is full of aggressive radicals from animal activists and greens to extremist gays and atheists. There is a need to downgrade some concepts and upgrade other, so yhe measures are universal. Bombing for democracy is equaly bad as bombing for personal power.

Anette Mor -> gilstra 16 Jan 2015 05:41

This is really not Guardian problem. They got every right to choose anti-Russian rant as the main topic. The problem is the balance. Nobody watching it and the media as a whole distorting the picture. Double standards are not good too. RT to stay permitted in the UK was told to interrupt every person they interview expressing directly opposite view. Might be OK with some theoretical conversation. But how you going to interrupt mother who just most a child by argument in favor of the killer? The regulator:C is out of their reach. But guardian should not be. Yet every material is one sided.

Asimpleguest -> romans

International Observer: ''The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs''

PeraIlic

"Decisions should be made in Moscow and not in Washington or Brussels," Nkolai Starikov, a nationalist writer and marginal politician.

Never mind that he's marginal politician. This man really knows how to express himself briefly. An Interview with Popular Russian Author and Politician Nikolai Starikov:

Those defending NATO expansion say that those countries wanted to be part of NATO.

Okay. But Cuba also wanted to house Soviet missiles voluntarily. If America did not object to Russian missiles in Cuba, would you support Ukraine joining NATO?

That would be a great trust-building measure on their part, and Russia would feel that America is a friend.

imperfetto

This article contains unacceptable, apparently carefully wrapped up, distortions of what is happening in Russia. A piece of journalism which tell us something about the level of propaganda that most mainstream media in our 'free' west have set up in the attempt to organize yet another coup, this time under the thick walls of the Kremlin. This newspaper seem to pursue this goal, as it shows to have taken sides: stand by NATO and of course the British interests. If this implies misguiding the readers on what is taking place in Russia\Ukraine or elsewhere (Syria for example) well...that's too bad, the answer would be. Goals justify the means...so forget about honesty, fair play and truthfullness. If it needs to be a war (we have decided so, because it is convenient) then... lies are not lies...but clever tools that we are allowed to use in order to destroy our enemy.

The patriots are most probably a neurotic sort of reaction to what most Russians now perceive to be an attempt from NSA, CIA..and more in general of the US/EU geo-political strategies (much more of the US, of course, as the EU and Britain simply follow the instructions) to dismantle the present Russian system (the political establishment first and then the ARMY).

The idea is to create an internal turmoil through some pretexts (gay, feminism, scandals...etc.) in the hope that a growing movement of protesters may finally shake up the 'palace' and foster the conditions for a coupe to take place. Then the right people will occupy the key chairs. Who are these subdued figures to be? They would be corrupted oligarchs, allowing the US to guide, control the Russian public life (haven't we noticed that three important ministers in Kiev are AMERICAN citizens!)

But, from what I understand, Russia is a democratic country. Its leader has been elected by the voters. Contrary to what is happening here in the west (where all media seem to the have joined the club of the one-way-thinking against Russia), some important media of that country do have a chance to criticize Putin and his policies. That's right, in a democratic republic. But, instead, the attempt to enact another Maidan, that is a FASCIST assault to the DUMA, would require a due response.

Thus, perhaps we could without any Patriots of the sort, that may feed the pernicious attention of western media. There should merely be the enforcement of the law:

a minority can express their opinion, as long as they do not attempt to overthrow the parliament, which is an expression of Russian people.

VladimirM

"The 'orange beast' is sharpening its teeth and looking to Russia,":e Surgeon, whose real name is Alexander Zaldostanov.

Actually, he used a Russian word "зверек", not "зверь". The latter can be rendered as "beast" but what he:s closer to "rodent", a small animal. So, using this word he just stressed his contemptious attitude rather than a degree of threat.

Kondratiev

There is at least anecdotal evidence that Maiden protestors were paid - see: http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-and-eu-are-paying-ukrainian-rioters-and-protesters/5369316 .

Bosula

These patriotic groups do seem extreme, but probably less extreme and odd than many of the current Ukrainian crop of politicians. Here is an article from the New York Observer that will get you up to speed....

The New York Observer:The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs

Robert Sandlin -> GreenKnighht

Did you forget the people in charge of the Ukraine then were Ukrainian communists.That many of the deaths were also ethnic Russian-Ukrainians.And the ones making policy in the USSR as a whole,in that period were mostly not ethnic-Russians.The leader was Georgian,his secret police chief and many of their enforcers were Jewish-Soviets.And his closest helpers were also mostly non-ethnic Russians.Recruited from all the important ethnic groups in the USSR,including many Ukrainians.It is a canard of the Wests to blame Russia for the famine that also killed many Russians.I'm sick of hearing the bs from the West over that tragic time trying to stir Russophobia.

seventh

Well, you know a government is seriously in the shit when it has to employ biker gangs to defend it.

Robert Sandlin -> seventh

Really? The government doesn't employ them. Defending the government is the job of the police and military. These civilian volunteers are only helping to show traitors in the pay of Westerners that the common people won't tolerate treason like happened in Ukraine, to strike Russia.Good for them,that should let potential 5th columnists know their bs isn't wanted in Russia.

Bulagen

I watch here in full swing manipulation of public opinion of Europeans, who imagines that they have "democracy" and "freedom of speech". All opinions, alternative General line, aimed at all discredit Russia in the eyes of the population of Europe ruthlessly removed the wording that Putin bots hinder communication "civilized public." And I am even more convinced that all this hysteria about "the problems of democracy in Russia" is nothing more than an attempt to sell Denyen horse (the so-called democratic values) to modern Trojans (Russians).

jezzam -> Bulagen

All the wealthiest, healthiest and happiest societies adhere to "so-called democratic values". They would also greatly benefit the Russian people. Putin opposes these values purely because they would threaten his power.

sashasmirnoff -> jezzam

The "wealthiest, healthiest and happiest societies"? That is description of whom?

I will generalize here - if by those you mean the "West" you are mistaken. The vast majority of it's populace are carrying a huge burden of personal debt - it is the bank that owns their houses and new autos. There is a tiny stratum that indeed is wildly wealthy, frequently referred to as the 1%, but in fact is much less numerous.

The West is generally regarded as being the least healthy society, largely due to horrifying diet, sedentary lifestyle, and considerable stress due to (amongst other things) the aforementioned struggle to not drown in huge personal debt.

I'm not certain as to how you qualify or quantify "happiness", but the West is also experiencing a mental health crisis, manifested in aberrant behaviour, wild consumption of pharmaceuticals to treat or drown out depression, suicide, high rates of incarceration etc. All symptoms of a deeply unhappy and unhealthy society.

One more thing - the supposed wealth and happiness of the West is predicated on the poverty and misery of those the West colonizes and exploits. The last thing on Earth the West would like to see is the extension of "democratic values" to those unfortunates. That would totally ruin the World Order.

Robert Sandlin -> kawarthan

Well the Ukrainians have the corner on Black and Brown shirts.So those colors are already taken.Blue,Red,White,maybe those?

Paultoo -> Robert Sandlin

Looking at the picture of that "patriotic" Russian biker it seems that Ukraine don´t have the corner on black shirts!

WardwarkOwner

Why do these uprisings/ internal conflicts seem to happen to energy producing countries or those that are on major oil/gas pipeline routes far more often than other countries?

Jackblob -> WardwarkOwner

I don't see any uprising in Canada, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, China, Mexico, the UAE, Iran, Norway, Qatar, etc.

So what exactly is your point?

Petros -> Sotrep Jackblob

Well there is problem in Sudan Iraq Syria Libya Nigeria . you have conflicts made up by USA to change governments and get raw materials . so ward is right . you just pretending to be blind . in Mexico ppl dying pretty much each day from corrupt people .

PullingTheStrings

If you scrap off the BS from this article they do have a point, because it has been a popular tactic of a certain country to change another countries government *Cough* America *Cough* by organising protests/riots within a target country

if that doesnt work they escalate that to fire fights and if that doesn't work they move onto say Downing a aeroplane and very quickly claiming its the other side fault without having any evidence or claim they have WMD's well anything to try to take the moral high ground on the situation even thou they caused the situation usual for selfish, arrogant and greedy reasons.

Jackblob -> PullingTheStrings

For some reason I do not trust you to discern the BS from the truth since your entire comment is an act of deflection.

The truth is most Russians are very poor, more poor than the people of India. This latest economic turmoil will make it even worse. Meanwhile, Putin and a handful of his cronies hold all the wealth. He proved he did not care about his people when he sent the FSB to bomb Moscow apartment buildings to start a war in Chechnya and ultimately to cancel elections.

Now Putin sees the potential for widespread protests and he is preparing to confront any protests with violent vISISante groups like those seen in other repressive countries.

Bob Vavich -> Jackblob

Wow, this is quite an assertion that Russians are poorer than Indians. I have been to India and I have been to Russia and I don't like using anecdotes to make a point. I can tell you that I have never seen as much poverty as in India.

I can also tell you that when I drove through the low income neighborhood of Detroit or Houston, I felt like I was in a post apocalyptic world. Burned out and boarded up houses. Loitering and crime ridden streets. I can go on and on about social injustice. Regardless your comments are even more slanted than the assertion you are making about "Pulling the Strings".

Jackblob -> Bob Vavich

I was just as surprised to learn that Indians earn more than Russians. My source for that info comes from PBS's latest broadcast of Frontline entitled "Putin's Way".

Also, I doubt you've visited many small and lesser known cities in Russia. It's as if the Soviet Union had just collapsed and they were forgotten. Worse, actually.

Hamdog

Weren't the Maidan protests anti-democracy since they used violence to remove a democratically elected leader? Just another anti-ruskie hit piece from the Guardian.

We in the West love democracy, assuming you vote for the right person.

In the US you only get 2 choices - it may be twice as many as you get with a dictatorship but it's hardly democracy.

E1ouise -> Hamdog

Yanukovych was voted out of office by the *elected parliament* after he fled to Russia. Why don't you know this yet?

secondiceberg -> E1ouise

Excuse me, he was forced out of the country at gunpoint before the opposition "voted him out" the next day.

Bosula -> secondiceberg

Yes. That is correct. And armed Maidan thugs (Svoboda and Right Sector) stood around the Rada with weapons while the vote taken.

Also the 'election' of the coup government was unconstitutional under article 111 of the Ukraine's own Constitution (Goggle - check for yourself). This is an undisputed and uncomfortable 'fact' which the US and the EU never mention (never) when drawn on the issue.

Sourcrowd

The soviet union didn't go through some kind of denazification akin to Germany after it disintegrated. Russia today looks more and more like Germany after WWI - full of self pity and blaming everyone but themselves for their own failures.

Down2dirt -> Sourcrowd

I would like to hear more about that denazification of Germany and how did that go.

Since the day one the West and the GDR used nazis for their laboratories, clandestine and civil services...State owned museums still refuse to give back artwork to their rightful owners that were robbed during 1930-45.

I don' t condone Putin's and Russia polity (one of the most neoliberal countries), but you appear to be clueless about this particular subject and don' t know what you are talking about.

Bosula -> Sourcrowd

Are you thinking about Ukraine here, maybe?

Bosula

A more interesting story would have been the similarities between this anti maidan group in Russia and Maidan in Kiev.

Both have have their military arm, are dangerous and violent, and both very nationalistic and right wing. Both appear to have strong links to politicians as well.

Such an analysis might show that Russian and Ukrainian nationalist groups have more in common than they would like to believe.

TuleCarbonari -> Bosula

A very important difference is the Russians are defending their elected government. The Ukrainians were hired by the West to promote a coup d'etat against an elected government, this against the will of the majority in Ukraine and only 3 months from general election in the country. The coup was indeed a way of stopping the elections.

Flinryan

Oh I see Russia has re-entered the media cross hairs in a timely fashion. I wonder what's going to happen in the coming weeks.

MarcelFromage -> Flinryan

I wonder what's going to happen in the coming weeks.

Nothing new - the Russian Federation will continue its illegal occupation of Crimea and continue to bring death and destruction to eastern Ukraine. And generally be a pain for the rest of the international community.

secondiceberg -> MarcelFromage

And the US will continue to murder innocent civilians in the Middle East, Northern Africa and wherever else it wants to plant its bloody army boots. And will also continue to use its NGO's and CIA to foment colour revolutions in other countries, as it did in Ukraine. Kiev had its revolution. Eastern Ukraine is having its revolution. Tit for Tat.

Velska

CIF seems flooded by Putin's sock puppets, i.e. mindless robots who just repeat statements favouring pro-Putinist dictatorship.

To be sure, there's much to hope for in the US democracy, where bribery is legal. I'm not sure whether bribery in Russia is a legal requirement or just a fact of life. But certainly Russia is far from democratic, has actually never been.

Bosula -> Velska

You can take your sock off now and wipe your hands clean.

secondiceberg -> Velska

What kind of democracy is the US when you have a federal agency spying on everything you do and say? Do you think they are just going to sit on what information they think they get?

What will you do when they come knocking at your door, abduct you for some silly comment you made, and then rendition you to another country so that you will not be able to claim any legal rights? Let Russia look after itself in the face of "war-footing" threats from the U.S.

Fight for social justice and freedom in your own country.

cichonio

"All street movements and colour revolutions lead to blood. Women, children and old people suffer first,"

That's why they are ready to use weapons and violence against a foe who hasn't really been seen yet.

Also,

"Decisions should be made in Moscow and not in Washington or Brussels,"

I think decisions about Ukraine should be made in Kiev.

Bosula -> cichonio

Yes. Decisions should be made in Kiev, but why are they being made in Washington then? How much does this compromise Kiev as its agenda is very different from the agenda the US have with Russia. Ukraine is weakened daily with its civil war and the killing its own people, but this conflict benefits the US as further weakens and places Russia in a new cold war type environment.

Why are key government ministries in Ukraine (like Finance) headed by overseas nationals. Utterly bizarre.

secondiceberg -> cichonio

So do I, by the legally elected government that was illegally deposed at gunpoint. Ukraine actually has two presidents. Only one of them is legal and it is not Poroshenko.

Bob Vavich -> cichonio

Yes, if they are taken by all Ukrainians and not a minority. Potroshenko was elected with a turnout of 46%. Of this he scored say over half, hardly a majority. More likely, the right wing Western Galicia came out to vote and the Russian speaking were discouraged. What would one expect when the new government first decree is to eliminate Russian as a second official language. Mind you a language spoken by the majority. Makes you think? Maybe. Probably not.

SHappens

"Personally I am a fan of the civilised, democratic intelligent way of deciding conflicts, but if we need to take up weapons then of course I will be ready,":lia Bereznikova, the ultimate fighting champion.

This quite illustrates Russians way of doing. Smart, open to dialogue and patient but dont mess with them for too long. Once on their horses nothing will stop them.

They are ready to fight against the anti Russian sentiment injected from outside citing Ukraine and Navalny-Soros, not against democracy.

"It is not acceptable for the minority to force its will upon the majority, as happened in Ukraine," he added. "Under the slogan of fighting for democracy there is instead total fear, total propaganda, and no freedom."

ploughmanlunch

After witnessing what happened during Maidan, and subsequently to Ukraine, I understand some Russians reluctance to see a similar scenario played out in Russia. That being: am also wary of vISISantism.

FlangeTube

"Pro-democracy" protests? They have democracy. They have an elected leader with a high approval rating. Stop trying twisting language, these people are not "pro-democracy" they are anti-Putin. That, as much as this paper tries to sell the idea, is not the same thing.

Drumming up odd-balls to defend the elected government in Russia is all well and good, but I would think the other 75% (the ones who like Putin, and aren't in biker gangs) should get a say too.

As for the anti-Maidan quotes - of course that was organised. Nuland:, for crying out loud. Kerry and others were there, Brennan was there. Of course the Western powers were partly involved. And it wasn't peaceful protests, it was violence directed against elected officials, throwing Molotov cocktails at policemen. It culminated in the burning alive of 40+ people in Odessa.

Sergei Konyushenko

Btw, Shaun is always very best at finding the most important issues to raise?

FallenKezef

It's an interesting point, what happened in the Ukraine was an undemocratic coup which was justified after the fact by an election once the previous incumbent was safely exiled.

Had that happened to a pro-western government we'd be crying foul. But because it happened to a pro-Russian government it's ok.

I don't blame Russians for wanting to avoid a repeat in their own country.

Spaceguy1 One

The Crimea referendum "15% for" myth - Human rights investigations. The idea that only 15% of Crimeans voted to join Russia is speeding around the internet after an article was published in Forbes magazine written by Professor Paul Roderick Gregory.

Professor Gregory has, dishonestly, arrived at his 15% figure by taking the minimum figure for Crimea for both turnout and for voters for union, calling them the maximum, and then ignoring Sevastopol. He has also pretended the report is based on the "real results," when it seems to be little more than the imprecise estimates of a small working group who were apparently against the idea of the referendum in the first place.

It appears that Professor Gregory is intent on deceiving his readers about the vote in Crimea and its legitimacy, probably as part of the widespread campaign to deny the people of Crimea their legitimate rights to self-determination and to demonize Russia in the process.

http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/2014/05/06/the-crimea-referendum-15-percent-for-myth/

vr13vr

This is not an unexpected result. EU and US governments are going out of way to stir people's opinion in the former Soviet republics. And they also set the precedent of conducting at least two "revolutions" by street violence in Ukraine and a dozen - elsewhere. There are obviously people in Russia who believe the changes have to be by discussion and voting not by street disturbance and stone throwing.

Beckow

Reduced to facts in the article, a group in Russia they will come out and protest in the streets if there are anti-government demonstrations. Their side also needs to be represented, since the protesters don't represent the majority.

That's all. What is so "undemocratic" about that? Or can only pro-Western people ever demonstrate? In a democracy a biker with a tattoo is equal to an urbane lawyer with Western connections. That's the way democracies should work.

About funding for Maidan protesters "for which there is no evidence". This is an interesting point. There were students from Lviv who were given "college credit" for being at Maidan. And how exactly have tens of thousands of mostly young men lived on streets in Kiev with food and clothes (even some weapons) with no support?

Isn't that a bit of circumstantial evidence that "somebody" supported them. I guess in this case we need to see the invoices, is that always the case or just when Russia issues are involved?

rezevici

Very sad news from Russia. If Putin or the government doesn't condemn this project of the "patriots", if he and government doesn't react against announcement of civilian militia's plan to use violence, I'll truly turn to observe Putin as a tsar.

The ethics of Russians will be on display.

Anette Mor -> rezevici

There are specific politicians who rejected participation in normal political process but chosen street riots instead. The door to politics is open, they can form parties and take part in elections. but then there is a need for a clear political and economical platform and patience to win over the votes. These people refuse to do so, They just want street riots. Several years public watch these groups and simply had enough. There is some edgy opposition which attracts minority but they play fair. Nobody against them protecting and demonstrating even when the call for revolutionary means for getting power, like communists or national-socialists. But these who got no program other than violent riots as such are not opposition.

They still have an agenda which they cannot openly display. So they attract public by spreading slander and rising tension. Nothing anti-democratic in forming a group of people who confront these actions. They are just another group taking part in very complex process.

PeraIlic

by Shaun Walker: "Maidan in Kiev did not appear just like that. Everyone was paid, everyone was paid to be there, was paid for every stone that was thrown, for every bottle thrown,":blin, echoing a frequently repeated Russian claim for which there is no evidence.

There is evidence, but also recognition from US officials. That at least is not a secret anymore.

Is the US training and funding the Ukraine opposition? Nuland herself claimed in December that the US had spent $5 billion since the 1990s on "democratization" programs in Ukraine. On what would she like us to believe the money had been spent?

We know that the US State Department invests heavily -- more than $100 million from 2008-2012 alone -- on international "Internet freedom" activities. This includes heavy State Department funding, for example, to the New Americas Foundation's...

...Commotion Project (sometimes referred to as the "Internet in a Suitcase"). This is an initiative from the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative to build a mobile mesh network that can literally be carried around in a suitcase, to allow activists to continue to communicate even when a government tries to shut down the Internet, as happened in several Arab Spring countries during the recent uprisings.

Indeed, Shaun! On what would you like us to believe so much money had been spent?

RandolphHearst -> PeraIlic,

You antipathy against the author speaks volumes about the contents of his article.

susandbs12 , link

All of this stems from the stupid EU meddling in Ukraine. We shouldn't get involved in the EUs regime change agenda. Time to leave the EU.

And also time for us to not get involved in any wars.

daffyddw

Thank you, thank you all, you wonderful putin-bots. I haven't enjoyed a thread so much in ages. Bless you all, little brothers.

susandbs12 -> daffyddw

Putinbot = someone who has a different opinion to you.

Presumably you want a totalitarian state where only your views are legitimate.

Grow up and stop being childish and just accept that there are people who hold different views from you, so what?

LaAsotChayim

Pro democracy protests?? Would that be same protests that Kiev had where Neo-nazis burned unarmed police officers alive, or the ones in Syria when terrorists (now formed ISIS) where killing Government troops? Are these the pro-democracy protests (all financed via "US aid" implemented by CIA infiltrators) that the Guardian wants us to care about?

How about the reporting on the indiscriminate slaughter of Eastern Ukrainians by Kiev's government troops and Nazi battalions?? Hey, guardian??!!

Anette Mor -> Strummered

Democracy is overrated. It does not automatically ensure equality for minorities. In Russia with its 100 nationalities and all world religions simple straight forward majority rule does not bring any good.

A safety net is required. Benevolent dictator is one of the forms for such safety net. Putin fits well as he is fair and gained trust from all faith, nationalities and social groups. There are other mechanisms in Russia to ensure equality. Many of them came from USSR including low chamber of Russian parliament called Nationalities chamber. representation there is disproportional to the number of population but reflecting minorities voice - one sit per nation, no matter how big or small.

The system of different national administrative units for large and small and smallest nationalities depending how much of autonomic administration each can afford to manage. People in the West should stop preaching democracy. It is nothing but dictatorship of majority. That is why Middle East lost all its tolerance. Majority rules, minorities are suppressed.

kowalli -> Glenn J. Hill

US has a separate line in the budget to pay for such "democratic" protests

kowalli -> Glenn J. Hill

U.S. Embassy Grants Program. The U.S. Embassy Grants Program announces a competition for Russian non-governmental organizations to carry out specific projects.

http://moscow.usembassy.gov/democracy.html

and this is only one of them, many more in budget.

MartinArvay

pro-democracy protesters? like ISIL, Right Sector, UÇK? They are right

[Oct 22, 2015] Russia ready to use military intervention to defend Iran and Syria from Israeli, US and Nato attacks

So Russian position was know to US neocons since at least 2012 and still they push forward "regime change" in Syria.
Notable quotes:
"... Former Member of Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov: Russia Is Ready to Use Military Power to Defend Iran and Syria; Attack on Syria or Iran Is Indirect Attack on Russia. ..."
February 23, 2012 | YouTube

Former Member of Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov: Russia Is Ready to Use Military Power to Defend Iran and Syria; Attack on Syria or Iran Is Indirect Attack on Russia.

Falamu445 10 months ago

And what about China? Should China also seek to protect Iran and Syria with military force if they are attacked?

hudzz

Pakistan will be with Russia if they go to war with usa or isreal

Benny Morris 1 year ago

Good thing that arrogant America is going down. America has spent nearly 70 years being a nuisance to Russians. What a bunch of swine they are when they refuse to admit what the whole world has always known that it was the Soviet Union that won WW2 and America only did so in its dreams.

optionrider12 2 years ago in reply to Brian Hynes

No, you don't understand and I'm not going to fall for your quasi-Hegelian dialectic. Communism can be categorized as a utopia and you're kindly advised to find the definition of Utopia by yourself. Fair enough?

Tristan Xavier 1 year ago in reply to Kati Kati

I understand what you mean but I would never wish the horrors of war on anybody. Peace can be done in different ways. Both Americans and Russians should focus on the corrupted governments that they both possess. The previous generations had their time and they chose either to conform or neglect to the systems. Now we see the results. It's us that needs to stand up and stop this. Why are we going to war for governments that are currently at war with it's own people? N.D.A.A,S.O.P.A and drones etc

[Oct 22, 2015] The Secret History of U.S.-Iranian Relations

Notable quotes:
"... Should we invade Iran for the benefit of our foreign policy, for the benefit of our security interests? ..."
ftmdaily.com
Feb 22, 2012 | youtube.com

FTM (Jerry Robinson): Alright, well, joining me on the program today is Stephen Kinzer. He is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has worked in more than 50 countries. He has been a New York Times Bureau Chief in Istanbul, Berlin, and Nicaragua. He's the author of many books, including the best-selling book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

He's also a professor of international relations at Boston University. My guest today is Stephen Kinzer. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me on Follow the Money Weekly Radio.

KINZER (Stephen Kinzer): Great to be with you.

FTM: I am looking at your book right now-at the Preface to the 2008 edition: "The Folly of Attacking Iran." And I would say, Stephen, that many of the people who are listening to the program today are…I don't want to assume that they're not familiar with the 1953 event, but I want to assume that perhaps they don't know as much about it as perhaps maybe they should. And especially now, as we take a look at the news cycle, we see that Iran is all over the news: talk about invasion; talk about stopping the nuclear program (whether it's even occurring or not is a debate). But the issue at hand right now is, "Should we invade Iran for the benefit of our foreign policy, for the benefit of our security interests?" And you have written a book here that really peels back the layers about this entire question. Why don't you begin by sharing with our audience why you wrote this book and why this topic is important to you?

KINZER: In the first place, you're right that that 2008 edition of the book, which was the new edition, contains this Foreword, "The Folly of Attacking Iran. Now, in the last couple of years, I've been looking at that new edition and thinking, "Boy, that's kind of out of date now." That was at the end of the Bush Administration when we were being really hyped up that Iran was a mortal threat to the rest of the world, but now that introduction is really kind of outdated. Boy, was I wrong! You're absolutely right that Iran has now emerged as the Number One foreign policy issue in this presidential campaign, as candidates flail around for foreign policy issues to beat each other over the head with, Iran really seems to rise to the top of the list. We are in a situation now where we're looking for a demon in the world. I think this is not just an American impulse, but in many countries, it's almost thought that if you don't have an enemy in the world, you should try to find one. It's a way to unite your population and give people a sense of common purpose.

So, you look around the world and pick some country that you want to turn into your enemy and inflate into a terrible, mortal threat to your own security. Iran seems to be filling that role right now. It's an odd situation, because in a sense, the world looks very different from Iran's point of view than it does from here. Iran has four countries in the immediate neighborhood that are armed with nuclear weapons. That's India, Pakistan, Russia, and Israel. Iran also has two countries on its borders that have been invaded and occupied by the United States: that is, Iraq and Afghanistan. So the idea that Iran might be a little unsure as to its defense and wants to make sure that it can build whatever it needs to protect itself doesn't seem so strange when you're sitting in Iran. But even more interesting than all that, when you're looking at differences between the way the world looks when you see it from the United States and the way it looks when you see it from Iran has to do with history.

Whenever I travel in the world, particularly when I travel to a country that I'm not familiar with, I like to ask myself one question: and that is, "How did this country get this way? So, why is this country rich and powerful?" Or, "Why is this country poor and miserable?" When I was traveling in Iran and getting to know Iran for the first time, I came to realize that there's a huge gap between what Iran should be based on its culture and history and size and the education of its people, and what it is. This is a country that has thousands of years of history. It was the first empire in history-the Persian Empire. It has produced a huge amount of culture over many centuries. Its people are highly educated. Nonetheless, it's isolated from the world; poor; unhappy. And I've always wondered on my first trips there why this was. What happened? And as I began to read more, and talk to Iranians, people told me, "We used to have a democracy here. But you Americans came over here and destroyed it. And ever since then, we've been spiraling down." So I decided, "I gotta find out what really happened. I need to find a book about what happened to Iranian democracy." And then I looked around and found there was no such book.

FTM: Wow.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/pW_Rbka6eZ8?rel=0

KINZER: I finally decided that if I was going to read that book, I was going to have to write it myself. And that's how All the Shah's Men came about.

FTM: Well, I would imagine that many in the listening audience would immediately take issue with some of the things that you've stated, and I want to hit those directly head-on. You state in your book some of the reasons why to attack Iran, at least, some of the reasons that are stated.

Number One: Iran wants to become a nuclear power, and that should not be allowed. Iran poses a threat to Israel. Iran sits at the heart of the emerging Shiite Crescent which threatens to destabilize the Middle East. Iran supports radical groups on nearby countries. Iran helps kill American soldiers in Iraq. Iran has ordered terror attacks in foreign countries. Iran's people are oppressed and need Americans to liberate them.

So there's a plethora of ideas as to why American invasion, or some other type of invasion into Iran would possibly be beneficial, not only to our security interests, but also to Iran's state of health so to speak, and bringing them liberty. So you made a good case against it. What do you say to those who say, "You're crazy, Stephen. We need to go over there; we cannot allow them to have a nuclear weapon.

KINZER: In the first place, we don't have any evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon; in fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency has made clear that it has never seen any such evidence, and those inspectors are all over those plants, the uranium is under seal, the seals are under constant video surveillance. It's not as urgent a problem as we're making it out to be.

Nonetheless, I would add a kind of larger perspective, and it's this. When you look at a map of the Middle East, one thing jumps right out at you and it is that Iran is the big country right in the middle. It's not possible to imagine a stable Middle East without including Iran. It's a little bit comparable to the situation that we faced after the end of World War II when there was tremendous anger at Germany for very good reasons.

There was a great move afoot (in fact, we actually followed this policy for a few months) to crush Germany. We were going to slice Germany into pieces, then we were going to forbid it from ever building another factory or industrial plant again. Fortunately, cooler minds prevailed. And we decided to take the opposite tactic. And that was to realize that this country, Germany, had been stirring up trouble in Europe for a hundred years or more, and that the way to prevent that cycle from continuing was not to isolate Germany and kick it and push it into a corner, but to integrate Germany into Europe, and to make it a provider of security rather than a consumer of security. That's what we need to do with Iran. Iran needs to be given a place at the table that's commensurate with its size, and its tradition, and its history, and its regional role.

Now, the United States doesn't want to do that because when Iran is at that table, it's not going to be saying things that are pro-American. It has an agenda that's different than ours. So we don't want it at the table. We want to crush Iran. It sounds like a tempting option, and in fact, if you could wave a wand and make the regime in Iran go away and make Iran be wonderfully friendly to the United States, I'd be all for that. But bombing Iran is likely to produce the opposite result.

First of all, one thing that really surprises me when I'm in Iran is how unbelievably pro-American the people of Iran are. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there's no country in the world where the population is so pro-American as in Iran. I have been stopped on the streets by people who are practically shrieking when they find out I'm American and tell me how much they love the United States. You don't even get that in Canada! If we're smart, we're gonna realize that this is the Middle Eastern country with the most pro-American population. And this pro-American sentiment in Iran is a huge strategic asset for us going forward. If we liquidate that asset by bombing Iran, we will be greatly undermining our own strategic power. And this is a pattern we've been following in that part of the world for a long time.

The war in Iraq greatly eroded American strategic power. It had the opposite effect that we thought it would have. And this is the real object lesson that we need to keep in mind. When we intervene in countries, we have enough power to achieve our short-term goal, but then we go away; our attention goes to other places. And the resentment and the anger festers and burns in the hearts and minds and souls of people in these countries, and ultimately, we wind up with backlash that we never anticipated and we can't control. In this rush now in these last months to demonize Iran and set the groundwork for an attack on Iran, we are doing something that Americans, and maybe all human beings do too often, and that is: we think about the short term; we never think about the long-term effects of our interventions.

FTM: You open the book with a quote, a quintessential quote, which is kind of common for a book, and it's by President Harry Truman: "There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know." And I would probably say that most of us are obviously familiar with the history of September 11th, 2001, and I would go even further and perhaps say that we are familiar with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and people may remember those days back in the Carter years. But your book goes back to 1953.

In the Preface of your book, you state that the 1953 intervention by the United States into Iran may be seen as a decisive turning point in the 20th Century history from our perspective today. Now I don't know how many people in our listening audience know what happened in 1953. What event are you referring to, and why is it important to what's happening today?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/H8ybj5KULmA?rel=0

KINZER: For most Americans, the history of U.S.-Iran relations begins and ends with the Hostage Crisis. That's all we know, and we know that everything went bad since then. But Iranians don't think that way. For them, the Hostage Crisis is just one of a number of incidents that have happened over the past 50 years. For them, the key moment in the history of U.S.-Iran relations came in 1953. This is an episode that completely defines Iranian history and the Iran-United States relationship. Yet, many people in the United States are not even aware this happened.

Very briefly, this is the story (and I tell it in much more detail in my book): In the period after World War II, Iranian democracy, which had come about at the beginning of the 20th Century through a revolution against a corrupt monarchy, really began to take form. It took on a reality. You had elections; competing parties; parliament. This was something that had not been seen in any Muslim country. So, Iran was truly in the vanguard of democracy. But, because Iran was a democracy, it elected a leader who represented the public will-not the will of outside powers. In Iran, there was one obsession. Iran is sitting, as we know, on an ocean of oil. But all through the 1920's and '30's and '40's, that oil was completely controlled by one British company.

The entire standard of living in Britain all during that period was based on oil from Iran, since Britain has no oil or any colonies that have any oil. Meanwhile, people in Iran were living in some of the most miserable conditions of anyone in the world. Once they had a democracy, they elected a leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who, as prime minister, proceeded to pass a bill in congress in which Iran nationalized its oil industry. This sent the British into a panic. They tried all kinds of things to crush Mosaddegh. Finally, when he closed their embassy and chased out all their diplomats, including all the secret agents who were trying to overthrow him, the British decided, "We're going to ask the Americans to do this for us." So, Churchill asked President Truman to "do this for us. Please go over to Iran and overthrow this guy who took away our oil company. And Truman said, "No." But then, a few years later, when Dwight Eisenhower became president, and John Foster Dulles became Secretary of State, and his brother, Allen Dulles, became Director of the CIA, things changed.

The United States decided that we would work with the British to overthrow Mosaddegh -mainly because he was challenging the fundamentals of corporate globablism, the principle that international companies should be allowed to function all over the world according to conditions that they considered fair. Mosaddegh was saying, "No, we are going to determine the conditions under which foreign companies can function in our country." As a result, the United States sent a team CIA agents into Iran. They went to work in the basement of the American Embassy. They threw Iran into total chaos, and that chaos finally resulted in the overthrow of the Mosaddegh government. That put the Shah back on his peacock throne; he ruled with increasing oppression for 25 years; his repressive rule produced the explosion of the late 1970's, what we call "The Islamic Revolution"; that brought the power, this clique of fanatically anti-American mullahs who are in power now. So, when you do what they call in the CIA "walking back the cat," when you walk back the cat, that is, to see what happened before, and before, and before, you come to realize that the American role in crushing Iranian democracy in 1953 was not only the defining event in the history of U.S.-Iran relations, but it set Iran in the Middle East into turmoil from which it has never recovered.

FTM: In 1953, in the book you point out that democracy was beginning to take root there.

KINZER: It's a remarkable story. This, as I said, is something that had never happened in a Muslim country before. Iran is a remarkable country; very different from the other countries in the Middle East. And I'm not sure that people in the United States realize this. Most of the countries in the Middle East are what you might call "fake countries." They're made-up countries that were invented by some British or French diplomat drawing lines on a map at some men's club after World War I.

Iran is not a fake country by any means. It has lived for thousands of years within more or less the same boundaries, with more or less the same language, and the same kind of population. It's a country with a deep, rich culture and very strong sense of itself. We are treating Iran as if it's Honduras or Barundi or some little place where we can just go and kick sand in people's face and they'll do whatever we want. Iran is not a country like that. And, given its size, and its location, you see that that region will never be stable as long as Iran is angry and ostracized. The only way to stabilize that part of the world is to build a security architecture in which Iran has a place.

The world needs a big security concession from Iran. The world also needs big security concessions from Israel. But countries only make security concessions when they feel safe. Therefore, it should be in interest of those who want stability in the Middle East to try to help every country in the region feel safe. But our goal in the Middle East isn't really stability; it's "stability under our rule…under our dominance." And we realize that when Iran emerges as a strong, proud, independent, democratic country, it's not gonna be so friendly to the United States. So I think there is some feeling that "we prefer it this way" being poor and isolated and unhappy.

FTM: I was looking at a map the other day of the Middle East, just noticing the U.S. military bases in the Middle East, and Iran, if you look at it very objectively, and take a look at the Middle East military base map, you'll discover that Iran is completely surrounded. And as you mentioned, there are four other nations in their general vicinity that have nuclear weapons, and it seems as if pretty much the only way to keep the United States away from your country if you aren't playing by their rules is to have a nuclear weapon. So logically, it does seem to make sense that the Iranians are perhaps seeking a nuclear weapon, but what you point out here again in your book is that the program, to have a nuclear program, was first proposed by the United States to Iran back in the 1970's.

KINZER: We thought it was a great idea for Iran to have a nuclear program-when it was run by a regime that was responsive to Washington. Now that it's a different kind of regime, we don't like this idea. You're absolutely right about the lessons that Iran has drawn about the value of having a nuclear weapon, or the ability to make a nuclear weapon, based on what's happened in the world. Why did the United States attack Iraq, but not attack North Korea? I think it's quite obvious: if North Korea didn't have a nuclear weapon, we would have crushed them already; and if Sadaam did have a nuclear weapon, we probably never would have invaded that country.

An even more vivid example is Libya. We managed to persuade Gaddafi to give up his nuclear program; as soon as he did that, we came in and killed him. I think that the Iranians are acutely aware of this. They would like, if I'm gonna guess, to have the ability to put together a nuclear deterrent, a nuclear weapon-something like Japan has. Japan has something that is in the nuclear business called a "screwdriver weapon." They're not allowed to have nuclear weapons, but they have the pieces and the parts around, so that in a matter of weeks, they could probably put one together. Now, we hear a lot about how the Israelis are terrified that as soon as Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it's gonna bomb Israel. But, in fact, as people in the Israeli security establishment have made clear, none of them really believe that. They fear the Iranian nuclear weapon for a couple of other reasons.

One is, that as Israel well-knows, when you have a nuclear weapon, you don't need to use it. It gives you a certain power; a certain authority. You can intimidate people around you. And second, of course, if there's another nuclear power in that region, it's going to set off perhaps another nuclear race, and other countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia or Egypt would want to have nuclear weapons, too. But when the Iranians look around, I think the first country they see (and I've heard this from a number of Iranians) is Pakistan. Pakistan is a far more volatile and far more dangerous country than Iran. We have serious Taliban/al-Qaeda types not only running around in Pakistan, but doing so under the egious of the government and they have a prospective to take over that government! This is not going to happen in Iran. Pakistan is far more volatile, yet the United States thought that is was fine that Pakistan should have a nuclear weapon. I'm against all countries having nuclear weapons.

I'd like to see all countries that have them abandon them, and I don't want any more countries to get them. But that's a dream world. The fact is, the most that we can do by attacking Iran (as our own Defense Secretary has said) is to postpone the day when Iran has a nuclear weapon, and in the process, make them a lot angrier. The way to reduce this danger is to build a security system in the Middle East where people don't feel the need to be threatening each other. But that requires dialogue, and dialogue requires compromise, and the United States is not ready to compromise with Iran.

FTM: Interesting. And that's where I want to take this in conclusion: What does that look like? Because obviously, the goal of your book here is to see some sort of peace reached. I mean, no one wants to see war. But the Middle East obviously is just an issue that has been debated for a long time. There are all kinds of geopolitical reasons for being involved in the Middle East-namely, oil. But predominantly, as we look at all of this, the question really boils down to this: What are we going to do? If we don't bomb Iran, then how do we prevent them from potentially becoming an explosive nation in that region? You say "security system" over there and also "dialogue." If you were President, what would you do? How do you start that process?

KINZER: The first place, we have never really tried serious diplomatic overtures to Iran. We've got some of our most senior retired diplomats in the United States now who are chafing at the bit to be sent to Iran. People like Thomas Pickering, who was George Bush's ambassador to the United Nations and ambassador to Moscow, and William Lords, another titan of 20th Century diplomacy. These are people who are itching to go to Iran and see what they can do. We have not even asked Iran the fundamental question, "What would it take from us for you to do what we would like you to do with your nuclear program?"

Forget about deciding whether we want to do it or not; we don't even know what the quid pro quo would be! So, we need first to get into a mindset where we're willing to have a real dialogue on an equal basis with Iran. We are not at that point. We feel that any dialogue with them is only going to legitimize their position in the Middle East and is going to make them feel that they're a powerful country, because we will be making concessions to them-that's what you do when you have negotiated solutions. But the fact is, Iran already is a powerful country. It doesn't need us to legitimize it. We need to understand that in dealing with Iran, we're not going to get everything we want. And we are going to have to concede Iran a measure of power in that region that's commensurate with its size, and its history, and its location. We're not even at that point yet. I think that's the first step. We have to make a psychological transition to realize that we're not going to be able to dictate to Iran if we want to reach a peaceful settlement. We're going to have to compromise. We're going to have to accept some things that Iran wants in order to get things that we want. Before we even get to the point of figuring out what those would be, we need to get over that psychological, political, diplomatic hurdle. And we haven't done that yet.

FTM: My guest today has been Stephen Kinzer. He's the author of the book All the Shah's Men. Very enlightening stuff; very illuminating. Stephen, if the folks would like to learn more about you and your work, how can they do so?

KINZER: I've got a website: stephenkinzer.com. My books are all available on that mass website that I don't want to advertise that it's named after a giant river in South America.

FTM: (laughter)

KINZER: But if you want to support your local independent bookstore, I'm sure it would be happy to order All the Shah's Men for you or any of my other books.

FTM: Very good, Stephen. Thank you so much for coming on our program today, Stephen.

KINZER: It was a great pleasure. Thank you.

(Audio Transcript - Saturday, February 11, 2012)

[Oct 19, 2015] The Banksters and American Foreign Policy by Justin Raimondo

Notable quotes:
"... But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism. ..."
"... , engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout. ..."
"... Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs. ..."
"... Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy ..."
"... The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early 1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad. At the heart of the new policy were America's leading bankers, eager to use the country's growing economic strength to subsidize and force-feed export markets and investment outlets that they would finance, as well as to guarantee Third World government bonds. The major focus of aggressive expansion in the 1890s was Latin America, and the principal Enemy to be dislodged was Great Britain, which had dominated foreign investments in that vast region. ..."
"... In a notable series of articles in 1894, ..."
"... set the agenda for the remainder of the decade. Its conclusion: if 'we could wrest the South American markets from Germany and England and permanently hold them, this would be indeed a conquest worth perhaps a heavy sacrifice.' ..."
"... Long-time Morgan associate Richard Olney heeded the call, as Secretary of State from 1895 to 1897, setting the U.S. on the road to Empire. After leaving the State Department, he publicly summarized the policy he had pursued. The old isolationism heralded by George Washington's Farewell Address is over, he thundered. The time has now arrived, Olney declared, when 'it behooves us to accept the commanding position… among the Power of the earth.' And, 'the present crying need of our commercial interests,' he added, 'is more markets and larger markets' for American products, especially in Latin America.' ..."
July 15, 2011 | Antiwar.com

In a free economy, the banks that invested trillions in risky mortgages and other fool's gold would have taken the hit. Instead, however, what happened is that the American taxpayers took the hit, paid the bill, and cleaned up their mess – and were condemned to suffer record unemployment, massive foreclosures, and the kind of despair that kills the soul.

How did this happen? There are two versions of this little immorality tale, one coming from the "left" and the other from the "right" (the scare-quotes are there for a reason, which I'll get to in a moment or two).

The "left" version goes something like this:

The evil capitalists, in league with their bought-and-paid for cronies in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was nothing left to steal. Then, when their grasping hands had reached the very bottom of the treasure chest, they dialed 911 and the emergency team (otherwise known as the US Congress) came to their rescue, doling out trillions to the looters and leaving the rest of America to pay the bill.

The "right" version goes something like the following:

Politically connected Wall Streeters, in league with their bought-and-paid-for cronies in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was nothing left to steal. Then, when their grasping hands had reached the very bottom of the treasure chest, they dialed BIG-GOV-HELP and the feds showed up with the cash.

The first thing one notices about these two analyses, taken side by side, is their similarity: yes, the "left" blames the free market, and the "right" blames Big Government, but when you get past the blame game their descriptions of what actually happened look like veritable twins. And as much as I agree with the "right" about their proposed solution – a radical cut in government spending – it is the "left" that has the most accurate analysis of who's to blame.

It is, of course, the big banks – the recipients of bailout loot, the ones who profited (and continue to profit) from the economic catastrophe that has befallen us.

During the 1930s, the so-called Red Decade, no leftist agitprop was complete without a cartoon rendering of the top-hatted capitalist with his foot planted firmly on the throat of the proletariat (usually depicted as a muscular-but-passive male in chains). That imagery, while crude, is largely correct – an astonishing statement, I know, coming from an avowed libertarian and "reactionary," no less. Yet my leftist pals, and others with a superficial knowledge of libertarianism, will be even more surprised that the founder of the modern libertarian movement, also an avowed (and proud) "reactionary," agreed with me (or, rather, I with him):

"Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.

"Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.

"Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs."

That's Murray N. Rothbard, the great libertarian theorist and economist, in his classic monograph Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. If you want a lesson in the real motivations behind our foreign policy of global intervention, starting at the very dawn of the American empire, you have only to read this fascinating treatise. The essence of it is this: the very rich have stayed very rich in what would otherwise be a dynamic and ever-changing economic free-for-all by securing government favors, enjoying state-granted monopolies, and using the US military as their private security guards. Conservatives who read Rothbard's short book will never look at the Panama Canal issue in the same light again. Lefties will come away from it marveling at how closely the libertarian Rothbard comes to echoing the old Marxist aphorism that the government is the "executive committee of the capitalist class."

Rothbard's account of the course of American foreign policy as the history of contention between the Morgan interests, the Rockefellers, and the various banking "families," who dealt primarily in buying and selling government bonds, is fascinating stuff, and it illuminates a theme common to both left and right commentators: that the elites are manipulating the policy levers to ensure their own economic interests unto eternity.

In normal times, political movements are centered around elaborate ideologies, complex narratives that purport to explain what is wrong and how to fix it. They have their heroes, and their villains, their creation myths and their dystopian visions of a dark future in store if we don't heed their call to revolution (or restoration, depending on whether they're hailing from the "left" or the "right").

You may have noticed, however, that these are not normal times: we're in a crisis of epic proportions, not only an economic crisis but also a cultural meltdown in which our social institutions are collapsing, and with them longstanding social norms. In such times, ideological categories tend to break down, and we've seen this especially in the foreign policy realm, where both the "extreme" right and the "extreme" left are calling for what the elites deride as "isolationism." On the domestic front, too, the "right" and "left" views of what's wrong with the country are remarkably alike, as demonstrated above. Conservatives and lefties may have different solutions, but they have, I would argue, a common enemy: the banksters.

This characterization of the banking industry as the moral equivalent of gangsters has its proponents on both sides of the political spectrum, and today that ideological convergence is all but complete, with only "centrists" and self-described pragmatists dissenting. What rightists and leftists have in common, in short, is a very powerful enemy – and that's all a mass political movement needs to get going.

In normal times, this wouldn't be enough: but, as I said above, these most assuredly aren't normal times. The crisis lends urgency to a process that has been developing – unfolding, if you will – for quite some time, and that is the evolution of a political movement that openly disdains the "left" and "right" labels, and homes in on the main danger to liberty and peace on earth: the state-privileged banking system that is now foreclosing on America.

This issue is not an abstraction: we see it being played out on the battlefield of the debt ceiling debate. Because, after all, who will lose and who will win if the debt ceiling isn't raised? The losers will be the bankers who buy and sell government bonds, i.e. those who finance the War Machine that is today devastating much of the world. My leftie friends might protest that these bonds also finance Social Security payments, and I would answer that they need to grow a spine: President Obama's threat that Social Security checks may not go out after the August deadline is, like everything out that comes out of his mouth, a lie. The government has the money to pay on those checks: this is just his way of playing havoc with the lives of American citizens, a less violent but nonetheless just as evil version of the havoc he plays with the lives of Afghans, Pakistanis, and Libyans every day.

This isn't about Social Security checks: it's about an attempt to reinflate the bubble of American empire, which has been sagging of late, and keep the government printing presses rolling. For the US government, unlike a private entity, can print its way out of debt – or, these days, by simply adding a few zeroes to the figures on a computer screen. A central bank, owned by "private" individuals, controls this process: it is called the Federal Reserve. And the Fed has been the instrument of the banksters from its very inception [.pdf], at the turn of the 19th century – not coincidentally, roughly the time America embarked on its course of overseas empire.

There is a price to be paid, however, for this orgy of money-printing: the degradation, or cheapening, of the dollar. Most of us suffer on account of this policy: the only beneficiaries are those who receive those dollars first, before it trickles down to the rest of us. The very first to receive them are, of course, the bankers, but there's another class of business types who benefit, and those are the exporters, whose products are suddenly competitive with cheaper foreign goods. This has been a major driving force behind US foreign policy, as Rothbard points out:

"The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early 1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad. At the heart of the new policy were America's leading bankers, eager to use the country's growing economic strength to subsidize and force-feed export markets and investment outlets that they would finance, as well as to guarantee Third World government bonds. The major focus of aggressive expansion in the 1890s was Latin America, and the principal Enemy to be dislodged was Great Britain, which had dominated foreign investments in that vast region.

"In a notable series of articles in 1894, Bankers' Magazine set the agenda for the remainder of the decade. Its conclusion: if 'we could wrest the South American markets from Germany and England and permanently hold them, this would be indeed a conquest worth perhaps a heavy sacrifice.'

"Long-time Morgan associate Richard Olney heeded the call, as Secretary of State from 1895 to 1897, setting the U.S. on the road to Empire. After leaving the State Department, he publicly summarized the policy he had pursued. The old isolationism heralded by George Washington's Farewell Address is over, he thundered. The time has now arrived, Olney declared, when 'it behooves us to accept the commanding position… among the Power of the earth.' And, 'the present crying need of our commercial interests,' he added, 'is more markets and larger markets' for American products, especially in Latin America.'"

The face of the Enemy has long since changed, and Britain is our partner in a vast mercantilist enterprise, but the mechanics and motivation behind US foreign policy remain very much the same. You'll note that the Libyan "rebels," for example, set up a Central Bank right off the bat, even before ensuring their military victory over Gadhafi – and who do you think is going to be selling (and buying) those Libyan "government" bonds? It sure as heck won't be Joe Sixpack: it's the same Wall Streeters who issued an ultimatum to the Tea Party, via Moody's, that they'll either vote to raise the debt ceiling or face the consequences.

But what are those consequences – and who will feel their impact the most?

It's the bankers who will take the biggest hit if US bonds are downgraded: the investment bankers, who invested in such a dodgy enterprise as the US government, whose "full faith and credit" isn't worth the paper it's printed on. In a free market, these losers would pay the full price of their bad business decisions – in our crony-capitalist system, however, they win.

They win because they have the US government behind them - and because their strategy of degrading the dollar will reap mega-profits from American exporters, whose overseas operations they are funding. The "China market," and the rest of the vast undeveloped stretches of the earth that have yet to develop a taste for iPads and Lady Gaga, all this and more will be open to them as long as the dollar continues to fall.

That this will cripple the buying power of the average American, and raise the specter of hyper-inflation, matters not one whit of difference to the corporate and political elites that control our destiny: for with the realization of their vision of a World Central Bank, in which a new global currency controlled by them can be printed to suit their needs, they will be set free from all earthly constraints, or so they believe.

With America as the world policeman and the world banker – in alliance with our European satellites – the Washington elite can extend their rule over the entire earth. It's true we won't have much to show for it, here in America: with the dollar destroyed, we'll lose our economic primacy, and be subsumed into what George Herbert Walker Bush called the "New World Order." Burdened with defending the corporate profits of the big banks and exporters abroad, and also with bailing them out on the home front when their self-created bubbles burst, the American people will see a dramatic drop in their standard of living – our sacrifice to the gods of "internationalism." That's what they mean when they praise the new "globalized" economy.

Yet the American people don't want to be sacrificed, either to corporate gods or some desiccated idol of internationalism, and they are getting increasingly angry – and increasing savvy when it comes to identifying the source of their troubles.

This brings us to the prospects for a left-right alliance, both short term and in the long run. In the immediate future, the US budget crisis could be considerably alleviated if we would simply end the wars started by George W. Bush and vigorously pursued by his successor. Aside from that, how many troops do we still have in Europe – more than half a century after World War II? How many in Korea – long after the Korean war? Getting rid of all this would no doubt provide enough savings to ensure that those Social Security checks go out – but that's a bargain Obama will never make.

All those dollars, shipped overseas, enrich the military-industrial complex and their friends, the exporters – and drain the very life blood out of the rest of us. Opposition to this policy ought to be the basis of a left-right alliance, a movement to bring America home and put America first.

In the long term, there is the basis for a more comprehensive alliance: the de-privileging of the banking sector, which cemented its rule with the establishment of the Federal Reserve. That, however, is a topic too complex to be adequately covered in a single column, and so I'll just leave open the intriguing possibility.

"Left" and "right" mean nothing in the current context: the real division is between government-privileged plutocrats and the rest of us. What you have to ask yourself is this: which side are you on?

[Oct 18, 2015] A journal of the Ukrainian National Academy of Science publishes the truth about Donbass. Panic ensues

Notable quotes:
"... Huge amounts of money were spread around in it, and not just those Nuland cookies ... Its main participants were outcasts from across the country, who, in fact, had nothing to lose. The outcasts very much wanted to take the property not just from Donetskis , but also from Kievskis , Lvivskis , Rivnenskis and others, wrote, in particular, the author of the scientific publication. ..."
"... Today, the population of Donbass en masse is being systematically, and brutally destroyed by the Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine, including through means and methods of warfare that are prohibited by international law ..."
Fort Russ
Enrique Ferro's insight:

"Today, the population of Donbass en masse is being systematically, and brutally destroyed by the Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine, including through means and methods of warfare that are prohibited by international law," - wrote A. Lopata.

... ... ...

According to the scientist, this revolution was nothing more than a coup.

"Huge amounts of money were spread around in it, and not just those Nuland cookies ... Its main participants were outcasts from across the country, who, in fact, had nothing to lose. The outcasts very much wanted to take the property not just from "Donetskis", but also from "Kievskis", "Lvivskis", "Rivnenskis" and others," wrote, in particular, the author of the scientific publication.

In addition, Lopata qualified the war in the Donbass as the genocide of the people in the east of the country by the army of Ukraine. "Today, the population of Donbass en masse is being systematically, and brutally destroyed by the Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine, including through means and methods of warfare that are prohibited by international law," - wrote A. Lopata.

The author also points out that "the authorities of the country have made a decision to urgently direct the entire Maidan "fuel" material to Eastern Ukraine;" and that "there is no aggression of Russia against Ukraine, but instead there is a US war with Russia in Donbass "to the last Ukrainian."

[Oct 18, 2015] Irrational Unrequited Love of Ukrainians for the West

This is how neocolonialism works: "global village' wants to move to "global town", while global town mercilessly exploits it.
Notable quotes:
"... There is also an important factor: several million Ukrainians work in Russia and in Europe. Comparing, they see that life in the European Union is more comfortable. And this also affects their geopolitical preferences . Finally, most of the residents of Ukraine, especially in the center and the west of the country perceived the reunion of the Crimea with the Russian Federation as an occupation of part of their country. And in relation to the events in Donbass the propaganda has convinced many people that it was not a rebellion against the new regime in Kiev, but Russia's aggression. Unfortunately, revanchist sentiments towards our country in Ukraine can last for a long time. I would even say that it is impossible to exclude the possibility of war between Russia and Ukraine. At least today it is bigger than zero. And even 2 years ago this assumption might seem an absurd fantasy. ..."
"... Yes, there are still strong illusions of average Ukrainians in relation to Europe. Many people think that joining the EU and NATO would quickly help Ukraine improve the living standards of the population, to solve social problems and so on. Others, more realistically minded Ukrainians, think like this: yes, we know that Europe will not solve our problems, but we have no other choice. Now, Russia, if not an enemy, is at least an unfriendly state. And they do not believe in the economic prospects of the alliance with us. ..."
"... public consciousness in Ukraine is largely irrational. Ive already talked about the persisting illusions of Ukrainian men from the street. It seems to him that only the West is able to protect Ukraine from the Russian aggression . This explains such a persistent and irrational focus on Europe. ..."
"... it seems to me that the real percentage of Ukrainians who are in favor of strengthening cooperation with Russia on the territories controlled by Kiev is not much higher than what was revealed by the survey. ..."
Oct 15, 2015 | Fort Russ
Most citizens of "independent" Ukraine are disappointed with Maidan, but they still believe in Europe

The public consciousness in Ukraine continues to amaze with its irrationality. This is confirmed by the poll conducted by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

Despite the fact that the majority of Ukrainians acknowledge that Euromaidan did not meet their expectations, a dominant sentiment in Ukraine is in favor of the pro-Western geopolitical course.

49% of respondents are of the opinion that Ukraine should better strive to deepen relations with Europe, while the percentage of those who prefer a closer relationship with Russia is only 8%.

At the same time 56% of Ukrainians believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction, and only 20% hold the opposite opinion. The notion that the country is moving in the wrong direction is spread across the country and is shared by the majority of citizens in each region.

The survey was conducted on the territory of Ukraine, controlled by the Kiev government, without regard to the views of some four million people living in the LPR and the DPR.

It would seem that in the last eighteen months Europe has demonstrated that it is in no hurry to recognize Ukraine as its "own". Western aid is given precisely in those volumes that prevent the final collapse of Ukraine's statehood. At the same time, due to the influx of Western goods and severance of economic ties with Russia hundreds of Ukrainian enterprises are closed. The latest news in this regard: in Ukraine it has become unprofitable to produce even sugar leading to the closing of 15 sugar mills.

The situation in the post-Maidan economy of Ukraine is much worse, however it has not affected the unrequited love of Ukrainians to the West. Why is this the case and what will be the outcome?

- We must understand that the process of Ukraine's reorientation to the West began long before the Maidan, - says the Head of the Center for Political Research of the Institute of Economics, Head of the Department of International Relations of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Federation Boris Shmelev. - For a quarter century that has passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than one generation of Ukrainians has grown who are convinced that it is necessary not to be friends with Russia, but with Europe. That only this friendship with the West will ensure the prosperity of Ukraine.

There is also an important factor: several million Ukrainians work in Russia and in Europe. Comparing, they see that life in the European Union is more comfortable. And this also affects their "geopolitical preferences". Finally, most of the residents of Ukraine, especially in the center and the west of the country perceived the reunion of the Crimea with the Russian Federation as an occupation of part of their country. And in relation to the events in Donbass the propaganda has convinced many people that it was not a rebellion against the new regime in Kiev, but Russia's aggression. Unfortunately, revanchist sentiments towards our country in Ukraine can last for a long time. I would even say that it is impossible to exclude the possibility of war between Russia and Ukraine. At least today it is bigger than zero. And even 2 years ago this assumption might seem an absurd fantasy.

"SP": - Why a year and a half since the "February coup" have not convinced Ukrainians that the EU is not going to make Ukraine a member state and that the West is helping Kiev only to the extent that the pro-Western regime does not collapse?

- Yes, there are still strong illusions of average Ukrainians in relation to Europe. Many people think that joining the EU and NATO would quickly help Ukraine improve the living standards of the population, to solve social problems and so on. Others, more realistically minded Ukrainians, think like this: yes, we know that Europe will not solve our problems, but we have no other choice. Now, Russia, if not an enemy, is at least an unfriendly state. And they do not believe in the economic prospects of the alliance with us.

"SP": - But it is impossible to escape the logic: as long as Ukraine maintained relatively good relations with Russia, the situation in the Ukrainian economy was more or less tolerable. And as soon as Kiev finally turned towards the West, the economy began to crumble ...

- All this is true. But public consciousness in Ukraine is largely irrational. I've already talked about the persisting illusions of Ukrainian men from the street. It seems to him that only the West is able to protect Ukraine from the "Russian aggression". This explains such a persistent and irrational focus on Europe.

"SP": - And can we explain such a low percentage of Russian sympathizers by the fact that some respondents, especially in the South-East of Ukraine are afraid to openly express their opinions?

- Yes, it is possible. Although, it seems to me that the real percentage of Ukrainians who are in favor of strengthening cooperation with Russia on the territories controlled by Kiev is not much higher than what was revealed by the survey.

[Oct 12, 2015] The Tragic Ending To Obama's Bay Of Pigs: CIA Hands Over Syria To Russia

One week ago, when summarizing the current state of play in Syria, we said that for Obama, "this is shaping up to be the most spectacular US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam." Yesterday, in tacit confirmation of this assessment, the Obama administration threw in the towel on one of the most contentious programs it has implemented in "fighting ISIS", when the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force.

But this, so far, partial admission of failure only takes care of one part of Obama's problem: there is the question of the "other" rebels supported by the US, those who are not part of the officially-disclosed public program with the fake goal of fighting ISIS; we are talking, of course, about the nearly 10,000 CIA-supported "other rebels", or technically mercenaries, whose only task is to take down Assad.

The same "rebels" whose fate the AP profiles today when it writes that the CIA began a covert operation in 2013 to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Assad. Over that time, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear.

The effort was separate from the one run by the military, which trained militants willing to promise to take on IS exclusively. That program was widely considered a failure, and on Friday, the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force, instead opting to equip established groups to fight IS.

It is this effort, too, that in the span of just one month Vladimir Putin has managed to render utterly useless, as it is officially "off the books" and thus the US can't formally support these thousands of "rebel-fighters" whose only real task was to repeat the "success" of Ukraine and overthrow Syria's legitimate president: something which runs counter to the US image of a dignified democracy not still resorting to 1960s tactics of government overthrow. That, and coupled with Russia and Iran set to take strategic control of Syria in the coming months, the US simply has no toehold any more in the critical mid-eastern nation.

And so another sad chapter in the CIA's book of failed government overthrows comes to a close, leaving the "rebels" that the CIA had supported for years, to fend for themselves.

From AP:

CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on President Bashar Assad's forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.

Over the past week, Russia has directed parts of its air campaign against U.S.-funded groups and other moderate opposition in a concerted effort to weaken them, the officials say. The Obama administration has few options to defend those it had secretly armed and trained.

The Russians "know their targets, and they have a sophisticated capacity to understand the battlefield situation," said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who serves on the House Intelligence Committee and was careful not to confirm a classified program. "They are bombing in locations that are not connected to the Islamic State" group.

... ... ..

Incidentally, this is just the beginning. Now that the U.S. has begun its pivot out of the middle-east, handing it over to Putin as Russia's latest sphere of influence on a silver platter, there will be staggering consequences for middle-east geopolitics. In out preview of things to come last week, we concluded by laying these out; we will do the same again:

The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS (there were of course numerous other CIA efforts to arm and train anti-Assad fighters, see below for the fate of the most "successful" of those groups), the effort ended up being a complete embarrassment that culminated with the admission that only "four or five" remained and just days after that admission, those "four or five" were car jacked by al-Qaeda in what was perhaps the most under-reported piece of foreign policy comedy in history.

Meanwhile, Iran sensed an epic opportunity to capitalize on Washington's incompetence. Tehran then sent its most powerful general to Russia where a pitch was made to upend the Mid-East balance of power. The Kremlin loved the idea because after all, Moscow is stinging from Western economic sanctions and Vladimir Putin is keen on showing the West that, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia isn't set to back down. Thanks to the fact that the US chose extremists as its weapon of choice in Syria, Russia gets to frame its involvement as a "war on terror" and thanks to Russia's involvement, Iran gets to safely broadcast its military support for Assad just weeks after the nuclear deal was struck. Now, Russian airstrikes have debilitated the only group of CIA-backed fighters that had actually proven to be somewhat effective and Iran and Hezbollah are preparing a massive ground invasion under cover of Russian air support. Worse still, the entire on-the-ground effort is being coordinated by the Iranian general who is public enemy number one in Western intelligence circles and he's effectively operating at the behest of Putin, the man that Western media paints as the most dangerous person on the planet.

As incompetent as the US has proven to be throughout the entire debacle, it's still difficult to imagine that Washington, Riyadh, London, Doha, and Jerusalem are going to take this laying down and on that note, we close with our assessment from Thursday: "If Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night."

Which is not to say that the latest US failure to overthrow a mid-east government was a total failure. As Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma says "probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates."

Which is at least great news for the military-industrial complex. It means more "terrorist attacks" on U.S. "friends and allies", and perhaps even on U.S. soil - all courtesy of the US government supplying the weapons - are imminent.

BlueViolet

It's not a fiasco. It's a success. AlQaeda/ISIS created by Israel and financed by US.

Stackers

Never forget the first chapter of this story happened in 2011 Benghazi Libya when the Turkey brokered arms deal went bad, Obama admin abandoned them and one CIA op posing as an ambasador and his security detail were killed.

This thing has been a shit show from day one and involves scandal after scandal

The Indelicate ...

Video: Israeli forces open fire on Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza killing seven

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/10/israeli-palestinian-demonstrators

Paveway IV

There is no such thing as 10,000 CIA 'rebels' - that's only their on-line name.

There is a 10,000-man CIA assassination team or better still - mafia hit squad - in Syria. They're not rebels, they're not terrorists, they're not even mercs. They are paid criminal assassins, nothing more. My country hired them, so my country is guilty of racketeering and assassination. There are no degrees of separation here - the U.S. is directly responsible. Since the acts were perpetrated by people who are also violating the Constitution of the U.S., they are criminals and traitors.

We should do something about them... right after this season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

WTFRLY

White House still ignores murder of American reporter Serena Shim who filmed western aid to ISIS February 27, 2015

1 year almost since her death. Today would have been her 30th birthday.

SWRichmond

You and I (and perhaps others) wonder how 10,000 "moderate rebels" were vetted before being trained and equipped. I am guessing an interview with some commander-wannabee, who said "yes I am a moderate" and then CIA said "awesome, here's $500,000,000.00 and a boatload of sophisticated weapons. Go hire and train some more moderates." Or maybe CIA just asked McCain and took his word for it.

...but few believe the U.S. can protect its secret rebel allies

Some secret...

This kind of shit is what you get when the deep state breathes its own fumes.

Lore

Exactly. American hands are drenched in blood. It's not enough just to withdraw from Syria and leave a bunch of mercs and "assets" to burn, and it's not enough to go after the individuals behind specific atrocities like 911, the bombing of the hospital, or the weddings, or Abu Ghraib, or Benghazi, or, or... Nothing will be fixed or resolved until those responsible for drafting, approving and implementing the pathological policy behind all the loss of life over the past decade are prosecuted and brought to justice. Unless and until that happens, America has abandoned its moral foundation and is doomed as a nation. It's just a practical observation.

geno-econ

Neocons went a step too far with their marauder agenda in Ukraine and Syria. Now they have been silenced by Putin with a show of force exposing US weakness. Both Bush and Obama showed weakness in not controllling Neocon influence in Wash. and is now reflectrd in political party turmoil. EU should rejoice because US policy in Syria caused refugee problem which will subside with end of civil war in Syria. Kiev government now also realizes US will not support real confrontation with Russia and Russia will not give up Crimea. Neocon experiment in achieving growth through regime change has been a total failure and huge drain on US economy.

greenskeeper carl

I agree 100%. What I'm dreading is listening to all the republitards in the next debate trying to one up each other on the war mongering. The problem with 'let Russia have it' is that it will be talked about by the right as though that's a bad thing. It will be spun as an Obama fuck uo(which it is) not because of the simple fact that it was never any of our business in the first place. To them, EVERYTHING is our business, and they will be spending the next few weeks talking tough about how they will stand up to Putin.

RockyRacoon

You got it right, Carl. If they want to see Russia get its butt kicked, give them Syria, and Afghanistan, and Iraq and all the other crappy countries that the U. S. has managed to destabilize. Wish the Russians luck in putting that all back together. Better yet, encourage them to annex the whole shootin' match into the Russian alliance!

Hey, wait.... could this have been the long term plan all along? Hmmm.... Maybe them thar neocons are smarter than they look. Nah, never mind.

sp0rkovite

The article implies the CIA "lost" Syria. When did it ever "win" it? Total political propaganda.

datura

There are some risks, yes, dead Iranian general, perhaps soon some dead Russian soldiers. But unlike the USA, Iran is fighting for its existence here. They know if Syria falls, they could be next. As for Russia, it is very similar. As one expert said: "When the USA looks at Syria, they see pipelines, profit from weapons, money and power." But the first thing Putin sees, when looking at Syria, is Chechnya. Syria is very close to Russia, but very far from the USA. And that is a huge difference.

For example, yesterday, some ISIS fighters were arrested in Chechnya. Luckily, FSB discovered them before they could do some harm. Not even talking about those ISIS fighters, who came to Ukraine, to fight against the pro-Russian rebels!!! You can see, how close and how important is this to Russia and why Russia cannot give up here and has to go to all the extremes. Including the parked nuclear submarine near Syria.

I could say to the US lunatics: you shouldn't have kept poking the bear. You shouldn't have supported terrorists in Chechnya. You should have left Ukraine to Russia. As Putin said very clearly in Valdai: "Russia does not intend to take an active role in thwarting those who are still attempting to construct their New World Order-until their efforts start to impinge on Russia's key interests. Russia would prefer to stand by and watch them give themselves as many lumps as their poor heads can take. But those who manage to drag Russia into this process, through disregard for her interests, will be taught the true meaning of pain."


Bring the Gold

Do you have a link for that Putin statement?

JohninMK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdai_speech_of_Vladimir_Putin

agent default

House of Saud better be careful, because once Syria is taken care of, they will pay dearly for arming ISIS. If Russia wins in the ME Qatar and SA are up for regime change and the US cannot stop it.

Neil Patrick Harris

no no no. It's a about Israel seizing legal authority to drill for oil and nat gas in the Golan Heights/Southern Syria. The plan was to arm ISIS, help ISIS defeat Assad, let ISIS be terrible ISIS who will then threaten Israel, giving the Israelis a perfect excuse to invade Syria, defeat ISIS and look like a hero, then build a pipeline through Turkey, right in to Europe.

But thankfully Putin cockblocked those racist Zionists, and he is going to get all the oil and gas for himself. Poor ol' Bibi gets nothing. Checkmate.

Freddie


http://www.moonofalabama.org/

Moon of Alabama web site is saying the See Eye Aye and Pentagram are not giving up. If anything, they plan on ramping it up. How many more civilians do they want to kill? Sickening.

ThirdWorldDude

This shitshow is far from over. It might be just a coy in their efforts to improvise another Afghanistan.

"Saudi Arabia is ramping up its supplies of lethal weaponry to three different rebel groups in Syria in response to the Russian airstrikes on Syrian rebels, British media reported, citing a Saudi government official in Riyadh. He did not rule out supplying surface-to-air missiles to the rebels..."

techpreist

Given our military spending I think we actually could win an all-out war. We have enough nukes to glass the planet a dozen times after all.

However, bullies don't want to fight with someone who could actually fight back, and who could change the wars from this abstract thing that "creates jobs" and only hurts a few Americans (10k Americans = 0.003% of the population), to something that people actually might not want.

viahj

if this is framed as an Obama failure in foreign policy (it will) in the upcoming US political Presidential selection, the candidates will all be falling over themselves to come to the aide of our "ME Allies" to restore order. there will be a push to re-escalate US involvement in the ME especially with the pressure of Israel over their owned US politicians. a US retreat in the short term while fortunate for the American people, will not stand. the warmongers will be posturing themselves as to which will be the loudest in calling for re-engagement.

[Oct 12, 2015] Paul Craig Roberts: A Decisive Shift In The Power Balance Has Occurred

... my former CSIS colleague, Zbigniew Brzezinski, normally a sensible if sometimes misguided person, has written in the Financial Times that Washington should deliver an ultimatum to Russia to "cease and desist from military actions that directly affect American assets." By "American assets," Brzezinski means the jihadist forces that Washington has sicced on Syria.

Brzezinski's claim that "Russia must work with, not against, the US in Syria" is false. The fact of the matter is that "the US must work with, not against Russia in Syria," as Russia controls the situation, is in accordance with international law, and is doing the right thing.

Ash Carter, the US Secretary for War, repeats Brzezinski's demand. He declared that Washington is not prepared to cooperate with Russia's "tragically flawed" and "mistaken strategy" that frustrates Washington's illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government with military violence.

Washington's position is that only Washington decides and that Washington intends to unleash yet more chaos on the world in the hope that it reaches Russia.

... ... ...

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence organization, said that Washington needs to understand that "Russia also has foreign policy; Russia also has a national security strategy" and stop crossing Russia's "red lines." Gen. Flynn thus joins with Patrick J. Buchanan as two voices of sense and sensibility in Washington. Together they stand against the arrogance and hubris that will destroy us.

Several commentators, such as Mike Whitney and Stephen Lendman, have concluded, correctly, that there is nothing that Washington can do about Russian actions against the Islamic State. The neoconservatives' plan for a UN no-fly zone over Syria in order to push out the Russians is a pipedream. No such resolution will come out of the UN. Indeed, the Russians have already established a de facto no-fly zone.

Putin, without issuing any verbal threats or engaging in any name-calling, has decisively shifted the power balance, and the world knows it.

... ... ...

worbsid

It is completely impossible for Obama to admit he is wrong. Note the 60 Min interview.

Mini-Me

Wondering which host the neocons will attach themselves to after having sucked the US dry. A parasite should never kill its host.

A Lunatic

Following advice from the likes of Brzezinski is a large part of the problem......

BarnacleBill

I've posted this before, but... we can't ask the question too often: Who sold ISIS all those Toyotas? ISIS didn't buy them themselves out of some Texas showroom, custom-built for desert warfare! Right?

http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2014/10/who-sold-isis-all-those-toyotas.html

johmack2

I must admit this certainly seems like a wild BEAST in action. Wreakless, seemingly unpredictable causing mass chaos in its wake


Chad_the_short_...

Why don't they want to hit israel? I thought all muslims wanted a piece of Israel.

Macon Richardson

Do you really have to ask?

Reaper

ISIS are the nutured harpies of Barack, McCain and the neo-cons, which inflict death and mayhem upon their targets. ISIS's evil is Barack's, McCain's and the neo-con" projected evil.

In US law, they are called principles and as such deserve equal punishment. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2 ISIS's acts are war crimes. The principles abetting ISIS are as guilty as ISIS. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441

War crimes text (Geneva Convention): "To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

a)violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

b)taking of hostages;

c)outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and de-grading treatment." https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf


Salah

Anyone making these bullshit comments about ISIS being the USA's extra-military arm (or Israel's) has obviously NEVER BEEN IN THE MILITARY. Ditto any of the alphabet covert services.

ISIS is the enemy, period. They cleverly arose in a vacuum, and disperse at the first sign of military opposition that has its shit together.

Yeah, go out there and tell some US special ops his buddy's death, maybe at the hands of ISIS, was his own govt's doing.

Go do it you insulated fucks...I dare you. And see what happens. First rule in clandestine warfare; don't shit in your own mess tent.

SgtShaftoe

I was in the military, enlisted and officer corps. I lost a few of good friends from my unit in Iraq II. ISIS is absolutely a creation of CIA/DoD (at a distance, like planting seeds and watering them), just as so many other tragedies have the blood squarely on the hands of the same. I've seen it with my own eyes. Sorry dude, you're fucking wrong. When military people see shit they shouldn't have seen, they're either brought in, or they accidentally fall out of the sky. That's just the way it is.

Winston Smith 2009

"ISIS is the enemy, period."

Absolutely.

"They cleverly arose in a vacuum"

And what created that vacuum? The lack of the only thing, apparently, that can keep these religious fanatics absolutely infesting that area of the world in line: a dictator. Who foolishly removed the dictator in Iraq? These ignorant, arrogant assholes:

-----

In his book, "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End," Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his "Axis of Evil" speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq's first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!"

"From the president and the vice president down through the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, there was a belief that Iraq was a blank slate on which the United States could impose its vision of a pluralistic democratic society," said Galbraith. "The arrogance came in the form of a belief that this could be accomplished with minimal effort and planning by the United States and that it was not important to know something about Iraq."

-----

"Yeah, go out there and tell some US special ops his buddy's death, maybe at the hands of ISIS, was his own govt's doing."

Only indirectly, but the astoundingly arrogant stupidity at the highest levels of his government unnecessarily caused the conditions that led to it. It was and is their absolutely clueless meddling that is the problem.

And don't get the idea that I'm a pacifist. Far from it. Geopolitical gaming including the use of military force has been and always will be the way the world works. There's nothing I or anyone else can do or ever will be able to do about that. Since that is the case, I want the "coaches" of my "team" to be smart. They aren't.

They're f'ing bumbling idiots!

Dre4dwolf

I would agree it is in bad taste to go tell someone who is active military that they are fighting an enemy their own govt created.

But

When something is hard to say, a lot of times its just the truth.

Now if the people listening aren't open minded to the possibility, well . . . there exists the potential to get decked in the face by a marine.

Also, ISIS is not a direct branch of U.S. forces, its a group the U.S. funded, created to perpetuate a war so that the U.S. can spill into borders outside of current combat zones .... the scenario is sorta like well ..."O I know we attacked Iraq, but there is this new boogieman and he is called Isis and BTW hes living in your garage so I have to invade your land now... "and so on and on new invasion one after the other into new areas all blamed on the spread of isis ISIS IS HERE, WE NEED TO INVADE, ISIS IS THERE WE NEED TO INVADE,

ISIS IS EVERYWHERE ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO U.S.

Thats probably what the strategy was, and it failed horribly when Russia exposed the hypocrisy when it directly decided to engage and terminate the ISIS group , it revealed that the U.S. has no intention of squelching ISIS, and now you have proof that the U.S. govt is just para-dropping weapons in random locations all around the middle east..... they dont even care who gets the weapons, they just want a bunch of pissed off people armed to the teeth . . .

The greatest hypocrisy of all is the fact that while the U.S. govt is dropping weapons all over the place (its a weapons free-for-all bonanza ) right now, they are pushing Gun Control and Confiscation here at home....

What does that say about your govt? when it is actively caught red handed arming terrorists, while pushing gun confiscation domestically ??? lol its not that far of a stretch to connect the dots... cmon

SuperRay

Salah you sure are righteous. Like you've been in the deep shit. Maybe we should call you four leaf instead. What do you think?

Bullshitting a soldier who's risking his life for what he thinks is a noble cause, is unconscionable. You're saying - trust your leaders, they know best. I say, what planet on you on, you fucking moron? The neocon assholes who are guiding, or mis-guiding, policy in the middle east should be lined up and shot for treason. Why is Russia destroying ISIS at blistering speed? Because they want to destroy it. We could've done the same thing, but is we destroyed ISIS and 'won' the battle against terrorism, the defense contractors might not make tons of money this year. We always need an enemy. Get It? We've always been at war with Eurasia? There's no money for the Pentagon without war, so we have to always have an enemy. Duh

datura

I feel awful that Russia is now almost alone in this enormous fight:-(....We in the West won't help them. It feels like WWII again and Russians will have to bear the grunt alone again. Westerners don't seem to change. We are practically good for nothing cowards. Sorry to say, but it is so. And we even dare to judge them in any way??? We dare to judge their leader or their level of democracy? It just makes me sick.

These is how Russian ladies, who fought in WWII, looked like. These seemingly fragile creatures...more valiant than Western men at those times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kraFEWO7Z44

Dre4dwolf

They aren't alone, the U.S. is leaving care packages full of weapons and supplies all over the middle east for Russia to discover. Its like an easter egg hunt, except there is no easter because your in a Muslim shit-hole, and.... there are no bunnies, just pissed of Jihadis who want to shoot you.

Better find the eggs before they do.

Mike Masr

And the US regime change in Ukraine resurrected Frankensteins' monster Nazism!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJQW_0utHKY

The Indelicate ...

ISIS meaning CIA/Mossad.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islam...

I think the world is beginning to understand that the anglo-Zionist Banking and Warfare Empire can not be reasoned with.

[Oct 12, 2015] In Midst of War, Ukraine Becomes Gateway for Jihad

A new player among far right forces in Ukraine...
"... Photos: Tomasz Glowacki ..."
"... Next: The Life and Death of a Chechen Commander ..."
"... At the request of the writer, "Ruslan" is identified by a pseudonym. ..."
Feb. 26 2015 | theintercept.com
"OUR BROTHERS ARE there," Khalid said when he heard I was going to Ukraine. "Buy a local SIM card when you get there, send me the number and then wait for someone to call you."

Khalid, who uses a pseudonym, leads the Islamic State's underground branch in Istanbul. He came from Syria to help control the flood of volunteers arriving in Turkey from all over the world, wanting to join the global jihad. Now, he wanted to put me in touch with Ruslan, a "brother" fighting with Muslims in Ukraine.

The "brothers" are members of ISIS and other underground Islamic organizations, men who have abandoned their own countries and cities. Often using pseudonyms and fake identities, they are working and fighting in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus, slipping across borders without visas. Some are fighting to create a new Caliphate - heaven on earth. Others - like Chechens, Kurds and Dagestanis - say they are fighting for freedom, independence and self-determination. They are on every continent, and in almost every country, and now they are in Ukraine, too.

In the West, most look at the war in Ukraine as simply a battle between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government. But the truth on the ground is now far more complex, particularly when it comes to the volunteer battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine. Ostensibly state-sanctioned, but not necessarily state-controlled, some have been supported by Ukrainian oligarchs, and others by private citizens. Less talked about, however, is the Dudayev battalion, named after the first president of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev, and founded by Isa Munayev, a Chechen commander who fought in two wars against Russia.

Ukraine is now becoming an important stop-off point for the brothers, like Ruslan. In Ukraine, you can buy a passport and a new identity. For $15,000, a fighter receives a new name and a legal document attesting to Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine doesn't belong to the European Union, but it's an easy pathway for immigration to the West. Ukrainians have few difficulties obtaining visas to neighboring Poland, where they can work on construction sites and in restaurants, filling the gap left by the millions of Poles who have left in search of work in the United Kingdom and Germany.

You can also do business in Ukraine that's not quite legal. You can earn easy money for the brothers fighting in the Caucasus, Syria and Afghanistan. You can "legally" acquire unregistered weapons to fight the Russian-backed separatists, and then export them by bribing corrupt Ukrainian customs officers.

"Our goal here is to get weapons, which will be sent to the Caucasus," Ruslan, the brother who meets me first in Kiev, admits without hesitation.

WITH HIS WHITE hair and beard, Ruslan is still physically fit, even at 57. He's been a fighter his entire adult life. Born in a small mountain village in the Caucasus, on the border between Dagestan and Chechnya, Ruslan belongs to an ethnic minority known as the Lak, who are predominantly Sunni Muslim.

The world that Ruslan inhabits - the world of the brothers - is something new. When he first became a fighter, there wasn't any Internet or cell phones, or cameras on the street, or drones. Ruslan joined the brothers when the Soviet Union collapsed, and he went to fight for a better world, first against the Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. He then moved to Azerbaijan, where he was eventually arrested in 2004 on suspicion of maintaining contact with al Qaeda.

Even though Ruslan admits to fighting with Islamic organizations, he claims the actual basis for the arrest in Azerbaijan - illegal possession of weapons - was false. Authorities couldn't find anything suspicious where he was living (Ruslan was staying at the time with his "brothers" in the jihad movement) but in his wife's home they found a single hand grenade. Ruslan was charged with illegal weapons possession and sent to prison for several years.

In prison, he says he was tortured and deliberately housed in a cell with prisoners infected with tuberculosis. Ruslan took his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, accusing the authorities in Azerbaijan of depriving him of due process. The court eventually agreed, and asked the Azerbaijani government to pay Ruslan 2,400 euros in compensation, plus another 1,000 euros for court costs.

But when Ruslan was released from prison, he didn't want to stay in Azerbaijan, fearing he would be rearrested, or even framed for a crime and again accused of terrorism. "Some of our people disappear and are never found," he says. "There was one brother [who disappeared], and when he was brought for burial, a card was found showing that he was one of 30 people held in detention in Russia."

In Russia, a warrant was issued for Riuan's arrest. Returning to his small mountain village was out of the question. If he goes back, his family will end up paying for what he does, anyhow. "They get to us through our families," he says. He condemns those who refused to leave their own country and fight the infidels. This was the choice: either stay, or go abroad where "you can breathe freedom."

"Man is born free," Ruslan says. "We are slaves of God and not the slaves of people, especially those who are against their own people, and break the laws of God. There is only one law: the law of God."

After his release from prison in Azerbaijan, Ruslan became the eternal wanderer, a rebel - and one of the brothers now in Ukraine. He came because Munayev, now head of the Dudayev battalion, decided the brothers should fight in Ukraine. "I am here today because my brother, Isa, called us and said, 'It's time to repay your debt,'" Ruslan says. "There was a time when the brothers from Ukraine came [to Chechnya] and fought against the common enemy, the aggressor, the occupier."

That debt is to Ukrainians like Oleksandr Muzychko, who became one of the brothers, even though he never converted to Islam. Muzyczko, along with other Ukrainian volunteers, joined Chechen fighters and took part in the first Chechen war against Russia. He commanded a branch of Ukrainian volunteers, called "Viking," which fought under famed Chechen militant leader Shamil Basayev. Muzychko died last year in Ukraine under mysterious circumstances.

Ruslan has been in Ukraine for almost a year, and hasn't seen his family since he arrived. Their last separation lasted almost seven years. He's never had time to raise children, or even really to get to know them. Although he's a grandfather, he only has one son - a small family by Caucasian standards, but better for him, since a smaller family costs less. His wife calls often and asks for money, but Ruslan rarely has any to give her.

IN THE 17th century, the area to the east of the Dnieper River was known as the "wilderness," an ungoverned territory that attracted refugees, criminals and peasants - a place beyond the reach of the Russian empire. Today, this part of Ukraine plays a similar role, this time for Muslim brothers. In eastern Ukraine, the green flag of jihad flies over some of the private battalions' bases.

For many Muslims, like Ruslan, the war in Ukraine's Donbass region is just the next stage in the fight against the Russian empire. It doesn't matter to them whether their ultimate goal is a Caliphate in the Middle East, or simply to have the Caucuses free of Russian influence - the brothers are united not by nation, but by a sense of community and solidarity.

But the brothers barely have the financial means for fighting or living. They are poor, and very rarely receive grants from the so-called Islamic humanitarian organizations. They must earn money for themselves, and this is usually done by force. Amber is one of the ideas Ruslan has for financing the "company of brothers" fighting in eastern Ukraine - the Dudayev battalion, which includes Muslims from several nations, Ukrainians, Georgians, and even a few Russians.

The brothers had hoped the Ukrainian authorities would appreciate their dedication and willingness to give their lives in defense of Ukrainian sovereignty, but they miscalculated. Like other branches of fighters - Aidar, Azov and Donbass - the government, for the most part, ignores them. They're armed volunteers outside the control of Kiev, and Ukraine's politicians also fear that one day, instead of fighting Russians in the east, the volunteers will turn on the government in Kiev. So ordinary people help the volunteers, but it's not enough. The fighters associated with the Ukrainian nationalist Right Sector get money, cars and houses from the rich oligarchs.

Ruslan has a different plan. He's afraid that if they begin stealing from the rich, the Ukrainian government will quickly declare their armed branch illegal. He's decided to work in the underground economy - uncontrolled by the state - which the brothers know best.

Back in the '90s, the amber mines in the vast forests surrounding the city of Rivne were state-owned and badly run, so residents began illegally mining; it was a chance at easy money. Soon, however, the mafia took over. For the right daily fee, miners could work and sell amber to the mafia at a fixed price: $100 per kilogram. The mafia conspired with local militia, prosecutors and the governor. That was the way business worked.

As a result, although Ukraine officially produces 3 tons of amber annually, more than 15 tons are illegally exported to Poland each year. There, the ore is processed and sold at a substantial profit. The Rivne mines operate 24 hours a day. Hundreds of people with shovels in hand search the forest; they pay less to the mafia, but they extract less amber and earn less. The better off are those who have a water pump. Those people pump water at high pressure into the earth between the trees, until a cavity 2 to 3 meters deep forms. Amber, which is lighter than water, rises to the surface.

At one point, Ruslan disappeared in Rivne for several weeks. When he returned, he was disappointed; he'd failed to convince the local mafia to cooperate with the brothers' fight for an independent Ukraine. But now, he has other arguments to persuade them. His men are holding up the mines, by not allowing anyone into the forest. Either the local gangsters share their profits, or no one will get paid.

Ruslan doesn't like this job. He knows it won't bring him any glory, and could land him in prison. He would have preferred to be among the fighters at the front lines, where everything is clear and clean. He says he can still fight, but he's already too old to really endure the rigors of battle, even if he doesn't want to admit it. He may still be physically fit, but fighters don't usually last longer than a few years. Then they lose their strength and will to fight.

He has other orders from Munayev: he's supposed to organize a "direct response group" in Kiev. The group will be a sort of rear echelon unit that take care of problems, like if someone tries to discredit the Dudayev battalion. It will also collect debts or scare off competition. There's no doubt the new branch will work behind the lines, where there isn't war, but there is money - as long as you know where to get it. If need be, the direct response group volunteers will watch over the mines in Rivne, or "will acquire" money from illegal casinos, which operate by the hundreds in Kiev.

Ruslan sends me photos of the group's criminal exploits: they came into the casinos with weapons, and broke into the safes and slot machines. They disappeared quickly, and were never punished. The money went to food, uniforms, boots, tactical vests and other equipment necessary for the fighters. The mafia knows they can't beat them at this game. The brothers are too good, because they are armed and experienced in battle. The police aren't interested in getting involved either. In the end, it's illegal gambling.

I told Ruslan that it's a dangerous game. He laughed.

"It's child's play," he says. "We used to do this in Dagestan. No one will lift a finger. Don't worry."

RUSLAN FINALLY DROVE me to see his "older brother," to Isa Munayev, and his secret base located many miles west of Donetsk.

Riding in an old Chrysler that Ruslan bought in Poland, we drove for several hours, on potholed and snowy roads. Ruslan had glued to the car one of the emblems of Ukraine's ATO, the so-called Anti-Terrorist Operation, which includes both soldiers and volunteers in the fight against separatists.

The bumper sticker allows him to drive through police traffic stops without being held up - or if he is stopped, they won't demand bribes as they do from other drivers. The ATO sticker, Ruslan's camouflage uniform, and a gun in his belt are enough to settle matters. Policemen salute him and wish him good luck.

He drives fast, not wanting to rest, sleep or even drink coffee. If he stops, it's to check the compass on his belt to check the direction of Mecca. When it's time to pray, he stops the car, turns off the engine, places his scarf in the snow and bows down to Allah.

Asked whether - after so many hardships, after so many years, and at his age, almost 60 now - he would finally like to rest, he answered indignantly, "How could I feel tired?"

There's much more work to do, according to Ruslan. "There's been a small result, but we will rest only when we've reached our goals," he says. "I'm carrying out orders, written in the Holy Quran. 'Listen to God, the Prophet.' And I listen to him and do what I'm told."

On the way into the city of Kryvyi Rih, we met with Dima, a young businessman - under 40 - but already worth some $5 million. He's recently lost nearly $3 million from his business in Donetsk, which has been hit hard by the war. Dima worked for Igor Kolomoisky, one of the oligarchs who had been funding Ukraine's volunteer battalions. Dima and Ruslan have only known each other for a short time. Ruslan claimed Dima owed him a lot of money, although it's unclear from what. Ruslan kept bothering him, threatening to blackmail him. Finally, he got $20,000 from Dima.

That's not nearly enough to support the Dudayev battalion. But Ruslan had something bigger to offer Dima: amber. Now, Dima was ready to talk. He came up with the idea to find buyers in the Persian Gulf, including wealthy sheikhs. They would like to sell an entire house of amber: furniture, stairs, floors, and inlaid stones. It only takes contacts, and Ruslan has them. The brothers from Saudi Arabia like to help the jihad in the Caucasus and the Middle East.

The next day, Ruslan was behind the wheel again. The old Chrysler barely moved, its engine overheated. A mechanic with an engineering degree and experience working in Soviet arms factories connected a plastic bottle filled with dirty water to the radiator using a rubber hose.

"I don't know how long I'll last," Ruslan says suddenly. "It depends on God. I'll probably die on this road. But I don't have any other road to take."

Photos: Tomasz Glowacki

Next: The Life and Death of a Chechen Commander

* At the request of the writer, "Ruslan" is identified by a pseudonym.

The material for this story is part of BROTHERS, a documentary film being developed for Germany's broadcaster WDR – Die Story and Autentic, produced by Propellerfilm, broadcast date May 18th, 10pm (MET).

Doctors Without Borders: we received no advance warning of US airstrike

This is war crime.

The Guardian


Pat Driscoll -> Haynonnynonny 7 Oct 2015 19:32

Obviously Kunduz was not a safe place, was it? And perfectly reasonable when you are under deadly attack - particularly by a so-called "protector" - to complain about it.

Paul Lorenzini -> liberalexpat 7 Oct 2015 19:32

Kosher islamists?


Gerard White -> DontHaveDontSpend 7 Oct 2015 19:31

Well, do you actually believe anything the United States says? I mean, they created this whole "War on Terror", WMD BS, they created Islamic State, they committed similar atrocities in Fallujah. The US is a terrorist state.

Pat Driscoll -> Haynonnynonny 7 Oct 2015 19:31

What statistical reports? Let's start with the last 13 months in Syria shall we? The official U.S. statistical report for innocents killed reports a total of : ZERO. Why is that? Because the U.S. military hasn't kept track. Iraq? Well, until the Iraq government complained after numerous massacres, the U.S. military also DIDN'T KEEP RECORDS. Same with Afghanistan.

crankyyankee1945 -> smokinbluebear 7 Oct 2015 19:28

let's see:......exaggerating and contorting the initial information from a diverse and complicated command structure, falsely stating that the US has refused to cooperate with an international investigation which has not been convened or decided upon......isn't that what cynical propagandists who could care less about the suffering or solemnity of a situation except to reprehensibly frame it callously for maximum shallow indoctrination effect do?

Donkzilla -> donkeyshit 7 Oct 2015 19:25

the chances of this US attack on kunduz hospital having been a mistake is close to zero. the question therefore is and remains: why?

Chaos and mass murder is causing the biggest refugee crisis since WW II, that's why.

An apparent war of annihilation on the Taliban is actually a war of attrition on Russia for selling oil and gas in euros. Millions of refugees flooding into the EU may break the EU and destroy the euro, that's what the US are hoping for, there is no other logical reason I can see for the US murdering innocent civilians.

hadeze242 7 Oct 2015 19:22

the buck stops here. He is the Commander in Chief ... then, behave like one.

US Obama should return his Swedish Nobel Peace Prize. To keep it (and the European money attached to the prize) means to besmirch the Peace Prize & all other past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.


BrightSpots -> Alto Cumulus 7 Oct 2015 19:20

Have to say it, but I think the USA went native and turned terrorist quite some time back. They have dabbled in it continually and on every continent since WWII. But terrorism has become the USA's modus operandi in the last 14 years.

Every horror IS have committed, the US has committed tenfold in one shape or form.

Civilians to Military deaths have been at a rate of 1000's to 1 for a decade and a half.

Their rage since 9/11 has resulted in more refugees than WWII and phenomenal civilian rates. With circling drones terrorising people, killing sleeping children and firing again at neighbours who go to rescue their dying screaming neighbours children. You know you will be targeted if you help, so you have to listen to the kid's prolonged death and hate yourself for not going to help, because the fly boys in their bunker in Nevada will get you.

That's not war, that's not security. That's sadistic terrorism on a par with IS.

SocalAlex -> outkast1213 7 Oct 2015 19:14

We are far from a fascist police state

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Do you know, for example that - unreported anywhere except, briefly, in The Nation - the U.S. has no quietly changed the legal definition of "the border" to include everywhere within 100 miles of a coast or official land border ? And that this definition includes the places where 2/3 of Americans live, and includes entire states, among them Florida and Maine?

Why does this matter? Because, "on the border", the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies are free to do whatever they want, and normal laws don't apply. They can enter your home and search your things or even arrest and detain you with no probable cause and your other standard rights (including even the right to a lawyer) don't legally apply either! The ACLU has termed it "a Constitution-free zone", and that's no exaggeration!

And thanks to a minor wording change to an obscure law, 2/3 of Americans now live in this Constitution-free zone! This happened with no political debate whatsoever, and, given it was never reported, it's needless to say no public debate either!

Sorry, but to me that sounds very much like the tactics of "a fascist police state"...

CliftonSantiago -> Sam Ahmed 7 Oct 2015 19:13

No, you completely misread what I was saying. Which isn't surprising considering your crass profanities, which I suspect reveal a limited vocabulary and poor reading comprehension skills.

I was agreeing with your point in principle, but disagreeing with your solution, which is one of despair. Only through the pursuit of transparency will the US, UK and their middle-eastern allies be held accountable by the other nations of the world. Only by revealing their complete hypocrisy with irrefutable evidence will one be able to weaken their position. Just look at the damage that Wikileaks, Snowden, and Manning have done to the US propaganda machine.

Surrender is completely pointless. Why should one give up hope as you suggest? Do you live in Dostoevsky novel? Not me.


Federalist10 7 Oct 2015 19:11

There is some debate among lawyers about the extent to which an insurgency such as Afghanistan's technically constitutes an international armed conflict – and accordingly whether the duty to warn applies.

If we continue to willfully ignore this law, then we are as bad as the bad guys we had in mind when we first wrote it.

When did American Exceptionalism become an excuse for American Hubris?

SeanThorp -> charles47 7 Oct 2015 19:11

Are you deliberately misreading the article or merely missing the point?

I'm reading that different branches of the Afghan security services are saying that they were coming under fire and even that the Taliban were using the hospital as a base. Afaik only one building in the hospital came under fire not the 'whole hospital' as you have imagineered.

do try to keep up

Oh the irony.


Donkzilla DallasWilliams 7 Oct 2015 19:10

... you can continue this list for as long as you'd like. Enjoy!

The US is responsible for the chaos and mass murder behind the biggest refugee crisis since WW II, refuting that fact with a straw man list of conspiracy theories is a piss poor attempt at discrediting the conclusions I have drawn about US strategy.


Olorin 7 Oct 2015 19:07

Even if there were terrorists inside of hospital, even if Afghans were asking for bombing area of their choice THERE IS NO EXCUSE to bomb innocent civilians.

This is war crime. US Air Force should be careful even if ally ask for bombing their own territory they should check twice what is in targeted area. This is serious...


gossy -> Haynonnynonny 7 Oct 2015 19:06

When the last US troops go, the Afghan government will collapse pretty quickly and we'll see what a house of cards it really was, supported by US and EU grants, subsidy, and bribe money - that's all. Within 12 months of the US going the Taliban will be in Kabul and sitting down to govern. The next US president will then be faced with the usual McCain/Republican cry of being "weak on terror" - and so the BS goes on.


Alto Cumulus -> dusablon 7 Oct 2015 19:01

Continued: and that lie fails to explain why the hospital was pounded over and over despite desperate calls pleading for the US bombing to stop, and that lie fails to explain why we did not utilize our pinpoint accurate weaponry on the "area adjacent."


macmarco 7 Oct 2015 18:59

NYT says Obama is considering three different legal arguments on why the hospital attack was not a crime. My guess is that he and the DOD will claim that someone in or near the hospital was an imminent threat and had to be taken out to save lives. Obama used "imminent threat" excuse to assassinate two American citizens one a teenbage boy drinking tea. It sailed through both the media and legal community witout one objection.


hadeze242 -> Batleymuslim 7 Oct 2015 18:59

no ... even CNN (today) clearly states & shows the vidio the 30 min US bombing run on the MSF hospital (a white cross from above) was approved by US Control Centre 3 separate times. in google speak: can i hit it again ? yes, hit it. 2nd fly around: can I hit it a 2nd time? yes, go. 3rd fly around: hit is again? yes, do it again.


katiewm 7 Oct 2015 18:58

Why would a civilian hospital ever be considered a legitimate target for an air strike, regardless of whether "warning" was issued? This is shameful.

Alto Cumulus -> dusablon 7 Oct 2015 18:58

What? Weren't the taliban INSIDE the hospital dressed in scrubs? No.

Now yet ANOTHER revision: that the Taliban was "using area adjacent" to hospital.
Problems is, hospital staff has refuted that lie. And that lie fails to explain why the HOSPITAL ITSELF

Move on to your next lie.

DiggersAndDreamers -> Sal2011 7 Oct 2015 18:55

And in accepting that there is some sort of justification for it, we condone it,

I completely agree, it should be condemned in the strongest possible terms and those who are culpable should be brought to justice.


CliftonSantiago -> thatshowitgoes 7 Oct 2015 18:53

Your sarcasm aside, that is exactly what Americans think that means. Just look at the Republican party's website: https://www.gop.com/platform/american-exceptionalism/

Pretty scary actually...


CliftonSantiago DontHaveDontSpend 7 Oct 2015 18:49

You are obviously, and deliberately (american patriot?) ignorant of the articles of the Geneva Convention, of which the US is a signatory member (regardless of the Bush regime's attempts at redefining their obligations). https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter7_rule25


ExpatJohn22 7 Oct 2015 18:45

Doctors without borders, can you stop whinging, Really? just one bomb. We have to concentrate on demonizing Russia. You are spoiling the show.


[Oct 07, 2015] Putin Has Just Put An End to the Wolfowitz Doctrine

"... Syria ..."
"... Putin is trying to put an end to a doctrine that has caused 25 years of Bushist Crusader mayhem. Will he succeed is another question. ..."
"... But having got the ball rolling is a tipping moment and Humpty Dumpty of NWO is now a broken toy of a bygone age, especially as its created the destruction of Pax Americana's main hold on the world : Oil duopoly and monetary hegemony all gone down the shute in debt debasement folly. ..."
"... Just as the first Iraqi war was seminal in the fall of the Soviet Union IMHO when the world (and particularly the Soviet military analysts) were able to see the overwhelming technical superiority of the US smart weapons and the ease with with the US disposed of Saddam's huge standing army (breaking the illusion that the Soviet Union was a superpower on the par with the US), the move into Syria by Russia by the invitation of the legal government of Syria is in my opinion just as historic and seminal, the bell weather for a major sea-change in the the power structure of the world. ..."
"... the MSF hospital in Kunduz fiasco in juxtaposition with the well planned Russian strikes against ISIS (which the US supposedly has been attacking for 13 months), raises the question: if you needed someone to protect you, do you trust the Russian military or the US military? ..."
"... The above question is a fatal doubt intruding into the all powerful US paradigm - if the Saudis and other important players (Germany!) start to question US power and cozy up to the Russians, the US petrodollar is done for, and with it US dollar as WRC - the US as a nation will start an inevitable slide into third world status if that occurs. Imagine what happens for example if the US has to pay its military budget from actual assets or savings rather than just print dollars it needs to buy the hugely expensive F35 or send billions to Israel... ..."
"... The most rabid neocons may push the US into a poorly thought out confrontation, and get us all killed in the worst case. ..."
"... What has Putin proved? That the US desires not to destroy ISIL, but to empower ISIL. When has Assad ever attacked the US? Never. ..."
"... Everything the US government says is a lie. Everything the government's Ministry of Truth's media reports is a lie. With every lie the sheeple to emote for government. Barack is evil incarnate. The US is a tool of neo-cons and the exceptional American fools. Evil succeeds, when the American sheeple follow. ..."
"... Don't praise the day before the sunset. Imho, the more accurate statement would be: Putin has challenged the Wolfowitz doctrine. ..."
"... The neocons are not defeated until the truth about 9-11 if widely accepted, or, more properly, that which is untrue is widely rejected. it is their achilles' heel. The crime is too great, too evil and too poorly done to be explained away or ignored. once a growing majority of the nation sees through this lie (and the fraction is already larger than many imagine), new things become possible. this is not yesterday's news. There is no statute of limitations on treason or murder. The day will be won mind by mind. do your part. ..."
Oct 07, 2015 | Zero Hedge
4-Star General Wesley Clark noted:

In 1991, [powerful neocon and Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz] was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy – the number 3 position at the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a 1-Star General commanding the National Training Center.

***

And I said, "Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm."

And he said: "Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn't … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won't stop us. And we've got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us."

Crocodile

Putin has put an end to the Wolfowitz doctrine - end

Then Putin has found a cure for psychopathy; unlikely.

As you know, October is "Pink" month, the month they remind women of the deadly disease brought on women in which the big corporations are raping in billions and they would/will NEVER give you the cure, for their is no profit in a cure. Stupid is as stupid does.

Pinkwasher: (pink'-wah-sher) noun. A company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products that are linked to the disease.

Here are the results of those efforts: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/statistics/trends.htm (NONE from the disease perspective)

Minburi

This shit is from 2007? Wow... Just Wow!! It's only gotten worse since then!

Why is nothing being done?

Crocodile

The rich are getting richer and the middle class is being dismantled and you say "why is nothing being done?"

Johnny_Dangerously

So is the Greater Israel thing just a wild conspiracy theory? Along with the 3rd temple and "cleansing" the rest of Palestine?

Because I'd bet you my life savings that it is not a conspiracy theory as to Netanyahu and his ilk in Likud.

shutterbug

the USA people have some cleaning up to do, starting in the White House, every governmental agency and after that probably other federal departments...

BUT have you ever seen Walking Dead clean something up???

Icelandicsaga.....

Wolfowitz type thinking is spin off of Angl American establishment that grew out of Brtish empire/banking/trade ..some say reverts back to East India Trade cartel..but recent history, read for free online insider chronicler Georgetown U. Professor Carrol Quigley, who lays it out in Tragedy and Hope.http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X........ of his uotes: It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are attacking the Communists.

Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.

By the winter of 1945-1946, the Russian peoples were being warned of the dangers from the West.

In post Cold War guys like Harvards Samuel Huntington...discussed Anglo..American hegemony in Clash of Civilizations. Another who laid out the post Cold War game plan ..Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History. pentagon adviser Thomas Barnett laid out the countries to be taken sown in The Pentagons New Map. The guy is a wack job, but pentagon took him seriously.

Followed by PNAC..Project for a New American Century?..guys like Wolfowitz, Kagan, Kristol, Cheney et al first proposed invading Iraq a second time. But the genesis for fucked up US policy on steroids, was fall of Soviet Union. That is when elite, shadow govt and banking class from IMF TO World Bank to BIS came into their own. I recall this invade and bring democracy and KFC capitalism began in major policy journals in 1992..just about same time HW BUSH gave his ""new world order" speech at UN. It has been FUBAR evrr since.

Given what ""economic advisers" from US like Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Summers, Jonathan Hays caused in early days of new Russia, I do not blame them if they hate our guts. We have created chaos and destruction from Balkans ""war" to Ukraine ..Iraq..Libya..Syria. we have turned into a rabid stupid uncontrollable beast. Wolfowitz and his ilk were midwives. Enclosed pertinent links that may be helpful.

http://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civilizations-Remaking-World-Order/dp/145162......

and Francis Fukuyama...

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. Fukuyama is known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his subsequent book Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity (1995) modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics. Fukuyama is also associated with the rise of the neoconservative movement,[2] from which he has since distanced himself.[3]

Fukuyama has been a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy,

MSimon

No expense is too great to send a message. Until it is.

MEAN BUSINESS

False. What's your fucking problem?

MSimon

OK no expense is too great.

An estimate of what the war is costing Russia.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/countingthecost/2015/10/russia-econo...

Looking around I found out that Russia depends on Western companies for oil field eqpt. The war is causing it to defer projects.

On top of that Russia needs to balance its economy with more consumer manufacturing. The war is deferring some of that that.

War steals from the future. And then there is this bit of news. Propaganda or reality? Or a set up for a false flag attack?

FBI has foiled four plots by gangs to sell nuclear material to ISIS: Authorities working with federal agency stop criminals with Russian connections selling to terrorists

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3262821/FBI-foiled-four-attempts...

Johnny_Dangerously

"FBI has foiled four plots by gangs to sell nuclear material to ISIS:"

Sure they did.

And they *did not* assassinate that kid down in Florida for refusing to sign a confession.

Hell In A Ha...

"An estimate of what the war is costing Russia."

The cost of this bombing campaign against ISIS is costing Russia, there is no hiding from this fact, but the cost is also being burdened by Syria and Iran. Secondly, the Military Industrial Complex(MIC) does not have total control Iran, Syria and most importantly Russia, like it does over the U.S government. IE; The Russians have flown to date less than 100 sorties and have significantly downgraded ISIS, to the point western governments and media have been bitching about the loss of innocent civilian life(translated; U.S, U.K and allied special forces are being killed by Russian bombs). Conversely the U.S air-force have officially flown over 1800 sorties in an attempt to downgrade ISIS and have been unsuccessfu to datel. 1800 sorties and a lot of bombing achieving nothing, is a great payout for the MIC.

So an obvious question must be asked. The Russians have flown and bombed just 4% compared to the U.S air-force and have downgraded ISIS. Are the Yanks vastly inferior and incompetent than the Russians? And if the answer is no, then the only logical conclusion must be the Americans never really targeted ISIS and we the public are being fed a pack of lies and propaganda.

falak pema

Well said.

Putin is trying to put an end to a doctrine that has caused 25 years of Bushist Crusader mayhem. Will he succeed is another question.

But having got the ball rolling is a tipping moment and Humpty Dumpty of NWO is now a broken toy of a bygone age, especially as its created the destruction of Pax Americana's main hold on the world : Oil duopoly and monetary hegemony all gone down the shute in debt debasement folly.

Dear Henry's legacy to the Trilateral world now looking like Petrodollar's metamorphosis into Humpty Dumpty.

But where it leads to is a debatable question.

Quo Vadis.

flapdoodle

The *really* big problem with the US Deep State is the following:

1) The US Dollar as World Reserve Currency is based on, well, the fact that it is the WRC. The "faith" the rest of the world invests in the Dollar is only backed by momentum - and the perceived preeminence of the US armed forces.

2) Just as the first Iraqi war was seminal in the fall of the Soviet Union IMHO when the world (and particularly the Soviet military analysts) were able to see the overwhelming technical superiority of the US smart weapons and the ease with with the US disposed of Saddam's huge standing army (breaking the illusion that the Soviet Union was a superpower on the par with the US), the move into Syria by Russia by the invitation of the legal government of Syria is in my opinion just as historic and seminal, the bell weather for a major sea-change in the the power structure of the world.

3) Russia in Syria has, at least in its first appearances, greatly neutralized ISIS, which was touted as a huge almost invincible juggernaut, putting on a clinic of technical prowess and coordination almost comparable to the US effort in Iraq 1.

4) The paradigm of the all powerful US military has taken a big hit, if not by its lack of technical superiority (the F35 fiasco does not inspire confidence in US technical capability), but by its intentions, will, and competence. the MSF hospital in Kunduz fiasco in juxtaposition with the well planned Russian strikes against ISIS (which the US supposedly has been attacking for 13 months), raises the question: if you needed someone to protect you, do you trust the Russian military or the US military?

5) The above question is a fatal doubt intruding into the all powerful US paradigm - if the Saudis and other important players (Germany!) start to question US power and cozy up to the Russians, the US petrodollar is done for, and with it US dollar as WRC - the US as a nation will start an inevitable slide into third world status if that occurs. Imagine what happens for example if the US has to pay its military budget from actual assets or savings rather than just print dollars it needs to buy the hugely expensive F35 or send billions to Israel...

6) What gives pause are what the US might do about what has just happened in Syria. The most rabid neocons may push the US into a poorly thought out confrontation, and get us all killed in the worst case.

7) Whatever response the US tries will not change the death of the US Dollar as WRC. The only question is how soon it will be cast aside (and my gut tells me it will be relatively soon, regardless of how "oversubscribed" dollar denominated debt is to the actual number of dollars in circulation)

GMadScientist

Fuck off. Neocons can own their fucking mistake until the end of time. It was stupid. You did it (and elected the fucker TWICE!). So get the fuck over it.

falak pema

You are missing the point : Its PAX AMERICANA's mess; but it was the Wolfowitz doctrine of the BUSHES (father and son Incorporated along with Cheney) that started it.

Boy King is just a mouthpiece (reluctant now but gung-ho in Libya) of that same imperial game.

History is a bitch and you can't play King Canute with it !

NuYawkFrankie

re Putin Ends Wolfowitz Doctrine

Now we should do our part, and put an end - a permanent end -to Mastermind War-Criminal "Rat Face" Wolfowitz; then the demonic KAGAN KLAN.

The other NeoCON warmongers can be rounded-up shortly thereafter trying to board flights to Tel Aviv, Israel

dreadnaught

Seen on a wall in a bus station: "Kill a NeoCON for Christ"

WTFUD

Long time GW! Nice watching all dem US made Saudi bought weapons go up in smoke. Now that's what i call Change you can believe in. Go Vlad, some US base collateral damage in Baghdad would be equally welcome.

The Plan to keep Russia busy with Ukraine mischief is another multi-billion farce gone up in smoke.

Really nice watching the EU erupt in a burden of refugees, none of which was ear-marked in the austerity budgets of the poodle-piss vassal states.

Cat-Al-Loan-iA here i come, right back where we started from . . .

Reaper

Evil is power. What has Putin proved? That the US desires not to destroy ISIL, but to empower ISIL. When has Assad ever attacked the US? Never.

Everything the US government says is a lie. Everything the government's Ministry of Truth's media reports is a lie. With every lie the sheeple to emote for government. Barack is evil incarnate. The US is a tool of neo-cons and the exceptional American fools. Evil succeeds, when the American sheeple follow.

bunnyswanson

You leave out the most important detail. STATE CAPTURE

Share the insults with the nation who has trained our cops in methods used against Palestinians, beating the crap out of everyone who shows the least bit of hesitation to obey their orders.

Okeefe = Full page of videos explaining ISRAEL EXPANSION PROJECT Greater Israel.

Dead politicians, dead journalists and many dead business people, all strangely similar yet some nobody from nowhere is sent to prison, with wide eyed drugged look.

ISRAEL is the source of the evil so fucking remember that prickface.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=israel+expansion+project+o%...

gezley

The source of the evil is not Israel, at least not the political entity known as Israel in the Middle East. The source of the evil is something far deeper, a Power of Darkness that exists somewhere else, a Power that created this modern state of Israel in the first place. In my opinion, that power of darkness, the truly evil "Israel", occupies the City of London, otherwise known as the Jewish Vatican, the counterpoint in this world to the other square mile that matters, the Holy See.

That's where the problems for the US and the Middle East have their beginning, middle and end. Solve that problem and America and the Middle East will both wake up to a bright new future.

Luther van Theses

"Soviet client regimes?" Didn't it ever occur to this dummy they are countries in their own right, people live there, you can't just take their countries away from them?

Bismarck said 'God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.' We must be in good shape considering we've had fools like Wolfowitz and drunks like G.W Bush running the country.

opport.knocks

Let's not give too much credit to Paul Wolfowitz, and his "doctrine". It was just a restatement of Halford MacKinder's "Heatland Theory" and Zbigniew Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halford_Mackinder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

jcdenton

Speaking of Ziggy, the guy just snapped ..

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/06/is-terrorists-may-blast-mosques-...

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/06/zbig2putin/

August

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/06/zbig2putin/

Decent article....i.e. better than aveage for veteranstoday. IMHO.

Ol' Zbigniew sez that he USA should "disarm" Russian forces in Syria.

Guess the US Police will have to use some flash-bangs on the Russkies, and shoot their dogs, too.

fleur de lis

Brzezh has been a psycho for a long time, and has harbored a seething hatred for the Russians that still spews poison to this day. He pushed the idiots in DC to support the serial killer Pol Pot who murdered more than a million Cambodians, and that was a long time ago. He was sly enough to get the Chinese to do the direct support. Still crazy after all these years.

The Cambodians were fightng with the Vietnamese who were allied with the Russians, so that was reason enough for him regardless of all the Cambodian deaths.. The Western powers had no good reason to be mixed up in Asia except as blood sport.

Jorgen

"Putin has put an end to the Wolfowitz doctrine."

Don't praise the day before the sunset. Imho, the more accurate statement would be: Putin has challenged the Wolfowitz doctrine.

jeff montanye

The neocons are not defeated until the truth about 9-11 if widely accepted, or, more properly, that which is untrue is widely rejected. it is their achilles' heel. The crime is too great, too evil and too poorly done to be explained away or ignored. once a growing majority of the nation sees through this lie (and the fraction is already larger than many imagine), new things become possible. this is not yesterday's news. There is no statute of limitations on treason or murder. The day will be won mind by mind. do your part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GNww9cmZPo

http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticl...

11b40

Here are some examples of people in senior government position who have Israeli citizenship. Will America ever wake up and end this idiocy, which was brought about in 1967 by a Supreme Court decision guided by Justice Abe Fortas, a prominent Jewish American. If some these names are not familiar, google them for a real surprise, or follow this link:

http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/Story-Dual_Citizenship_Loyal_T...

Jonathan Jay Pollard
Michael Mukasey
Michael Chertoff
Richard Perle\
Paul Wolfowitz
Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
Douglas Feith
Edward Luttwak.
Henry Kissinger
Dov Zakheim
Kenneth Adelman
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Robert Satloff
Elliott Abrams
Marc Grossman
Richard Haass
Robert Zoellick
Ari Fleischer
James Schlesinger
David Frum
Joshua Bolten
John Bolton
David Wurmser
Eliot Cohen
Mel Sembler
Steve Goldsmith
Adam Goldman
Joseph Gildenhorn
Christopher Gersten
Mark Weinberger
Samuel Bodman
Bonnie Cohen
Ruth Davis
Daniel Kurtzer
Cliff Sobel
Stuart Bernstein
Nancy Brinker
Frank Lavin
Ron Weiser
Mel Sembler
Martin Silverstein
Lincoln Bloomfield
Jay Lefkowitz
Ken Melman
Brad Blakeman

Beginning to see the problem?

OldPhart

Here's a full taste of Wolfowitz as he was interviewed by some metro-sexual I've never heard of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-wwFE_DaM

The faggot's got some solid points over Wolfowitz.

[Oct 07, 2015] Chris Hayes and Paul Wolfowitz, Amazing Interview

YouTube

OldPhart

Here's a full taste of Wolfowitz as he was interviewed by some metro-sexual I've never heard of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-wwFE_DaM

The faggot's got some solid points over Wolfowitz.

[Oct 05, 2015] Lawrence Wilkerson The American 'Empire' Is In Deep, Deep Trouble

Oct 05, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Former US army colonel and Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson unleashed a most prescient speech on the demise of the United States Empire.

As Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith notes, Wilkerson describes the path of empires in decline and shows how the US is following the classic trajectory. He contends that the US needs to make a transition to being one of many powers and focus more on strategies of international cooperation.

The video is full of rich historical detail and terrific, if sobering, nuggets, such as:

"History tells us we're probably finished.

The rest of of the world is awakening to the fact that the United States is 1) strategically inept and 2) not the power it used to be. And that the trend is to increase that."

Wilkerson includes in his talk not just the way that the US projects power abroad, but internal symptoms of decline, such as concentration of wealth and power, corruption and the disproportionate role of financial interests.

Wilkerson also says the odds of rapid collapse of the US as an empire is much greater is generally recognized. He also includes the issues of climate change and resource constraints, and points out how perverse it is that the Department of Defense is the agency that is taking climate change most seriously. He says that the worst cases scenario projected by scientists is that the world will have enough arable land to support 400 million people.

Further key excerpts include:

"Empires at the end concentrate on military force as the be all and end all of power… at the end they use more mercenary based forces than citizen based forces"

"Empires at the end…go ethically and morally bankrupt… they end up with bankers and financiers running the empire, sound familiar?"

"So they [empires] will go out for example, when an attack occurs on them by barbarians that kills 3000 of their citizens, mostly because of their negligence, they will go out and kill 300,000 people and spend 3 trillion dollars in order to counter that threat to the status quo. They will then proceed throughout the world to exacerbate that threat by their own actions, sound familiar?…This is what they [empires] do particularly when they are getting ready to collapse"

"This is what empires in decline do, they can't even in govern themselves"

Quoting a Chinese man who was a democrat, then a communist (under Mao) then, when he became disenchanted, a poet and writer…"You can sit around a table and talk about politics, about social issues, about anything and you can have a reasonable discussion with a reasonable person. But start talking about the mal-distribution of wealth and you better get your gun" …."that's where we are, in Europe and the United States".

pretty bird

America is going through a tough time right now. But she's been through tougher times. I wouldn't bet against her.

Manthong

Gee, might this be a Smedley Butler moment?

Crud.. looking at the Roman Empire, and Revolutionary France, you do not need to be a Phd in economics (theory, not science) or political science (?) er, NO.. theory.. to figure out where this is heading.

Oh regional Indian

It's pretty clear that the Empire dream is crumbling.

Which does not bode well for people on the INSIDE of the empires gates.

Perhaps more true for the west in general right now and to a lesser or greater extent, cultures world-wide that have been brought to their knees by the false (Jewish/Zio inspired and funded) libertarianism of freedom via sex drugs and rock and roll.....it's time to go inwards.

The next 4-5 years are going to be shocking hard in the west as everything you were brought up to believe in shows it's true, tattered colours of specious beginnings, ugly/lost individuals (Sanger, Kinsey, Steinem, Leary, Greatful Dead etc. etc. to name but a few) and a funding hand that showed it's biases early but a populace with their eyes on the TV, hands on their (or someone else's gentalia), beer and bad food...too far gone to rise in any manner of protest at all...

America is definitely sliding down a deep dark hole...

Not finger pointing, just reality...

Apathy is a cancer...

Everyone should give this a listen...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZSBFxanDAw

Handful of Dust

Did I read "Colin Powell"? The same Colin Powell who sold his country down the river into one of the most costly bloodiest wars in American history with a bareface lie about non-existent WMDs and a phantom threat from a cave-dwelling desert country of camel jocks?

THAT Colin Powell?

omniversling

"Chief of Staff for Colin Powell"...was it Wilko who prepped the vial of ANNNNTTHHHRRAAX for Powel to present to the world via the UN PROVING the WMD case for bombing Iraq back to the stoneage?

TAALR Swift

Nothing wrong with reading Machiavelli, but you're better off watching this YT 11 minute clip from a former CIA agent:

"Ex CIA agent explains how to delete the elite!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLr8ZvgURg0


luckylongshot

Great article. However while it exposes the cycle of power centralisation that leads to empires growing and collapsing it does not propose what needs to be done to stop this cycle occurring. This can be done by teaching the public to think critically, having a constitution that you stick to and decentralising power so different arms keep each other from becoming too powerful. Imagine if the NSA reported to the public and was tasked with ensuring politicians were not bribed and that businesses did not try to influence politics? In business the formula is decentralise power, treat people with respect and weed out the narcissists...and then enjoy large profits: This works wih nations and empires as well....why not try it.

Urban Redneck

The military and civil unrest threats due of climate change are not BS. What is BS are the contortions (both distortions and outright lies) and that the brass knob jockeys at the Pentagram will perform to receive moar funding for reducing competition for potentially much more scarce resources.

The larger threat isn't actually rising temperatures, but rather falling temperatures and changes in average precipitation. A single freeze in Florida can decimate citrus production, a wetter or drier than "Goldilocks" year can wreak havoc on production of various grains, and that is all without the .gov idiocy that is the People's Republic of Draughtifornia.

On a one-year timeline the weather costs are bad enough, but on a slightly longer climate timeline... not even the EBT equipped North American Land Whale has enough stored fat to wait out new McFodder if production has to migrated to follow climate change, which for some perennials (e.g the trees necessary for the all-American apple pie) means much more than a one year wait for first harvest.

So anyway... reducing competition... assuming you are a major power grand poobah (instead of a neo-Ethiopian Arab Spring despot), you can invade someone else to steal their food, invade someone else to reduce your domestic demand for food, or you can FEMA camp the useless eaters and put them on la dičte noir, (if you can't afford Zyklon B, and the infrastructure to properly deploy it). Regardless, this is Military Planning 101 level stuff.

AMPALANCE

Industrial farming it destroying top soil on a massive scale, we reached peak production years ago. Combine that with a decrease in biodiversity from unconstrianed Trojan Horse GMO's, and the prospect of a catastrophic food shock is very real. Don't forget peak Phosphorus is expected to be reached around 2030, and depleated in 50 to 100 years, it true would prove devastating for humanity.

Motasaurus

Reached peak production years ago?

Pleasr do explain then how all food crops have increased yield every year while reducing the amount of both land and fertilisers used to do so.

We're no-where near peak production, and the higher the atmospheric CO2 content climbs, and the milder the winters we have (from a warming atmosphere), the more food we will be able to produce. We're not even half way to the optimal atmospheric CO2 levels of 1000ppm for food crop growth yet.

techpreist

Here's a fun graphic from the journal Nature (Science and Nature being the two most prestigious journals in modern science):

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/fig_tab/461472a_F1.html#...

By mainstream academia's own numbers, industrial farming (the primary cause of nitrogen pollution is a far bigger problem than official global warming. But you never hear a peep about it because the main cause of this type of pollution is a combination of 1) subsidies and 2) GMOs which require much higher N input to get the growth that's possible from genetic modification. Since the solution is less control over farming, they have no problem driving the Earth off a cliff.

junction

Wilkerson has the freedom to travel and talk because he receives a fairly large military pension. What neither Wilkerson or any other critic of the current rulers of the United Staes will say is that the United States has no economic future anymore. The Wall Street looters have pillaged the country, first stealing the assets of corporate pension funds and now finishing off their brigandage by stealing all the future tax income of this country through the criminal use of derivatives. America is now a country with poisoned water supplies (fluoridation which causes heart disease), poisoned food (glyphosates and antbiotic contamination) and a poisoned electoral system where the top 0.1% chooses the winners.

The super-rich have their bolt holes outside the USA because they don't want to be around when this country, now a near Nazi state complete with death squads and Nazi People's Court-type hanging judges and prosecutors, completes its transformation by setting up concentration camps.


pachanguero

This asshole is part of the problem. Fuck him and his bullshit Glow-Ball warming scam. He should be in jail for the Iraq War along with Obama and Bush.

TheObsoleteMan

What do you expect from him, he is a CFR member and a CIA/NSA asset. No one ever retires from the CIA, you just aren't assigned projects and you are pensioned, but the only way you ever leave the CIA is in a box. He is not an American, he is a globalist. You have to be, or your not allowed into the CFR.


Dark Daze

Here's a fucking news flash for you Einstein. Your 'team' as you so quaintly put it has spent the last 250 years murdering, bombing, assassinating and fucking over 3/4's of the planet. Originally, just after the revolution, there was a period of say 20 years (just as Jefferson suggested) where the citizenry of the US was peacful and productive. Then, not long after the death of the last of the original Father's of the Revolution, the psychopaths arrived (General Hull at Fort Detroit) and started their crap with an attempted invasion of Canada (1812-14). That didn't work out so well, so you went south and fought with the Spanish, the Mexicans, every country in central and south america, declaring that the US had a god given right to control the entire area of North and South America (the Monroe doctrine). On the way you made sure you wiped out virtually every 'dirty injun' you could find, burned a few dozen 'witches' at the stake, invaded China and brought the opium/heroin trade to America (the Connecticut Yankees in their Clipper ships) and generally forced yourselves on an unwilling world. There are only two western democracies that have never engaged in empire, Australia and Canada. All the rest, the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, the Macedonians (greeks), France, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Hungary have all tried and failed at establishing empires, killing millions along the way. I read your Constitution a few years back (probably one of the most enlightened documents ever created), and I seem to remember a passage about 'not becoming entangled in foreign intrigues'. Too bad you didn't take that to heart. They left you a clear, easy to understand, definitive document on how to live and you fucking destroyed it, and yourselves in the process.

The rest of the history is available to anybody that cares to investigate, which means not very many Americans, who prefer to remain conveniently ignorant of your bloody history.

in4mayshun

News flash for YOU...All significant Governments throughout history have killed lots of people to remain in power. And FYI, Canada and Australia don't matter cause they're really just extensions of Europe, as they follow in lockstep.

The Old Man

Refernce France: 1790 through 1816. Sorry. But paper doesn't work unless you feed it war. When war is always an option, society fails in the common place. Reinvent society. I mean you got iPhones and all this crap. How hard is it to think this through?

Lyman54

Australia and Canada were just proxy extensions of the British Empire. Canadians served in the Napoleonic wars, Crimea, the Boer War, WW-1, WW-2 and Korea. It wasn't until Korea that the media would actually call Canadian troops Canadians.

Socratic Dog

Aussie eh. While I don't dispute anything you say, I have to suggest the Aussie government is even worse in that it slavishly follows the US lead in fucking EVERYTHING, including killing and maiming women and children in their millions in places far from its shores. I saw a couple of days ago in the SMH (once-great local rag) that Australia is waiting for US direction on how to respond to the Russian "provocation" in Syria. They're ready to go to war with russia to protect, err, not exactly sure what they're ready to protect, but it must be important. Israel maybe? Australia has become a pathetic lap dog, starting with Vietnam. And just like the USSA, the people support the government position in most anything.

conscious being

Mossad did 9-11. Terrerists come in a lot of shapes and sizes.

Memedada

Both Mr. Banzai and rbg81 are displaying a surprising (this forum taken into account) lack of insight into the power-structures of the US empire.

I thought it was obvious to all – who pays attention – that the 'electorate' (especially the president) are mere pawns of a hidden (not that well hidden) power-elite. The people actually ruling US are not named in MSM (the 0,01 % - and no, that's not anyone on the Forbes list). That US have a 'colored president' does not make any difference – his masters are the same.

Second: US have no real elections. An election requires an informed and educated population. US has the opposite. The medias are controlled by the 0,01%, the public education system have been eroded and made into an extension of the 0,01%'s propaganda-machine and there's no independent think tanks and/or institutions that can help the population get informed (the absolute majority of think tanks and research institutions in US are founded and funded by and for the 0.01%). Moreover, since you got 'Diebold' it doesn't matter – the votes are counted the way the 0,01% wants them to be counted.

Third: communist in what way? What's your definition of communism? If he – I don't listen to him – actually said anything that could be interpreted as communist it doesn't count (he speaks nothing but BS – distractions). What political actions has he taken that you would consider 'communist'?

+ who don't despise USA for what it has become today? US deserves nothing but contempt – and until there's a real revolt/revolution the US population deserves the same contempt.

IridiumRebel

My wife, who has been involved with Doctors Without Borders albeit briefly, asked about the errant strike that killed 19+. I stated what happened. After she gasped, I went on to say that our current leadership and trajectory as a nation has to be purposeful in its fuckery and stupidity. It's willful. They HAVE to be making these stupid decisions on purpose. There is no other possible answer. No way they could be making these decisions and think they will do anything but make us weaker and less trusted if it's even possible.

AmericanFUPAcabra

The GPS coordinates for that hospital had been given to the US months in advance. They knew it was there (probably helped build it with your money) In fact when the first bombs started falling phone calls were made to the US and NATO that they were hitting the wrong place- and guess what? The air strikes kept coming down for 30 minutes.

You can go on Youtube and watch Robert Ford (john negroponte's protege) making the news circuits lately blaming the people in the hospital for not having an evacuation plan. THEY DO NOT FUCKING CARE ABOUT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES. It has nothing to do with fucking up. A handful of Kissinger quotes come to mind.


Dark Daze

Well, it is very coincidental that less than 24 hours after 'the taliban' shot down a cargo plane carrying 'contractors' (CIA?), the hospital was bombed. There is more to this story than we know. Regardless, it still shows basially one thing which is that governments everywhere are out of control.

delacroix

a fuckup would be if they bombed the opium wharehouse.

Jorgen

"a fuckup would be if they bombed the opium wharehouse."

Yes, indeed, it would be...

Rumors Persist That the #CIA Helps Export #Opium from #Afghanistan http://t.co/yeihvYEvB3 pic.twitter.com/MYiDWqdPYV

- The Anti Media (@TheAntiMedia1) September 26, 2015

Paveway IV

"...No way they could be making these decisions and think they will do anything but make us weaker and less trusted if it's even possible..."

It would be most unhelpful to think of the actions of any branch of the U.S. government or military today as being in the interests of the people they serve. You can be certain that psychopaths running the U.S. (many groups with overlapping, occasionally competing but generally complementary interests) are in TOTAL control, and the organizations have morphed to serve ONLY psychopathic leaders, not normal ones. Arguing about which specific group of psychopaths is at the top of the heap or what their motivations are is also totally meaningless - it just doesn't matter. THAT isn't the problem.

The real problem is that the machinery of all of these government organizations has been fundamentally changed to serve only psychopathic leaders. They can no longer accomodate a 'normal' leader in any sense of the word. Replacing the heads of every one of these organizations today wouldn't work - the organizations themselves would reject a 'normal' person in charge and would oppose them at every turn or simply drive them out. It's well past the point of just getting 'the right' leaders in place.

The U.S. is on psychopath auto-pilot. There are no personal consequences for 'bad' decisions by those in charge of our government organizations. The leaders are making the exact same kind of decisions that every other failing empire has made during its decline since forever.

Perceptions of strength/weakness or trust/distrust are immaterial to the psychopaths in charge, as long as everybody seems to obey them. They're in a desperate scramble to maintain their OWN illusion of control before things go full-retard - they could care less what anyone else thinks of them or their decisions today.

o r c k

Agree, but just imagine living in most European Countries and knowing that the end of your ancient culture is only a few decades away due to the psychopathy of your "leaders".

Being surrounded by a warlike, mean-spirited and superstitious clan of early humans and NO way out whatsoever.

Jorgen

"They HAVE to be making these stupid decisions on purpose. There is no other possible answer."

Here is one theory on why the MSF hospital was bombed:

This is interesting... Did Obama Bomb Doctors Without Borders for Opposing TPP? http://t.co/2GEIbaQKyd

- AntiMedia UK (@AntiMediaUK) October 5, 2015

Flying Wombat

The Processes and Logic of The Deep State - Professor Peter Dale Scott

Unusually, just a single speaker this week: one two hour interview with the doyen of deep political research, Canadian Professor Peter Dale Scott. He provides not only a lot of details of the evolution of the post WW2 deep state in the USA, but also sketches out its guiding principles, some of the deeper patterns which allow one to understand the superficially confusing and contradictory actions of the US deep state.

Access show here: http://thenewsdoctors.com/?p=516544

SFopolis

Colin Powell has been treated as a great man for doing what? Semi-admitting that he knew we had it all wrong and everybody in power was (is) a war criminal?

In my opinion he is worse than all of the rest, because he had the platform and could have single handidly prevented this whole mess and exposed so many falshoods. Instead he did exactly what he knew was wrong. If he were a patriot and such a great man, he wouldn't have done what he did.

tool

WTF happen to him. Did he disappear into obscurity because of the extreme shame he felt for presenting that huge steaming pile of horse shit to the UN in front of the world .

I'm guessing not because people like that don't feel remorse or shame. They just get paid and live happily ever after!

conscious being

Colin proved himself to be a useful tool when he was brought in as the black face to do his part in covering up The Mai Lai Massacre in VietNam. His career took off after that.


[Oct 04, 2015] My comprehensive plan for US policy on the Middle East

Crooked Timber

5566hh, 10.04.15 at 2:02 am

Seriously though, I think a non-plan isn't really that useful. Why not have an actual plan? Something like this:
  1. End all drone strikes
  2. Cut off all military aid to countries in the Middle East
  3. Cut off diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia
  4. End all CIA or other covert support for groups in the region
  5. Put sanctions on any state in the region that funds terrorist groups
  6. Abolish the CIA, or at least covert CIA political interventions (this would help to address a lot of other problems outside the region too)
  7. Withdraw all US forces from the Middle East
  8. Encourage Britain to abandon its plans for a base in Bahrain
  9. Provide development aid (non-military) to the region
  10. Put diplomatic pressure on repressive regimes in the region

Val, 10.04.15 at 3:12 am

A U.S. air strike killed 20 MSF workers and patients in Afghanistan. A U.S. spokesperson called it collateral damage

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/03/kunduz-charity-hospital-bombing-violates-international-law

It's bullshit. That's what contemporary warfare does – kills civilians. The vast majority of those who die in contemporary warfare are civilians. It's not collateral damage, it's what war does. I don't know (as I've written on my blog) how anyone can justify war these days.

Frank Wilhoit, 10.04.15 at 3:17 am

The United States has only one option left in the Middle East. That is to build a time machine, go back to 1911, and prevent Winston Churchill and Jacky Fisher from converting the British Navy from coal to oil. Admittedly, serious obstacles stand in the way of implementing this approach, but there is no alternative.

John Quiggin, 10.04.15 at 3:40 am

@5 This amounts to spelling out my plan

@8 Or, alternatively, set the time machine for 2015, when the US is virtually self-sufficient in oil, and the price is at a historic low (the supposed need to control ME oil was always nonsense, but it's nonsense on stilts now)

[Oct 03, 2015] Moscow and Kiev in positive mood over talks to end east Ukraine conflict

Notable quotes:
"... The EU cannot do anything about Ukraine Right Sector radicals and its other nutters in the Mafia. ..."
"... But the Donbas situation is more mixed, however, even before the trouble in 2014, what I DID encounter in Kiev in particular (not so much Galycnya) was a regard of the SE UA citizens as second-class citizens, as well as attitudes that could be accurately be described as quasi-facist, ..."
"... I wonder why you call Western airstrikes "tactical". The coalition launched >7,000 military aircraft sorties in over a year, apparently carefully "missing" ISIS targets, killing on average ~0.4 terrorist per sortie and freeing up as much as 15 square kilometers of territory from ISIS. As you can easily imagine, a lot of people made huge amounts of money in the process. So we should call this a resounding success, on par with $10 billion no-bid Halliburton contract in Iraq. Wouldn't you agree? ..."
"... Does it really matter if they have ? We know the West has been involved so it would be pretty much par for the course if Russia was involved. The main thing is Ukraine becomes a peaceful nation for the benefit of its citizens, not for the benefit of either the West or Russia. ..."
Oct 02, 2015 | The Guardian

Елена Соловьева -> BMWAlbert 3 Oct 2015 20:37

Dear, you refer to "one blonde said!". On some vague feelings, assumptions... Enough speculation about Crimea, please! Let's stick to facts! Crimea 80% of the population - Russian. Not only Pro-Russian, and ethnic Russians. Russia does not need were the little green men of Crimea! But for drunk and scared of the Ukrainian military in the Crimea, for the Wahhabis, who through the streets went to the cars with black flags for Ukrainian neo-Nazis, importing explosives and suitable for shooting on the streets, probably Yes. Crimea was similar to the Autonomous Republic, until authonomy has destroyed by abandoning the Constitution. It was abolished by the President! Crimea held a referendum for secession from Ukraine long before the coup in Ukrainein 2014 .

Note that the Americans tried to seize Crimea under the guise of NATO exercises! Was absolutely illegal attempt to build an American military base in Crimea for the U.S. Navy landed the Marines on may 26, 2006, of which the citizens of Crimea dishonorably discharged. And during the state coup in Ukraine in the Black Sea suddenly a us warship.

In Debaltsevo the Ukrainian neo-Nazis fought with men that were deprived of the government, the President, sovereignty, language, external management is introduced, destroyed the economy. Take away the right to life. Whose wives, parents and children every day are killed by shells from anti-aircraft weapons in schools, hospitals, shops, bus stops, fill up with planes of white phosphorus, the water is shut off and the light stopped issuing wages and pensions, imposed humanitarian blockade.

To fight with desperate men, defending their home, or engage in rape and looting among the civilian population, where the majority of the elderly, women, children - different things.

Sarah7 -> Sarah7 3 Oct 2015 19:58

One more thing:

Actually, the first photograph accompanying this piece by Shaun Walker shows Poroshenko looking particularly angry and miserable -- if looks could kill, Merkel would be in big trouble!

That said, in the same photo, Putin appears calm, sanguine, and in a very 'positive mood' compared to his counterparts. Go figure.

Sarah7 3 Oct 2015 19:49

Moscow and Kiev in 'positive mood' over talks to end east Ukraine conflict

If you look at the photographs that accompany the following piece, Poroshenko does not appear to be in a 'positive mood' over the recent meeting of the Normandy Four, and Merkel looks like she is going to spit nails. Perhaps this explains their dour faces:

Checkmate!

3 October 2015

Finally the Penny Drops: Merkel Admits Crimea is Part of Russia
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20151003/1027980523/merkel-admits-crimea-is-part-of-russia.html

German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the first time publically accepted the fact that Crimea doesn't belong to Ukraine and that the peninsula will stay as part of Russia, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian Duma, said on his Twitter account, according to Gazeta.ru. (Emphasis added)

"Important: After a meeting in Paris, Merkel for the first time admitted that Crimea won't return to Ukraine. That means the crisis is only about the east of the country," Pushkov wrote. (Emphasis added)

The Normandy Four talks on Ukraine reconciliation concluded in Paris on Friday.

The leaders of the Normandy Quartet countries managed to agree on the procedure of the withdrawal of heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday.

"We were able to agree on the withdrawal of heavy weapons," Merkel said following the Normandy Four talks in Paris. "There is hope for progress. We are moving toward each other."

On the whole, the results of Friday's Normandy Four talks in Paris set a positive tone, Angela Merkel said, adding that she was satisfied with what the participants achieved during the meeting.

The Normandy Four are planning to meet for a followup in November, presumably to keep Poroshenko in compliance and moving head with the implementation of Minsk II.

PS -- It was the evil Putin wot done it!

HollyOldDog -> Laurence Johnson 3 Oct 2015 18:55

The EU cannot do anything about Ukraine Right Sector radicals and its other nutters in the Mafia. This mess is for Ukraine alone to sort out and Mikheil Saakashvilli is not the man for the job - his corruption runs far to deep for any action that is more than cosmetic.

BMWAlbert -> Елена Соловьева 3 Oct 2015 18:38

IDK the number of Russian nationals in the Donbas forces, something between 1-10K as a rough guess, these are not formal formations (some are organized at the battalion level as all-Russian units, just an observation from the Russian language news coverage of the closing of Debaltsevo earlier this year, e.g. so called "Khan" battalion, this is just televised news, but there must be more than one such unit, hence the estimate-there are enough weapons captures from UAF in the earlier battles also to arm a small army in Donbas, but this does not rule-out direct supplies (I would imagine something low-key and NOT the big white convoys), this would be the natural minimal level of support I would infer/expect in this case and seems a fair inference. I am not replicating mindless statements from ATO leaders, and remember that Rada twice tried

Crimea was an autonomous region in UA and with rights to hold a referendum under the early 2014 UA Constitution and an earlier legal attempt in 1993 was surprised, also that RU had large forces already legally stationed in Crimea/Krim according to the Kharkov treaty and that in some cases, civic authority, Sebastopol by the RU naval command being a case in point-a continuation of old practices. My sense from personal friends is that among the young, and old generally, the pro-RU sentiment in Krim is strong (incl. one girl with whom I have lost contact, who works there in what is now RU, due to current conditions).

But the Donbas situation is more mixed, however, even before the trouble in 2014, what I DID encounter in Kiev in particular (not so much Galycnya) was a regard of the SE UA citizens as second-class citizens, as well as attitudes that could be accurately be described as quasi-facist, this includes well-educated people, ibcl. in one case (a blonde) the desire to 'exterminate' the Russians-but I would not count the opinions in Donbas as only those enduring the bombardments, there are also many refugees, many in RU itself of course, whose opinions vary from those expressed sometimes here with all due respect, so yes it is complicated.


HollyOldDog -> William Snowden 3 Oct 2015 18:13

Putin wants Ukraine to succeed but the only way it can do this is for the Ukrainian citizens to take over its government and boot out the Self-serving Oligarchs. The Oligarchs have their place in Ukraine but that is to stay out from forming Government decisions and confine their endeavors to modernizing and improving the infrastructure of Ukraine Industrial base which would improve the finance and conditions for all of Ukrainian citizens. It's going to be a difficult road but Russia and the EU can help, though clinging on to the influences of the USA would surely be a retrograde step.

Елена Соловьева -> BMWAlbert 3 Oct 2015 18:07

What's so complicated? The war is real or not! Evidence of finding the 200 000 Russian soldiers in Lugansk and Donbass, or have or not! Crimea after the collapse of the USSR was a disputed territory, which Ukraine annexed unilaterally, without considering the opinion of the Russian Federation and, more IMPORTANTLY, against the wishes of the citizens of the Crimean Republic, which, actually, was constitutional and presidential, while Ukraine did not destroy this status! It is Ukraine annexed the Crimean Republic, and the Russian city Sevastopol, which is in the Republic even geographically not part of, Mr. specialist on Ukraine! Demarcation implies the absence of territorial disputes. And, by the way! Another monstrous stupidity of your media! Poor Ukraine after the coup d'état, followed by the external management of the country by the EU and the US are terrorized by the evil Russian, because it is weak and has no nuclear weapons because of the Treaty of non-aggression from the Russian Federation? Really? Ukraine did not pay its portion of external debt of the USSR and the Russian Empire, therefore, is not the successor,and cannot claim to nuclear power status! Ukraine is a priori not have a right to this weapon, because it was not the owner initially, as the successor! The coup in Kiev was held under the slogan "Cut all Russians!", which in Ukraine 2 years ago, it was a few million, and that is what they are doing throughout the Ukraine, especially in Eastern Ukraine and was planning to do in Crimea. The burning of people in Odessa - a vivid example.

Beckow -> Bart Looren de Jong 3 Oct 2015 17:11

You cannot survey people in the middle of a civil conflict on how much they like or dislike what is described as the "enemy". It simply cannot be done, the numbers are meaningless.

Look at Ukraine's economy and you will see the future of this conflict. The living standards are down so low that all else will become meaningless - people actually care about their incomes and living standard.

Your slogans about "illegal", "privileged sphere" are not what any of this is about, they are not what people in Ukraine think about or what matters to them. But if you insist on slogans, there is one simple answer: Kosovo. West bombed Serbia, killing about a thousand civilians, to force Albanian separation in Kosovo. All talk about "international law" is kind of meaningless after that.

Informed17 -> Laurence Johnson 3 Oct 2015 15:53

I wonder why you call Western airstrikes "tactical". The coalition launched >7,000 military aircraft sorties in over a year, apparently carefully "missing" ISIS targets, killing on average ~0.4 terrorist per sortie and freeing up as much as 15 square kilometers of territory from ISIS. As you can easily imagine, a lot of people made huge amounts of money in the process. So we should call this a resounding success, on par with $10 billion no-bid Halliburton contract in Iraq. Wouldn't you agree?

Manolo Torres -> Bart Looren de Jong 3 Oct 2015 15:49

I have condemned the actions of the Russian government in chechnya many times, if you are going to speak about anyones hypocrisy, you should at least know with whom are you talking.

Manolo Torres
9 Sep 2014 09:42
0 Recommend
Look, I already replied, I wasn´t careful with my question. Of course the Russians have committed many abuses, namely the war in Chechnya. I also explained the differences between that war and the wars by US/NATO that have simply no justification on grounds of self defense.


My concern with human life was shown by my condemnation of every violent act: the massacre in Odessa, the airstrikes and shelling that killed thousands in Ukraine, the war in Iraq and Syria, the war in Chechnya or the neo-nazi movement inside Russia (as we were discussing yesterday before you started shouting and got overwhelmed by the numbers I showed you).

As for the Ukrainians I don´t you are as stupid as to blame Putin for the Ukrainian governments shelling of residential areas. And perhaps you know that there is an investigation for MH17.

i am not like you Rob, I am not a fanatic and I only make judgements when I think I know the facts. You are just shouting and looking every time more ridiculous.

A good start for you would be to say that you stand corrected for the Amnesty report. Do it, I have done it, feels good.

Can I do anything else for you?

Laurence Johnson -> gimmeshoes 3 Oct 2015 14:15

Poroshenko is in a bit of a legal quagmire as his government has not at any stage controlled the entire nation and its borders at any time. His current claim on Eastern Ukraine in legal terms is more a wish list than a legal document of fact.

His only path is partition to legalise his government to govern what they have today, or to negotiate the handing over of East Ukraine to his governments control in order that he can legitimately govern the entire nation and its borders. An invasion of East Ukraine is probably not going to work legally, or on a more practical basis.

Informed17 -> Worried9876 3 Oct 2015 14:10

This is too categorical. Chocolate man wants anything that allows him to keep cashing in on his "president" title. The only thing that's unacceptable to him is if his masters try to prevent his thievery. Then he is likely to become angry and unpredictable. Might even remember about Ukraine, although that's highly unlikely.

elias_ 3 Oct 2015 14:04

Looks to me like Putin wins. Crimea in the bag, the eastern regions stay in Ukraine with enough clout to prevent nato membership and keep the nazis at bay. And stupid EU and US get to pay the bill for reconstruction. The sanctions hurt all sides but are forcing much needed reforms in his country, he may even become a net exporter of food products instead of importing from the eu. He gets a refund for the Mistrals and makes the poodle French look untrustworthy. Oh well, serves the sneaky bastards right (you know who i mean "fuxx the eu").

Laurence Johnson -> Alexzero 3 Oct 2015 14:03

Does it really matter if they have ? We know the West has been involved so it would be pretty much par for the course if Russia was involved. The main thing is Ukraine becomes a peaceful nation for the benefit of its citizens, not for the benefit of either the West or Russia.

[Oct 03, 2015] The Tragedy of American Diplomacy by William Appleman Williams

J. Lindner, June 7, 2004

In the Tragedy of American Diplomacy, William Appleman Williams illustrates how America fails to honor its own principles when it approaches foreign policy. America believes in self-determination and the right to develop its own brand of democracy. Unfortunately, no other nation is afforded the luxury of self discovery. Other nations must conform to America's vision of democracy or face the terror of America?s military might. This, to Williams, is the tragedy.

Cuba is his first case. America wanted Cuba to adhere to American visions which meant wealth for the sugar planters and their American backers. When Cuba sought its own course and threw off a repressive regime, America objected. The rift has existed ever since as no American administration will ever acknowledge Cuba's right to govern its own affairs so long as Castro is in power.
Williams then systematically follows the years from 1898 through 1961 and paints a similar picture. It does not take the reader long to get the idea and carry the argument beyond Williams' parameters and show that everything from Grenada to Lebanon to Afghanistan to Iraq can be shown in the same light. American puppet governments are not granting freedom and democracy to their constituents as much as they are part of a ruling class dominated by the business interests that exploit their workforce and deny requests for reform until the entire population is ripe for rebellion (remember the Shah of Iran). One wonders if the Saudi government is the next great western ally to fall victim to a popular revolt of Muslim fundamentalists.

Williams is a master of detail and works his arguments creatively in an entertaining fashion. Neoconservatives of today will have the same objections as their predecessors from the 1950s in acknowledging Williams as a valid author. But Williams makes a strong case and if more people were exposed to his writing, our country might even find a way to avoid the same pitfalls. A Saudi revolution would disrupt oil markets and jeopardize world economies. Perhaps if some thought is put into policy such a scenario is avoidable and preventable. If people are willing to give Williams a chance American foreign policy might eventually reflect a broader American vision rather than the interests of a few.

Karun Mukherji, April 8, 2006

Erudite, splendidly crafted, fine piece of scholarhip

Williams book explores paradoxical nature of US Foreign Policy.

Firstly author refutes orthodox view that accidental, inadvertent turn of events transformed America into a global power. Williams has argued market forces unleashed by private free enterprise economy dictated the growth of American power; it has also molded country's foreign policy and continues to do so. To comprehend this fully one has to understand the intricacies of Capitalism.

It goes without saying that Capitalism carries within it the seed of self destruction. Late 19th century American economy was convulsed by frequent bouts of economic depression which led to wide spread social unrest. Home markets saturated with goods which people find difficult to absorb as they had only limited purchasing power. 'Frontier' had close down and country's leading intellectuals [William Jackson Turner ,Brooke Adams, Alfred Thayer Mahan] frantically called for overseas expansion avert an impending economic doom

Thus economic considerations compelled successive American Presidents [Grover Clevland, William Mckinley, Thedore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson] to remake the world in America's image. Unfortunately this policy boomeranged because Afro ,Asian, Latin American world refused to share American view.

Iniquitous, unfair trade practised by US helped Washington to enrich in detriment to welfare of latter economies. This was closely followed by American tendency to externalise evil. It posits the view that other nations have a stake in America's continued, prosperous existence. This preposterous notion, according to the author, has been the starting point America's troubles. Actually problem lay in fundamental nature of capitalist economy. Attempts to reverse this trend triggered counter revolutionary wars in Asia, Latin America. The above feature forms essence of this book; this idea continues to permeate the book.

Williams provide fresh interpretation on the onset of Cold War. He holds Truman administration accountable for the coming of iron curtain in Eastern Europe. Firstly in immediate postwar years US taking advantage of its economic might tried to extend its 'open door' policy into Eastern Europe. Further exploiting atomic monopoly the President tried to reverse political order which emerged in areas under Soviet control.

We may pause here try to establish reasons behind America's post war hostility toward Soviet Union. Unlike Britain which during the days of the empire could invest and dominate worldwide, America upon the end of World War II inherited a divided world.

Soviet economy with its emphasis on industrial self sufficiency apart from shutting the door US investment was in the process of curtailing imports substantially. With the success of Communist revolution 1/3rd of world's population had wrenched free from capitalist sphere influence. With so much production capacity lying idle, US by the end of World War II was haunted by a spectre of another depression. Challenge before America -- challenges her still-wheather market will shrink.

Marshall plan leading to massive post war reconstruction Western Europe must be seen from this angle. Rebuilding war-ravaged economies stimulated economic growth in US. Thus in my opinion Marshall plan must not be construed as a manifestation of American altruism; it was motivated by economic self interest.

Author's stress upon market forces dictating the American destiny broadly agrees with Marxian interpretation of History. Perhaps this was reason why Williams was dubbed Marxist, Stalinist by conservative, liberal elite of his country. This book deserves to be read by those who believe current anti American sentiment sweeping the world stems from sheer envy for American prosperity.

Tim, December 31, 2009

Creates a clear path through 20th century American history

The fact that this book has become a classic is hardly debatable. Williams' examination of American foreign policy is now in its fourth printing with this 50th anniversary edition. The book takes a detailed look at "The Open Door Policy" which evolved out The Open Door Notes of the late 19th century. It shows that, for better or worse, American Capitalism had to find and constantly expand into foreign markets in order for there to be freedom and prosperity at home.

Williams argues that not only American leaders but the general population internalized this belief so deeply that it was considered the very basis of morality in the world. Any other way of looking at society was believed to be simply wrong, and in fact, evil. Williams undoubtedly knew that this way of looking at Capitalism, and the world at large, coincided directly with the predictions of Marx concerning Capitalism's globalization. The Policy of the Open Door can be used to explain the objectives of every foreign military excursion we have undertaken since the end of the 1800's.

It continues to this day in our oil-hungry drive for control of the nations in the Middle East and South Asia. It creates real and imagined enemies that have accounted for the build up of America's military might over the years. Overall I found this examination of American foreign policy to be quite satisfactory and rational in explaining the successes and failures of American actions over the years. Where I would criticize Williams is in his characterization of America's leaders having a truly benevolent anti-colonial attitude towards the lesser nations in which America invested and set up "trade".

Williams argued repeatedly, and the commentators in the 50th anniversary edition did as well, that the government really believed they were benefiting mankind as a whole by not only exporting America's goods, but American values, and that the only "Tragedy" was the failure of these policies. I think it a bit uncritical to state this unequivocally. To argue that American leaders (both government and civilian) did NOT know that they were exploiting nations and purposely directing the trade to benefit Americans regardless of the effect on foreigners is quite bold. I believe that the greed of Americans and the drive that is inherent in Capitalistic countries meant that these leaders knew EXACTLY what they were doing, and that they had little true regard for the welfare of nations.

Our failure to see that there is more than one way for societies to organize themselves is certainly a problem of ignorance in American culture, and Williams is right to argue that blaming America's leaders becomes a scapegoat. Americans need to change themselves first and realize the error of their ways...that it will cause destruction at home and abroad...before we will see any change in leadership and our destructive policies.

However, the American empire is really not that different than others in history. The drive for power becomes all consuming, and ultimately leads to disregard for humanity...unless that humanity happens to be at the top of the American food chain.

[Oct 03, 2015] Germany to supply Ferguson insurgents in the US with weapons

"... Translator's note: I like satire: just change a few words, and this could be your newspaper, or some pages in the Congressional Record. Satire actually helps one realize what is going on. ..."
Oct 03, 2015 | fortruss.blogspot.be

October 1, 2015 | Fort Russ

Translated from German by Tom Winter

Translator's note: I like satire: just change a few words, and this could be your newspaper, or some pages in the Congressional Record. Satire actually helps one realize what is going on.

The Federal government of Germany wants to supply weapons to insurgents in the US.

"The red line has been crossed!" With these words, a visibly frayed Foreign Minister Steinmeier appeared this morning before the press. "With the murder of yet another black activist, the Obama regime once again shows its ugly head!". Background: On August 09, the totally unarmed black civil rights activists Michael Brown was shot by police. Now on August 19, another black activist in St. Louis, not far from Ferguson, has been shot in cold blood by white policemen.

"The world can not continue to stand idly by," Steinmeier stressed at the press conference. "Here are peaceful human rights activists protesting against heavily armed police in a profoundly racist apartheid regime."

Therefore, the point now been reached, "in which Germany, too, must take responsibility for the oppressed peoples of the world," said Steinmeier.

As several media have unanimously reported, the government is now considering supplying arms to the rebels.

Next comes consideration what to supply in support of the rebels in Ferguson: protective vests, helmets, and night vision devices, and light infantry weapons?

Many MPs in the government coalition feel this does not go far enough. Given that the police and National Guard are geared up with weapons of war like an army, several CDU MPs are calling for supplying the rebels with heavier munitions. "We are currently discussing the proposals," an unnamed deputy is quoted. "We cannot rule out that the weapons may end up falling into the wrong hands."

In view of these events in the US, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen will not rule out the use of Bundeswehr soldiers. However, out of sensitivity and respect for the local activists "only colored members of the Bundeswehr would participate in such a mission."

Mid-East Coup As Russia Pounds Militant Targets, Iran Readies Ground Invasions While Saudis Panic

Zero Hedge
Dutti

Congratulations to Russia and Iran to standing up [to neocons strategy], I hope their strategy will work.

Why can Saudi-Arabia with the approval of the western powers bomb a foreign country, Jemen, without Jemen having attacked Saudi? Of course Saudi claims they do it at the request of the president Hadi of Jemen who fled to Saudi. If that is accepted by western powers, then how would those western powers have reacted if Russia would have attacked and bombed the Ukraine, at the request of the democratically elected president Yanukovich who fled to Russia?

I think the house of Saud is setting itself up for real bad long-term Karma or, if you prefer, the Saudis create a lot of enemies for themselves by destroying the people and their neighboring country of Jemen. Reminds me of why Americans are often times not liked in many parts of the world.

Americans often claim that Assad is a Tyrant, a Murderer and a Dictator and that's why he must go. Why does the US not call the House of Saud by the same names and try to overthrow them? I guess because the House of Saud is an obedient servant of the US, and Assad is cooperating with a different power - Russia.

The western mainstream media treats the Saudi atrocities in Jemen as a sideshow, while blowing up the story about Assad and demonizing him. What's the alternative to Assad?

Let's see how other countries, Iraq and Libya, with worse Tyrants - Saddam Hussein and Ghaddafi have "developed", thanks to western intervention.

In addition, the US is always talking about the evil Iranians, and how they took American hostages back in 1979. You don't hear much about the fact that the US staged a coup in 1953, deposed the democratically elected president Mossadegh and installed the Shah, who, just like the House of Saud became a servant for US interests. After the Iranians were finally able to get rid of the Shah who had been in power for over 25 years they understandably did not have much love left for the US. The pendulum went to the other side.

If you look at all these facts in context, it's easy to see the hypocrisy of the US and it's western "allies".

Lost My Shorts

It sounds like -- we are covertly supporing ISIS while pretending to attack them, and getting huffy because Putin is really attacking them. Or wandering around like a headless chicken. Or just wasting money. Not sure.

Crash Overide

"Remind me ... WTF are we doing in Syria ?!"

Trying to profit from destruction and keep control on the US civilian population through fear of boogeyman terrorists.

Just remember, when they fail abroad, they will start chaos at home.

Lock and load my fellow countrymen... eyes open.

[Oct 03, 2015] The Mind of Mr. Putin By Patrick J. Buchanan

October 02, 2015 | Information Clearing House

...Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us.

What does Putin see as the ideological root of these disasters?

"After the end of the Cold War, a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think they were strong and exceptional, they knew better."

Then, adopting policies "based on self-conceit and belief in one's exceptionality and impunity," this "single center of domination," the United States, began to export "so-called democratic" revolutions.

How did it all turn out? Says Putin:

"An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life."

Is Putin wrong in his depiction of what happened to the Middle East after we plunged in? Or does his summary of what American interventions have wrought echo the warnings made against them for years by American dissenters?

Putin concept of "state sovereignty" is this: "We are all different, and we should respect that. No one has to conform to a single development model that someone has once and for all recognized as the right one." The Soviet Union tried that way, said Putin, and failed. Now the Americans are trying the same thing, and they will reach the same end.

Unlike most U.N. speeches, Putin's merits study. For he not only identifies the U.S. mindset that helped to produce the new world disorder, he identifies a primary cause of the emerging second Cold War.

To Putin, the West's exploitation of its Cold War victory to move NATO onto Russia's doorstep caused the visceral Russian recoil. The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government led straight to the violent reaction in the pro-Russian Donbas.

What Putin seems to be saying to us is this: If America's elites continue to assert their right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations, to make them conform to a U.S. ideal of what is a good society and legitimate government, then we are headed for endless conflict. And, one day, this will inevitably result in war, as more and more nations resist America's moral imperialism.

Nations have a right to be themselves, Putin is saying. They have the right to reflect in their institutions their own histories, beliefs, values and traditions, even if that results in what Americans regard as illiberal democracies or authoritarian capitalism or even Muslim theocracies.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans had no problem with this, when Americans accepted a diversity of regimes abroad. Indeed, a belief in nonintervention abroad was once the very cornerstone of American foreign policy.

Wednesday and Thursday, Putin's forces in Syria bombed the camps of U.S.-backed rebels seeking to overthrow Assad. Putin is sending a signal: Russia is willing to ride the escalator up to a collision with the United States to prevent us and our Sunni Arab and Turkish allies from dumping over Assad, which could bring ISIS to power in Damascus.

Perhaps it is time to climb down off our ideological high horse and start respecting the vital interests of other sovereign nations, even as we protect and defend our own.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

[Oct 02, 2015] The pretense that it was a Russian invasion in Donetsk is exactly that, a pretense.

At fist I thought that Twaddleradar, member since Aug 9, 2015A is a new NATObot. It it looks like he is a regular Russophob... Still amazingly prolific spamming the whole discussion. It's definitly not enough for him to state his point of view and voice objection. Such commenting incontinence is very disruptive in Web forums.
Notable quotes:
"... WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE!?!? After 2 weeks in syria you have loads of satellite pictures of the Russian base/troops, but after a year + in Ukraine all your evidence is taken from social media posts? Good thing more and more people are refusing to swallow your daily dose of bullshit. ..."
"... The pretense that this was a Russian invasion is exactly that, a pretense. ..."
"... Something tells that it's easy to say but hard to implement. Far right powers in Ukraine would resist such a law very much. ..."
Oct 02, 2015 | The Guardian

ID075732 2 Oct 2015 22:51

Russia has denied military involvement in the conflict despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This old chestnut again... Evidence please of this sweeping claim?

No mention of Putin drafting the Minsk agreement, this is what happened. Then presenting it as a road map for a resolution to the Ukrainian Civil war? As I recall it was Merkell and Holland who rushed to Moscow in February to meet with Putin and thrash out a solution which was then presented to Poroshenko.

As the USA is now in an election cycle and with the Syrian War on Isis takes centre stage with Russian involvement, it looks like the their sock puppet, Petro Poroshenko has been hung out to dry. Finally being told to get back in his box... for now, probably as no more funds via the IMF will be directed into this proxi-conflict if it continues (well they were breaking their own rules giving Ukraine money when it's at war with itself).

Finally, this made me smile...

It has been a busy diplomatic week for Putin, who has not been a frequent guest in western capitals over the past year

Actually Putin has had a very busy diplomatic year building international partnerships across Asia and the BRIC's, Trade agreements with China and Saudi Arabian investment into Russia. The Silk Route project and much more. It seems to me some of the Graun's journalists should get out more, like Putin has been doing!

PrinceEdward -> Twaddleradar 2 Oct 2015 21:12

Meanwhile every Ukrainian male is so full of patriotism, there is no need for a 5 draft rounds in Ukraine because they're flooding with so many volunteers, they turn them away. Stories of parents paying $1000 to get their kids out of the draft, or countless thousands of 20-something Ukrainians running away to Russia and Poland to get student visas, is just propaganda.

MrJohnsonJr 2 Oct 2015 21:07

Ukraine has a fucking nerve to require a diplomatic effort to have it explained to them what a murderous losers the turned out to be and that another of their "revolutions" brought nothing but a major waste of human life and EU and Russian taxpayer money.

KriticalThinkingUK 2 Oct 2015 20:39

Its great isnt it what can be achieved when Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine get together for serious negotiations. Just like in Minsk 1 and 2 when the same group first established peace in Ukraine, behind the backs of the USA and UK who were pointedly not invited to those talks either.

What is the key to this progress? Simple. Dont invite the rightwing cold war loonies to attend. Keep them out at all costs. That is to say exclude from all talks USA, UK, NATO, Poland and the rest of the crazy warmongers who have worked so hard to encourage conflict.

If these negotiations are successful expect further progress over the next decade in other spheres between Germany and Russia. In fact objectively by all measures it is in the long term interests, both economic and political, for these two major European powers to co-operate as natural trading partners....the US warmongers worst nightmare!

Interesting times................

Mazuka 2 Oct 2015 20:35

" Russia has denied military involvement in the conflict despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE!?!? After 2 weeks in syria you have loads of satellite pictures of the Russian base/troops, but after a year + in Ukraine all your evidence is taken from social media posts? Good thing more and more people are refusing to swallow your daily dose of bullshit.

NotYetGivenUp -> HHeLiBe 2 Oct 2015 19:18

You confuse Crimea, which voted for secession after Russian forces ensured Kiev military didn't engae in anti-secessionist reprisals (as stated by Putin), with East Ukraine, in which Kiev generals admitted they were fighting Donbass forces, not Russian forces.

The pretense that this was a Russian invasion is exactly that, a pretense. But any honest appraisal of the facts on the ground, through observation of events as they happened, show that the rejection of the Kievan coup was by the people of Donbass, and is a popular rejection, not the nonsense Russian invasion peddled by the media in the west.

Mr Russian 2 Oct 2015 19:13

The compromise plan would involve the Ukrainian parliament passing a law stating these elections were indeed legal, but they would be organised by the rebels.

Something tells that it's easy to say but hard to implement. Far right powers in Ukraine would resist such a law very much.

[Oct 02, 2015] Showdown at the UN Corral

Antiwar.com
If there was any doubt that Washington has learned absolutely nothing since George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, then President Obama's address to the United Nations has confirmed the world's worst fears. It was an oration that combined the most egregious lies with the wooly-minded "idealism" that has been such a destructive force in world affairs since the days of Woodrow Wilson. First, the lies:

"The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians. These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood and landed in opposition neighborhoods. It's an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack."

The evidence is far from "overwhelming," and the only insult to human reason is the dogmatic repetition of this American talking point. As Seymour Hersh pointed out in the London Review of Books:

"Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country's civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad."

And this isn't the only time this President hasn't told the whole story when it comes to the findings of US intelligence agencies: that's why fifty intelligence analysts are in open revolt at his cherry-picking of intelligence in order to show we're making progress in the fight against the Islamic State. And now we have former CIA chief David Petraeus, who was forced to resign, openly coming out with a proposal that we ally with the al-Nusra Front in order to overthrow Assad and edge out the Islamic State. Shouldn't that arouse suspicion that Washington has been covertly cooperating with al-Nusra – the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda – all along, and that Petraeus merely wants to formalize his deal with the Islamist Devil?

Here's another lie:

"[I]n Libya, when the Security Council provided a mandate to protect civilians, America joined a coalition that took action. Because of what we did there, countless lives were saved and a tyrant could not kill his way back to power.

"I know that some now criticize the action in Libya as an object lesson, that point to the problem that the country now confronts, a democratically elected government struggling to provide security, armed groups in some places, extremists ruling parts of the fractured land. And so these critics argue that any intervention to protect civilians is doomed to fail. Look at Libya.

"And no one's more mindful of these problems than I am, for they resulted in the death of four outstanding U.S. citizens who were committed to the Libyan people, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, a man whose courageous efforts helped save the city of Benghazi.

"But does anyone truly believe that the situation in Libya would be better, if Gadhafi had been allowed to kill, imprison or brutalize his people into submission? It's far more likely that without international action, Libya would now be engulfed in civil war and bloodshed."

It is beyond embarrassing that the President of the United States is going before the world assembly of nations proclaiming that he and his allies prevented Libya from being "engulfed in civil war and bloodshed." What does he think is happening there at this very moment?

The reality is that the intelligence did not show a "genocide" was in the making. Officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency – the same agency now being accused by its analysts of "cooking" intelligence to suit the administration's political agenda – could provide no empirical evidence for the assertions made by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Col. Moammar Gaddafi was planning on slaughtering civilians en masse.

The claims made by the Obama administration that intervention was the only alternative to "genocide" were contested, at the time, by Alan J. Kuperman, writing in the Boston Globe:

"The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially – including Zawiya, Misurata, and Ajdabiya, which together have a population greater than Benghazi."

"It is hard to know," Kuperman continues, "whether the White House was duped by the rebels or conspired with them to pursue regime-change on bogus humanitarian grounds." With the truth-challenged Hillary Clinton at the helm of this misbegotten misadventure, it isn't at all hard to draw the conclusion that the "genocide" claim was an outright lie perpetrated by the administration and its Libyan Islamist allies.

That these brazen falsehoods are coupled with phrases oozing with liberal "idealism," calls for "international cooperation," and proclamations that all Washington desires is "peace" throughout the Middle East and the world makes for a toxic and particularly nauseating cocktail. Bashar al-Assad is a "tyrant," but the regime of Gen. Abdel al-Sisi, which overthrew the democratically elected government, is merely guilty of making "decisions inconsistent with inclusive democracy."

Speaking of Assad, Obama's focus wasn't on the spread of the Islamic State but on the Syrian strongman, who is barely holding on to power by his fingernails. He cited Washington's support for the so-called "moderate" rebels, but complained that – for some unspecified reason – "extremist groups have still taken root to exploit the crisis." What he didn't mention – although Putin did – is that these alleged "moderates" have gone over to the extremists in droves, raising the question: were these US-funded Good Guys always Bad Guys in an ill-fitting disguise?

[Editorial note: This is the first part of a two-part column contrasting President Obama's UN speech to the address delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The second part, dealing with Putin's remarks, will be published on Friday.]

[Sep 30, 2015] Obama, Putin need steady nerves & stout hearts in Syria by M.K. Bhadrakumar

September 30, 2015 | Asia Times

The best thing about the ninety-minute meeting between the US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in New York on Monday was that they agreed there was not going to be any recourse to rhetoric. Putin, accordingly, handled the media himself and the White House refrained from releasing the customary readout.

A senior US official said the talks were "productive" and he calmed down the American media, explaining "this was not a situation where either one of them [Obama or Putin] was seeking to score points". Putin's interaction with the Russian media conveyed the impression that he too was satisfied with the outcome of the meeting.

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had previously met US Secretary of State John Kerry and handed over to him a 'flow chart' on the implementation of the Minsk agreements on Ukraine. Indeed, Putin also used an interview with Charlie Rose at CBS to speak without diplomatese on the Kremlin thinking regarding Syria and Ukraine.

In remarks to Russian media, Putin described his talks with Obama as "very useful and what is particularly pleasant, it was very sincere". He struck a positive tone, saying the American side explained their position "quite clearly" and "indeed, surprising as it may seem, we have many coinciding points and opinions".

Putin acknowledged the differences, but refused to be drawn into them – except on the central issue that the air strikes in Syria by the US-led coalition are incompatible with international law.

... ... ...

Obama could not have agreed with the line of Russian thinking on strengthening "al-Assad's army" – at least, not yet openly. But an increasingly wider audience in the West has learnt to live with that thought. Putin simply drew satisfaction for the moment that despite differences, "we have agreed to work together".

However, a senior US official maintained separately that the two sides fundamentally disagreed on the role that President Bashar al-Assad will play in resolving the civil conflict in Syria. The official explained that while Moscow sees Assad as a bulwark against the extremists, the Americans see him as continuing to fan the flames of a sectarian conflict in Syria.

Of course, Putin insists that the future of al-Assad is not for outsiders to propose but is the exclusive business of Syrian citizens. The principle is unquestionable. The US faces an acute dilemma here insofar as in a democratic election, Assad's re-election as president still remains a strong possibility, since secular-minded Syrians cutting across religious sects or ethnic divides would still see him as the best bet against an extremist takeover.

... ... ...


The discussions relating to Syria and the Islamic State apparently marginalized the Ukraine crisis, but tensions are not so acute on that front lately. Putin hinted that the US is now putting its weight behind the Normandy Format (comprising the leaderships of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine), allowing it to spearhead the conflict resolution in Ukraine. A Normandy Format summit meeting is due to take place Friday in Paris.

... ... ...

[Sep 30, 2015] Obama Re-Defines Democracy – A Country that Supports U.S. Policy naked capitalism by Michael Hudson

September 29, 2015

In his Orwellian September 28, 2015 speech to the United Nations, President Obama said that if democracy had existed in Syria, there never would have been a revolt against Assad. By that, he meant ISIL. Where there is democracy, he said, there is no violence of revolution.

This was his threat to promote revolution, coups and violence against any country not deemed a "democracy." In making this hardly veiled threat, he redefined the word in the international political vocabulary. Democracy is the CIA's overthrow of Mossedegh in Iran to install the Shah. Democracy is the overthrow of Afghanistan's secular government by the Taliban against Russia. Democracy is the Ukrainian coup behind Yats and Poroshenko. Democracy is Pinochet. It is "our bastards," as Lyndon Johnson said with regard to the Latin American dictators installed by U.S. foreign policy.

A century ago the word "democracy" referred to a nation whose policies were formed by elected representatives. Ever since ancient Athens, democracy was contrasted to oligarchy and aristocracy. But since the Cold War and its aftermath, that is not how U.S. politicians have used the term. When an American president uses the word "democracy," he means a pro-American country following U.S. neoliberal policies. No matter if a country is a military dictatorship or the government was brought in by a coup (euphemized as a Color Revolution) as in Georgia or Ukraine. A "democratic" government has been re-defined simply as one supporting the Washington Consensus, NATO and the IMF. It is a government that shifts policy-making out of the hands of elected representatives to an "independent" central bank, whose policies are dictated by the oligarchy centered in Wall Street, the City of London and Frankfurt.

Given this American re-definition of the political vocabulary, when President Obama says that such countries will not suffer coups, violent revolution or terrorism, he means that countries safely within the U.S. diplomatic orbit will be free of destabilization sponsored by the U.S. State Department, Defense Department and Treasury. Countries whose voters democratically elect a government or regime that acts independently (or even that simply seeks the power to act independently of U.S. directives) will be destabilized, Syria style, Ukraine style or Chile style under General Pinochet. As Henry Kissinger said, just because a country votes in communists doesn't mean that we have to accept it. It is the style of "color revolutions" sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy.

In his United Nations reply, Russian President Putin warned against the "export of democratic revolution," meaning by the United States in support of its local factotums. ISIL is armed with U.S. weapons and its soldiers were trained by U.S. armed forces. In case there was any doubt, President Obama reiterated before the United Nations that until Syrian President Assad was removed in favor of one more submissive to U.S. oil and military policy, Assad was the major enemy, not ISIL.

"It is impossible to tolerate the present situation any longer," President Putin responded. Likewise in Ukraine. "What I believe is absolutely unacceptable," he said in his CBS interview on 60 Minutes, "is the resolution of internal political issues in the former USSR Republics, through "color revolutions," through coup d'états, through unconstitutional removal of power. That is totally unacceptable. Our partners in the United States have supported those who ousted Yanukovych. … We know who and where, when, who exactly met with someone and worked with those who ousted Yanukovych, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which countries, and who those instructors were. We know everything."

Where does this leave U.S.-Russian relations? I hoped for a moment that perhaps Obama's harsh anti-Russian talk was to provide protective coloration for an agreement with Putin in their 5 o'clock meeting. Speak one way so as to enable oneself to act in another has always been his modus operandi, as it is for many politicians. But Obama remains in the hands of the neocons.

Where will this lead? There are many ways to think outside the box. What if Putin proposes to air-lift or ship Syrian refugees – up to a third of the population – to Europe, landing them in Holland and England, obliged under the Shengen rules to accept them?

Or what if he brings the best computer specialists and other skilled labor for which Syria is renowned to Russia, supplementing the flood of immigration from "democratic" Ukraine?

What if the joint plans announced on Sunday between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Russia to jointly fight ISIS – a coalition that US/NATO has refrained from joining – comes up against U.S. troops or even the main funder of ISIL, Saudi Arabia?

The game is out of America's hands now. All it is able to do is wield the threat of "democracy" as a weapon of coups to turn recalcitrant countries into Libyas, Iraqs and Syrias.

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "KILLING THE HOST: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy."

nippersdad, September 29, 2015 at 10:22 am

"We know who and where, when, who exactly met with someone and worked with those who ousted Yanukovich, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which countries, and who those instructors were. We know everything."

That sounds like a pretty clear threat to the Democratic front runner for the Presidency to come to terms, or else. While it is good to see someone threatening accountability, it would be nice if it didn't have to come from Russia.

ifthethunderdontgetya™ł˛®©

September 29, 2015 at 11:49 am

Accountability will not come from an Administration that made Victoria Nuland an Assistant Secretary of State in the first place.

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/

nippersdad, September 29, 2015 at 1:41 pm

No doubt, but I was kind of hoping that the progressive caucuses might make more of a fuss than they did over our "the king is dead, long live the king", foreign policy. That is, after all, what got many of them elected. It never ceases to amaze me how fast candidates become coopted by the establishment once elected.

Synoia, September 29, 2015 at 2:03 pm

The establishment has files on them. Hudson's piece reads as a prelude to war.

Nick, September 29, 2015 at 10:38 am

This post is nothing but tinfoil-hattery. I can assure you, the US is shedding no tears for the pain Russia is about to inflict on itself by putting Russian boots on the ground in Damascus.

OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 11:10 am

Did a latter-day Charlie Wilson tell you that? I have no doubt that the stuck-in-the-past meatheads in DC have a wet dream over just such a scenario. I also have no doubt that Russia (as well as China and Iran) have no intention of falling into such a trap. The ongoing peeling-off of Euro/NATO lemmings is as clear indication as any that the US will end up either backing off or try to go it alone. The latter is a recipe for disaster, as even Obama realizes. So right now it's all posturing for domestic consumption, behind the scenes things are a bit different as certain recent incidents would seem to indicate. But hey, we can dream the Russophobic/Slavophobic dreams, amiright?


lylo, September 29, 2015 at 12:05 pm

Yeah, my reading too.

I also have to point out how ironic it is that a country stuck in several unresolved conflicts that continue to drain resources and produce instability years later is hoping that, somehow, their opponents get suckered into a quagmire in a country they are already stuck in.

So, sure, I guess that's what they're hoping for. Makes about as much sense as anything else they've come up with recently (including direct confrontation with Russia just to enrich a few ME and corporate pals.)

And "tinfoil hattery" is generally used as things not accepted and proven. Which part of this isn't proven? US toppling democracies and installing dictators who we then call democratic? That we have less pull on the international stage than anytime in our lives? That the other bloc has a serious advantage in this conflict, and going forward? These are all facts…


washunate, September 30, 2015 at 12:10 pm

Give Nick a little credit now; there is a shred of cleverness to the comment(!). He's trying to plant a big lie inside of the framing – namely, that the rise of IS is a legitimate rebellion within Syria.

When of course the truth is the opposite. It's IS that is the foreign invader; Russian boots on the ground would be working with the recognized government, not against it. Indeed, the comparison might inadvertently be quite apt. Syria looks more and more like a marker on the road from Pax Americana to a multipolar world. Just like the Soviet-Afghan war was a marker on the road from the Cold War to Pax Americana.

Perhaps another incident is a better comparison. Maybe Syria is our Suez moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

Thure Meyer, September 29, 2015 at 11:15 am

Nick,

Tinfoil-hattery, interesting choice of words. So who's conspiracy are you talking about?

As to your assurance; well it would be a bit more convincing if you were to unveil your identity so that I know who speaks for all of us (US)...

readerOfTeaLeaves, September 29, 2015 at 2:32 pm

Oh, crikey Nick.
What codswaddle!

As near as I can tell, the US Foreign Policy establishment is driven by think tanks that are funded by oil companies, Saudis, Israelis, and others for whom 'putting America first' means covering their own asses and letting the US military (and well-compensated military contractors) do all the heavy lifting.

As if that weren't bad enough, we also have the R2Pers ("responsibility to protect"), whose hypocrisy could gag a maggot - the R2Pers seem to think it is urgent to solve every other nation's (and corporations) problems - indeed, so very urgent that kids from Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho, etc should all be sent into harm's way in distant lands, whose languages the R2Pers don't happen to speak, whose histories the R2Pers are ignorant about, and whose cultural nuances are unknown to the R2Pers.

IOW, Washington DC appears to be awash in egoism and careerism.

I think that Russians have managed to figure that out.

washunate, September 30, 2015 at 11:54 am

I find it rather amusing that this is the best the Democratic establishment can throw at posts pointing out the idiocy of imperialism. How the Obots have fallen.

steelhead23, September 29, 2015 at 10:56 am

It isn't just the lies and abject stupidity that keeps the U.S. constantly at war, it is our alliances with repressive dictators, like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is leading the U.S. toward confrontation with civilization, and Russia. Not so much a leader, the U.S. has become the militant vassal of KSA. The undying irony is that it was wealthy Saudis who started the most recent mess on 9/11/01. This will not end until the U.S. turns its back on the KSA.

Sufferin' Succotash, September 29, 2015 at 11:15 am

Or KSA self-destructs.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/collapse-saudi-arabia-inevitable-1895380679

Ranger Rick, September 29, 2015 at 11:00 am

Russia has always maintained that the Ukrainian revolution was CIA-backed if not -instigated. It's a shrewd move given the US's track record with regime change. No one will ever be sure if the new Ukrainian government is entirely legitimate or not.

What really gets terrifying is when you take a step back and realize that the 1800s imperialist regime never really changed. When you start talking about "superpower" or "regional power" you are no longer talking about power in the military or economic sense. These countries regularly meddle in, if not directly control, the politics in other countries. It honestly does not matter to the United States or Russia or any other country what your government chooses to do as long as it does what the other country wants.

NotTimothyGeithner, September 29, 2015 at 11:48 am

The Kiev rump failed to meet constitutional standards for impeachment even with the threats of the mob, and with elections just three or four months away in September following the Maidan event, there was no practical reason for a forceful removal of the government. Third party or not, the Kiev rump government has the same legality as the Confederacy. The "separatists" and the Crimeans saw their country dissolved by a mob, not an election with a regularly scheduled one on the horizon. The Ukraine was not a case where they would be waiting four years under a tyrant. If they had made it to September with electioneering issues, then the situation would be different, but as the current cabal didn't do that, they are akin to Jefferson Davis just with a better hand.

Americans as celebrators of the Declaration of Independence should note it is not legitimate to change established governing customs because your side might lose there has to be a litany of grievances with no possibility of redress. By Mr. Jefferson's standards, this country should have nothing to do with the Kiev government until the concerns of the separatists have been addressed. Unfortunately the use of law doesn't exist in this country.

Eureka Springs, September 29, 2015 at 11:11 am

Obamacrats rhetoric and behavior (policy) are both reminiscent and escalation of Bushco in so many ways.

Wasn't it Bush Jr. who said something along the line of "Democracies don't attack each other"?

NotTimothyGeithner, September 29, 2015 at 12:03 pm

It's just the old Democratic peace theory. It's utter garbage. I'm sure 43 said it because he repeated the last thing he heard anyway. World War I is pitched as a battle between old world tyrannical such as Germany (with universal male suffrage for its power base) versus shining beacons of democracy such as the UK and France which weren't quite democracies yet. Hitler sort of won a national election. Churchill was selected in a secret meeting when Chamberlain had to step down. So where is the democratic line? It's always been subjective test.

Of course, all governments rule by the consent of the governed.

JerseyJeffersonian, September 29, 2015 at 5:37 pm

Actually, Leander, the vaunted "independence" of the central banks of the US, Great Britain, and Deutschland is largely a fiction. And this very fiction has the effect of hyper-empowering both the financial sector and the oligarchs with whom the financial sector exists in a symbiotic relationship; in point of fact, these "independent" central banks are largely mere creatures of the financial sector and the symbiont oligarchs. The carefully cultivated appearance of independence is a sham under whose cover the truth about how central bank policies cater slavishly to the interests of the financial sector and oligarchs remains unrecognized.

Careerist movement back and forth between the central banks and the financial sector (along with the academic and think tank communities in which neo-liberalism reigns supreme as the only accepted school of economics) facilitates the group-think that culminates in the intellectual capture of the "independent" central banks. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Welcome to Naked Capitalism; our hosts provide us with a rich spread of knowledge and analysis, rather as Col. Lang does at his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, at which I have also read your posts.

MaroonBulldog, September 29, 2015 at 11:13 pm

In United States administrative law, the word "independent" has an interesting meaning: it refers to an executive regulatory agency that is "independent of the president," in the sense that the president cannot easily remove the head of the agency. The Fed is independent in this sense: the president cannot easily fire Chair Yellen or any other member of the Fed's board of governors.

An agency can be "independent" in this sense and still completely captured by the industry it purports to regulate.

Yves Smith, September 30, 2015 at 3:42 am

*Sigh*

The Fed is NOT owned by banks.

Banks hold shares of non-voting preferred stock in regional Feds. The Board of Governors, which approves the hiring of all regional Fed presidents, is most assuredly part of the Federal government. The regional Feds are more like a nasty public-private partnership with a bad governance structure (as in the regional Fed boards on which banks have some, and I stress some, director seats, cannot hire or fire ANYONE at a regional Fed, they do not approve budgets or other policy actions. Their role is strictly advisory, although the regional Feds, being more than a little captured cognitively, give that advice a fair bit of weight.

To give an idea how much power those banks you incorrectly deem to be owners have: Congress is looking at passing a bill to cut the dividends of the all but small banks how hold shares in the Fed by 75%. Pray tell, can Congress tell a private company to cut its dividends?

TedWa, September 30, 2015 at 10:21 am

Hi Yves : I don't see any Fed "independence" in action and haven't for quite some time.


Max, September 29, 2015 at 11:40 am

Ah yes, the notoriously secular and definitely legitimate PDPA government of Afghanistan 'overthrown' by the US. Is that a joke? Has Michael Hudson ever read a book about the Afghan civil war, a highly complex, decade-plus asymmetrical conflict with constantly shifting actors and allegiances? Reducing it to a narrative about US imperialism is intellectually dishonest on its own (there is no evidence that the US ever provided material support to the Taliban – everything from HRW to internal US documents to the academic consensus to journalistic accounts such as Ahmed Rashid's Taliban (2001?) contradicts that claim), nevermind that the Khalqi-Parcham government was a Soviet puppet government and an imperial construct in its own right. Check out any works by Barnett Rubin (U Nebraska?) or Thomas Barfield (B.U.)

The Mujahideen debacle (Which is both a separable and conjoined issue to the rise of the Taliban depending on time frame) was a result of poor US oversight of Pakistan, an internal US policy failure (no accountability or human intelligence on the ground) and of course intimately tied to the USSR's campaign of genocide in Afghanistan. Yes, the CIA gave the ISI $2-3bil in loose change to funnel into the Mujahideen (which were not united in any meaningful sense at any point in time, and frequently factionalized over pork-barrel / ethnic / tribal issues), however, the US policy at the time was hands-off with regard to how that money was spent, and if you read Peter Tomsen's book about his time as HW's special envoy it becomes quite clear that the blinders were on in Washington with regard to what was actually happening there on the ground.

Here's a quick and outdated overview for anyone who would like to educate themselves about this conflict: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/Afghan0701-02.htm

I understand that the Russophilia on this blog runs strongly but the inhumane destruction visited upon the Afghan people by the USSR's geopolitics is and was sickening, imperialistic and functionally a genocide. How am I supposed to take any of this polemic seriously when the author can't even be bothered to read about a conflict? This is a prime example of ideology driving discourse. There are plenty of fair-game examples to call out the US's short-sighted and globally destructive foreign policy. I do not see the point in allowing ideology to cover for misinformation and misrepresentation of historical facts – that's the playbook of neoliberal hustlers.

Faroukh Bulsara, September 29, 2015 at 2:53 pm

"…the notoriously secular and definitely legitimate PDPA government of Afghanistan 'overthrown' by the US. Is that a joke?"

Umm, Max buddy, where in this article did Hudson say such a thing? Right, he didn't. But thanks for the Afghan history lesson anyway.

Max, September 29, 2015 at 3:13 pm

"Democracy is the overthrow of Afghanistan's secular government by the Taliban against Russia."

It's right there in the opening paragraph, and the accusation is rather explicit.

juliania, September 29, 2015 at 8:53 pm

That's an awkward sentence to be sure, Max – I puzzled over that one myself. I'm more in favor of this extract from Putin's speech at the UN:

". . .We should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we remember examples from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress. . ."

Sort of 'puts paid' to trying to equate the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union, doesn't it?

OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 3:15 pm

Is that the same HRW that can't find evidence of Kiev purposefully targeting and killing civilians? The same HRW that has never said a thing about the US support for murderous regimes in Latin America? Or about US war crimes? Yeah OK, I will take their word on how Afghanistan went down, over the US' proven track record of destroying any and all left-leaning Third World governments from 1950 onward.

Max, September 29, 2015 at 3:38 pm

Attack one of my sources, fine – the others still exist in far greater numbers. Barnett Rubin is my favorite, his book "Blood on the Doorstep" is excellent.

Is everything part of the US capitalist plot or is there some verifiable source that you will accept without dismissing out of hand? You didn't even attempt to read the source.

The Afghan government was left leaning in the sense that it was more socially progressive than the population living outside of Kabul, all 80% of the country that the government did not control in fact; and their authoritarian approach to instituting gender equality and abolishing Islam had a disastrous effect on the government's popularity and tribal credit, which was and is necessary to gain the support of the rural population. Other than that it was your typical post-Stalinist tankie failed experiment in land redistribution and Party education apparatus that only served to create a new class of insular elites & alienating/disenfranchising the majority of the population while hamstringing developmental progress made by actual Afghans in the decades before the Soviets (and eventually Pakistan and the US) got their hands in the pot.

OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 3:55 pm

IOW, the Soviets and the US were like peas in a pod. Funny that the "accomplishments" cited by Empire apologists also used to include gender equality and the creation of insular elites. So what's your point, that the Soviets tried to prop-up their flunkies by force? Pot calling the kettle black, much like 0bama's speech yesterday. And HRW has often acted in concert with the US to cover up its crimes while hypocritically calling out those who weren't "our sonzofbiatches."

likbez, September 30, 2015 at 9:23 pm

The Afghan government was left leaning in the sense that it was more socially progressive than the population living outside of Kabul, all 80% of the country that the government did not control in fact; and their authoritarian approach to instituting gender equality and abolishing Islam had a disastrous effect on the government's popularity and tribal credit, which was and is necessary to gain the support of the rural population. Other than that it was your typical post-Stalinist tankie failed experiment in land redistribution and Party education apparatus that only served to create a new class of insular elites & alienating/disenfranchising the majority of the population while hamstringing developmental progress made by actual Afghans in the decades before the Soviets (and eventually Pakistan and the US) got their hands in the pot.

That's plain vanilla propaganda. Or more charitably you are oversimplifying the issue and try to embellish the USA behavior. Which was a horrible crime. Soviets were not that simplistic and attempts to abolish Islam were not supported by Soviets. They tried to create a secular country that's right but with Islam as a dominant religion.

See http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=afghanwar_tmln&afghanwar_tmln_soviet_occupation_of_afghanistan=afghanwar_tmln_us_aid_to_islamist_mujaheddin

And how many years Afghan government survived after the USSR dissolved and financial and technical aid disappeared. You need to shred your post and eat it with borsch. It's a shame.


fajensen, September 30, 2015 at 5:35 am

Ah, but: "A man is known by the company he keeps".

Whatever Putin is besides, he is *not* a friend, ally and global protector of Saudi Arabic Wahhabism!

With friends like that, it is clear o everyone else that you people are circling pretty close to the drain already and we non-USA-nian un-people prefer to not be sucked into your decline via TTIP et cetera.

Michael Hudson, September 29, 2015 at 11:17 pm

Max, your comment does not make sense.

All I can say is that this blog is NOT Russiaphilia. That's name calling. It is not Russiaphilia to note the effect of U.S. foreign policy on bolstering the most right-wing fundamentalist Islamic groups, Latin American right-wing kleptocracies or other dictatorships.

Whatever Soviet oppression was in Afghanistan, it did not back religious extremism. Just the opposite.

OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 11:38 pm

Nick was probably one of those who screamed about cheese-eating surrender monkeys while stuffing themselves with supersized freedom fries orders.

September 29, 2015 at 3:47 pm


Ahem. Egypt. Egypt had a brief democracy.

Iran had a very real and true democracy (1955) but it was wiped out by the US.

Lot's of countries actually have democratic elections but when the people elect someone the US disapproves of, that democracy has to go and is ALWAYS replaced by a dictatorship.

Obama's a corrupt idiot. Syria is a mess only because the US made it that way, NOT because Assad is a meanie.

Reply ↓

cwaltz

September 30, 2015 at 2:50 am


It's possible that Assad is a meanie AND that Syria is a mess because as usual we half assed support people who are just as horrible as him. It isn't like Saddam wasn't our great friend before we declared him horrible, terrible awful leader.

Reply ↓

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL, September 29, 2015 at 5:39 pm

The words in their respective UN speeches were very clear. Obomba: "I believe that what is true for America is true for virtually all mature democracies". Putin: "No one is obliged to conform to a single development model that is considered by someone else as the right one".
Ask yourself which statement the Founding Fathers of the U.S. would agree with. Yankee go home.

bh2, September 29, 2015 at 10:40 pm

"Hope and change", baby! The long arc of history bends toward despotism.

Knute Rife, September 29, 2015 at 11:25 pm

This has been a favorite US tactic since the Marines hit Tripoli (anti-piracy myths notwithstanding), took off with the Spanish-American War, went through the roof when the Latin American interventions started in earnest in the 20s, and became our peculiar and cherished institution with the Cold War. Obama is just continuing the tradition.

cwaltz , September 30, 2015 at 2:37 am

I'll give him this- it's as close to being transparent on our foreign policy as I've seen any of his predecessors come.

At least, he's admitting that our end game has always been first and foremost about our own interests. Now if he'll only admit that THIS is why the world really hates us. Being selfish and protecting only your own interests at the cost of others is never going to be a winning plan to encourage people to like you or trust you(particularly when you collude behind closed doors to carry out those interests.)

*Sigh* We're America. We set the bar low when it comes to caring about how others wish to govern themselves, our only criteria is that your leader always consider US interests first(nevermind that they aren't actually a US leader and should be putting their own inhabitants first.)


[Sep 28, 2015] Violence instead of democracy: Putin slams policies of exceptionalism and impunity in UN speech

"Do you realize what you've done?" -- Putin about recent US sponsored color revolutions.
Notable quotes:
"... instead of reforms and the triumph of democracy and progress "we've got violence, poverty and social disaster, and human rights, including the right to life, to which no weight is given." ..."
"... "Rather than bringing about reforms, aggressive foreign interference has resulted in the brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself," ..."
"... "Therefore they do not have to reckon with the UN, which instead of automatically authorizing, legitimizing the necessary decisions often creates obstacles or in other words 'stands in the way'." ..."
Sep 28, 2015 | RT News

The export of so-called 'democratic' revolutions has continued, but has unleashed poverty and violence instead of the triumph of democracy, Russian President Vladimir Putin said addressing the UN General Assembly.

Attempts to push for changes in other countries based on ideological preferences have led to "tragic consequences and degradation rather than progress," said Putin in his speech to world leaders and policy makers gathered at the UN General Assembly's anniversary 70th session in New York on Monday.

"We should all remember what our past has taught us," Putin said. "We, for instance, remember examples from the history of the Soviet Union."

It seems however that some are not learning from others' mistakes, but keep repeating them, he said, adding that "the export of so-called 'democratic' revolutions continues."

"I cannot help asking those who have caused this situation: Do you realize now what you have done?" he asked. "But I am afraid the question will hang in the air, because policies based on self-confidence and belief in one's exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned."

He cited the example of revolutions in the Middle East and Northern Africa, where people have wished for change. However, instead of reforms and the triumph of democracy and progress "we've got violence, poverty and social disaster, and human rights, including the right to life, to which no weight is given."

"Rather than bringing about reforms, aggressive foreign interference has resulted in the brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself," he said.

... ... ...

A single center of domination emerged in the world after the Cold War era ended, Putin stated. Those who were at the "top of this pyramid" were tempted to think that "if they were so strong and exceptional, they knew what to do better than others."

"Therefore they do not have to reckon with the UN, which instead of automatically authorizing, legitimizing the necessary decisions often creates obstacles or in other words 'stands in the way'."

[Sep 27, 2015] 60 Minutes of Putin Quotes From Charlie Rose Interview

Brilliant instant reply on provocative question: "Once, somebody from the CIA told me that the training you have is important, that you learn to be liked as well. Because you have to charm people, you have to seduce them," Charlie Rose said. "Well, if the CIA told you so, then it must be true. They are experts on that," laughed the president.
I do not see full interview on YouTube. Large chunk can be found at Vladimir Putin 60 Minutes interview FULL 9-27-15 Vladimir Putin 60 minutes Interview Charlie Rose - YouTube
"... Reprinted in accordance with Sputnik reprint policy. ..."
Sep 27, 2015 | www.sputniknews.com

His love and pride for Russia, his pain over what is going on in Ukraine, his past as an intelligence officer and his attitude towards being called a czar – these are some of the issues brought up in Russian President Vladimir Putin's interview with American talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose.

Ahead of his much anticipated address at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down with American talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose to share his opinion on the today's hottest news topics.putin 60 minutes - 2

Putin on Ukraine:

'It is absolutely unacceptable to address issues, including controversial ones, as well as domestic issues of the former Soviet Republics through the so-called color revolutions, through coups and unconstitutional means of toppling the current government'.

Of course, Russia's closest neighbor, Ukraine, is part of the daily news agenda.

President Putin cast some light on why the Ukraine issue is such a huge problem for Russia.

"Ukraine is the closest country to us. We have always said that Ukraine is our sister country and it is true. It is not just a Slavic people, it is the closest people to Russia: we have similar languages, culture, common history, religion etc."

He also revealed what he believes is completely unacceptable for Russia.

"Addressing issues, including controversial ones, as well as domestic issues of the former Soviet Republics through the so-called colored revolutions, through coups and unconstitutional means of toppling the current government. That is absolutely unacceptable. Our partners in the United States are not trying to hide the fact that they supported those opposed to President Yanukovych."

Asked whether he believed the United States had something to do with the ousting of Yanukovych, causing him to flee to Russia, the president replied that he, in fact, knew this for sure, at the same time describing his sources.

"It is very simple. We have thousands of contacts and thousands of connections with people who live in Ukraine. And we know who had meetings and worked with people who overthrew Viktor Yanukovych, as well as when and where they did it."

"We know the ways the assistance was provided, we know how much they paid them, we know which territories and countries hosted training and how it was done, we know who the instructors were."

"We know everything. Well, actually, our US partners are not keeping it a secret."

Putin on the sovereignty of Ukraine: 'At no time in the past, now or in the future has or will Russia take any part in actions aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government.'

The Russian leader also stressed that Russia respects the sovereignty of Ukraine and Russia had not and would not take any part in any activities aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government of any country. He added that Russia would never resort to the use of the military force in such a case.

However, the president called on other countries to respect the sovereignty of other states, including Ukraine.

"Respecting the sovereignty means preventing coups, unconstitutional actions and illegitimate overthrowing of the legitimate government."

Putin on Russia's military presence in Ukraine: 'If we keep our troops on our territory on the border with some state, it is not a crime.'

The issue of Russia's military presence in Ukraine has long had the Western media in a flurry. But the Russian president explained it using the example of the US' military presence in Europe.

"US tactical nuclear weapons are in Europe, let us not forget this. Does it mean that the US has occupied Germany or that the US never stopped the occupation after World War II and only transformed the occupation troops into NATO forces?"

"And if we keep our troops on our territory on the border with some state, you see it is a crime?"

Putin on his rating and popularity: 'There is something that unites me and other citizens of Russia. It is love for our Motherland.'

The sufferings and hardships of the Second World War remain the unifying factor of the Russian nation.

"Yes, my family and my relatives as a whole suffered heavy losses during the Second World War. That is true. In my father's family there were five brothers and four of them were killed, I believe. On my mother's side the situation is much the same."

"In general, Russia suffered heavily. No doubt, we cannot forget that and we must not forget, not to accuse anyone but to ensure that nothing of the kind ever happens again."

Putin on democracy: 'There can be no democracy without observing the law and everyone must observe it – that is the most basic and important thing that we all should remember.'

The president explained that the most important thing in the country's domestic policy is to continue improving the political system so that every citizen feels that they can influence the life of the state and society, they can influence the authorities, and so that the authorities will be aware of their responsibility before those people who gave their confidence to the representatives of the authorities in the elections.

As for those tragic incidents where lives are lost, including those of journalists, unfortunately, it happens in all countries around the world, he said.

But if it occurs in Russia, the president stressed, the authorities take every step possible to ensure that the perpetrators are found, identified and punished.

There were a number of questions that made the president smile and answer light-heartedly.

Putin on the disintegration of the Soviet Union and recreation of the Soviet empire: 'The Russians have turned out to be the largest divided nation in the world nowadays.

The host's question on the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the possible recreation of a sphere of influence, which President Putin might think Russia deserves, made him smile.

"Your questions make me happy," he responded. "Somebody is always suspecting Russia of having some ambitions, there are always those who are trying to misinterpret us or keep something back."

"I did say that I see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a great tragedy of the 20th century. Do you know why? First of all, because 25 million Russian people suddenly turned out to be outside the borders of the Russian Federation."

"They used to live in one state; the Soviet Union has traditionally been called Russia, the Soviet Russia, and it was the great Russia. They used to live in one country and suddenly found themselves abroad. Can you imagine how many problems came about?"

"First, there were everyday issues, the separation of families, economic and social problems. The list is endless."

"Do you think it is normal that 25 million people, Russian people, suddenly found themselves abroad?"

"The Russians have turned out to be the largest divided nation in the world nowadays. Is that not a problem? It is not a problem for you as it is for me."

And then there were some personal questions, such as how he feels being called a czar.

The president light-heartedly answered that the title does not fit him, though he is used to being called many different things. In fact, it does not matter to him what people call him.

He also talked about his past as an intelligence officer, admitting that every stage of one's life has an impact on the person.

"Whatever we do, all the knowledge, the experience, it stays with us, we carry it, use it in one way or another. In this sense, yes, you are right - there is no such thing as a former KGB man. Once a KGB man, always a KGB man."

But then laughed while answering the host's question:

"Once, somebody from the CIA told me that the training you have is important, that you learn to be liked as well. Because you have to charm people, you have to seduce them," Charlie Rose said.

"Well, if the CIA told you so, then it must be true. They are experts on that," laughed the president.

President Putin refused to assess the President of the United States, saying he is not entitled to do that. This is up to the American people.

Finally he revealed what is most important to him.

"What is important is what you think you must do in the interests of the country, which put you in such position, such a position as the Head of the Russian State."

See also:

Reprinted in accordance with Sputnik reprint policy.

[Sep 27, 2015] Putin's deceptive pause What are Russia's n4ext steps in Ukraine

"... Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine and the New Cold War ..."
Sep 27, 2015 | www.brookings.edu

Sep 1, 2015 | Brookings Institution4

Ukraine is no longer the top priority for American diplomats. They are understandably absorbed with selling the Iran nuclear deal to a reluctant Congress. But, if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is to be believed, there are a number of senior officials who have also been sending signals to Russia suggesting that President Obama wants to turn a page and improve his frosty relations with President Vladimir Putin. "We are already getting such signals from the Americans," Lavrov said, "though for now not very clear." Would Russia be open to better relations? Russia, responded the foreign minister, would "consider constructively" any such possibility.

... ... ...

Though Russia is not the Soviet Union, it still remains the boss of Eastern Europe. When it sneezes, as we have learned, Ukraine can catch a bad cold. These days, everything in and around Ukraine seems to be in what one journalist called "managed instability." Putin can bring the crisis closer to a possible solution or he can widen the war. Or, more simply, he can "freeze" it. The key question is: What does Putin have in mind? What are his plans, assuming that he has plans, and is not winging the crisis day by day?

... ... ...

With respect to Ukraine, Putin's position is hardly ideal, but it is still manageable. He now owns Crimea and controls two rebellious provinces in the southeast Donbas region. He knows Ukraine faces the possibility of economic collapse, even though it has made some progress. The more it slips toward the abyss, the better his chances, he thinks, of keeping Ukraine out of the Western orbit, which has always been one of his principal goals. Putin has the assets to throw Ukraine into further chaos at any time.

Marvin Kalb is a nonresident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and senior advisor at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He focuses on the impact of media on public policy and politics, and is also an expert in national security, with a focus on U.S. relations with Russia, Europe and the Middle East. His new book, scheduled for September 2015 publication, is Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine and the New Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2015).

[Sep 27, 2015] Is it too late to get the civil engineers in to change the plate on Yatsenyuk's door to "Saakashvili"?

"... "Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, President Petro Poroshenko's chief of staff Borys Lozhkin and an ally of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov have been targeted by investigators and whistleblowers in Ukraine and abroad this week." ..."
Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

marknesop, September 26, 2015 at 10:30 pm

Oh, oh!! Is it too late to get the civil engineers in to change the plate on Yatsenyuk's door to "Saakashvili"?

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/yatsenyuk-allies-of-poroshenko-avakov-targeted-by-corruption-investigations-398743.html

Yeah, we're going to need a stronger Barcalounger. One with more width between the arms, too.

"Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, President Petro Poroshenko's chief of staff Borys Lozhkin and an ally of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov have been targeted by investigators and whistleblowers in Ukraine and abroad this week."

yalensis, September 27, 2015 at 4:58 am
I like that boy, Oleg Sukhov. I don't agree with his political views, but I have to say, of all the "journalists" on KyivPost staff, he is maybe the only one who looks and smells like an actual journalist. He is a good muck-raker, and I think he has a future, even after Ukraine goes down the tubes.

[Sep 27, 2015] Analysis – EU 'ring of friends' turns into ring of fire

"... The European Union's dream of building "a ring of friends" from the Caucasus to the Sahara has turned into a nightmare as conflicts beyond its borders send refugees teeming into Europe. ..."
"... Ian Bond, a former British ambassador now at the Centre for European Reform, called the current policy a "mess of inconsistency and wishful thinking". .. ..."
"... "In contrast to the success of its eastward enlargement drive that transformed former communist countries into thriving market democracies, the European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 has been a spectacular flop…" ..."
Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al, September 27, 2015 at 2:41 am

Neuters: Analysis – EU 'ring of friends' turns into ring of fire
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/09/27/uk-europe-migrants-neighbourhood-analysi-idUKKCN0RR09820150927?

The European Union's dream of building "a ring of friends" from the Caucasus to the Sahara has turned into a nightmare as conflicts beyond its borders send refugees teeming into Europe.

In contrast to the success of its eastward enlargement drive that transformed former communist countries into thriving market democracies, the European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 has been a spectacular flop…

…The failure to stabilise or democratise the EU's surroundings was partly due to forces beyond Brussels' control: Russian resentment over the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as political and sectarian strife in the Middle East.

Five of the six Eastern Partnership countries – Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – are weakened by unresolved "frozen conflicts" in which Moscow has a hand. The sixth, Belarus, is so authoritarian that it is subject to EU sanctions and has eschewed the offer of a free trade deal.

EU officials now acknowledge that the framework designed to engage and transform the bloc's neighbours was flawed from the outset due to a mixture of arrogance and naivety.

"The idea was to have a ring of friends who would integrate with us but not become EU members. That was rather patronizing, with the European Union telling everyone what to do because we believed they wanted to be like us," said Christian Danielsson, head of the European Commission department for neighborhood policy and enlargement.

…Now the EU neighborhood policy is undergoing a fundamental rethink, with a more modest, flexible and differentiated approach due to be unveiled on Nov. 17.

Whether it will prove more effective remains to be seen.

Ian Bond, a former British ambassador now at the Centre for European Reform, called the current policy a "mess of inconsistency and wishful thinking". ..

…EU officials talk of the need for a new realism, putting the pursuit of common interests with partners ahead of lecturing them on human rights and democracy.

But the European Parliament and member states such as Germany and the Nordic countries will be loath to soft-pedal promoting such values….

…Michael Leigh, a senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund think-tank and former head of the EU's enlargement department, said Brussels had responded to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings by offering a "top-heavy, long, cumbersome, demanding" DCFTA process rather than swift but limited market access. …

####

Wise after the fact as usual. Too late mofos. For Stollenberg, its not the clever clever strategy being wrong, its always Russia. F/wit. I'm still waiting for van Rompuy to admit he has blood on his hands for the Ukraine.

What they allude to but don't make a point of is that they wholly dismissed Russia from their calculations as if it was just going to become the EU's cuddly toy, a larger version of Serbia. No mention either that Russia is 'part of the solution' and cooperation with Russia is essential.

It looks like some have got past anger and denial and have moved on to bargaining & depression.

marknesop, September 27, 2015 at 9:45 am
"In contrast to the success of its eastward enlargement drive that transformed former communist countries into thriving market democracies, the European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 has been a spectacular flop…"

Umm…say what?? I thought we had already looked at the Baltics as examples, and determined their populations peaked just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and their subsequent snatching by NATO, at which point they commenced a slide which was the mirror image of their ascent. Why are citizens fleeing a thriving market democracy?

I agree with your analysis – too late. However, the recent article linked which revealed Europe was just covering itself when it pretended to oppose the Gulf War has added another layer of cynicism to my hide, and I don't interpret this as the scales falling from anyone's eyes at all. They're not wiser, simply acknowledging that a ploy to get their own way did not work out as planned. There's no remorse, at all. They'll just try something else.

I particularly loved the line,

"The failure to stabilise or democratise the EU's surroundings was partly due to forces beyond Brussels' control: Russian resentment over the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as political and sectarian strife in the Middle East."

I see. So the angst of Russians missing Stalin wafted in the air over the borders of Europe's neighbors, and caused them to make irrational decisions and, against all common sense, to bite the soft pink European hand extended to them? Let me ask another – is there to be no limit of silliness and self-pity beyond which Europe will not go?

[Sep 27, 2015] Yay for Irredentism! Victoria Nuland Promises Yaltas Return to Ukraine

Sep 27, 2015 | sputniknews.com

Speaking at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kiev on Saturday, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland raised quite a stir among Ukraine's irredentist politicians, saying that the city of Yalta would one day return to Kiev's control.

... ... ...

Nuland's remarks featured rhetoric on stopping Russian aggression, praise for the Ukrainian leadership's great successes in reforming Ukraine's economy and tackling corruption, and promises that the US would continue to assist Ukraine, including its armed forces.

"You have stopped the Novorossiya project in its tracks, stabilized the financial system and created a new police force…Many challenges remain ahead. There will be losses in the fight against corruption. But there should be no tolerance for the oligarchs," Nuland noted, cited by Ukrainian newspaper LB.ua. "We are providing Ukraine with continuous assistance. The United States, more than any other country, has supported the Ukrainian army. This is part of the reason why Ukraine has been able to stop the offensive in the east."

But the remarks which caused the most excitement among Ukrainian officials and foreign hawks alike was a statement Nuland made at the beginning of her speech about the Yalta European Strategy forum one day returning to its home city of Yalta, Russia.

The forum's official Twitter account proudly tweeted the statement, reading "#victorianuland one day you will return to that great #Ukrainian city #Yalta" and "#victorianuland happy you didn't change name of this conference – it is the Yalta European Strategy conference."

... ... ...

Nuland's commentary kept up with the vaguely belligerent and occasionally downright absurd tone of the conference, with speakers bragging about the important successes of Ukraine has seen in its programs of economic and anti-corruption reforms, ramping up the rhetoric about Russian aggression, calling on Moscow to free suspected murderer Nadiya Savchenko, etc.

... ... ...

Founded by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk in 2004, the Yalta European Strategy forum has served to promote Ukraine's membership in the European Union, featuring high-level talks between Ukrainian and EU officials.

[Sep 27, 2015] Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Ministry, grades Nuland's paper

September 16, 2015 | Fort Russ/Komsomolskaya Pravda

It is impossible to deal with cockroaches in one room while at the same time laying out little plates of bread crumbs on the other side of the wall.

Translated from Russian by Tom Winter

Translator's note: this press account is based on a post on Maria Zakharova's facebook page, and I have changed this account slightly in alignment with Zakharova's original text. It was not clear in KP what was Zakharova and what was KP. I think it is in this translation...

Head of the Information Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote a "critical review" on the "Yalta speech" of the assistant US Secretary of State.

In Kiev, there was a conference "Yalta European Strategy". Already amazing. Yalta is in the Russian Crimea, and the "Yalta" conference was held in the Ukrainian capital. Well and good -- you couldn't miss that one!. But at this Yalta conference came the assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Yes, the same one that passed out the cookies. But now, considered a shadow ruler of Ukraine, she points out to the Kiev authorities what to do. This time, Nuland said in a public speech:

- There should be no tolerance for those oligarchs who do not pay taxes. There must be zero tolerance for bribery and corruption, to those who would use violence for political ends.

And these words of the grande dame of the State Department could not be overlooked. Just think, Americans don't like it when their loans to Ukraine get stolen. And anti-oligarchic Maidan brought the very oligarchs to power, and corruption in the country has become even greater. Some of us have grown weary of this talk. But, let Nuland drone on ...

But then Russian Foreign Ministry official spokesman Maria Zakharova replied. So much so that not a stone was left on stone in the American's "Yalta speech":

"All this a little bit, just a little, looks like a lecture to the fox about how bad it is to steal chickens, but actually it surprised in other ways. As soon as Russian authorities began exposing the tax evasion, bribery, or corruption of the oligarchs, Victoria Nuland's office hastened to call zero tolerance "political repression" - Zakharova wrote on her facebook page.

It would be great to see the Department of State "show that same zero tolerance and inquire a bit about how the initial capital of the Russian (and Ukrainian would not hurt) oligarchs got started, those oligarchs who have been accused of corruption at home, but who, once in London, feel protected by the authorities, enjoying all the benefits of membership in the Club of Victims of Political Persecution" - continued Zakharova.

"It is impossible to deal with cockroaches in one room while at the same time laying out little plates of bread crumbs on the other side of the wall. Giving the green light to the dirty money from Russia and the former Soviet Union, the Western world is only boosting the zeal with which the domestic thieves shove their loot in foreign bins."

"Though perhaps," wonders the Foreign Minstiry spokesman "this is the actual purpose of the imaginary zero tolerance?"

"Why do people on Interpol's lists, by the decision of the Russian courts, prove their financial immorality, as they thrive in the Western capitals, and no alarm bells go off in the State Department?"

It turns out to be an interesting story: Taking fetid streams of notes, the West has just one requirement at the border crossing. Scream "victim of the regime." That's it! and you're in spades!

This calls to mind the old Soviet bribery password translated into modern American:

- In Soviet times, it was common phrase, revealing corrupt intent to proceed with plans insidious in varying degrees: "I'm from Ivan Ivanovich." Today the corresponding "Open Sesame" that opens the doors "in Europe and the best houses in Philadelphia," is the phrase "I'm running away from Vladimir".

Victoria, if you're going to start cleaning out the cockroaches, stop feeding them on your side.

[Sep 26, 2015] Tony Benns Ten Minute History of Neoliberalism

People in debt are slaves to their employees. That's how neoliberalism works.
"... Regarding Thatcher's scheme of encouraging people to take on too much debt to buy houses even as her govt undermined wages; Reagan and co did the same in the US. 20-30-year-olds were encouraged to spend more for housing, and banks encouraged to lend more for housing than the traditional lending formula allowed, because (they were told) incomes for the young would only keep rising, just as their parents incomes had kept rising. The young were told they could pre-pay for their inevitable future prosperity by taking on too much debt. At the same time Reagan and co were undermining wages for most workers.
Sep 26, 2015 | naked capitalism

And not only is Benn's speech refreshingly direct, it's inspiring to see how energetic he was at the age of 83. And I agree with him on the importance of anger and hope. Anger is depicted as a very bad emotion to have, at least here in America, and the resulting self-censorship stifles dissent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=158&v=qX-P4mx1FLU

Published on Aug 6, 2012

Tony Benn - 10 min History Lesson for Neoliberals

See more Tony Benn videos and other great speeches at http://www.counterfire.org

Counterfire is a revolutionary socialist organisation dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism by the working class.

"Tony Benn | People Before Profit | the Budget | Nov 24 2008" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPREZ... Adrian Counsins https://www.youtube.com/user/adycousins

Great stuff man genuine feeling in it!

Homage to Tony Benn rap by Dan Bull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y76us...

Eulogy Galloway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYPea...

"An MP is the only job where you have 70,000 employers, and only one employee."

"It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you."

"The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain."

"I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it."

"Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that."

"I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them."

"If one meets a powerful person - Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler - one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system."

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Mark P. September 26, 2015 at 5:04 am

Aneurin Bevan, primary founder of the NHS, during speech at the Manchester Labour rally 4 July 1948 –

'…no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party …. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation.

'Now the Tories are pouring out money into propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you, young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now … I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.'

TheCatSaid, September 26, 2015 at 7:59 am

Amazing talk–clear, powerful, direct, and well-grounded in Benn's many years of personal experience. His perspective on Thatcher's policies is eye-opening, and his perspective on British politics in general.

Does anyone know what event he spoke at, and when? The link doesn't say.

Brooklin Bridge, September 26, 2015 at 8:42 am

Well, hew was born in 1925 and he talked about 80 years ago when he was 3 so he probably gave this talk sometime around 2008.

Brooklin Bridge, September 26, 2015 at 9:06 am

People Before Profit Alternative Economic summit , Nov 24, 2008

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPREZNbITH8&list=PL2227023797EAE9CF

ben, September 26, 2015 at 8:00 am

I call the self-censorship "American positivism" which is a great play by the elite. The poor, in the face of overwhelming evidence, somehow try to "be positive". They also censor others who complain.

It's an amazing system.

Synoia, September 26, 2015 at 9:58 am

Your so called "self-censorship" is driven by the press, in their role of propaganda distribution.

As in: The lying liars, lied again.

Synoia, September 26, 2015 at 9:55 am

What Benn does not address was the tremendous amount of Labor (Worker) strife in the 50s, 60s and 70s, and the cause of the strife.

I will quote a socialist song, the Red Flag:

The Working Class can kiss my arse
I've got the foreman's job at last

Enterprises get the Unions they deserve. If the management is toxic, so is the worker sentiment.

My experience in graduating and going to work for a major Bank in the UK, was such a revelation I never again worked for British management.

No only do the working people need unions, the working people need to believe the management care about both the customers and the workers in an enterprise. Contempt for both customers and workers become a cancer on society, and is, in my opinion a hallmark of our large enterprise who serve citizens.

Management needs to be answerable to its employees, because employees have more invested, their lives, that shareholders. Money is liquid, livelihood, employment, is not.

Examples: Walmart, large Banks, BP, Volkswagen, Centralized Government….

As a side note, Benn's comments on spending are completely in harmony with the monetary part of MMT, but not with its treatment of trade, tariffs and local production, which are complete nonsense.

flora, September 26, 2015 at 12:14 pm

"Every single generation has to fight the same battles again and again and again. There's no final victory and no final defeat. And therefore, a little bit of history may help." -Benn

Thanks for this post.

flora, September 26, 2015 at 2:12 pm

Regarding Thatcher's scheme of encouraging people to take on too much debt to buy houses even as her govt undermined wages; Reagan and co did the same in the US. 20-30-year-olds were encouraged to spend more for housing, and banks encouraged to lend more for housing than the traditional lending formula allowed, because (they were told) incomes for the young would only keep rising, just as their parents incomes had kept rising. The young were told they could pre-pay for their inevitable future prosperity by taking on too much debt. At the same time Reagan and co were undermining wages for most workers.

Now 20-30-year-olds are being told that they can pre-pay for their inevitable future prosperity by taking on too much debt for college educations. It's the same con.

skippy, September 26, 2015 at 4:28 pm

Did someone say Thatcher and Reagan – ???????????

Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas

By David Batstone, Eduardo Mendieta, Lois Ann Lorentzen, Dwight N. Hopkins

"In 1985 David Stockman. who came from a fundamentalist back-ground, resigned from his position as chief of budget for Regan's government and he published a book entitled "the Triumph of Politics. He reproached Reagan for having been a traitor to the clean model of neoliberalism and for having favored populism. Stockmans.s book develops a neoliberally positioned academic theology, that does not denounce utopias, but presents neoliberalism as the only efficient and realistic means to realized them. It attacks the socialist "utopias" in order to reclaim them in favor of the attempted neoliberal realism. according to Stockman, it is not the utopia that threatens, but the false utopia against which he contrasts his "realist utopia of neoliberalism."

Michel Camdessus, Secretary General of the IMF, echoes the transformed theology of the empire grounding it in certain key theses of liberation theology. In a conference on March 27, 1992 he directed the National Congress of French Christian Impresarios in Lille Mid discussion he summaries his central theological theses:

Surely the Kingdom is a place: these new Heavens and this new earth of which we are called to enter one day, a sublime promise; but the Kingdom is in some way geographical, the Reign is History, a history in which we are the actors, one which is in process and that is close to us since Jesus came into human history. The Reign is what happens when God is King and we recognize Him as such, and we make possible the extension, spreading of this reign, like a spot of oil, impregnating, renewing and unifying human realities. Let Thy Kingdom come…." – read on

Page – 38, 39, 40

Skippy…. this is why some stare at walls…. better option…

Paul Tioxon, September 26, 2015 at 1:42 pm

Benn said that just as in war, we should in peace time do whatever is necessary for our economic well being. This is an echo of the great public intellectual William James, whose famously pronounced that we need the moral equivalent of war in politics to serve the public interest to eradicate social problems and create widespread prosperity. Jimmy Carter repeated this phrase, the moral equivalent of war, in trying to marshal the energy of society to snap out of the 1970s stagflation and national malaise.

From The Moral Equivalent of War:

"I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until and equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skillful propogandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic opportunities."

http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm

Masonboro, September 26, 2015 at 3:23 pm

Every generation must fight it's own battles. Another politician held the same view:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.

The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …

And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

It is its natural manure."

Thomas Jefferson

[Sep 26, 2015] Fascism and Neoconservative Rep4ublicans

March 25th, 2010 | Populist Daily

The word "Fascist" as with the terms "Socialist" and "Communist" are thrown around a lot by people who have no idea what they mean. If you want to know what those terms really mean, find someone who was in some branch of military counterintelligence, the CIA, the security section of the State Department, Defense Intelligence, or in the FBI.

In all those areas, the first day of basic training involves comparative forms of government. You can't spot a Communist if you don't know what a Communist is. You can't tell the difference between a Communist and a Fascist unless you know the difference in the two systems. It is Intelligence, and more specifically, Counterintelligence 101.

So, let's go right to Fascism. A Fascist is one who believes in a corporatist society. In other words, it is a political philosophy embodying very strong central government, with the authority to move in decisive steps to accomplish goals. It would be characterized by a unity of purpose, with more or less all the levels of the hierarchy in unison, starting at the top and working down. It is a top-down government involving an alliance of industry, military, media and a political party.

Because Fascism has been associated with the 1930s German Nazis, the Italian Fascists under Mussolini and the Falangists, under the Spanish Dictator, Francisco Franco, the term "Fascist" has taken on a sinister meaning. Not fewer than 10 million direct deaths resulting from the rule of these three may have something to do with it. On the other hand, philosophies don't kill people; people kill people.

It is interesting to note that at least two of the three Parties had origins as Socialist and morphed into strong, Right Wing, authoritarian rules as a result largely of expediency. It is also interesting to note that all three were not only intimately connected to the largest industrial corporations, but as soon as possible with the military leadership. While Fascism as a political philosophy is not innately evil, given the results, it is worth noting how things turned out.

Both the German and the Italian Fascist parties were also both revolutionary and conservative at the same time. Both Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were aggressive, anarchic leaders. Both served time in jail. Both served in the enlisted ranks with the military in war. Both used that experience to organize mobs of thugs to agitate against an established government, not for a more democratic regime, but for a more authoritarian one. You can begin to see some similarities with contemporary political activities.

As soon as they took power, which they did partially through gangs and mobs, intimidation and demonstrations and-in Mussolini's case an outright coup-they allied themselves with the biggest corporations and the military general staff. In addition, even before taking complete power, they began to wrest control of the media away from other political parties, and to use it for their own propaganda.

Once they had control of the radio and newspapers, which were then the prominent sources of information, they could begin to broadcast their messages. Hitler's "Big Lie" basically blamed rampant inflation and lack of jobs on the Jews. He blamed all their economic ills on the restraint of Germany by other nations and the presumed taking over of German lands (which they themselves had only won through aggressive wars.)

But let's for a minute assume that we know nothing about Fascism except that it exists. We have a group, here in America that believes in a corporatist political philosophy. What would that look like? If it were a true Fascist organization, they would ally themselves with big corporations, like the health care industry, oil and mining, pharmaceuticals, media corporations and the military-industrial complex.

They would try to control the message, particularly in radio and television. They would become as closely allied with the top military brass as possible, offering them a seat at the table in the running of the economy. Retired Generals would be assured of positions involved with military hardware and strategic planning.

And what about the people? In a fascist system, the whole idea is to have an efficient method of getting things done. If you want to build an "autobahn" you simply tell the transportation minister to get started. You control everything at every level. It will go faster because it is for the good of all the people, so no one will have the right to object or interfere. It is, Fascists would say, about efficiency, getting things done for the people.

Defense is about protecting the people. You attack other countries so that they cannot attack you. You start wars (Iraq) to prevent dangerous men from attacking you. It makes sense. Military efficiency in a Fascist state means that if the top guy (President or Dictator) wants to be absolutely certain that no other country is superior, he can build up the military industry and the military at any pace or at any cost.

In a Fascist state the idea is to have one set of rules, coming from the top down. No one votes as an individual, only as a part of the group that is assigned a task. It is corporate, total-totalitarian. So, if you decide that a national health care program is not right for the country, you all vote against it in a totally militaristic way. Everyone salutes and follows the lead from the top down. The only problem is when you do not have a strong leader.

The Democrats, for example, want to farm decisions out to others, let the opposition have their input. It slows the process. A Fascist health care program would be one decided upon by the President, discussed and worked out with the corporations, mandated to his staffs and enacted without any discussion or public debate in a matter of a few months.

In a Fascist state, policy is largely being written through a cooperative effort with the industries involved, in this case the health care industry. The slow, ragged, messy and Democratic process involved with our current health care reform process would never happen under a Fascist government. Whatever the decision, there would be no appeal. If a million or fifty million were left out, because, let's say, that the President needed more money for war machines that would be the decision- with no question or appeal.

So, if you want efficiency, you not only should you look to the Republicans, but you may have no choice. The Republicans, remember, have the complete support of Fox News, the Fox television Network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and any number of television stations around the country, plus somewhere between 600 and 1600 radio stations on which literally 9 out of 10 commentators are paid by those network owners to be Conservative (Neoconservative Republican.) They have expanded to very large numbers of web site bases, delivering whatever type of information they want, truth, lies, anything in between… accusations without proof…Socialist, Communist, government takeover of this or that…no need to be truthful. It is all propaganda.

Just as Herr Goebbels and Mussolini did in the 1930s-and except in the Communist counties and a few Latin American dictatorships there hasn't been anything to speak of similar to this in the Western advanced societies since then-the unchallenged message of the Right Wing goes out. The radio commentators today get their message from the top, from the Republican Party. Fox News Channel internal memos have shown that they literally decide what policies the Republican Party wished to champion, and then they attack rather than merely delivering the news.

So do we need to be civil about it-about these lies? Is it important to challenge people, like these Right Wing commentators who tell you that your current health care is sufficient? It is good for corporations, for health care insurance companies. But is it good for you not to be sure you can get health insurance? So if they tell you that something is a government takeover and it is not, so you vote against health care or you respond to a poll in a way that is against your own best interests…do you need to be civil about being lied to? You shouldn't be lied to by media. You need the truth, the facts, to make decisions.

It is a pretty simple answer. Should you be civil to people who lie to you and urge you to buy something that turns out to hurt you, or your family, or cause you to lose your job, or kill your sister, brother, neighbor? If I lie to you and say it is safe to swim across the channel and you are attacked by sharks that I knew were there…should you not care? This is what is happening, right now…today. In the consumer products market, we call that fraud and companies can be criminally liable.

So let's describe what a Fascist government or a political party attempting to introduce a Fascist government would look like and see if either or any of our political parties fits that description:

Allies with big corporations, planning strategy together, interchangeable.

Works to have control of the political process at all levels, starting with the top down.

Does not cooperate with and actually tries to undermine other political parties.

Uses mobs and demonstrations, and attempts to make individuals working in other parties afraid of violent reactions.

Advocates ownership of weapons as a fear factor to intimidate others. (Wayne La Pierre…"the people with the guns make the rules.")

Decides what is best for all citizens based on what corporations want.

Uses "big lie" propaganda technique, of top-down distributed propaganda message for each issue.

Allies with military on most issues, with ultra-aggressive military posture.

Total control of the political process is the ultimate goal.

If any of this seems familiar to you, then you see something "Fascist" in the current political process. Of course, one thing that wasn't mentioned. Fascists always need someone to stigmatize. In Germany, it was the Jews. In Italy it was the Socialists. In Spain it was the Communists. It seems clear that, in this country it is the Democrats.

The Neocons are out of power, but they are unrelenting in their efforts to control as much of the political discourse as possible, no matter how damaging to society. They bring mobs and riff-raff out, some with guns, trying to scare the average citizen. They send messages out over radio with lunatic commentators, some who are not even allowed to visit other countries because of their hate speech…yet we tolerate it.

We even allow asininely preposterous lies from a possibly psychotic television commentator…to be used to stoke the race-hatred of many tea party members, and thugs against a distinguished African-American President who won 54% of the vote, the largest since Ronald Reagan and who also won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The case is pretty clear. The Neoconservative Republicans are headed for Fascism if they are not there already. The latest round of insults, threats, lies, window breakings all contribute to the evidence. Sooner or later this totalitarian attitude will either be denounced or will have serious responses. One thing is sure, with the problems facing our country, we cannot afford the kind of anarchist attacks as were exhibited in the bombing of a Federal building in Oklahoma City or the flying of an aircraft into a building housing an IRS office.

This radical, violent, arrogant Fascist attitude has to stop. The first step in preventing this kind of political outcome is to identify and react to Fascism when it appears. Neoconservative Republicanism is Fascism. Republicans must return to sanity or be treated as a very dangerous and radical political party.

what is the difference between neocons and neofascists Yahoo Answers

Best Answer:

Not much. Neocons don't dress up in silly uniforms, neo fascists probably do and practice funny salutes when they think no-one is looking.

Joaquin B · 8 years ago

neocons are the new conservatives of the Cheney/Bush/Karl Rove school. These people bleeds the country of its resources in corporate welfare. In other words, they would give all sorts of money and incentives to corporations such as Halliburton and big oil companies at our expenses. They would like to impose a fascist system like thee ones of the early 20th century in Italy and Germany and it is been tried at this time in China..

Neofascists are those who would like the early 20th century geopolitical model. I would think that the Chinese government edges on this type of model. The Chinese call themselves communist yet they have a pseudo-free enterprise system with no democracy and total repression.

Lucky for the American people, we have waken up just in time to undo the damage done to our country from our once prestigious Republican Party.

Paranormal I · 8 years ago

The difference is that neoconservatism uses the language of democracy and freedom while neofascism openly admit they want the opposite. Otherwise they are quite similar. Including the fact that originally, they came from the Left from which they converted to rightwing politics.

[Sep 26, 2015] The City Of London Has Turned Britain Into A Civilized Mafia State

"... Property in this country is a haven for the proceeds of international crime. The head of the National Crime Agency, Donald Toon, notes that "the London property market has been skewed by laundered money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in the UK." ..."
"... The City is a semi-offshore state, a bit like the UK's crown dependencies and overseas territories, tax havens legitimised by the Privy Council. Britain's financial secrecy undermines the tax base while providing a conduit into the legal economy for gangsters, kleptocrats and drug barons. ..."
"... Yep. Socialism for us. Feudalism for the people. Because.....we're too big to fail. "They gotcha by the balls -- " - George Carlin ..."
"... London is an independent city-state, with mafia owners going back 1000+ years. Website admits it's a corporation http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Pages/default.aspx ..."
"... assassination politics: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/18/meet-the-assassinat... ..."
"... I'm not sure that author actually knows what he is talking about. "The City" has nothing do with domestic UK money laundering in real estate, because no one with money actually lives in "the City." They generally live in the West End or on country estates- that's the real estate that is being used to launder money. And the City is hardly the UK's only tax haven for corporations -- Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man are all short puddle jumper flights from LCY, and if you want to use long haul flights out of Heathrow- the list of Crown dependencies and overseas territories serving as tax havens is almost endless... the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and the Bermuda Triangle being the most familiar to Americans trying to lose fiat in boating accidents. ..."
"... "What Do You Think of Western Civilization?" "I Think It Would Be a Good Idea" -- Gandhi
"...London is now the global money-laundering centre for the drug trade, says crime expert ..."
"... It's a big club and we ain't in it...... R.I.P. George Carlin ..."
"... "The City" = croupier and enforcer of the global casino. ..."
"... The lesson - a financial sector without a commensurate sized industrial base will rapidly evolve into organised crime. ..."
Sep 10, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

While an earlier post related to the likely bursting of the London real estate bubble, this one highlights a blistering critique of the role the City of London has played in transforming Great Britain into what George Monbiot calls a "civilized mafia state." But that's just an appetizer. This extremely well written and information article is a must read for anyone still in the dark regarding London's central role within the global financial crime syndicate.

Here are a few excerpts from the Guardian:

To an extent unknown since before the first world war, economic relations in this country are becoming set in stone. It is not just that the very rich no longer fall while the very poor no longer rise. It's that the system itself is protected from risk. Through bailouts, quantitative easing and delays in interest-rate rises, speculative investment has been so well cushioned that – as the Guardian economics editor, Larry Elliott, puts it – financial markets are "one of the last bastions of socialism left on Earth".

Public services, infrastructure, the very fabric of the nation: these too are being converted into risk-free investments. Social cleansing is transforming central London into an exclusive economic zone for property speculation. From a dozen directions, government policy converges on this objective.

Property in this country is a haven for the proceeds of international crime. The head of the National Crime Agency, Donald Toon, notes that "the London property market has been skewed by laundered money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in the UK."

It's hardly surprising, given the degree of oversight. Private Eye has produced a map of British land owned by companies registered in offshore tax havens. The holdings amount to 1.2m acres, including much of the country's prime real estate. Among those it names as beneficiaries are a cast of Russian oligarchs, oil sheikhs, British aristocrats and newspaper proprietors. These are the people for whom government policy works – and the less regulated the system that enriches them, the happier they are.

The speculative property market is just one current in the great flow of cash that sluices through Britain while scarcely touching the sides. The financial sector exploits an astonishing political privilege: the City of London is the only jurisdiction in the UK not fully subject to the authority of parliament. In fact, the relationship seems to work the other way. Behind the Speaker's chair in the House of Commons sits the Remembrancer, whose job is to ensure that the interests of the City of London are recognised by the elected members. (A campaign to rescind this privilege – Don't Forget the Remembrancer – will be launched very soon.)

The City is a semi-offshore state, a bit like the UK's crown dependencies and overseas territories, tax havens legitimised by the Privy Council. Britain's financial secrecy undermines the tax base while providing a conduit into the legal economy for gangsters, kleptocrats and drug barons.

Even the more orthodox financial institutions deploy a succession of scandalous practices: pension mis-selling, endowment mortgage fraud, the payment protection insurance con, Libor rigging. A former minister in the last government, Lord Green, ran HSBC while it engaged in money laundering for drug gangs, systematic tax evasion and the provision of services to Saudi and Bangladeshi banks linked to the financing of terrorists. Sometimes the UK looks to me like an ever so civilised mafia state.

The government also insists that there is no link between political donations and seats in the House of Lords. But a study by researchersat Oxford University found that the probability of so many major donors arriving there by chance is 1.36 x 10-38: roughly "equivalent to entering the National Lottery and winning the jackpot 5 times in a row". Why does the Lords remain unreformed? Because it permits plutocratic power to override democracy. Both rich and poor are kept in their place.

Governed either by or on behalf of the people who fleece us, we cannot be surprised to discover that all public services are being re-engineered for the benefit of private capital. Nor should we be surprised when governments help to negotiate, without public consent, treaties such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which undermine the sovereignty of both parliament and the law. Aesop's observation, that "we hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office", remains true in spirit, though hanging has been replaced by community payback.

Wherever you sniff in British public life, something stinks: I could fill this site with examples. But, while every pore oozes corruption, our task, we are told, is merely to trim the nails of the body politic.

To fail to confront this system is to collaborate with it.

Most people don't want to face this, but it's undeniably true.

umbotron

Yep. Socialism for us. Feudalism for the people. Because.....we're too big to fail. "They gotcha by the balls -- " - George Carlin

JoeSexPack

London is an independent city-state, with mafia owners going back 1000+ years. Website admits it's a corporation http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Pages/default.aspx

Short vid explains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

Why matters? The square mile is home to Bank of England (private corp), HQ of Freemasons & branch offices of all major banks on Earth. It is center of world finance, & has been for centuries. Privately-owned Bank of E was model later replicated with FED, ECB, WB, IMF & most others.

US revolutionary War was fought to fee US from having to use Bank of E's debt notes. Sound familiar? We're back there now. Same struggle against same institutions.

KnuckleDragger-X

If you read about the history of London, you'll notice it has always been a very bizarre and screwed up place. They are now reaching their Nirvana of fucked uppedness.....

two hoots

What they can no longer do with their Dutch East India Company and with the by-gone reach of the Empire they do in the M A Rothschild tradition with their global financial tenacles

Chuck Knoblauch

Civilized assassins needed.

sleigher

assassination politics: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/18/meet-the-assassinat...

lawyer4anarchists

Of course the author is right. And of course this has always been the case, it is not new. The problem we have in this country is that the people have the laughable notion that there is some magical time to "go back to" where the "constitution and it's rights" were the law. lol. The people are so lost. The constitution is not what people think. It is there to enslave you. It was never a source of freedom. Until they wake up and realize this fact, well... they will keep getting what they are getting. http://www.thetruthaboutthelaw.com/the-peoples-case-for-what-happened-at...

Urban Redneck

I'm not sure that author actually knows what he is talking about. "The City" has nothing do with domestic UK money laundering in real estate, because no one with money actually lives in "the City." They generally live in the West End or on country estates -- that's the real estate that is being used to launder money. And the City is hardly the UK's only tax haven for corporations -- Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man are all short puddle jumper flights from LCY, and if you want to use long haul flights out of Heathrow -- the list of Crown dependencies and overseas territories serving as tax havens is almost endless... the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and the Bermuda Triangle being the most familiar to Americans trying to lose fiat in boating accidents.

Peribanu

Unlike the Yanks, we Brits don't have a constitution written down from first principles. Our "constitution" is the body of laws of the country, but it goes back so far that any contemporary changes are minor, superficial, and irrelevant. Many of the formal institutional powers in the country are the unfortunate but necessary result of a compromise between landowning aristocrats of old and the bourgeoisie who wanted a slice of the cake. The workers are merely tolerated. The internal mafia are the oh-so-very-refined aristocracy, whose heads were never cut off unlike in France, together with the rather uncouth capitalists and self-made money men, who are also tolerated, since someone has to provide one with an income, ideally by devising ways to get the workers to pay 90%-100% of their income back to us as rent. The other mafia are the rich foreigners -- Russian oligarchs, and the "persecuted" rich of the world, who are allowed to reside in Britain on condition that: a) they bring in lots of lovely "investments"; and b) don't get involved, at least publicly, in any of that unnecessary "politics" that goes on overseas. In Britain we long ago abolished politics. The commoners come and go with their naive belief that they can actually change things, while the core institutions of the country are unchanging and eternal: Eton, Oxford, Cambridge, the Civil Service, MI5, MI6, the BBC, and, of course, the Monarchy. God Save the Queen! (Or should I call her the Godmother?)

q99x2

The scum of the world all located in one place. How convenient is that. Won't be long before they start going after one another. Then poof.

JustObserving

Re: The City Of London Has Turned Britain Into A "Civilized Mafia State"

Civilized?

"What Do You Think of Western Civilization?" "I Think It Would Be a Good Idea" -- Gandhi

London is now the global money-laundering centre for the drug trade, says crime expert

The City of London is the money-laundering centre of the world's drug trade, according to an internationally acclaimed crime expert.

UK banks and financial services have ignored so-called "know your customer" rules designed to curb criminals' abilities to launder the proceeds of crime, Roberto Saviano warned. Mr Saviano, author of the international bestseller Gomorrah, which exposed the workings of the Neapolitan crime organisation Camorra, said: "The British treat it as not their problem because there aren't corpses on the street."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-is-now-the-global-mone...

London: A giant washing machine for the filthy cash of a corrupt elite: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/london-giant-washing-machine-filthy-cash-corrup...
Calculus99

London: The money laundering capital of the world.

Fear not though because Prime Minister Cameron has said he's going to stamp down on it especially the offshore companies that are buying up all the property. BWHAHAHAHAHA.

ThroxxOfVron

...& Obama's new Affirmative Action figurehead at the DOJ has agreed with her underlings that since it is now well past the Statute Of Limitations for prosecuting anything even vaguely related to the fraud-induced economic disaster which culminated in the interbank and equities markets implosions that it is time 'to get touch on White Collar Crime.'

Dr. Engali

It's a big club and we ain't in it...... R.I.P. George Carlin

Salah

Been that way since their founders escaped from the Pope & the King of France, 10/13/1307

https://lordmayorsshow.london/history/gog-and-magog

Jonathan Living...

I'm fascinated by The City - so much of British law seems so weird ~ even just the status of Wales, which is in some ways its own country within the UK, some ways just part of England, but they have their own Parliament.

Anyway there's always google, but if anyone has come across any particularly good articles or books on the subject of the City's history and status, please share the wealth.

I wonder if, like our Electoral college, most people would agree it should be abolished but most people simply dont know about it.

22winmag

Let's dismantle Miami and sell it off in order to fund the criminal prosecution and incarceration of the CIA scum and drug runners who built that city thanks to decades of drug smuggling and money laundering. Then we move on to D.C.

Salah

No, make NYC & Long Island a US "City-State", but with no US Congressional representation, or taxation, or US financial insurance guarantees or citizenship.

1 crash later, they'll clean-up mightily and be a little Dubai.

jcdenton

We do have $100 BILLION for that on the way ..

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/01/11/another-thwarted-attempt-to-hija...

Another major disbursement scheduled is 100 Billion USD to set up an ongoing special Task Force to investigate and prosecute organized crime and government and corporate corruption at any level.

... Funds were disbursed on December 15, 2014 ...

https://app.box.com/s/hfgvcqg7gqh7i27at6sv53ywu87lwarp (see file with interview dated Dec. 3, 2014)

youngman

Well they still have a Royal Family...go figure......and remember any news or numbers that come out of London are probably wrong... Faked...or just fixed....they cheat well there

rufus66

Meanwhile in the news today, Revenue Canada uncovers something fishy regarding between kpmg's Great Britain connection and rich clients ......

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/kpmg-offshore-sham-deceived-tax-authorit...

Solio

"So it just means that more of the tax burden is borne by the middle class."

What middle class?!!

Calculus99

The difference between Miami and London is Miami knows it's bent. London likes to hide/forget and think/preach it's honest.

homebody

This will be fixed by adding 800,000 economic refugees from Syria and Africa

XRAYD

London has always been thus ... from the age of Dickens, and the Colonial Empire Head Office - now masquerading as the "Commonwealth"!

NotApplicable

Indeed.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Salah

"The City" = croupier and enforcer of the global casino.

1. Look for things to "break apart", i.e. Ottoman Empire, Hapsburg Empire, Russian Empire, Spanish Empire, USSR, et al

2. Look for things to "put together", i.e. USA, Chile (sans Bolivia on the Pacific), South Africa, Rhodesia, Oz, NZ, Hong Kong, Singapore, et al

They've been working this biz-model since the North Sea Knights Templars escaped the big deception in 1307

JessieSharpton

Ah the knights templar, the prototypical pre Rothschild banking mafia incarnation.

SillySalesmanQu...

Just my own personal observation here, but what do these three things have in common, why and who created them in the first place?

Most bad shit that happens to average people seem to emanate from:

1. Vatican City

2. City of London

3. Washington D.C.

Chosenpeople

Britain has become a classic dystopian state. They have cameras everywhere, and I mean everywhere. The state runs and controls everything. The place is swarming with foreigners, it is difficult to find a white Englishman in London. Britain is dead.

ajax

London became the mega-city in "Blade Runner" instead of L.A.

umblemore

Before the banking mafia looted Britain's industrial base and shipped it offshore industry was the dominant power and although the City was part crooked it was also kept part functional as a utility for industry.

Over the last 30 years or so since they offshored all the industry the financial power has become completely dominant and completely criminal. To a certain extent the London branches of the Wall St banks are where they do their dirtiest deeds because it's easier to get away with in London.

The lesson - a financial sector without a commensurate sized industrial base will rapidly evolve into organised crime.

MSimon

For several Centuries Brit banks have been running the dope racket.

You might recall "Opium Wars" or if you want to be modern - NATO in Afghanistan.

jcdenton

Next, we will have the courage to write about Dachau?

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/05/04/neo-so-much-more-than-nukes/

MSimon

Since 1840 - at least

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-07/bed-despotic-house-saud#comment...

MSimon

The Brits have been at it for a long time: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-07/bed-despotic-house-saud#comment...

[Sep 24, 2015] U.S. and Its Coalition of Mid-East Dictators Kill 13 Times More Yemeni Civilians than Al Qaeda

Sep 24, 2015 | www.zerohedge.com
Sep 24, 2015 | Zero Hedge
I-am-not-one-of-them

Al Qaeda only ever exists in a country where the US decides on a regime change because that country in not under their control

so the old Al Qaeda wag the dog mercenaries for propaganda show up (they brutally kill civilians don't they, the more barbaric the better, we'll hate them more and then have justification to bomb even more)

Zarqawi in Iraq was such horse manure propaganda, and the CIA continue to use that boogeyman strategy because:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again." George W. Bush

fooled again, fooled continuously, just plainly fools

Bay Area Guy

George, they're only brown people. It's black lives that matter. The brown people? Not so much.

Besides, we're killing them for their own good.

[Sep 24, 2015] Corbyn Says ISIS Partly Created by Western Interven4tion

September 23, 2015 | theantimedia.org
Michaela Whitton

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom - Jeremy Corbyn delivered his uncompromising stance on Western warmongering from the back of a London taxi last week. As the cab raced through the streets of the capital, the new Labour leader revealed his vision for an ethical foreign policy in his 17-minute interview with Middle East Eye.

Asked how he would deal with ISIS, the anti-war campaigner was uncompromising. "ISIS didn't come from nowhere, they've got a lot of money that's come from somewhere. They have a huge supply of arms that have come from somewhere and they are, not in total but in part, a creation of western interventions in the region," he said.

According to Corbyn, he would deal with the terror group by economically isolating its members. He says he would attempt to unite other groups in the region and stressed the importance of supporting autonomy for Kurdish groups. On the rise of ISIS, he pointed to the vast amount of arms that Britain sells, particularly to Saudi Arabia, declaring they must have ended up somewhere and are now being used.

Corbyn was vehemently opposed to the 2013 Parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria and remains adamant that bombing the country now would create more mayhem. He told Middle East Eye it would be very unclear who the alliances would be with.

On the region in general, he referred to Israel and Palestine as a massive issue. Unlike his British counterparts, he expressed grave concern at the illegal Israeli settlements, military occupation of the West Bank, and lack of reconstruction in Gaza.

Praising the recent agreement with Iran, he said he wished it had included the issue of human rights, and when asked if he would have invited Egyptian leader Abdel al-Sisi to the U.K., he was clear:

"No, I would not, because of my concerns over the use of the death penalty in Egypt, the treatment of people who were part of the former government, and the continued imprisonment of President Morsi." He went on to clarify that his statement wasn't passing judgement on different parties, but on the meaning of democracy.

On Britain's relationship with Saudi Arabia, Corbyn expressed concern on what he referred to as a "huge number of issues," naming the treatment of women, the frequent use of the death penalty - including public beheadings - and the treatment of migrant workers.

At a recent Parliamentary debate, Corbyn raised the question of whether British arms sales to Saudi Arabia are more important than genuine concerns about human rights. Most of us already know the answer to this question.

"We need to be a constant irritant on human rights," he said.

Asked how Britain can make itself safer, both at home and abroad, Corbyn was frank:

"We make ourselves safer by not being part of U.S. foreign policy at every single turn. And we become a force for human rights rather than military intervention."

Asked why he has such good judgement compared with other MPs, Corbyn admitted that he reads a lot, travels a lot, and learns from people wherever he goes. "The issue is the ability to listen to people," he said.

Describing what an ethical foreign policy under a Corbyn-lead British government would look like, he said, "My basis would be that I want to see the protection and preservation of human rights around the world, deal with issues of global hunger and global inequality, and the environmental disaster that is facing this planet."

He added, "I think that should be the basis rather than what it is at the moment which seems to be to see what the White House wants, and how we can deliver it for them."


This article (Corbyn Says ISIS Partly Created by Western Intervention) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email [email protected].

[Sep 21, 2015] Blame America ? No, Blame Neocons!

"... If aggressive US policy in the Middle East – for example in Iraq – results in the creation of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda in Iraq, is pointing out the unintended consequences of bad policy blaming America? Is it "blaming America" to point out that blowback – like we saw on 9/11 – can be the result of unwise US foreign policy actions like stationing US troops in Saudi Arabia? ..."
"... the current refugee crisis is largely caused by bad US foreign policy actions. The US government decides on regime change for a particular country – in this case, Syria – destabilizes the government, causes social chaos, and destroys the economy, and we are supposed to be surprised that so many people are desperate to leave? Is pointing this out blaming America, or is it blaming that part of the US government that makes such foolish policies? ..."
"... they never explain why the troops were removed from Iraq: the US demanded complete immunity for troops and contractors and the Iraqi government refused. ..."
"... As soon as the US stopped paying the Sunnis not to attack the Iraqi government, they started attacking the Iraqi government. Why? Because the US attack on Iraq led to a government that was closely allied to Iran and the Sunnis could not live with that! ..."
"... The same is true with US regime change policy toward Syria. How many Syrians were streaming out of Syria before US support for Islamist rebels there made the country unlivable? ..."
"... I don't blame America. I am America, you are America. I don't blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion - that they have to promote American goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people. ..."
"... In short, I don't blame America; I blame neocons. ..."
Sep 21, 2015 | www.ronpaulinstitute.org
Sep 20, 2015 | Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
Is the current refugee crisis gripping the European Union "all America's fault"? That is how my critique of US foreign policy was characterized in a recent interview on the Fox Business Channel. I do not blame the host for making this claim, but I think it is important to clarify the point.

It has become common to discount any criticism of US foreign policy as "blaming America first." It is a convenient way of avoiding a real discussion. If aggressive US policy in the Middle East – for example in Iraq – results in the creation of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda in Iraq, is pointing out the unintended consequences of bad policy blaming America? Is it "blaming America" to point out that blowback – like we saw on 9/11 – can be the result of unwise US foreign policy actions like stationing US troops in Saudi Arabia?

In the Fox interview I pointed out that the current refugee crisis is largely caused by bad US foreign policy actions. The US government decides on regime change for a particular country – in this case, Syria – destabilizes the government, causes social chaos, and destroys the economy, and we are supposed to be surprised that so many people are desperate to leave? Is pointing this out blaming America, or is it blaming that part of the US government that makes such foolish policies?

Accusing those who criticize US foreign policy of "blaming America" is pretty selective, however. Such accusations are never leveled at those who criticize a US pullback. For example, most neocons argue that the current crisis in Iraq is all Obama's fault for pulling US troops out of the country. Are they "blaming America first" for the mess? No one ever says that. Just like they never explain why the troops were removed from Iraq: the US demanded complete immunity for troops and contractors and the Iraqi government refused.

Iraq was not a stable country when the US withdrew its troops anyway. As soon as the US stopped paying the Sunnis not to attack the Iraqi government, they started attacking the Iraqi government. Why? Because the US attack on Iraq led to a government that was closely allied to Iran and the Sunnis could not live with that! It was not the US withdrawal from Iraq that created the current instability but the invasion. The same is true with US regime change policy toward Syria. How many Syrians were streaming out of Syria before US support for Islamist rebels there made the country unlivable? Is pointing out this consequence of bad US policy also blaming America first?

Last year I was asked by another Fox program whether I was not "blaming America" when I criticized the increasingly confrontational US stand toward Russia. Here's how I put it then:

I don't blame America. I am America, you are America. I don't blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion - that they have to promote American goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people.

In short, I don't blame America; I blame neocons.

Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity

[Sep 21, 2015] After Creating Migration Flood Merkel Throws Up Emergency Dikes

"... The German chancellor Merkel tried to gain some points with her neoliberal friends and with big companies and donors by suddenly opening the border for "refugees" of all kinds, even for those who come from safe countries. These migrants would help to further depress German wages which, after years of zero growth, slowly started to increase again. ..."
"... While Merkel was lauded by all kinds of Anglo-american neoliberal outlets, from the Economist over FT and Newsweek to the Washington Post the backlash in Germany was brewing. ..."
"... Despite a major campaign of pro-migrant propaganda in Merkel friendly media the German population in general is furious with her stunt. ..."
"... So the brave new world is coming to you also? The brave new world of depressed wages and benefits for the working classes. ..."
"... Poor Mr. Schäuble must give "earth and water" to the German oligarchs. He must organize a new Treuhand for the whole Europe to sell-off public property, he must completely dissolve labor rights, bring down pensions and wages, destroy the social state. ..."
"... These refugees mean workers and jobs. Or how do you think their houses will be built, or where will the doctors come from to treat them and the teachers to teach them, the shops that will feed them. ..."
"... Would be the planed PR con of ' aren't we nice to the most needy refugees', that being used as a duel use purpose with that appeal to her real constituency in the elite and corporates with refugees as wage slaves depressing wages. ..."
"... And when times are bad enough. the far-right actually gains and keeps power till they run a bloody muck. Nazis and Fascism is what these freaks are risking again. ..."
"... Of course, this is all made possible because the US isn't a country anymore, it is now a corporation. The same is true for the EU. The EU isn't a union of nations anymore, it is now a collection of corporations. ..."
"... Yes, The brave new CORPORATE world is coming to us all. Humanity be damned, profits uber alles. Workers of the globe, lube up, and bend over. ..."
"... This migrants crisis should be seen as a fantastic opportunity to all corporatists and neolibs. Companies need cheap labor. This is an open bar to them! ..."
"... This is really another unmasking of the EU. It is run by Germany. ..."
"... I think German industry is angry at the Russia sanctions and has been pressuring for 'new workers', in the sense of being able to set conditions, choose candidates from a larger pool, and almost certainly, pay less, have more control over workers. ..."
"... The makers of Western policy and the media are one and the same. Mass media now so consolidated, it's a corporate/state entity. ..."
"... The origin of totalitarianism : Part two, Imperialism : Chapter 9, Decline of the nation-state; end of the rights of man, p. 269 ..."
"... Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression ..."
"... I have real sympathy for the Syrian refugees coming from the concentration camps in Turkey. These are mostly younger, middle-class, educated Syrians with small children who either lost their homes or couldn't tolerate the risk of violence to them and their families. ..."
"... it's better lavrov speaks openly on what everyone with half a brain is thinking here.. that isis is a mercenary group paid to be where it is ought to come as no surprise.. that the usa hopes to use them to overthrow assad - they have openly stated this. ..."
"... When refugees still managed to get into Europe in large numbers heading for Germany where they had relatives and knew that there were jobs there was not much German politicians could legally do except stop Schengen that makes it easy to go anywhere once you have crossed the European borders - which is happening now getting refugees stranded in the fields. ..."
"... with the influx of probably millions of cheap labour, the big cats may bring back the industries from china , yes now the western Europe may be able to compete with them. ..."
Sep 21, 2015 | www.moonofalabama.org

The German chancellor Merkel tried to gain some points with her neoliberal friends and with big companies and donors by suddenly opening the border for "refugees" of all kinds, even for those who come from safe countries. These migrants would help to further depress German wages which, after years of zero growth, slowly started to increase again.

But neither she nor her allies ever prepared the German public for a sudden influx of several hundred thousand foreigners. Changes in immigration policy were sneaked in without any public discussion. Suddenly 800,000 foreign people are expected to arrive this years and many more over the next years. People who neither speak German nor readily fit into the national cultural and social-economic environment. Most of these do not come out of immediate dangers but from safe countries.

While Merkel was lauded by all kinds of Anglo-American neoliberal outlets, from the Economist over FT and Newsweek to the Washington Post the backlash in Germany was brewing. In Who Runs The Migrant Media Campaign And What Is Its Purpose? I predicted:

There will be over time a huge backlash against European politicians who, like Merkel, practically invite more migrants. Wages are stagnant or falling in Europe and unemployment is still much too high. The last thing people in Europe want right now is more competition in the labor market. Parties on the extreme right will profit from this while the center right will lose support.

Despite a major campaign of pro-migrant propaganda in Merkel friendly media the German population in general is furious with her stunt. The backlash comes from all sides but especially from her own conservative party. Additionally many European leaders point out that Merkel, who insistent on sticking to the letter of law in the case of Greece, is now openly breaking European laws and agreements.

... ... ...

ben | Sep 13, 2015 12:39:05 PM | 3

So the brave new world is coming to you also? The brave new world of depressed wages and benefits for the working classes. Corporate Germany is drooling at the prospect of that happening. Good luck b.

nmb | Sep 13, 2015 12:57:08 PM | 4

... poor Mr. Schäuble, who recently surpassed Mrs. Merkel in popularity in Germany, is under extreme pressure, mostly by the German capital, to "restructure" the eurozone through the Greek experiment. The German oligarchy is now in a cruel competition mostly with the US companies to hyper-automate production. It sends continuous signals that human labor will be unnecessary for its big companies and presses the German leadership to finish the experiment in Greece.

Poor Mr. Schäuble must give "earth and water" to the German oligarchs. He must organize a new Treuhand for the whole Europe to sell-off public property, he must completely dissolve labor rights, bring down pensions and wages, destroy the social state. He must end quickly with Greece and pass all the "Greek achievements" to the whole eurozone.

http://bit.ly/1fTpHhy

Peter B. | Sep 13, 2015 4:12:54 PM | 11

I live in Germany in a village near the Austria border. Our village is broke: too much debt. The people in Germany are taxed to death with over a 50 percent tax rate. In addition, the Euro took a lot of buying power away from us. And Germans are fleeing many areas to get away from the Ghettos of migrants that have come before.

The propaganda machine in running 24/7 about how great these migrants are for Germany. Unfortunately in this case, the propaganda is not working. For example, my son's school teacher tried to set an example by being nice to a local black migrant by saying a few kind words only to be told – F*ck you lady. In any case, if you have eyes you can see migrants are a burden.

It is a fact that Migrants get everything for free. They are not allowed to work for the first year and are given free health care, dental, accommodations, etc. In addition, the police do not like to bother them, so unless it is really bad, they just get away with it.

So, how do you expect to pay for all of this? Where is the money going to come from? And did I mention that no one in our village supports the idea of have more migrants. In my opinion, this is a case of going too far. The politicians have now lost the population and they are back-tracking.

Susan Sunflower | Sep 13, 2015 4:23:23 PM | 12

In These Times: Zizek: We Can't Address the EU Refugee Crisis Without Confronting Global Capitalism

The refugees won't all make it to Norway. Nor does the Norway they seek exist.

somebody | Sep 13, 2015 5:05:13 PM | 15

b. you are an economic analphabet. These refugees mean workers and jobs. Or how do you think their houses will be built, or where will the doctors come from to treat them and the teachers to teach them, the shops that will feed them. And how do you think German industry will survive with a shrinking aging work force, or old age pensioners homes and hospitals keep functioning.

It happened before. Germany had some 2.6 million "guest workers" in the 1950's and 60's. Most of them aren't counted as immigration nowadays as they have become European - Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. But recruitment was done in Turkey and North Africa, too.

RE: Peter B. | Sep 13, 2015 4:12:54 PM | 11

You have to be very rich to pay 50 per cent tax. I cannot say I sympathize. German countryside is quite empty, lots of room for refugees. They don't seem to want to go there though but to the cities. Like Germans, really.

Bavaria has experience with refugees since World War II. To quote a Bavarian from one of the - formerly incestuous - valleys: We did not like them but they were good for us.

But yes, it is beginning to feel like the end of Shengen and the end of Europe as we knew it. And yes, stupid German politicians seem to be surprised by the global effect of twitter and facebook.

tom | Sep 13, 2015 5:40:50 PM | 16

I thought the back up plan by Merkel and her despicable likes like mentioned by b and above;

Would be the planed PR con of ' aren't we nice to the most needy refugees', that being used as a duel use purpose with that appeal to her real constituency in the elite and corporates with refugees as wage slaves depressing wages. Then with the final back up plan would be targeting those refugees she invited in - for hate speech against, demonisation and scape-goating those innocent refugees, for economic problems caused by her and the right-wingers in their economic class war.

like b mentioned; that runs the risk of the far-right racists gaining more popularity and power.

But haven't we seen that before. Political centrists planning to scapegoat innocence, but then being out hate-mongered by the far-right.

And when times are bad enough. the far-right actually gains and keeps power till they run a bloody muck. Nazis and Fascism is what these freaks are risking again. Or does Merkel think she will fit in nicely with the possible future for Germany ?

Cynthia | Sep 13, 2015 6:09:50 PM | 17

The migrant crisis would be worrisome if it did not benefit corporate elites in the Western countries. It is exactly the same reason as why the same countries are outsourcing all work to the third-world countries: short term gain for a long term pain. The pain from the migrant crisis is felt by ordinary people and the state in the long term.

This is why racism is rising in Western countries – those who lose jobs or have to compete for a home with a 12-member immigrant family hate immigrants the most. The elites, corporate or otherwise, are quite comfortable with immigration, they never go to the economically challenged and immigrant areas anyway, such crime does not reach them. Also, most Western countries have many a lawyer working on behalf of the illegal immigrants and against the society because it is so lucrative.

The flip side is, of course, that it is often the policies of the Western governments and pillaging by Western companies which causes disasters in the places where illegal immigrants come from. How high the anti-immigration Wall needs to be when you push a country such as Libya or Syria into a 30-year civil war?

Of course, this is all made possible because the US isn't a country anymore, it is now a corporation. The same is true for the EU. The EU isn't a union of nations anymore, it is now a collection of corporations.

ben | Sep 13, 2015 8:10:01 PM | 21

Cynthia @ 17: "Of course, this is all made possible because the US isn't a country anymore, it is now a corporation. The same is true for the EU. The EU isn't a union of nations anymore, it is now a collection of corporations."

Yes, The brave new CORPORATE world is coming to us all. Humanity be damned, profits uber alles. Workers of the globe, lube up, and bend over.

Cynthia | Sep 13, 2015 8:55:27 PM | 23

Ben@21,

This migrants crisis should be seen as a fantastic opportunity to all corporatists and neolibs. Companies need cheap labor. This is an open bar to them! What a great way to force Europe into the New World Order? Putting people in front of the fait accompli has always been the best recipe to success. Who cares about culture and civilization? We are consumers before anything, aren't we?

Noirette | Sep 14, 2015 7:44:48 AM | 33

This is really another unmasking of the EU. It is run by Germany. Merkel on her own bat decides the Dublin accords don't apply. Just like that! Then a week or more later Juncker stands in front of the EU Parliament and makes some proposal about quotas or what not and nobody says anything (except I suppose Farage and those who don't want the migrants.) Schengen is by-passed or overridden or transformed on her say so. (The part that seems to be holding is that non-signatories can't be forced to participate.) I strongly disaproved of both those accords (and the whole mismanagement of the migrant issue from day one) but just having Merkel run amok like that is utterly scandalous, and very disquieting. The whole media-hype (pro and soon contra) with the usual doctored pictures and crowd scenes etc. was totally disgusting. This is not going to end well. Incompetence, extend and pretend, shove the problem away leading to a 'crisis' which is handled with appeals to emotion and so on…bad news.

I don't believe this was some US or Anglo-Zionist or whatever plot to harm Europe. (Unintended / uncared about consequences perhaps.) This is a purely internal EU affair. I think German industry is angry at the Russia sanctions and has been pressuring for 'new workers', in the sense of being able to set conditions, choose candidates from a larger pool, and almost certainly, pay less, have more control over workers. That may happen in part. But that is just one angle. (see tom above and somebody as well.)

gemini33 | Sep 14, 2015 8:04:13 AM | 34

I hate to even go here but there's a lot of public money to be made by contractors in this refugee crisis. With the media blitz, countries, corps and individuals will be pouring money into refugee funds. Look at these two articles w/ US coming onto refugee scene just as Europe shuts the gates:

http://news.yahoo.com/us-plans-welcome-10-000-syrian-refugees-053252486.html
http://news.yahoo.com/us-plans-welcome-10-000-syrian-refugees-053252486.html

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

MoonofA calls Merkel's actions a "stunt" above. I sadly agree. In the headlines here in the US, I noticed the alliteration "Generous Germany" in more than a handful of articles. Google confirms it has been used thousands of times. It conveniently counters the immense damage to Germany and Merkel's image that occurred after they fricasseed Greece on the world stage which while it may have made some northern Europeans happy, the rest of the world felt a very different emotion, despite the propaganda.

virgile | Sep 14, 2015 9:58:02 AM | 36

The migrant crisis is part of the amateurism of the international community in collaboration with a scoop and drama oriented media.

The migrants move out of Turkey was long predictable. If anyone had read the Turkish law on 'refugees', they would know that Turkey does not recognize people coming from a middle eastern country as a "refugee". Therefore these people DO NOT get a UNHCR refugee card. Countries that welcome refugees request that card. Therefore people stuck in Turkey have no other way than to move to a country where they will be recognized as a valid 'refugee'.

So it was obvious that after realizing the war in Syria was endless, masses of wannabe refugees rushed out of Turkey to Europe.

It was obvious right from the start that Syria was no Libya, no Tunisia and no Egypt. Yet the amateur Western politicians rushed in prediction and the media went wild with youtubes, analysis, dramas..

4 years later, both the western politicians and the media turned out to be wrong. Yet, they are so arrogant that they would never admit and continue and obsolete discourse to perpetuate their stupid predictions.

The media have become the drivers of the Western policy. They are not elected, have no legitimacy, no accountability and yet they leade for the good and the bad.

Only one thing, good news don't make a scoop!

gemini33 | Sep 14, 2015 11:19:45 AM | 38

@36 "The media have become the drivers of the Western policy"

The makers of Western policy and the media are one and the same. Mass media now so consolidated, it's a corporate/state entity.

TG | Sep 14, 2015 3:15:35 PM | 45

"It may appear to be the interest of the rulers, and the rich of a state, to force population [ed. note: force = rapidly increase, as via an excessive rate of immigration], and thereby lower the price of labour, and consequently the expense of fleets and armies, and the cost of manufactures for foreign sale; but every attempt of the kind should be carefully watched and strenuously resisted by the friends of the poor, particularly when it comes under the deceitful guise of benevolence…"

T.R. Malthus, "An Essay on the Principle of Population", 1798

Virgile | Sep 14, 2015 7:05:37 PM | 58

ONLY the countries that called themselves "The Friends of Syria" should be obliged to take a quota of refugees!

That is the time to pay the fee for membership! Why the hell Slovakia or Serbia are supposed to take the refugees that the Friends of Syria created

Here are the countries that should be OBLIGED to take Syrian refugees:

Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States

http://www.dw.com/en/friends-of-syria-group-promises-more-rebel-aid-aid-workers-freed/a-17639889

jfl | Sep 14, 2015 10:58:02 PM | 61

Syrian Girl :

#RefugeeCrisis: What The Media Is Hiding, Help #SyrianRefugees Go Home ~08:37 - 08:58

... There are forces that want to estrange people from their homeland, and to dissolve national identities altogether. Obama and other criminals are trying to make Syrians a people without a nation. A people without a nation suffer the worst humiliation. Look at what happened to the Palestinian people. One day, it could happen to you. ...

Hannah Arendt :

The origin of totalitarianism : Part two, Imperialism : Chapter 9, Decline of the nation-state; end of the rights of man, p. 269

With the emergence of the minorities in Eastern and Southern Europe and with the stateless people driven into Central and Western Europe, a completely new element of disintegration was introduced into postwar Europe. Denationalization became a powerful weapon of totalitarian politics, and the constitutional inability of European nation-states to guarantee human rights to those who had lost nationally guaranteed rights, made it possible for the persecuting governments to impose their standard of values even upon their opponents. Those whom the persecutor had singled out as scum of the earth - Jews, Trotskyites, etc. - actually were received as scum of the earth everywhere; those whom persecution had called undesirable became the indésirables of Europe. The official SS newspaper, the Schwarze Korps, stated explicitly in 1938 that if the world was not yet convinced that the Jews were the scum of the earth, it soon would be when unidentifiable beggars, without nationality, without money, and without passports crossed their frontiers.[2] And it is true that this kind of factual propaganda worked better than Goebbels' rhetoric, not only because it established the Jews as scum of the earth, but also because the incredible plight of an ever-growing group of innocent people was like a practical demonstration of the totalitarian movements' cynical claims that no such thing as inalienable human rights existed and that the affirmations of the democracies to the contrary were mere prejudice, hypocrisy, and cowardice in the face of the cruel majesty of a new world. The very phrase "human rights" became for all concerned - victims, persecutors, and onlookers alike - the evidence of hopeless idealism or fumbling feeble-minded hypocrisy.

[2] The early persecution of German Jews by the Nazis must be considered as an attempt to spread antisemitism among

"those peoples who are friendlily disposed to Jews, above all the Western democracies"
rather than as an effort to get rid of the Jews. A circular letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to all German authorities abroad shortly after the November pogroms of 1938, stated:
"The emigration movement of only about 100,000 Jews has already sufficed to awaken the interest of many countries in the Jewish danger ... Germany is very interested in maintaining the dispersal of Jewry ... the influx of Jews in all parts of the world invokes the opposition of the native population and thereby forms the best propaganda for the German Jewish policy ... The poorer and therefore more burdensome the immigrating Jew is to the country absorbing him, the stronger the country will react."
See Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Washington, 1946, published by the U. S. Government, VI, 87 ff.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la męme chose ... This time it's Obama's handlers copying the NAZIs, last time it was the NAZIs copying the US' genocide of North American indigenes.

PavewayIV | Sep 15, 2015 12:11:43 AM | 63
I have real sympathy for the Syrian refugees coming from the concentration camps in Turkey. These are mostly younger, middle-class, educated Syrians with small children who either lost their homes or couldn't tolerate the risk of violence to them and their families.

That image stands in stark contrast to some of the odd footage coming out of Hungary about refugees refusing food and water, trashing camps and threatening Hungarian aid workers. These were obviously refugees and presumably muslim, but didn't seem like the Syrians leaving Turkish camps. Who were these people?

Fort Russ just published an article entitled, Afghan-Kosovo Mafia Migrant Smuggling Ring and More Refugee Chaos in Macedonia. A highly recommended read for anyone like me confused about the supposed 'Syrian Refugee' problem. It's much more complex than it appears and explains Europeans reports of the general demeanor of some of the refugee groups. This will not end well for anybody.

Noirette | Sep 15, 2015 6:21:10 AM | 67

It seems that the refugee 'crisis' in the EU is playing right into Putin's hands. (It is not a US plot!). The Putin coalition is gingerly taking shape. On Syria.

Germany is ready to ally with Putin. Russia Insider.

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/germany-may-be-leaving-us-anti-syria-coalition/ri9704

Hollande has changed his mind. (From a newspaper yest.) Now he is sugggesting that he won't bomb there will only be reconnaissance flights. Or some such. After being seemingly keen to bomb Syria to smithereens.

Cameron announced before Corbyn was elected that he would then (when it happened) be cautious or 'withholding' (I forget the precise words and posted the link before) about bombing Syria (Corbyn is against.) But see here, RT:

https://www.rt.com/uk/315277-cameron-seeks-syria-consensus/

In fact Cameron's communicated position is not clear. It is imprecise.

Lavrov has come right out and said that the US knows ISIS positions but refuses to bomb. Which is extremely pointed of him. For a man who carefully measures his words. Fort Russ.

http://fortruss.blogspot.ch/2015/09/lavrov-us-knows-isis-positions-refuses.html

Kiwicris | Sep 15, 2015 7:29:02 AM | 69

Noirette @ # 67 Yes I was a bit Swift intake of breath when I read that on Fort Russ. No, it's definitely not like him to be so, well, blunt is it? With this, we also have the arguments in the Iraqi Parliament about US & UK planes dropping arms & supplies to ISIS as in landing and unloading,(Totally separate from the parachute drops to the Kurds or Shite Militias or Iraqi Army that seem to end up in ISIS hands most of the time), Israel treating wounded militants and being al Qaeda's Air Force, with all this there should be enough now for a big exposee of it in the MSM. . . . . . . . and waiting . . . . . . . still waiting ( ͝° ͜ʖ͡°)
james | Sep 15, 2015 4:21:57 PM | 82

@74 noirette.. as always, thanks for your input and reasoned thoughts on these topics.. thanks for the data @66 as well..

it's better lavrov speaks openly on what everyone with half a brain is thinking here.. that isis is a mercenary group paid to be where it is ought to come as no surprise.. that the usa hopes to use them to overthrow assad - they have openly stated this.. the only thing the usa hasn't done is said they're contributing to the funding of isis, or turning a blind eye when there cohorts saudi arabia and etc. are... it's just another mercenary group called isis getting approval to help along the western agenda here - much like blackwater, but they could state that openly with iraq - not so here..

if anyone thinks isis are the one's the usa or their western buddies are going after here - if you believe that - make as well make a constant diet of wow posts then...

somebody | Sep 15, 2015 8:59:25 PM | 86

Re: dh | Sep 15, 2015 5:27:50 PM | 83

You got my argument the wrong way round.

Altruistic behaviour in primates relies on reciprocity

It has got nothing to do with German guilt. Nowadays you can't be seen letting children drown in the Mediterranean or getting starved in Hungary without people disliking you.
So European politicians first tried to throw up their hands with tears in their eyes whilst making sure the ships in the Mediterranean are military and not humanitarian.

When refugees still managed to get into Europe in large numbers heading for Germany where they had relatives and knew that there were jobs there was not much German politicians could legally do except stop Schengen that makes it easy to go anywhere once you have crossed the European borders - which is happening now getting refugees stranded in the fields. They cannot legally send the refugees back to Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. Neither can they send refugees back to Turkey. They might be able to do that after a lengthy legal process, but not now. In this situation European politicians have no choice - they cannot revert to racism as their populations are pretty mixed already, it would tear the whole European fabric apart, and, in the case of export driven Germany, it would destroy their global brand.

The truth is that Turkey has a land bridge to Europe and there is a perfectly safe ferry from Turkey to the Greek islands which is closed for refugees. The other truth is that Germany has been pressuring countries on the periphery to close their borders and keep the refugees who still made it. There is no reason for countries on the periphery to agree to something as disadvantageous to them as the Dublin regulation but that their negotiation position was very week.

It could be that Germany overdid the pressure and forgot about the reciprocity. As I understand the situation now German politicians threaten more or less openly to "stop paying" for Europe which is hilarious as the "paying" is based on an export surplus other European countries pay for with a deficit.

duth | Sep 18, 2015 2:14:53 PM | 89

yes indeed very soon, with the influx of probably millions of cheap labour, the big cats may bring back the industries from china , yes now the western Europe may be able to compete with them. I think this must all be part of their big plan and i think it wont work though due to the people demanding higher standards of living.

[Sep 19, 2015] Clock Ticks On US Syria Strategy As Assad Pounds ISIS Targets, Russia Sends Fighter Jets

Suddenly the hypocrite-fiends of Western Europe wanted the conflict in Syria over.
"...Putin had literally called Washington's bluff, forcing The White House to either admit that this isn't about ISIS at all, or else join Russia in fighting them. "
"... Economic destruction followed by political stability exploited for regime change. The most damaging of those sanctions (and the easiest for the U.S. financial bully to enforce) are banking sanctions. Those are also easiest to ram through the tratiorous little bitches in congress with the least amount of hand-wringing and public outcry. No bad PR from Twitter pictures of dead babies or mutilated kids and destroyed homes, but destruction of the 'target' just the same."
"...Yet another neocon fiasco. Uncounted billions gone, Syriah shattered forever, oh, and our dearest allies in Europe overrun with filthy penniless refugees. Way to go Team America!"
Sep 19, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Note that this is a bitter defeat for Washington. Moscow, realizing that instead of undertaking an earnest effort to fight terror in Syria, the US had simply adopted a containment strategy for ISIS while holding the group up to the public as the boogeyman par excellence, publicly invited Washington to join Russia in a once-and-for-all push to wipe Islamic State from the face of the earth. Of course The Kremlin knew the US wanted no such thing until Assad was gone, but by extending the invitation, Putin had literally called Washington's bluff, forcing The White House to either admit that this isn't about ISIS at all, or else join Russia in fighting them.

... ... ...

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the man some suspect of masterminding the entire effort to restore the Assad regime, Quds commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, seems to understand the US strategy all too well - we close with the following from Iran's PressTV:

Commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Qassem Soleimani said Wednesday that the policy of the US with regards to Daesh and other Takfiri groups operating in the region is to only have them under control and not eliminate them.

nnnnnn

don't forget who's creating this so called "terrorists"?

Motasaurus

It's entirely possible to forget though, since there's so many.

There's Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, London, the USA, France, Australia, and NATO. I'm probably still missing some.

Stackers

Assad is still stuck with the same big problem. He does not have the infantry numbers to defeat ISIS.

You can see prime example of this on YouTube clips of Syrian T-72 tanks doing close quarters street fighting and getting taken out by RPG's because they have no supporting infantry to sweep out the enemy infantry. Heavy tactical equipment like artillary, tanks and fighter aircraft is fine, but at the end of the day you have to be able to sweep through with enough boots to control the area.

At best Assad can wage a holding stalemate until the Russians actually deploy 10's of thousands of ground troops.

Latina Lover

Not true. Cut off the supply lines and cash funnel, and ISIS will fall apart. When the USSA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia figure out the game is over, they will cut off money.

Money Counterfeiter

Someone needs to tell Putin Israel is right next door to the south. Why let a crisis go o waste?

Manthong

Now that the Rooskies have changed the battlescape from US State's obsession to displace secular Assad with some Muslim Arab terrorist pipeline puppet to solving the US/Saudi/NATO/ISIS chaos problem, maybe the ISIS terror mercenaries will finally get a taste of their own medicine.

Everyday Europeans should be rooting for Russia and Assad if they want to solve the root cause of their Islamic invasion problem.

Manthong

Those ISIS shills really had it made for a while.. like, where else could you get money, training, military bases, unused armor and weapons parachute delivered to your doorstep?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NzFJxX8yoY

sun tzu

Yes, against that vaunted American ISIS mercenary fighting force that is known for its military prowess LOL. Your fearsome ISIS with full US military training, weapons, and air support can't even defeat Assad's little military force with 40 year old tanks.

They're good at chopping off heads of unarmed people and that's about it. Most are foreign jihadist idiots born and raised in Western nations under rap and hiphop MTV music. Unlike the Taliban and in Iraq, they are not fighting for their homeland. The western mercs leading the ISIS forces are also a bunch of cowards. Once they face death from air attacks, the paycheck no longer means anything. Those mercs are good at overthrowing third world countries. They didn't sign up to be attacked by cruise missiles.

847328_3527

I remember when George Bush said, "God talked to him."

wtf?!

You would a thought Americans would have wised up at least after THAT!

The Indelicate Genius

ISIS Leader Admits to Being Funded by the US
http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-admits-to-being-funded-by-the-u...

Now, who knows how reliable that site it - but who still thinks that whatever makes it into the NY Times is reliable?

two hoots

News:

Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian conflict:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34298826

nope-1004

Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian embarrassment:

fify

Clearly the US could wipe ISIS if they wanted to, but since ISIS is a USA asset, used to destabilize the region so "democracy" can be forced once "humanitarian problems arise", it will be kept until no longer useful.

The origins of ISIS are quite interesting. The flow of supplies are rather obvious. .GOV is the worlds largest terrorist if you follow the dots.

After being caught red-handed shipping USA vehicles for ISIS militants, .gov has come out saying that the image was doctored. LMFAO!!!! The propaganda is mind blowing.

This photo, taken from a propaganda video, shows a near identical scene featuring a different truck, raising questions as to the authenticity of the photo featuring Mr Oberholtzer's truck

"Raising questions....". From whom?

Fascism. It's obvious.

shovelhead

Wait until ISIS has some Truly Nolan trucks...

http://www.trulynolen.com/images/locations/service-tabs/commercial-pc-ba...

trulz4lulz's picture

How anyone could down vote that is beyond me, but one thing is for certain, Murikistan still wouldnt be able to find them with their hundreds of billions of dollars worth of satelites raoming the lower atmosphere of Earth.

Fractal Parasite

Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian calamity.

Oh, now that the State Dept's takfiris are getting their asses whipped, suddenly Horse Face wants a negotiated peace.

Mr al-Assad has been offering talks for four years.

Freddie

Just like the Ukraine. The NovoRussians (DPR and LPR) get the Ukie Army in a cauldron (surrounded) and we have Minsk 1 then they get surrounded again and Minsk 2. There were probably mercs and Spec Ops in those cauldrons. they sue for peace when they are losing.

Kudos to the Ukie soldiers who quit and surrendered knowing they were being used by Kiev and kudos for the NovoRussians for treating the Ukies humanely when they surrendered.

PM Zakarchenko of DPR has said there will be no Minsk 3.

johngaltfla

BigK spot on. And once they are bottled up there, it becomes a Saudi problem again. Because what is left of the "rebels" in Syria will be ashes and incinerated bodies. The Syrian AF is doing this without the Russian AF; wait until the Russians start dropping their bombs at altitude and square blocks of terrorists begin to get vaporized.

Zero Point

A bit like how they pushed the Mujahadeen out of Afghanistan? Wait... what?

NeedtoSecede

"We are only going to arm the moderate rebels."

From the second that phrase came out of .gov's piehole I know this was going to turn into a cluster fuck of epic proportions. What a fucking joke...

Kayman

"moderate rebels"

But first we are going to round up some Unicorns for transportation.

"Christmas Greetings to the Fatherland from your brave and successful army in Stalingrad."

The Indelicate ...

The Jesuits are about 2500 old men. Apart from a few colleges and on campus mansions with well-stocked bars - they don't control dick.

I see this notion all over CNN and youtube comments, like it is an organized effort.

Lots of valid criticisms to offer about the RCC - but controlling the world smacks of obvious gatekeeping for the usual suspects

... ... ...

PacOps

Good interview: al-Assad and Russian media.

http://sana.sy/en/?p=54857

President al-Assad to Russian media outlets.. We cannot implement anything unless we defeat the terrorism.. The army is the most important symbol for any society.

Carpenter1

Here's Putin paying homage to the Pope and Vatican.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/26/article-2513236-19A3B6AA000005...

When will you stupid fucks figure this out??

misnomer

No. He chose to kiss the book and NOT the Pope's ring because Orthodox Christian's do not believe the Pope should be venerated or exalted as Christ. It is very telling that he chose to kiss the Bible instead.

Fractal Parasite

Here it is on youtube. All in English (mostly dubbed).

40-minute RT interview with Bashar al-Assad by a Russian delegation in Damascus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wELCDCPsw6M

Blankone

Re comment by Publicus:

"Russia is showing the world the correct way to deal with terrorists. EXTERMINATION."

BUT Russia is not doing any fighting. None. Putin still has not fired a shot.

What has happened is that Syria now has some accurate weapons. Finally! Which begs the question.

Why was Syria not supplied accurate weapons before now. They have been fighting and losing and dieing for several years. Much of Syria is destroyed, cities destroyed and the people killed or refugees in other countries. And it appears Putin was not suppling Russia's better quality weapons. I am not even talking about suppling the S-300, as was contracted for in 2007, but rocket launchers, decent air to ground missiles for air strikes and accurate artillery. What kind of support is it when you refuse to sell those types of weapons to an "allie' who is under attack?

Putin/Russia has not fired a shot, flown a mission or put people in the field. Russia has finally supplied some weapons that might help Assad punish the insurgents who hold much of northern Syria. If the west ups the stakes in their support will Russia finally take a direct role in flying missions or launching real missiles?

And why is Putin trying to negotiate a political agreement that includes the removal of Assad? How is that being supportive or is that just being opportunistic to do regime change using a new Russian puppet?

Fractal Parasite

Reasonable questions. Re-read the article for the answers. It explains how Emperor Washington & co have been exposed as without clothes after a year of off-target "air strikes against ISIS in Syria" while Russia steps in and gets the job done in a week.

Pity Ľ millions Syrians got killed before then, but who did that?

The claim that Putin is negotiating Assad's removal is bullcrap.

Blankone

You need to re read the article. Russia did not fly any missions or fire a single shot. Nothing.

Also, read who got killed. Seems most were civilians. But those here seem to think it is ok when their side kills the innocent.

Putin held negotiations with the leaders of the insurgents and even hosted them as his guests recently in Russia. Why do you think he flew them to Russia, to drink vodka? It was reported that Putin wanted some figure head role for Assad and the insurgents want him dead.

Lurk Skywatcher

Where does that BBC article say "civilians"?

You have as much evidence for them being civilians as I do for them being US/UK handlers and "trainers".

Why hasn't he supported Assad until now? Why did he fly insurgent leaders to Russia for talks? Why are you confused and critical of everything he has done?

Because constantly you try to squeeze Putins opaque actions into your own flawed concept of statesmanship, and assume to understand completely what is happening. Constantly you read things into events that suit your own bias.

He knows what he is doing - twice in as many years he has deftly avoided a trap set to mire Russia in war.

If he had acted as you critisize him for not acting, he would have been long caught in the first one.

And that shows exactly how worthless and wrong your opinion is.

Crash Overide

There are a lot of people that should be in jail... start 1, 2, 3 wars! no problem, get promoted.

Being a veteran that fought in so called wars and smokes pot for PTSD, you will be shot in your own home and arrested.

Amerika!

General Wesley Clark:

Because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" - meaning the Secretary of Defense's office - "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw

indygo55

I know the puppet masters are very good but sorry, I think Putin is the real deal. I think the puppet masters are NOT in total control of the world and Russia and China are really not going for the murder criminal cabal that does control the West.

I-am-not-one-of-them

"Russia and the US serve the same master"

Boris Yeltsin ain't President anymore

Motasaurus

It's a proxy war. For at least the last three years Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting each other tooth and nail all over the Middle East. Sauid Arabia through their Islamist irregulars and Iran through their regular army (though in the case of Yemen the roles are reversed), brough in by Iraq and Syria to fight them off.

But now that the U.S. and her allies have openly entered the proxy war (remember, the U.S. has been bombing Syria for a couple of weeks now) it released Russia to do the same.

The proxy is a whole lot more direct now, and it looks like the U.S. will blink first. She doesn't like being met by capable oponents that she has to confront directly - despite all the military spending.

Carpenter1

Look at all the fools here, thinking Russia is actually against the US.

Russia has a central bank, therefore it attends the BIS meetings in Switzerland and is a major part of the globalist agenda.

indygo55

There is a break in the force. Putin may break away this year from The London based Rothschild central bank system. He needs and now has a reason (need) to do so:

http://yournewswire.com/putin-to-nationalise-rothschild-central-bank/

Fractal Parasite

Russia's central bank was established under Yeltsin, the drunkard puppet who 'invited' advisors from Washington to write Russia's laws after the USSR was surrendered dismembered to the victorious hegemon in 1991.

As soon as the pathetic legislating cretins in the Duma grow a pair and take some action to reform the Central Bank Law and undo the subordination to BIS, then the people can have their country back.

Paveway IV

"...It's a proxy war. For at least the last three years Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting each other tooth and nail all over the Middle East...."

I agree in part, Motasaurus. This is a huge part of what's happening that's often relegated to a footnote of 'causes'. But the situation is far more complex. Years of European and American empire-building, Oil interests, ZATO's Russian 'containment' attempt, religious extremism, Israel land-grabbing and Turkish criminal clownfuckery are all rolled into one here. Every one is needed to trace the path that ended us up here.

"...Sauid Arabia through their Islamist irregulars and Iran through their regular army (though in the case of Yemen the roles are reversed), brough in by Iraq and Syria to fight them off."

That's a part of it, but I will offer an alternative: this is a banker war between Saudi Arabia/Qatar and Iran/Iraq/Syria, with the U.S. squarely backing the Saudi Arabia/Qatar side, cheered on by Israel and ZATO.

The neocon/Kagan/ISW noise about armed intervention is kind of the after-show for Syria. How did all their wars start? Iraq started with sanctions. Iran started with sanctions. Syria started with sanctions. Economic destruction followed by political stability exploited for regime change. The most damaging of those sanctions (and the easiest for the U.S. financial bully to enforce) are banking sanctions. Those are also easiest to ram through the tratiorous little bitches in congress with the least amount of hand-wringing and public outcry. No bad PR from Twitter pictures of dead babies or mutilated kids and destroyed homes, but destruction of the 'target' just the same.

Case in point [from Kenneth Rijock's Financial Crime Blog]:

Adam Szubin, formerly the Director of OFAC, and now the Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes, at his confirmation hearing, asserted that, should any Iranian bank, released from sanctions, due to the comprehensive nuclear agreement, re-offend, meaning conducting any transactions with Hezbollah or the IRGC Quds Force, American sanctions will be reimposed forthwith.

So if this guy is going to be the Terrorism and Financial Crimes guy, why was he silent about the same sanction threat for Saudi Arabia and Qatar? They regularly use the banking system to move massive amounts of money to finance their terrorist war in both Syria and Iraq. Where's the outrage there? How many Americans have already died (and will die) because dual-citizen israeli-firster Szubin (his two predecessors in the job were the same) pees his pants about any Iranian funds going to 'enemies of Israel' but he - just like his predecessors - will completely ignore ANY of the widely-known money transfer mechanisms the Saudis and Qatar use to fund terrorists?

The joke in all this is that the U.S. is the first to employ sanctions when it suits Israel's whims, but refuses to even acknowledge the river of money flowing to ISIS, al Nusra and the dozens of other head-chopper clans that the Saudis and Qatar fund. Why? Because to Israel (and their little bitches in the U.S. congress) any dime spent on terrorists that oppose Iran or any of their allies is not terrorist funding - it's democracy building. Ever heard of a Saudi or Qatar bank sanctioned? Ever hear of a U.S. or European bank sanctioned for moving terrorist payrolls every week to ISIS? ISIS steals and extorts a lot of money from it's imprisoned populations, but they hardly have the financial wherewithal to fund a damn global war. ISIS isn't running a cash war with suitcases of fiat - they have to use banks like everyone else for the big stuff.

Russia knows this. It wasn't going to feed it's soldiers into a meatgrinder again (like Afghanistan) funded by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.. Putin supports Assad, but would not take Russia down merely to defend Syria. All Putin had to do was wait until enough corruption and theft corroded the terrorism financing pipeline. Now it doesn't matter how much money goes in - very little gets to the terrorists on the front lines. The head-choppers are starving. Let's just say Putin has some experience on both sides of the fence dealing with corrupt psychopaths and their criminal regimes' amazing ability to self-destruct from rot.

Turkey got greedy and took too much skim from the terrorist logistics network. The jihadis themselves have been robbing ISIS and al Nusra blind of everything - weapons, radios, cash. Mostly to support their two biggest habits: food and ampehtamines. Although they continue to fund the terrorists, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have to be convinced by now that it's like storing water in a sieve (but maybe I give them too much credit here).

ISIS and al Nusra are on their financial death-bed from corruption. Good at head-chopping, not so good handling money. Putin merely has to get Assad to kick a few pegs out from under them to hasten the collapse. There will be no mass influx of Russian troops because it's unnecessary. Russia is not trying to annihilate ISIS in a war of attrition - they're letting it rot on the hoof, and giving it an occasional well-placed kick. Back-door Turkish-ISIS deals for oil? Bomb the f'king oil wells - no more oil sales. U.S.-ZATO intelligence via scrambled SATCOM links? Take out the ground stations - six months to get the new crap there which Russia will direct Assad to take out again. Takfiri payday? Smoke the al Raqqa branch of the ISIS/ZATO central bank. Next up: main branch in Mosul.

Russia has no desire, and Putin just has enough common sense not to fight ZATO terrorists on their (or the Kagan's) terms: rivers of blood and money. Russia has neither to waste and has demonstrated over and over again that they won't fall for ZATO's usual tricks. They let the ZATO terrorists in Syria bleed out by self-inflicted cuts, and will merely direct Assad where to inflict the final set of wounds to finish them off.

In the mean time, ISW and the Kagans are still trying to decide if there's some other way they can get the sieve to hold water. As of late, the strategy seems to be to send Kerry to negotiate something based on the premise that the sieve is still holding water. It's kind of pathetic when you think about it.

chunga

I'd like to see a stinging rebuke that causes the Murikans to reel in their policy of maliciously fucking with everybody's shit all over the world. The trouble is, in order to preserve the petro dollar and reserve status the military must maintain it's aura of invincibility because everything else is coming into question.

Therefore it seems likely they'll do something very stupid to antagonize nuclear armed Russia. Unlike China or other countries, Russian nukes are not in the experimental phase of development and every ICBM they launch is likely to perform flawlessly.

sandhillexit

U.S. leadership abdicated and let Bibi and Nuland take the Syria fight to Russia's door, using the cousins...nearly everyone in Israel still has a cousin in Ukraine. Russia was not supposed to respond like this was a existential threat, but they did. First he locked down the Crimea. Despite hardship, the country is rallying behind Putin. You won't starve on red beets and chicken, in fact you'll be pretty healthy...that is, the Russians can outlast the French and Italian farmers who have lost their market. And the Russians understand that the same Chechen mercs who blow up their trains and schools....and are on the Saudi payroll.....are running training camps now in Syria.

There might be a deeper "game." It is highly plausible that the City of London looked around twenty years ago for someone competent, not a klepto and backed the Putin horse to protect their investments in Russia. Not a bad choice. The British foreign service is so much more competent than ours. And they have just reopened their embassy in Teheran, having turned Basra over to the Iranians before they pulled troops out. USA is so badly served.

The definitive book on Russian & Jewish relations was written by Solzynitzin. It's called "200 Years Together" and it has not been translated/published in English. You can't buy it at Amazon. THINK about that.

But that isn't so important right now. At the level of families living or dying, 2000-year old Christian treasures being obliterated by ISIS Bolsheviks, he is the only thing that stands up to Bibi's lunacy. The Germans seem to be making the same calculus. They think the US has lost the plot.

Remember Bibi is expendable. All it takes is a vote of no-confidence by the military. Livni could step up. BHO isn't going to reach out ot help a 'friend' because...well...

AmericanFUPAcabra

The people of Crimea voted on a referendum to join Russia and 95+% voted in favor of doing so. Other than that nice post @@

My Days Are Getting Fewer

Excellent summary here:

http://www.vho.org/tr/2004/3/Strauss342-351.html

Read the last sentence...

godiva chocolate

The US is neither free nor a democracy itself. How dare it spread its oligarchy onto other countries.

FireBrander

The USA in 2015 is the end result of a "Free Market"...it is what happens when the concentration of wealth/power goes unchecked...even ecouraged....Corporate Crony Capitalism...where the bulk of the "profits" fall into the hands of th e few...That is America today.

Show me someone that thinks "Socialism" has brought us to this point, and I'll show you a complete fucken Rightwing moron.

max2205

The killing fields. Putin helping EU to stop the mass exodus as well

researchfix

But they will blame him nonetheless.

Usurious

They always doooooooo............

world map of US military installations........

http://empire.is/

Spiritof42

It's Russian payback time for Afghanistan.

It's not that I'm rooting for the Russians and Syrians. I don't give a shit who stuffs the USSA, NATO and Israel, as long as it's done.

withglee

may have turned the tide in the country's four-year civil war.

This is a propaganda marker. Syria is not having a "civil" war. They are under attack by the USA CIA and Israel Mossad.

NoWayJose

I have always wondered how ISIS continues to operate tanks and Humvees across open desert without any coalition air strikes. They have training camps and barracks and offices without worrying about air strikes. They have parades and convoys of vehicles without fear. They operate oilfields and refineries at will, and transport and sell the output. The U.S. is allowing this. Putin will not.

The U.S. wants to track my $10,000 withdrawal, freeze Iranian money, seize Russian billionaire's funds, peek into Swiss bank accounts -- yet cannot track ISIS oil revenues and huge financial transactions?

But at least we will have an openly gay Secretary of the Army!

NeoRandian

Also seems a little strange that ISIS can openly recruit people through Twitter and Facebook. Would anything remotely similar ever be permitted on any other site?

Keep an eye on the Joshua Goldberg story; I bet the CIA offers him a job after he is debriefed by the FBI.

bthunder

You, ZeroHedgers, never seem to learn from history: "checkmate, courtesy of The Kremlin. " - SERIOUSLY?

35 years ago the CIA lured USSR into Afghanistan, and when the oil prices dropped in the mid-1980s, the USSR was no more.

Oil prices are already down (son to go down even more thanks to Iran.) The Chinese already refuse to pay prices they agreed to just 8 months ago, and Gazprom is offering Ukraine 50% discounts!), Russia is already is involved in Ukraine, and now it's getting itself stuck in the sandbox in Syria.

How is it different from Afghanistan in 1980s? And while the USSR could hide the dead in 60000 zinc coffins, do you think in the age of Twitter and Facebook they'll be able to do that? You think that Russian people are sheepple just like the americans?

Seems to me it's checkmate to Putin, courtesy of the CIA and the Saudis.

P.S. When evryone keeps telling a dictator how great and brilliant he is, he starts believing that shit. Even as state revenues drop by 50%, even as his newest missiles explode at launch and the only target they hit are passenger jets. His pride takes over and he sends his best forces into the "sandbox" to defend his ally, a palce where every great army has been defeated. Checkmate, indeed.

P.P.S. Since the reports of Russians in Syria has surfaced, there's unusual "quietness" in Eastern Ukraine. Could it be that Russia cannot conduct war on 2 fronts? I can't wait until the CIA tests that theory, gives Ukes some of the new weaponry to "probe" russkies closer to thir homeland.

BendGuyhere

Jaw-dropping inanity.

"35 years ago the CIA lured USSR into Afghanistan, and when the oil prices dropped in the mid-1980s, the USSR was no more."

Yes, the brilliant CIA created the TALIBAN, which WE just spent 12 years fighting with 4 TRILLION$ and thousands DEAD, maimed. WAY TO FUCKING GO USA! OH, and now our home-grown USA SHALE OIL 'MIRACLE' has been destroyed by said engineered low oil prices. DUH. Blowback's a bitch.

bthunder

USA is still here, where's USSR?

USA (or USSA) is in deep sh*t, but Russia is waaaayyyy deeper.

Indeed, CIA was brilliant in using the Taliban to defeat USSR. It was Dick 'the Dick" Cheney who caused 12 years of fighting and spent $4T.

Just let the CIA do their thing and in no time China and USA will be dividing siberian oil amoung themselves, with Putin looking through jail window.

rejected

"How is it different from Afghanistan in 1980s? "

In 1980 the usa debt was 980 billion. Today the ussa debt is 18 trillion dollars (what they admit to) and growing exponentially.

In 1980 the usa was a manufacturing giant of quality merchandise. Now all the ussa produces is fiat and the tools of war.

In 1980 the usa had robust economy with much opportunity. Today the ussa has no work, no economy and no opportunity unless you call playing in the stock casino's opportunity.

In 1980 the usa had individual privacy and still could depend on the constitution. Today the ussa spies on everyone, and has totally eviscerated the constitution.

In 1980 the usa was at war with no one, for a change. Today the ussa is at war with half the world.

In 1980 the usa had a space program. Today the ussa depends on China and Russia to get people into space.

In 1980 the usa had a president. Today the ussa has a dictatorial executive.

In 1980 Afghanistan was eradicating the opium crop. Today the ussa armed forces guards and ships the bumper crops.

Comparing 1980 to now is like comparing Day to Night. On September 11, 2001 a darkness descended on the usa which gave birth to the ussa

MeBizarro

This has nothing to due with Afghanistan. As for the US economy in '80, it was pretty crappy and the only reason we weren't officially at war was because of Carter in the White House. Plenty on the Hill and in the DOD were pushing for a fight in Central America, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

I would agree though on several point and since 9-11 we have been a scared, scitterish, anxiety-ridden mess on the whole.

Anunnaki

Terrific article. Superb narrative. Essentially Obama can no longer bleed Assad through ISIS. And he will have to coordinate with Putin or it looks mightily suspicious to Europe overwhelmed by refugees

And this aggressive Syrian air force display makes a No Fly Zone moot

Obama and Kerry come off as sore losers. Give Hezbollah all the small arms they need and tell Netanyahoo to gack to murdering Gazan children which is all he is good at

Admittedly, I am a Putin supprter, but he just caught Obama with his pants down.

Wait till Putin's speech before the UN General Assembly. America will go apoplectic over being on the brunt end of a scolding

I had been impatient with Putin over Syria. I should have had faith that he would not fold

Obama by telling Carter to callShoigu means he lost his nerve

BendGuyhere

Yet another neocon fiasco. Uncounted billions gone, Syriah shattered forever, oh, and our dearest allies in Europe overrun with filthy penniless refugees. Way to go Team America!

falak pema

the russian axis now in place.

Obama cedes Syria to Putin and thus allows an Iranian initiative also which will have repercussions in Lebanon (Hezbollah), in Yemen (Houthi) and Palestine (Hamas).

A major shift in the ME power structure now seems in the making as the Lausanne Deal between US/IRan has changed the game.

What will Saud do now?

And watch the French and Germans try and win some contracts both in Iran and in Saud...when alliances fold new ambitions are born.

Pax Americana...wither now?

litemine

Like the Americans in control say.........."American Interests" are what the Military fight for....Right or wrong, Obama said.....We have No Friends, only Opportunities".

That being said, and the dumbed down General American Population with an Army pumped on Roids think thier shit doesn't stink. Wrap the stars and stripes around you and die for your freedom......Well now, How did that work out?

The Congress is bought, the army is Mercinary and the financial system controls. The Biggest lobby group is Israel...who profits from this? Not mainsteet. They own you. If you don't have a problem with that.....Carry On .


[Sep 18, 2015] Poroshenko is deliberately overpricing the company so it won't sell

marknesop, September 16, 2015 at 12:49 pm
Well, actually, he did, if I remember correctly. Roshen was indeed placed in a trust, so that Poroshenko cannot fiddle with the day-to-day running of it, which he would hardly have time to do anyway. Yeah…here's a mention of it; Rothschild's (surprise!!) is holding on to it for him, and it was Nestle who offered "no more than a Billion dollars" for the company. According to the article, it is just the owners' judgment that says it is worth three times that amount, and it seems odd an American company would try to rip off America's good friend by low-balling him. I wonder if he has not deliberately priced it so it won't sell.

According to Sputnik, the company is worth $1.5 Billion, although they don't say how that figure was arrived upon, either. I know you will be surprised to learn that Poroshenko blames….Russia for his failure to sell the company. Uh huh, he said "at the moment, Russian authorities – and it would be better to ask [the management of] Roshen about this, are preventing the sale…In any case, it must be carried through to the end."

Hmmm….I'm kind of editing this as I go along, as I find more information. Here's what is to me the most informative site so far; Kapital says the company was assessed at $1.6 Billion by Eavex Capital Investment company. Eavex is the former Sincome Capital, relaunched as Eavex following the acquisition of a 10% minority shareholding by Accuro Group (Zurich). Eavex reports that two factories have been shut down; Lipetsk, in Russia, and Mariupol. Perhaps that has something to do with the zeal with which the state military is defending Mariupol; if that factory could be restored to stable production, the company's worth could go up to $2.1 Billion. The current assessed value is based on "a multiplier calculated on financial performance of the corporation in previous periods", to which a discount is applied for reduced volume of business. But you have to hand it to Roshen – even without Poroshenko's steady hand on the tiller, they have increased their stores in Kiev to 18, a 38.4% increase over 2013. Roshen chocolates and candies are also sold in supermarkets and retail chain stores, and new supermarkets increased by more than 20% in Ukraine in 2013.

Anyway, it does look like Poroshenko is deliberately overpricing the company so it won't sell. Nestle offered $1 Billion even, the company as it currently stands is worth $1.6 Billion, if it could restore the Mariupol factory to stable production and perhaps dispose of the Lipetsk factory it might be worth as much as $2.1 Billion, and Poroshenko is asking almost $1 Billion more than that.

et Al, September 16, 2015 at 2:24 pm
I sit corrected (the cat has f/k'd off). Then it makes eminent sense to not sell now, especially to Nestlé who are as brutal as you would expect from an American company. They bought Cadbury in the UK a few years back, the Conservative government receiving 'ass-urances' that they won't butcher Cadbury. Of course, Nestlé did. It was another case of a US company off-shoring its taxes to the UK (big pharma has done this too with the UK), which is weird. We are told that the US is great for companies because it has low tax blah blah blah blah.

So, why do US globocorps need to shift their tax address to countries like the UK to avoid paying tax. I say follow Italy's model. Massively support SMEs and make sure they co-operate with each other as the sum of parts so that they are global competitors. This is what German companies do. They band together and go global. The Frogs, not so much.

I 'know' a French engineer who want to take his 3D printing patent big time. His boss won't fund it as it is 'high risk', no other French company is interested because of IP and who gets the cash. In the EU, if you can pony up half the development money from private sources, the EU will pitch in the other half, particularly for ground-breaking and innnovative products. I asked him if he'd looked abroad. No. I even suggested Japan as this is what James Dyson of bagless hoover fame did. Not one single European white goods manufacturer gave him any time. A big Japanese company did which meant he could set up his laboratory and factory in the UK. When Euro-companies started copying his designs, he had the full weight of a massive Japanese corporation's legal department to shit on them from a great height.

The crux being, if the U S A is so great for business, WTF are they doing tax dodging in expensive, crappy Europe (mofos)? /rant

Jen, September 16, 2015 at 6:03 pm
I believe the Cameron govt keeps cutting corporation tax, precisely to attract more money, and Ireland, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands and Switzerland also have very low corporate tax rates. Jersey and the Isle of Man (both part of the UK) are also attractive places for US investment.
https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/tax-rates-online/corporate-tax-rates-table.html
marknesop , September 16, 2015 at 12:37 pm
It is worth mentioning also that Poroshenko was a co-drafter of the European Association Agreement, before he ran for office. It has been suggested that he wrote a number of amendments into it which would have been extremely beneficial – not to mention lucrative – for Roshen had the transition been the great and thunderous success Europe plainly expected it to be. Little bit of a conflict of interest there, but it might help to explain why he is holding on to his business. After all, if nobody's buying but you genuinely want to sell, you drop your price a little, sort of feel around to see where the floor is. Poroshenko has never dropped his price to the very best of my knowledge, and some Candy News site reported a large company – Cadbury, or somebody in their league, I forget now – made an offer but it was much too low for Poroshenko. This further imples he is not really interested in selling and may even have deliberately priced it too high, because he expects to return to life as a wealthy…ahem…"tycoon" once he has served his penance as Ukraininan leader.
Moscow Exile, September 16, 2015 at 9:41 pm
The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine purchased 4 tons of chocolate from LLC "Kyiv Confectionery Company" on September 2, also known as the official distributor of the Roshen Corporation. The total transaction amounted to 995 520 UAH [$45,923].

See Fort Russ: Ukrainian MOD bought 4 tons of Roshen chocolate for the Ukrainian army

[Sep 18, 2015] The Russians are Coming! by Graham E. Fuller

"...A remarkably sound analysis by Graham Fuller on Russia and Syria: http://grahamefuller.com/the-russians-are-coming/
Despite his CIA pedigree and the Tsarnaev connection, Fuller has moments of lucidity occasionally – he published a book in the 1990s arguing that Iran under the ayatollahs was nowhere near as totalitarian as the Western groupthink suggested, and in some ways outpaced Israel, 'the-only-democracy-in-the-midlle-east', in terms of societal openness."
"...The overthrow of Asad seemed a simple task in 2011 as the Arab Spring sparked early uprisings against him. The US readily supported that goal, as did Turkey along with Saudi Arabia and others. As the Asad regime began to demonstrate serious signs of resilience, however, the US and Turkey stepped up support to nominally moderate and secular armed opposition against Damascus, thereby extending the brutal civil war."
"...For similar reasons Iran's long-time open challenge against American ability act with impunity in the Middle East has always constituted a deep source of American strategic anger-viscerally surpassing the more Israel-driven nuclear issue."
"...In my view, the fall of Asad will not bring peace but will instead guarantee deadly massive long-term civil conflict in Syria among contending successors in which radical jihadi forces are likely to predominate-unless the west commits major ground forces to impose and supervise a peace. We've been there once before in the Iraq scenario. A replay of Iraq surely is not what the West wants."
"...What Russia will not accept in the Middle East is another unilateral US (or "NATO") fait accompli in "regime change" that does not carry full UN support. (China's interests are identical to Russia's in most respects here.)"
"...It is essential that the US not extend its new Cold War with Russia into the Middle East where shared interests are fairly broad - unless one rejects that very supposition on ideological grounds. The same goes for Iran."
September 14, 2015 | grahamefuller.com

Washington has been wrapped in confusion and indecision for years now in trying to sort out just what its real objectives are in Syria. Its obsessive, and ultimately failed goal of denying Iran influence in the Middle East has notably receded with Obama's admirable success in reaching a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue and gradual normalization of Iran's place in the world.

But while the Israel lobby and its Republican allies failed to block Obama's painstaking work in reaching that agreement, they now seem determined to hobble its implementation in any way possible. This is utterly self-defeating: unable to block Iran's re-emergence they seem determined to deny themselves any of the key payoffs of the agreement-the chance to work with Iran selectively on several important common strategic goals: the isolation and defeat of ISIS, a settlement in Syria that denies a jihadi takeover, the rollback of sectarianism as a driving force in the region, a peaceful settlement in Iran's neighbor Afghanistan, and the freeing up of energy/pipeline options across Asia.

But let's address this Syrian issue. There's a new development here-stepped up Russian involvement-that poses new challenge to the American neocon strategic vision. So here is where Washington needs to sort out what it really wants in Syria. Is the main goal still to erode Iranian influence in the region by taking out Iran's ally in Damascus? Or does it want to check Russian influence in the Middle East wherever possible in order to maintain America's (fast becoming illusory) dominant influence? These two goals had seemed to weigh more heavily in Washington's calculus than Syrian domestic considerations. In other words, Asad is a proxy target.

There are two major countries in the world at this point capable of exerting serious influence over Damascus-Russia and Iran. Not surprisingly, they possess that influence precisely because they both enjoy long-time good ties with Damascus; Asad obviously is far more likely to listen to tested allies than heed the plans of enemies dedicated to his overthrow.

The overthrow of Asad seemed a simple task in 2011 as the Arab Spring sparked early uprisings against him. The US readily supported that goal, as did Turkey along with Saudi Arabia and others. As the Asad regime began to demonstrate serious signs of resilience, however, the US and Turkey stepped up support to nominally moderate and secular armed opposition against Damascus, thereby extending the brutal civil war.

That calculus began to change when radical jihadi groups linked either to al-Qaeda or to ISIS (the "Islamic State") began to overshadow moderate opposition forces. As ruthless as Asad had been in crushing domestic opposition, it became clear that any likely successor government would almost surely be dominated by such radical jihadi forces-who simply fight more effectively than the West's preferred moderate and secular groups who never got their act together.

Enter Russia. Moscow had already intervened swiftly and effectively in 2013 to head off a planned US airstrike on Damascus to take out chemical weapons by convincing Damascus to freely yield up its chemical weapons; the plan actually succeeded. This event helped overcome at least Obama's earlier reluctance to recognize the potential benefits of Russian influence in the Middle East to positively serve broader western interests in the region as well.

Russia is of course no late-comer to the region: Russian tsars long acted as the protector of Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Middle East in the nineteenth century; the Russians had been diplomatic players in the geopolitical game in the region long before the creation of the Soviet Union. During the West's Cold War with the Soviet Union the two camps often strategically supported opposite sides of regional conflicts: Moscow supported revolutionary Arab dictators while the West supported pro-western dictators. Russia has had dominant military influence in Syria for over five decades through weapons sales, diplomatic support, and its naval base in Tartus.

With the collapse of the USSR in 1991 Russian influence in the area sharply declined for the first time as the new Russia sorted itself out. America then began declaring itself the "world's sole superpower," allegedly now free to shape the world strategically as it saw fit. And the significant neoconservative and liberal interventionist factions in Washington still nourish the same mentality today-predicated on the belief that the US can continue to maintain primacy around the world-economic, military, and diplomatic. In this sense, any acknowledgment of Russian influence in the Middle East (or elsewhere) represents an affront, even "a threat" to US dominance and prestige.

For similar reasons Iran's long-time open challenge against American ability act with impunity in the Middle East has always constituted a deep source of American strategic anger-viscerally surpassing the more Israel-driven nuclear issue.

Today the combination of Russia and Iran (whose interests do not fully coincide either) exert major influence over the weakening Asad regime.

If we are truly concerned about ISIS we must recognize that restoration of a modicum of peace in Syria and Iraq are essential prerequisites to the ultimate elimination of ISIS that feeds off of the chaos.

Russia appears now to be unilaterally introducing new military forces, stepped up weapons deliveries, and possibly including limited troop numbers into Syria specifically to back the Asad regime's staying power. Washington appears dismayed at this turn of events, and has yet to make up its mind whether it would rather get rid of Asad, or get rid of ISIS. It is folly to think that both goals can be achieved militarily.

In my view, the fall of Asad will not bring peace but will instead guarantee deadly massive long-term civil conflict in Syria among contending successors in which radical jihadi forces are likely to predominate-unless the west commits major ground forces to impose and supervise a peace. We've been there once before in the Iraq scenario. A replay of Iraq surely is not what the West wants.

So just how much of a "threat" is an enhanced Russian military presence in Syria? It is simplistic to view this as some zero-sum game in which any Russian gain is an American loss. The West lived with a Soviet naval base in Syria for many decades; meanwhile the US itself has dozens of military bases in the Middle East. (To many observers, these may indeed represent part of the problem.)

Even were Syria to become completely subservient to Russia, US general interests in the region would not seriously suffer (unless one considers maintenance of unchallenged unilateral power to be the main US interest there. I don't.) The West has lived with such a Syrian regime before. Russia, with its large and restive Muslim population and especially Chechens, is more fearful of jihadi Islam than is even the US. If Russia were to end up putting combat troops on the ground against ISIS (unlikely) it would represent a net gain for the West. Russia is far less hated by populations in the Middle East than is the US (although Moscow is quite hated by many Muslims of the former Soviet Union.) Russia is likely to be able to undertake military operations against jihadis from bases within Syria. Indeed, it will certainly shore up Damascus militarily-rather than allowing Syria to collapse into warring jihadi factions.

What Russia will not accept in the Middle East is another unilateral US (or "NATO") fait accompli in "regime change" that does not carry full UN support. (China's interests are identical to Russia's in most respects here.)

We are entering a new era in which the US is increasingly no longer able to call the shots in shaping the international order. Surely it is in the (enlightened) self-interest of the US to see an end to the conflict in Syria with all its cross-border sectarian viciousness in Iraq. Russia is probably better positioned than any other world player to exert influence over Asad. The US should be able to comfortably live even with a Russian-dominated Syria if it can bring an end to the conflict-especially when Washington meanwhile is allied with virtually every one of Syria's neighbors. (How long Asad himself stays would be subject to negotiation; his personal presence is not essential to 'Alawi power in Syria.)

What can Russia do to the West from its long-term dominant position in Syria? Take Syria's (virtually non-existent) oil? Draw on the wealth of this impoverished country? Increase arms sales to the region (no match for US arms sales)? Threaten Israel? Russia already has close ties with Israel and probably up to a quarter of Israel's population are Russian Jews.

Bottom line: Washington does not have the luxury of playing dog in the manger in "managing" the Middle East, especially after two decades or more of massive and destructive policy failure on virtually all fronts.

It is essential that the US not extend its new Cold War with Russia into the Middle East where shared interests are fairly broad-unless one rejects that very supposition on ideological grounds. The same goes for Iran.

We have to start someplace.

Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is "Breaking Faith: A novel of espionage and an American's crisis of conscience in Pakistan." (Amazon, Kindle) grahamefuller.com

[Sep 16, 2015] U.S. Rejected Offers by Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria to Surrender … and Proceeded to Wage War

"...There's no money in PEACE.."
Sep 16, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Submitted by George Washington on 09/16/2015 00:42 -0400

The Daily Mail reported last year:

A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that [Gaddafi offered to abdicate as leader of Libya.]

'Gaddafi wasn't a good guy, but he was being marginalized,' [Retired Rear Admiral Chuck ] Kubic recalled. 'Gaddafi actually offered to abdicate' shortly after the beginning of a 2011 rebellion.

'But the U.S. ignored his calls for a truce,' the commission wrote, ultimately backing the horse that would later help kill a U.S. ambassador.

Kubic said that the effort at truce talks fell apart when the White House declined to let the Pentagon pursue it seriously.

'We had a leader who had won the Nobel Peace Prize,' Kubic said, 'but who was unwilling to give peace a chance for 72 hours.'

The Washington Times wrote in January:

"I have been contacted by an intermediary in Libya who has indicated that President Muammar Gadhafi is willing to negotiate an end to the conflict under conditions which would seem to favor Administration policy," [former U.S. Congressman Dennis] Kucinich wrote on Aug. 24.

***

Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gadhafi's son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution, the secret recordings reveal.

A day later, on March 18, Gadhafi called for a cease-fire, another action the administration dismissed.

***

"Everything I am getting from the State Department is that they do not care about being part of this. Secretary Clinton does not want to negotiate at all," the Pentagon intelligence asset told Seif Gadhafi and his adviser on the recordings.

Communication was so torn between the Libyan regime and the State Department that they had no point of contact within the department to even communicate whether they were willing to accept the U.N.'s mandates, former Libyan officials said.

***

"The decision to invade [Libya] had already been made, so everything coming out of the State Department at that time was to reinforce that decision," the official explained, speaking only on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

***

"The Libyans would stop all combat operations and withdraw all military forces to the outskirts of the cities and assume a defensive posture. Then to insure the credibility with the international community, the Libyans would accept recipients from the African Union to make sure the truce was honored," Mr. Kubic said, describing the offers.

"[Gadhafi] came back and said he was willing to step down and permit a transition government, but he had two conditions," Mr. Kubic said. "First was to insure there was a military force left over after he left Libya capable to go after al Qaeda. Secondly, he wanted to have the sanctions against him and his family and those loyal to him lifted and free passage. At that point in time, everybody thought that was reasonable."

But not the State Department.

Gen. Ham was ordered to stand down two days after the negotiation began, Mr. Kubic said. The orders were given at the behest of the State Department, according to those familiar with the plan in the Pentagon. Gen. Ham declined to comment when questioned by The Times.

"If their goal was to get Gadhafi out of power, then why not give a 72-hour truce a try?" Mr. Kubic asked. "It wasn't enough to get him out of power; they wanted him dead."

Similarly, Saddam Hussein allegedly offered to let weapons inspectors in the country and to hold new elections. As the Guardian reported in 2003:

In the few weeks before its fall, Iraq's Ba'athist regime made a series of increasingly desperate peace offers to Washington, promising to hold elections and even to allow US troops to search for banned weapons. But the advances were all rejected by the Bush administration, according to intermediaries involved in the talks.

Moreover, Saddam allegedly offered to leave Iraq:

"Fearing defeat, Saddam was prepared to go peacefully in return for Ł500million ($1billion)".

"The extraordinary offer was revealed yesterday in a transcript of talks in February 2003 between George Bush and the then Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at the President's Texas ranch."

"The White House refused to comment on the report last night. But, if verified, it is certain to raise questions in Washington and London over whether the costly four-year war could have been averted."

According to the tapes, Bush told Aznar that whether Saddam was still in Iraq or not, "We'll be in Baghdad by the end of March." See also this and this.

Susan Lindauer (after reading an earlier version of this essay by Washington's Blog) wrote:

That's absolutely true about Saddam's frantic officers to retire to a Villa in Tikrit before the invasion. Except he never demanded $1 BILLION (or $500 MILLION). He only asked for a private brigade of the Iraqi National Guard, which he compared to President Clinton's Secret Service detail for life throughout retirement. I know that for a fact, because I myself was the back channel to the Iraqi Embassy at the U.N. in New York, who carried the message to Washington AND the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. Kofi Annan was very much aware of it. So was Spain's President Asnar. Those historical details were redacted from the history books when George Bush ordered my arrest on the Patriot Act as an "Iraqi Agent"– a political farce with no supporting evidence, except my passionate anti-war activism and urgent warnings that War in Iraq would uncover no WMDs, would fire up a violent and bloody counter-insurgency, and would result in Iran's rise as a regional power. In 2007, the Senate Intelligence Committee hailed my warnings in Jan. 2003 (as the Chief Human Intelligence covering Iraq at the U.N.) to be one of the only bright spots in Pre-War Intelligence. Nevertheless, in 2005 and again in 2008, I was declared "incompetent to stand trial," and threatened with "indefinite detention up to 10 years" on Carswell Air Force Base, in order to protect the cover up of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence.

(The New York Times has covered Lindauer at least 5 times, including here and here.)

On October 14, 2001, the Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted bombing if the Taliban were given evidence of Bin Laden's involvement in 9/11.

Specifically, the Guardian noted in 2001:

Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty" …

Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

"If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.

However, as the Guardian subsequently pointed out:

A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night.

For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan's military leadership said.

And the Guardian reports today:

Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.

Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world's gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.

Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the opposition.

But he said that the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal.

***

"There was no question because I went back and asked him a second time," he said, noting that Churkin had just returned from a trip to Moscow and there seemed little doubt he was raising the proposal on behalf of the Kremlin.

Ahtisaari said he passed on the message to the American, British and French missions at the UN, but he said: "Nothing happened because I think all these, and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything."

Similarly, Bloomberg reported in 2012:

As Syria slides toward civil war, Russia is signaling that it no longer views President Bashar al-Assad's position as tenable and is working with the U.S. to seek an orderly transition.

***

After meeting with French President Francois Hollande, among the most adamant of Western leaders demanding Assad's departure, Putin said Russia was not invested in Assad staying.

***

"We aren't for Assad or for his opponents," Putin told reporters in Paris on June 1. "We want to achieve a situation in which violence ends and a full-scale civil war is avoided."

And yet, as with Gaddaffi, Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, the U.S. turned down the offer and has instead prosecuted war. See this and this.

Postscript: An offer by Russia for Assad to leave is not the same as an offer by Assad himself. However, because the Syrian government would have long ago fallen without Russia's help, the distinction is not really that meaningful.

demur

What the USSA is doing is pure evil. At least Germany had a logical reason for aggressions. The treaty of Versailles unfairly took German lands. Germany wanted them back. It wasn't till Poland resisted that Germany let loose.

The USSA destroys leaders seeking a truce and does so in the name of peace. Then it rams its immoral, family destroying sterilizing geo-political socio economic system down traditional pious soverigns throats.

sidiji

so this make us what? the evil emipire? officially the bad guys?

honestann

I don't call them the predators-that-be for nothing.

Sudden Debt

Why did we go to war in the first place?

War industry, they run shit.

And sure they did it so they could steal all the money in the world.

That's why we're broke and half the world is at war.

That can never be ended.

tstraus

This is far from a new phenomena, we did the same against Spain until we took the Philippines, Wilson and House were against a settlement of the then still European War until the US had shed its blood on European soil, which clearly would have resulted in a pre-hostilities border settlement and maintained political structures instead of unconditional surrender.

All the blood, misery and human carnage that could have been subsequently avoided had we just stuck to the principles of the nations founders.

But capital requires war, war for profits, war to cull excess supply of capital, war to rebuild and war to dominate.

Power and money forged with American myth has been a potent mixture that directly and indirectly has murdered 100's of millions of innocent lives. And we are to destroy the cultural heritage of nations because one boy died on the beaches escaping a war that we initiated and fostered?

yellowsub

"War is Peace", why do you think they didn't negotiate?

Turdy Brown

Admiral Kubic is a good friend of mine. I was in Libya and Afghanistan with him. He is one of the smartest, bravest men that I have ever met.

In fact a quick story about him. We were both working on a project at the US Embassy in Kabul in 2011. I had just landed in the morning and as soon as I got to the Embassy, a group of Taliban started lobbing rocket towards the Embassy. Anyhow, it was a 24 hour ordeal but Kubic was the only person that I saw that grabbed an AK from a Ghurka guard (btw Ghurkas are cowards!), and rushed towards the attackers! Most people, including security personell were running away from the fire. Not Kubic: he was charging the Taliban! Never seen anything like it in my life!

I also have personal knowledge of what he has said in this article. ALL TRUE!

pFXTim

wouldn't be the first time...

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945:

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 329, Chapter 26) . . . [Nimitz also stated: "The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . ."]

http://www.doug-long.com/guide1.htm

somewhat different than the widely accepted official narrative.

SUNKNIGHT2010

Saddam Hussein switched from using the US dollar to the euro in selling Iraqi oil. The same with Libya, they were friends with the USA until plans were established to set up a currency (Dinar) backed by gold .for the USA's economy to survive, it MUST maintain world currency reserve status --

ANYTHING that threatens this position WILL be neutralized, irregardless of what it takes -- When Iraq started selling oil using the euro, Saddam Hussein signed his death warrant, as did Libya -- The true reason for all this conflict is to maintain & support the US dollar & economy, namely all the wealthy of Wall Street & Washington DC .

But for some weird reason ALOT of people here seem to think Israel is responsible for everything bad that has or will ever happen !

Sad how in 2015 , people are still so racist -- How far humanity has advanced in technology but how primitive an foolish the human race still is in MANY ways !

Reaper

There is glory in military victories. Exceptional trained sheeple die for that glory. Does the sheeple's god reward them for their stupidity? Do the gods praise as exceptional those whom they'll destroy?

11b40

Wall Street controls Washington.

Who controls Wall Street?

(if you don't know, I'm sure someone here could help you find out)

Motasaurus

London controls Wall Street. And Riyadh. And Tel-Aviv. Not England, London. And the Bankers who control that city, control the world.

RagnarRedux

Yep, sounds just like ethno-oligarch subverted Western nations, nothing has changed.

What the World Rejected

Hitler's Peace Offers, 1933- 1939

http://ihr.org/other/what-the-world-rejected.html

http://www.tomatobubble.com/id570.html

BullyBearish

There's no money in PEACE..

Max Steel

Why is the West reporting this NOW? It is a negotiating ploy. They know they have lost. Now they are trying to see if this old offer could still be put on the table.

silverer

No, the US leadership is a bunch of sore losers. That's what US voters wanted, prayed for, hoped for, and then mandated with an election. US leaders can't admit defeat, so next is probably a nuclear escalation, because they've convinced themselves that they have dug their protection deep enough into a number of mountains at taxpayer expense so that they will win and then survive.

In Russia, they built billions of dollars worth of fallout shelters over the last 20 years for the ordinary Russian. Every citizen in Moscow is within three minutes of a fallout shelter. The Russian leadership knows the US leadership better than the US voters do. In the US, they haven't built anything at all to protect the general population, and apparently consider everyone expendable.

This way, if the US calls it all wrong and totally screws it up, they won't have to answer to anyone who voted for them when they walk out of their fallout shelters a year after it's all over.


OpTwoMistic

Do not confuse America with its leadership.

Motasaurus

So long as the leadership remains in power and not dangling by their necks from the White House balcony, America and the leadership are the same.

SmittyinLA

The US didn't want an election, Kaddaffi would have won, he was loved by his people, Libyans wouldn't vote for their own liquidation, Libya had the highest living standards in Africa, Libyan citizenship was a valuable commodity -- like US citizenship.

Libya was looted in an international war crime.

To Hell In A Handbasket

Looted is the understatement of the year.

The narrative by the MSM was Gaddaffi is a dictator and the people need freedom and democracy. What the MSM ommitted was a background history of the country, Libya's achievments under Gaddaffi vs the total plunder of Libya under our puppet leader King Idris(who was overthrown by Gaddaffi), who were the Libyian National Transitional Council (NTC), what was the price of French(NATO) intervention for the treasonous (NTC)? (Mining rights to 35% of Libya's hydro carbons)

On 3 April a letter was sent by Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) to a coalition partner, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, which mentioned that France would take "35 percent of crude oil...in exchange for its total and permanent support" of the NTC. France's Liberation daily reported on Thursday that it had a copy of the letter, which stated that the NTC's Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam, would negotiate the deal with France. In 2010 France was the second purchaser of Libyan oil after Italy, with over 15 percent of its "oil" imported from Tripoli.

But that's not all as we must apply logic. Who was the first country to recognise the NTC? Which was the only country Gaddaffi broke off diplomatic ties? Which country was the first to bomb? The answer is France, to all 3 of those questions, but there is more the MSM avoided talking about and the biggest mystery is WHERE IS LIBYA'S 148 METRIC TONNS OF GOLD? Western leaders are not interested in peace, but in conquest and plunder for their paymasters.. Even the doubters who believed in freedom and humanitarian intervention, had to sit up, pause and think, when the NTC before they had even reached Trippoli and was losing the ground offensive, created their own central bank that was recognised by the NATO coalition inside of 2 days.. Case closed.

OpenThePodBayDoorHAL

Gaddafi had loaned Unicredito multiple billions in 2009 and they didn't feel like paying it back. Follow the money.

Bankster Kibble

We don't trust elections in our client states. When the Iraqis had their first election after the fall of Saddam, they elected some mullah we didn't like so we made them hold another election. "Do it again until you do it right!"

rsnoble

There's no profit in peace. Or not nearly as much I should say. A little dribble just won't cut it, steal the whole fucking enchilada at once. Get to test weapons. Get to play with cool toys like drones. See people get blown to pieces for the sick-minded. Move closer to world domination, etc. All ideas of crazy people. The only problem is, since this is human nature, if the US wasn't doing it or preventing others, would others step in with the same crazy ass plan? I would venture to guess yes.

GRDguy

Whatever is of benefit to peaceful citizens is not profitable to the financial sociopaths. Hence, fighting increases. Your real enemy hides in financial institutions, surrounded by minions and voracious lawyers.

BurnUnit

Do you think the white collar crime of Wall Steet and the Federal Reserve is bad ?

For more crimes against humanity go to www.firecrusade.com and see Free Document page and click link A Crime Against Humanity

The very gov agencies that are supposed to be protecting the public from dangers of fire and hazardous products, CPSC and NFPA as well as the non gov testing facility UL which often tests products on the governments behalf, have been covering up a deadly conspiracy to commit fraud that has resulted in the deaths of 10's of 1000's and horrible, often times, disfiguring injuries of 100's of 1000's of unsuspecting consumers over last 5 decades.

These agencies have all been in the back pocket of ionized alarm manufactures for over 50 years , which was exposed back in 1976 by a Fire Protection Engineer, Richard Patton. Mr. Patton revealed that the government funded Dunes Test which tested smoke alarms, was not only rigged so ionized alarms would pass the smoldering smoke stage of test but the data was falsified so that ionized detectors could keep the UL stamp of approval, while the superior, safer and more reliable heat detector technologies were deliberately set up to fail the tests.

With each day that passes and the CSPC fails to make a mandatory recall of ion alarms , many more victims will either be killed and or suffer serious injuries as the ionized alarm manufactures flooded the market with ion alarms and it is estimated that over 90% of all homes and habitable structures have these deadly devices, providing the public with a false sense of security.

Buyer beware -- These deaths and injuries have been and are preventable, as the safer more reliable photoelectric / heat smoke alarms have been available for over 40 years. The ion manufactures are fully aware of the problem and have been sued multiple times and paid $10's of millions in damages and the UL has been sued as well. Manufactures, in one lawsuit back in 2001 were ordered to provide disclosure on ion alarm packaging which ended up being a watered down disclosure / recommendation to use both photoelectric and ionized alarms. Being ion alarms are less expensive and majority of consumers do not read fine print on packaging which omits the actual dangers / death / injury factors, consumers assume a smoke detector is a smoke detector, and most people still opt to buy the less expensive and dangerous ion alarms.

Most everyone you know is at risk and should be made aware of these deadly devices as the government agencies will continue to cover up the fraud from the public until such a time a civil lawsuit and verdict is reached to force CPSC to execute a mandatory recall which could take several years. Please post this message on your facebook and twitter sites and forward to as many others as possible. More information and 60 minutes segment / news videos that have covered this issue can be found on www.smokealarmwarning.org

rwe2late

and in Ukraine,

Poroshenko (the elected guy who didn't want the IMF-NATO offer for Ukraine),

had agreed in a EU brokered deal to hold early elections and step down.

Guess who said "Fuck the EU" and instead backed a coup by jackbooted jingoists?

rwe2late

nor should we forget the US-led attack on Yugoslavia, in complete violation of the UN charter, a devastating bombing campaign destroying the civilian infrastructure, done with the hypocritical alleged motive to prevent "human rights violations".

In that case, Yugoslavia's refusal to accept a non-negotiable ultimatum to surrender sovereignty of its territory (Kosovo) to the Mafia-run KLA was falsely depicted as Yugoslavia's refusal to negotiate.

http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/22_rambo.htm

http://iacenter.org/warcrime/2_kla.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Kosovo

Sandmann

Now Turkey destabilises Western Europe by funnelling refugees into the EU in an invasion force. Germany takes in 1,000,000 in 2015 which exceeds its own birth rate. Won't be long before Europe disintegrates into civil war and regional conflicts like so much of its history. Soon the US will have created global chaos and it will not be able to restore order anywhere because it dare not put "boots on the ground" and it will need 4-5 million soldiers to restore order the way things are going.

When the Ukrainian refugees start towards Western Europe it should be clear the EU has destroyed peace in Europe for generations

SgtShaftoe

It seems that the US "leaders" have made it a game to violate every law of the Geneva conventions.

A. Bean-Counter

All those kids who were taking, like, loads of drugs in the '70's, those kids are now running US foreign policy - and still taking the drugs.

SixIsNinE

the "kids" who Turned On went into music, computing, design, family, travel, and more ...

but yeah, those alcoholic kids did go on to run foreign policy, i give you that ...

mc225

...coke heads too, but less likely the potheads...

Usurious

Global Geopolitical Chessboard:
Psychopathic Players and Cynical Moves
Guarantee a Future of Perpetual War "From the Black Sea to the Baltic"

Explosive Presentation Hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Reveals

What No Government Official, No Political Representative, No NGO Executive

and No Think Tank Director Has Ever Said Before in Public

http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=22223

rita

When will the American people demand that Cheney, Bush Hillary and Obama face justice for war crimes committed against humanity. Hopefully in 2016 Americans remember the crimes these people have committed and vote for somehing with not such a past.

Pancho de Villa

Are you Dreaming Amigo? Los Gringos will Never admit what they Refuse to Believe! Bush and Cheney will go to their graves as Heroes in their eyes! Otherwise Intelligent Peoples Refuse to Entertain what They Consider to be "Treasonous" Notions. I have Three Brother-in-Laws that work in Govt Related Fields. I get along with them all just fine now that I have learned what Topics to Avoid in Conversation!

Buen Suenos, Amigo

aleph0

http://libyasos.blogspot.de/p/gaddafi.html

With the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, a very poor desert country became a very rich little western protectorate. US and European companies had huge stakes in the extremely lucrative petroleum and banking sectors, but these were soon nationalized by Gaddafi. Thus Libya overnightjoined the list of US 'enemy' or 'rogue' states that sought autonomy and self-determination outside the expanding sphere of western Empire. Further cementing western hatred of the new regime, Libya played a leading role of the 1973 oil embargo against the US and maintained cooperative relations with the Soviet Union. Gaddafi also reportedly channeled early oil wealth into national free health care and education.

Life in Libya with Leader Gaddafi:

1. Electricity for household use is free,

2. interest-free loans

3. during the study, government give to every student 2 300 dolars/month

4. receives the average salary for this profession if you do not find a job after graduation,

5. the state has paid for to work in the profession,

6. every unemployed person receives social assistance 15,000 $/year,

7. for marriage state pays first apartment or house (150m2),

8. buying cars at factory prices,

9. LIBYA not owe anyone a cent,

10. free higher education abroad,

11. 25% of highly educated,

12. 40 loaves of bread costs $ 0.15,

13. water in the middle of the desert, drinking water,

14. 8 dinars per liter of oil (0.08 EUR),

15. 6% poor people,

16. for each infant, the couple received $ 5,000 for their needs.

etc.
etc.

sleigher

"9. LIBYA not owe anyone a cent,"

That's the problem right there...

SixIsNinE

and i didn't see any mention of the golden Squid in the article, so more obfuscation still ....

HamRove

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, and Condoleeza Rice among many others all need to spend a better portion of their earthly existence in an 8x8 cell watching the rest of us enjoying their sudden departure.

steelhead23

That's a rather incomplete list, but it's a start.

f16hoser

Don't forget Blair...

Motasaurus

What's that? The UK and their US and NATO puppets weren't at all interested in peaceful solutions to the middle-east conflicts? It's almost exactly like the way Israel targetted assasinations against the moderate Palistinian politicians for the express purpose of making the radicals powerful, meaning that no peace would be possible.

One would think that the aim has been to kill as many people as possible, and not regime change at all.

TheRideNeverEnds

Yes that and in many of these countries in the end its all about the physical gold they hold, a new leader doesn't matter we need to go there kill whoever and take their shit.

Saddam had lots and lots of gold, I think Ghadaffi had more.

Many of these places we end up going had loads of gold all of which now belongs to us aka the west aka the bankers aka the tribe. So in the end maybe we are all doing gods work just by being part of that system.

HowdyDoody

We also had to get the results of the effects of nukes on undamaged cities and their inhabitants - a magnificently evil medical experiment.

[Sep 14, 2015] Putin shifts fronts in Syria and Ukraine

Neocon Diehl has the audacity to use WashPost editorial page to attacks Secretary of State John Kerry. Promoting what is essentially Nuland's jingoistic policies... so despite blunder after blunder neocons are not yet done.
.
"...Diehl seems to think that the US has or should have a free hand to do what it wants wherever and whenever it wants, and gets all twitchy when he discovers that the 'end of history' hasn't arrived just yet. He forgets that Russia was in Crimea and Syria long before the US showed up with its solutions in hand."
.
"...Or best idea yet -- Send these WaPo neocons (Diehl and Hiatt) packing. "
Sep 14, 2015 | The Washington Post

Over the summer, while Washington was preoccupied with the Iran nuclear deal, U.S. and European diplomats quietly leaned on the democratically elected, pro-Western Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko. In Sochi, Kerry had offered full-throated U.S. support for the implementation of an accord known as Minsk 2 - a deal hastily brokered by Germany and France in February, at a moment when regular Russian troops were cutting the Ukrainian army to ribbons. The bargain is a terrible one for Kiev: It stipulates that Ukraine must adopt a constitutional reform granting extraordinary powers to the Russian-occupied regions, and that the reforms must satisfy Moscow's proxies. That gives Putin a de facto veto over Ukraine's governing structure.

Dryly 41

First, the instability in the Middle East is a direct result of the disaster caused the Bush II-Cheney administration's war against Iraq to fine Weapons of Mass Destruction. There were none. Any normal person would conclude that it would have been much cheaper and saner to have let the United Nations Monitoring and Verification Inspection Commission inspectors continue their inspections and find there were no WMD than to start a Pre-emptive War. Jackson is not a normal person as he supported the Bush II-Cheney war.

Second, Bush II-Cheney administration's war against Iraq at a time Iraq posed no military threat to the U.S. or any other nation did enormous damage to the standing, stature and prestige of the United States of America. How can the United States argue that it is fine for the us to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq if we want to but Russia cannot invade Ukraine?

Stranger9

Putin is extremely articulate on the subject of international ethics and law. Sure, he's corrupt as the day is long, but he seems to believe in certain basic Judeo-Christian-based tenets of international conduct. The West seems tied to Islamic jihad tenets, so the United States and its allies don't believe in the most basic rules. Thus, the moral high ground goes to Putin.

Whizdom

Diehl wants us to tie up our military assets trying to take down Hezbollah and Iran, while China is free to consolidate in the South China Sea

Whizdom

Iran is unlikely to be a Russian client, but strategic cooperation is likely.
Diehl and the Neocons over reached in trying to pry Ukraine out of Russians orbit before the time was right, and also massive fail in Syria A naive and stupid strategy.

Luke W

Putin has a right to conduct a foreign policy without the permission of the United States.

American statecraft and military performance in the region as been abysmal and is the font for much of the chaos now evident in Iraq and Syria thus, its credibility is in tatters.

Russia can certainly do no worse than what we have accomplish.

Livin_in_MD

Please, let us do all we can to entangle Russia into Syria's civil war. Let them bleed slowly their national treasure and the blood of their soliders. Let it become their NEXT Afghanistan. And while they're at it, please allow them to incite Muslims across the Middle East because they are helping the Butcher Assad.

You don't think they're Muslims in Russia who would like to strike back at Putin for this?

Obama, playing the long game, is going to give just enough rope to let the Russians hang themselves.

Whizdom

Let Russia be the magnet for Islamic terror instead of us? That's a concept.

Whizdom

Russia just wants its naval base and its hand on the valves of new Friendship pipeline that will cross Syria from Iran's Pars fields. Putin doesn't care if it Is Assad or some other stooge.

mike-sey

Who is in whose face depends on which side of the border one sits. Diehl seems to think that the US has or should have a free hand to do what it wants wherever and whenever it wants, and gets all twitchy when he discovers that the 'end of history' hasn't arrived just yet. He forgets that Russia was in Crimea and Syria long before the US showed up with its solutions in hand.

Stranger9

"Putin is meddling in the Middle East out of desperation because his bid for Ukraine has failed."

Putin's "bid for Ukraine"? His bid is not for all of Ukraine, as this statement implies; it is to keep Crimea within the orbit of Russia, since the great majority of its denizens are Russian by choice, history and culture. The word "Crimea" is not once mentioned.

Then there's this: "Putin has an agenda as clear as it is noxious. He wants to block any attempt by the West and its allies to engineer the removal of Bashar al-Assad ..."

Noxious? What's noxious is the West's and Israel's unfounded claim on Assad's regime.

danram

It take a real Putin boot-licker to defend Bashir Assad. Congratulations.

And if Putin is only concerned with Crimea, then why are his forces in southeastern Ukraine?

Oh yeah, that's right ... They really aren't. Got it.

Stranger9

An international code of conduct must be maintained. It cannot be broken by engineering coups and installing unelected leaders, as was done in Ukraine. The same applies In Syria. You simply cannot take over a sovereign country simply because you can. There are rules that even the U.S. -- "exceptional" though it claims to be -- must abide by.

MyCountry2

Syria will [be] Russia's second Afghanistan.

Whizdom

Do we get to arm the Islamists again?

IWH_rus

Why? did you stop it already? When?

jack406

Where's Reagan when we need him?
Didn't he build Al Quaida?

Michael DeStefano

We can dress Yatsenyuk up like Osama. His days in Ukraine are numbered anyway and he's about the right height. Not quite as handsome but the beard will cover most of that.

-shiloh-

The flood of refugees into Europe will continue until somebody stops the source of the flood. Does anybody really care who's fingers are in the dike? The only way to end the refugee crisis is to end the civil war(s) and insurgencies in the region. A cooperative effort among Europe, Russia, and Iran with the assistance of the US is preferable to the status quo. Ports, pipelines, and political ideologies are incidental issues.

Whizdom

So Russia and Iran are moving to crush ISIS and restore stability in Syria, which will ease the refugee crisis. And Diehl is unhappy? Syria has been a client of Russia's for a half century. Ending that relationship is a neocon goal, but does it even make sense now? Worth the price?

Forest Webb

What's the big deal? the editor makes this sound if this is some brilliant strategy on the part of Putin. If the Russians want to throw away their sons in the Mid-east quagmire let them.

It's a complicated stew and Putin has easier choices in the arena than the U.S. For Putin he simply supports Assad.

For the U.S. we want Assad out, so we cannot support him. We cannot support ISIL, half or the other opposition is supported by al Qaeda, the Kurds would just as soon fight the Turks our erstwhile Nato ally rather than fight the Assad regime. A complicated messy stew, we should try to keep our spoons out of.

Let Putin send his Russian boys to Syria, and let's count how many weeks pass before the terrorists take the war to Russian soil.

Michael Cook

Putin won in Ukraine. He has the Crimea back and has secured an overland gas pipeline corridor from Mother Russia to the peninsula, which was his objective. All it really cost him was dozens of scoldings from Obama.

Obama already scolds and threatens Vladimir Putin about Syria. The problem is that Moscow is absolutely right---if someone does not step in and rescue Syria RIGHT NOW the country will fall to ISIS before the end of the year. Assad's forces are exhausted.

Iran, of course, besides Russia is Bashar al Assad's other ally. The interesting point about that is that neither Russia nor Iran had much money available to make war.

Until last week. Now that Obama is freeing up frozen Iranian funds ($50-150 Billion!) suddenly the militant mullahs in Tehran have plenty of money for war making.

Can anyone smell a win-win for Putin? He gets to be the only leader of a major nation around to have the guts and intelligence to realize that allowing Syria to fall to ISIS would be a global catastrophe of the first magnitude. Better yet, Putin gets to sell lots and lots of Russian weapons, which helps his own struggling economy! Has Putin studied "The Art of the Deal?"

SELL weapons for cash money! Courtesy of Obama! Now that is worth putting up with more of these tiresome tongue-lashings that POTUS likes to dole out when he is clueless about what is going on. Since Obama is clueless all the time, Putin just has to put up with the noise.

Michael DeStefano

Putin's objective was to secure a gas pipeline corridor across the Kerch Strait?

So he could what, erect one of those ancient Greek fire breathing dragon flame throwers on the Crimean coast?

Not everything's about gas, Mr. Cook.

Ethernum

Russian airstrike in Syria won't perform better than the US (with a more advanced technology) against the Islamic state.

Can Putin engage a ground assault in Syria with regular/irregular troops the way he did in Ukraine ?

He can try but the result won't be the same, there's some wealthy countries supporting the Islamic State and they will provide them a lot of money, weapons and soldiers coming from everywhere to beat the Russian army, Putin will be unable to veto this support to the Islamic state, and it will restart what the US army experienced in Iraq, with permanent IED and kamikazes, while there will be no target for planes and drones....

IWH_rus

How many countries should be invaded and ravaged before USA became appeased?

simon7382

Nice try, no cigar....The US invasion of Iraq was a grave mistake, BUT it does not justify Putin's naked aggression in Georgia, in Ukraine or now in Syria in any way.

IWH_rus

Iraq is all you know about? Right now you involved in seven wars. And you never stop to invade all the last century. With all your history USA have only 21 year of peace, all the time invading, conquering, overthrowing legal governments to replace it with puppets. As it YOU made in Georgia, and Ukraine, and try to in Syria.

r2rnot

Putin is like a shark in the water, detecting blood around him. With the appeasers in our current administration, he has nothing to be worried about. He knows that Obama will do nothing but fire more drones and try to find some targets for bombs, as long is no non-combat person is in the area.

Michael DeStefano

If Putin's like a shark in water, McCain and Nudelman were like hyenas going after Ukraine's carcass,

SG2118

Refugees from Syria are a welcome relief to the Assad regime. It's hundreds of thousands of people who they need no longer worry about. Good riddance is Assad's feeling on the matter. Same holds for those from Iraq and Afghanistan. Rebels and those opposed to the government are leaving in droves and the regime couldn't be happier.

Russian troops in Syria? Russian warplanes and drones? They're going to be busom-buddies with the Iranian Quds Force which has been there for years, alongside Hezbollah fighters who are there to ensure the supply lines from Teheran remain open and aid, money and weapons continue to flow into the Bekaa Valley.

The Fall of Assad would be a cataclysm to Iranian hopes and dreams for the Middle East. They will not give up without a serious fight. Russia is there now, like in Vietnam 50 years ago, to "advise" and "train" local "militias" to "resist aggression".

choppy1

And if Putin's plan is to make himself look significant by "confronting" the U.S., he has succeeded, at least with Jackson Diehl. The question isn't whether Russia is pushing the U.S. around, it's whether U.S. national interests are involved. The U.S. has lived with the Assad regime for 45 years. Is it really so crucial that we get rid of it now? Ukraine is hardly a linchpin of Europe. Sure, it would be nice if it were free and western. But it has historic ties to Russia, is more important to Russia than to us, and has not shown laser-like focus on becoming a serious western democracy. Meanwhile Putin presides over an economy that's shrinking 5% a year, with a population that's also shrinking. And he made the choice to keep power for himself and his cronies rather than modernize. No matter what he does abroad, Russia itself is on a decline that he will only exacerbate. He's dangerous, not because he's strong, but because he's weak. We should not let his actions fool us into losing sight of where our core interests lie.

IWH_rus

While world sleeps, Putin moves stars with his finger, to disrupt NATO's operations and disturb dreams.

Greyhounds

Right. Because NATO is operating in Syria?

IWH_rus

NATO is a theatre of one actor. And this multifaced actor is operating in Syria, arming terrorists.

RealChoices

If anything, Russian aid to Assad should be encouraged. We may find Assad too repulsive to aid, but given a choice between Assad and ISIS, he is definitely the lesser of two evils. It's time to dispense with a notion of a "moderate pro-Western rebel force", it was always wishful thinking.

Greyhounds

There's this little thing called "human rights" and another little thing called "the Leahy Ammendment" that prevent us from providing aid to terrorists like Assad or even giving a nod to Putin to do so.

Michael DeStefano

But you seem to be all hunky dory with Poroshenko and our Saudi and Israeli allies bombing civilians into oblivion. Funny how that 'human rights' business pops up and down on demand.

Slava Besser

So Assad is a terrorist, but Poroshenko is allowed to bomb Donetsk at willSmile Saudi Arabia is allowed to bomb Yemen with cluster munitions we provide because they don't like the revolution there, but Russia should not provide aid to Donetsk despite the fact that people that came to power in Ukraine illegally and are blatantly anti-Russian are using air-force, tanks and artillery against civilian population that happens to have pro-Russian views?

Michael Cook

Spot On! Assad's forces are exhausted and extremely weak. If Russia doesn't come in and save the day, Syria will fall to ISIS with all the slaughter of minorities and hate crimes against archeology that entails.

I can't believe that the Obama administration is playing this like it is more important to uphold fictional political straw men than to actually stop ISIS from scoring their most important strategic victory ever!

SG2118

Iran is deeply involved in propping up Assad. It is through Syria that Iranian supplies reach their proxy lap-dog Hezbollah. Without that vital lifeline open, Hezbollah is cut off from their patron, and cannot be used against Iranian enemies (i.e. Israel). The Iranian Quds Force is in Syria now doing front-line fighting. Hezbollah too is deeply engaged. Without that level of aid, Assad's control would shrink dramatically, if not topple over altogether.

SG2118

News of the day. Iranian special forces moved into Syria to help Russians. Source - Israeli intelligence.

Slava Besser

I'm a Jew, are you implying that it is better for Israel if ISIS comes to power in Syria?

nativeson7

I would respectfully suggest that Russia's participation in the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts are different means to accomplish the identical objective, the undermining, if not outright dismemberment, of the EU and NATO.

While the Ukrainian gambit failed, taking the Russian economy with it, the "Syrian play" shows far more promise in its early stages and at the very least is likely to erode the unanimous support required for an extension of the EU's economic sanctions against Russia.

Merkel's misguided response to the initial flood of Syrian refugees has transformed the matter into an existential crisis in the minds of many Europeans and "right wing" parties throughout the continent.

There has been a notably unified and pronounced response from the Slavic Eastern European states in particular. Slovakia has declared it will accept only Christian refugees, Hungary has erected a fence along its southern border with Serbia and Bulgaria has done the same along its border with Turkey. Poland has agreed to take only 2000 Christian refugees rather than the 12,000 requested by the EU and in the Baltics protests have arisen over projected Syrian resettlement figures numbered in the hundreds.
Russia's military support will not only breathe new life into the Assad regime it will assure a continuing flood of migrants from Syria, into Europe, which will serve as a catalyst to create a "Pan-Slavic Europe" with a political, religious and cultural unity that could well transcend Eastern Europeans view of themselves as "European".

Michael DeStefano

Jeez, what a nefarious plot. Flood Europe with immigrants until it bursts at the seams. I knew that Putin was no good. What a Svengali-Machiavelli hybrid.

Why just today I heard on Meet the Press that they're all running from Assad and really upset that he's just being really mean with ISIS and not letting them distribute food and chocolates to the masses.

IWH_rus

Look at the map of "Arab spring". These lands make a belt from Atlantica to Indian Ocean, blocking Eurasia from Africa. It is clearly the geopolitical project of the power, which wins situation, while EU, Russia, China loose. Who is greatest and faithfull supporter of chaos in Middle East? USA.

Assad is unimportant. No matter who rule there, Syria is the target. If you destroy Syria - lots of military staff and arms will be left abandoned, and go to search new destiny. How ISIS was created? Jobless soldiers, cheap weapons. That's the target. Putin, Assad, just a decorations. You are blind, if unable to see it, or you do it consciously, as the autor of article. He is not as stupid, as try hard to look.

Michael DeStefano

Well it looks like, if Russia is 'pivoting' to Syria, then Germany has just decided to pivot with them. They didn't exactly call our approach feckless and wrongheaded but I suspect they may have had something along those lines in mind.

Syrien Deutschland bricht aus US-Allianz gegen Russland aus Nachrichten – DEUTSCHE WIRTSCHAFTS NACHRICHTEN

Germany surprisingly left the alliance formed together with the United States which intended to block Russia's entry into the Syrian conflict.

Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen told Der Spiegel that she welcomed president Putin's intentions of joining the fight against the extremist organization "Islamic State". It would be a matter of mutual interests, she said.

A speaker of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs added, Germany would welcome additional efforts of Russia in the fight against IS. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even announced the starting of a joint venture between him, Russian foreign minister Lavrov and their French colleague Laurent Fabius with the aim of bringing the Syrian civil war to an end. Lavrov and Fabius are expected to arrive in Berlin this Saturday.

moore_te

BIll Maher said it this weekend: There are five million troops in the Gulf States vs some 30,000 ISIS fighters... Where are they? Why don't the ME nations take in any refugees? (Of course, who would want to live in any of them given a choice?)

Taking out Saddam and Gaddafi worked so well, so of course we need to repeat the procedure in Syria!

Forget about the assurances we gave Russia that the West would leave a buffer between it and Russia. So what if we renege on our agreements, it's all for a good cause, right? After all, look how Bush stood up to them in Georgia. (He didn't.)

Or best idea yet -- Send these WaPo neocons (Diehl and Hiatt) packing.

Whizdom

There is a Syria peace deal in the works. naturally, NeoCons are gonna hate it. I wonder if Syria will get the Golan Heights back.

Chortling_Heel

It is always a pleasure to receive the NeanderCon musings and misdirection of Jackson Diehl.

Rootin' Tootin' Putin and his hand puppet, Bashar al-Assad, are trying to run out the clock before their nations implode even further --- taking each down with them.

[Sep 14, 2015] US War Theories Target Dissenters

Information Clearing House - ICH
... ... ...

Dissent as Treason

Since the Vietnam War, the belief that the media and other critics of government policies act as fifth columnists has become commonplace in military-oriented journals and with the American authoritarian-oriented political class, expressed in articles such as William Bradford's attack on "treasonous professors."

To the question "how a scholar pushing these ideas" did not raise a red flag, that might best be asked of the National Security Law Journal's previous editorial board. It is worth noting however that the editors who chose to publish Bradford's article are not neophytes in national security issues or strangers to the military or government.

As described on the NSLJ website, the Editor-in-Chief from 2014-2015 has broad experience in homeland and national security programs from work at both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security and currently serves (at the time of publication of Bradford's article) as the Deputy Director for the Office of Preparedness Integration and Coordination at FEMA. A U.S. government official in other words.

The "Articles Selection Editor" is described as "a family physician with thirty years of experience in the foreign affairs and intelligence communities." Websites online suggest his experience may have been acquired as a CIA employee. The executive editor appears to be a serving Marine Corps officer who attended law school as a military-funded student.

Significantly; Bradford was articulating precepts of the "U.S. common law of war" promoted by Chief Prosecutor Mark Martins because nothing Bradford advocated was inconsistent with William Whiting's guidance to Union Generals. Except Whiting went even further and advised that judges in the Union states who "impeded" the military in any way by challenging their detentions were even greater "public enemies" than Confederate soldiers were.

This "U.S. common law of war" is a prosecution fabrication created by legal expediency in the absence of legitimate legal precedent for what the United States was doing with prisoners captured globally after 9/11. This legal invention came about when military commission prosecutors failed to prove that the offense of Material Support for Terrorism was an international law of war crime. So prosecutors dreamed up a "domestic common law of war." This in fact is simply following the pattern of totalitarian states of the Twentieth Century.

Government-Media-Academic-Complex

The logic of Bradford's argument is the same as that of the Defense Department in declaring that journalists may be deemed "unprivileged belligerents." As quoted above, George H. Aldrich had observed that in Vietnam, both sides had as their goal "the destruction of the will to continue the struggle."

Bradford argued that Islamists must overcome Americans' support for the current war to prevail, and "it is the 'informational dimension' which is their main combat effort because it is U.S. political will which must be destroyed for them to win." But he says Islamists lack skill "to navigate the information battlespace, employ PSYOPs, and beguile Americans into hostile judgments regarding the legitimacy of their cause."

Therefore, according to Bradford, Islamists have identified "force multipliers with cultural knowledge of, social proximity to, and institutional capacity to attrit American political will. These critical nodes form an interconnected 'government-media-academic complex' ('GMAC') of public officials, media, and academics who mould mass opinion on legal and security issues . . . ."

Consequently, Bradford argues, within this triumvirate, "it is the wielders of combat power within these nodes - journalists, officials, and law professors - who possess the ideological power to defend or destroy American political will."

While Bradford reserves special vituperation for his one-time fellow law professors, he states the "most transparent example of this power to shape popular opinion as to the legitimacy of U.S. participation in wars is the media."

As proof, Bradford explained how this "disloyalty" of the media worked during the Vietnam War. He wrote: "During the Vietnam War, despite an unbroken series of U.S. battlefield victories, the media first surrendered itself over to a foreign enemy for use as a psychological weapon against Americans, not only expressing criticism of U.S. purpose and conduct but adopting an 'antagonistic attitude toward everything America was and represented' and 'spinning' U.S. military success to convince Americans that they were losing, and should quit, the war. Journalistic alchemists converted victory into defeat simply by pronouncing it."

Space does not permit showing in how many ways this "stab in the back" myth is false. But this belief in the disloyalty of the media in Bradford's view remains today. He wrote: "Defeatism, instinctive antipathy to war, and empathy for American adversaries persist within media."

Targeting Journalists

The right-wing militarist Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), with mostly retired U.S. military officers serving as advisers, has advocated targeting journalists with military attacks. Writing in The Journal of International Security Affairs in 2009, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters wrote:

"Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media . . . . Future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media." (Emphasis in original.)

The rationale for that deranged thinking was first propounded by Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp and other authoritarian-minded officers after the Vietnam War. Sharp explained, our "will" was eroded because "we were subjected to a skillfully waged subversive propaganda campaign, aided and abetted by the media's bombardment of sensationalism, rumors and half-truths about the Vietnam affair - a campaign that destroyed our national unity." William C. Bradford apparently adopted and internalized this belief, as have many other military officers.

That "stab in the back" myth was propagated by a number of U.S. military officers as well as President Richard Nixon (as explained here). It was more comfortable to believe that than that the military architects of the war did not understand what they were doing. So they shifted blame onto members of the media who were astute enough to recognize and report on the military's failure and war crimes, such as My Lai.

But those "critical" journalists, along with critics at home, were only recognizing what smarter Generals such as General Frederick Weyand recognized from the beginning. That is, the war was unwinnable by the U.S. because it was maintaining in power its despotic corrupt ally, the South Vietnamese government, against its own people. Whether or not what came later was worse for the Vietnamese people was unforeseeable by the majority of the people. What was in front of their eyes was the military oppression of American and South Vietnamese forces and secret police.

Information Warfare Today

In 1999, the Rand Corporation published a collection of articles in Strategic Appraisal: The Changing Role of Information in Warfare. The volume was edited by Zalmay Khalilzad, the alleged author of the Defense Department's 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, which was drafted when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary and Paul Wolfowitz was Under Secretary of Defense – and promulgated a theory of permanent U.S. global dominance.

One chapter of Rand's Strategic Appraisal was written by Jeremy Shapiro, now a special adviser at the U.S. State Department, according to Wikipedia. Shapiro wrote that the inability to control information flows was widely cited as playing an essential role in the downfall of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

He stated that perception management was "the vogue term for psychological operations or propaganda directed at the public." As he expressed it, many observers worried that potential foes could use techniques of perception management with asymmetric strategies with their effect on public opinion to "destroy the will of the United States to wage war."

Consequently, "Warfare in this new political environment consists largely of the battle to shape the political context of the war and the meaning of victory."

Another chapter on Ethics and Information Warfare by John Arquilla makes clear that information warfare must be understood as "a true form of war." The range of information warfare operations, according to Arquilla, extends "from the battlefield to the enemy home front." Information warfare is designed "to strike directly at the will and logistical support of an opponent."

This notion of information warfare, that it can be pursued without a need to defeat an adversary's armed forces, is an area of particular interest, according to Arquilla. What he means is that it necessitates counter measures when it is seen as directed at the U.S. as now provided for in the new LOW Manual.

Important to note, according to Arquilla, is that there is an inherent blurriness with defining "combatants" and "acts of war." Equating information warfare to guerrilla warfare in which civilians often engage in the fighting, Arquilla states "in information warfare, almost anyone can engage in the fighting."

Consequently, the ability to engage in this form of conflict is now in the hands of small groups and individuals, offering up "the prospect of potentially quite large numbers of information warfare-capable combatants emerging, often pursuing their own, as opposed to some state's policies," Arquilla wrote.

Therefore, a "concern" for information warfare at the time of the Rand study in 1999 was the problem of maintaining "noncombatant immunity." That's because the "civilian-oriented target set is huge and likely to be more vulnerable than the related set of military infrastructures . . . . Since a significant aspect of information warfare is aimed at civilian and civilian-oriented targets, despite its negligible lethality, it nonetheless violates the principle of noncombatant immunity, given that civilian economic or other assets are deliberately targeted."

What Arquillo is saying is that civilians who are alleged to engage in information warfare, such as professors and journalists, lose their "noncombatant immunity" and can be attacked. The "blurriness" of defining "combatants" and "acts of war" was removed after 9/11 with the invention of the "unlawful combatant" designation, later renamed "unprivileged belligerent" to mimic language in the Geneva Conventions.

Then it was just a matter of adding the similarly invented "U.S. domestic common law of war" with its martial law precedents and a framework has been built for seeing critical journalists and law professors as "unprivileged belligerents," as Bradford indiscreetly wrote.

Arquilla claims that information warfare operations extend to the "home front" and are designed "to strike directly at the will and logistical support of an opponent." That is to equate what is deemed information warfare to sabotage of the population's psychological will to fight a war, and dissidents to saboteurs.

Perpetual War

But this is a perpetual war driven by U.S. operations, according to a chapter written by Stephen T. Hosmer on psychological effects of information warfare. Here, it is stated that "the expanding options for reaching audiences in countries and groups that could become future U.S. adversaries make it important that the United States begin its psychological conditioning in peacetime." Thus, it is necessary "to begin to soften the fighting will of the potential adversary's armed forces in the event conflict does occur."

As information warfare is held to be "true war," this means that the U.S. is perpetually committing acts of war against those deemed "potential" adversaries. Little wonder that Vladimir Putin sees Russia as under assault by the United States and attempts to counter U.S. information warfare.

This same logic is applied to counter-insurgency. The 2014 COIN Manual, FM 3-24, defines "Information Operations" as information-related capabilities "to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decisionmaking of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own."

Those we "protect ourselves from" can logically be seen as the internal enemy, as William Bradford saw it, such as critical law professors and journalists, just as Augusto Pinochet did in Chile with dissidents.

With the totalitarian logic of information-warfare theorists, internalized now throughout much of the U.S. government counter-terrorism community, it should be apparent to all but the most obtuse why the DOD deems a journalist who writes critically of U.S. government war policy an "unprivileged belligerent," an enemy, as in the Law of War manual. William C. Bradford obviously absorbed this doctrine but was indiscreet enough to articulate it fully.

It Has Happened Here!

That's the only conclusion one can draw from reading the transcript of the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit. In that lawsuit, plaintiffs, including journalists and political activists, challenged the authority provided under Sec. 1021 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization for removal out from under the protection of the Constitution of those deemed unprivileged belligerents. That is, civilians suspected of lending any "support" to anyone whom the U.S. government might deem as having something to do with terrorism.

"Support" can be as William Whiting described it in 1862 and as what is seen as "information warfare" by the U.S. military today: a sentiment of hostility to the government "to undermine confidence in its capacity or its integrity, to diminish, demoralize . . . its armies, to break down confidence in those who are intrusted with its military operations in the field."

Reminiscent of the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can't Happen Here where those accused of crimes against the government are tried by military judges as in the U.S. Military Commissions, a Justice Department attorney arguing on behalf of the United States epitomized the legal reasoning that one would see in a totalitarian state in arguing why the draconian "Law of War" is a substitute for the Constitution.

The Court asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Torrance if he would agree, "as a principled matter, that the President can't, in the name of the national security of the United States, just decide to detain whomever he believes it is important to detain or necessary to detain to prevent a terrorist act within the United States?"

Rather than giving a straight affirmative answer to a fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution, Torrance dissembled, only agreeing that that description would seem "quite broad," especially if citizens. But he added disingenuously that it was the practice of the government "not to keep people apprehended in the U.S."

Which is true, it is known that people detained by the U.S. military and CIA have been placed everywhere but in the U.S. so that Constitutional rights could not attach. Under Section 1021, that "inconvenience" to the government would not be necessary.

When asked by the Court if he, the Justice Department attorney, would agree that a different administration could change its mind with respect to whether or not Sec. 1021 would be applied in any way to American citizens, he dissembled again, answering: "Is that possible? Yes, but it is speculative and conjecture and that cannot be the basis for an injury in fact."

So U.S. citizens or anyone else are left to understand that they have no rights remaining under the Constitution. If a supposed "right" is contingent upon who is President, it is not a right and the U.S. is no longer under the rule of law.

In discussing whether activist and journalist Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a citizen of Iceland, could be subject to U.S. military detention or trial by military commission, Assistant U.S. Attorney Torrance would only disingenuously answer that "her activities as she alleges them, do not implicate this." Disingenuous because he knew based upon the answer he previously gave that the law of war is arbitrary and its interpretation contingent upon a military commander, whoever that may be, at present or in the future.

What could happen to Ms. Jónsdóttir would be completely out of her control should the U.S. government decide to deem her an "unprivileged belligerent," regardless of whether her expressive activities changed positively or negatively, or remained the same. Her risk of detention per the Justice Department is entirely at the sufferance of whatever administration may be in place at any given moment.

Any doubt that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, along with Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, is believed by the U.S. Executive Branch to give it the untrammeled power that Article 48 of the Weimar Germany constitution gave to the German President in 1933 was settled by the arguments made by the Justice Department attorney in Hedges v. Obama.

Setting First Amendment Aside

One does not need to speculate that the U.S. government no longer sees First Amendment activities as protected. Government arguments, which were made in the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit, revealed that the Justice Department, speaking for the Executive Branch, considers protection of the Bill of Rights subordinate to the claim of "war powers" by the Executive. One can only be willfully blind to fail to see this.

By the Justice Department's court arguments and filings, the protections afforded by the U.S. Bill of Rights are no more secure today than they were to Japanese-Americans when Western District military commander General DeWitt decided to remove them from their homes on the West Coast and intern them in what were initially called, "concentration camps."

The American Bar Association Journal reported in 2014 that Justice Antonin Scalia told students in Hawaii that "the Supreme Court's Korematsu decision upholding the internment of Japanese Americans was wrong, but it could happen again in war time." But contrary to Scalia stating that Korematsu had been repudiated, Korematsu has never been overruled.

The court could get a chance to do so, the ABA article stated, in the Hedges v. Obama case "involving the military detention without trial of people accused of aiding terrorism." But that opportunity has passed.

A U.S. District Court issued a permanent injunction blocking the law's indefinite detention powers but that ruling was overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. A petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asked the justices to overturn Sec. 1021, the federal law authorizing such detentions and stated the justices should consider overruling Korematsu. But the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2014, leaving the Appeals Court's ruling intact.

The Supreme Court's decision to not overturn Korematsu allows General DeWitt's World War II decision to intern Japanese-Americans in concentration camps to stand as a shining example of what Brig. General Marks Martins proudly holds up to the world as the "U.S. domestic common law of war."

Todd E. Pierce retired as a Major in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in November 2012. His most recent assignment was defense counsel in the Office of Chief Defense Counsel, Office of Military Commissions. In the course of that assignment, he researched and reviewed the complete records of military commissions held during the Civil War and stored at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

[Sep 13, 2015] The workings of the Bush administration by Professor David Gries

"By their deeds shall you know them."

Introduction

I am concerned with the way this administration operates. I am not talking about policy -whether we should be at war, or who is right about the economy. Instead, the focus is on what the administration does and how it does it.

The actions of this administration have run counter to Bush's statements of April 2000 and have divided this country as no other administration has done in recent memory.

"I will set a different tone. I will restore civility and respect to our national politics. ... I will work with Republicans and reach out to Democrats ... I will treat the other party with respect, and when we make progress, I will share the credit. ... I will unite our nation, not divide it. I will bring Americans together." George Bush, April 2000

In August 2004, I created the website www.howbushoperates.info , describing the Bush Administration as I saw it, hoping that enough people would read the website and not vote for Bush again. I was alarmed at what the Bush administration had done in 2001 to 2004, and I was even more alarmed at what another 4 years of Bush would do to the US and the world. I did my best, through this website, to help. But not enough people looked at it to make any difference. Perhaps I should have blogged, or something like that.

(You can see the original website on the Wayback machine.)

My worst fears have been realized. Four more years of this administration has ruined the economy not only of the US but of the world. This administration has taken steps to harm, rather than help, the environment. Through its bullying tactics and its actual approval of torture, the US has lost any of its moral authority, and we have lost the US the respect of the world. Its lack of respect for our Constitution, its suppression of and manipulation of information, its lies, its incompetence in handling the Iraq war, its complete lack of planning for the Iraw war and the aftermath --all of these have hurt the United States tremendously. And we, the people, are now paying for it.

This website is the original website www.howbushoperates.info, with a few minor changes. It will remain as long as I have a website. I don't want people to forget how bad this administration has been.

I have had to change some links because, over the years, some links have been broken. In order to compensate for further loss of links, on most articles, I have copied the original webpage onto this website, and it appears as a "local version".

Read this site and weep at the fact that the American People knew what this administration was like four years ago but still allowed him to take over the Presidency a second time. We have ourselves to blame.

I am concerned with the administration's:

  1. Lack of honesty, which has brought about lack of trust.
  2. Manipulation of information to further its goals.
  3. Secrecy, which has kept the American public and Congress from making sound judgements.
  4. Conflict of interest.
  5. Lack of respect for others.
  6. Lack of reasoning and compromise -the administration's way of responding to differing views seems to be to ridicule rather than reason.
  7. Belligerent and arrogant attitude and mode of operation, which has cost our country the respect and compassion of the rest of the world.

I do want an administration that is forceful and strong. But that strong administration has to be:

  1. Honest, trustworthy, ethical.
  2. Respectful of all people and all nations.
  3. Able to engage in dialogue and make decisions based on reason.
  4. Without conflict of interest.
  5. A Uniting force, rather than one that divides.

Everyone - Democrat, Republican, Green, independent, etc. - should be alarmed at what this administration has done and what it may do in the future, if re-elected. A resounding defeat in November is the only way to let the world know that the United States people do not tolerate such an administration.

The links in the left column are to short discussions that back up my opinions. Again, remember that it is not the policies and programs that are at issue here, although I have problems with some of them. Rather, the issue is the way this government has operated, in a self-serving, untrustworthy, unethical, disrespectful, and even nasty, manner.

United we stand. If we stay as divided as we have been divided by this administration, we fall.

If an administration has integrity, ethics, and character, then policies will fall into place, for the administration will be guided by the good of the country and will engage in open, honest, and meaningful dialogue with the whole nation. If an administration has no integrity, ethics, and character, then the nation better beware.

Ethics and family values

The actions of this administration display a disregard for the values which Bush speaks of. Its actions have lost the administration the respect and trust of half the nation. The world is even less trustful and respectful. Below, I give some examples of this. "These are universal values, values we share in all our diversity: Respect, tolerance, responsibility, honesty, self-restraint, family commitment, civic duty, fairness and compassion." George Bush. White House Conference on Character and Community, June 2002.

1. The administration lied to us about the need for going to war in Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and there was no link between Al Quaeda and Iraq. Iraq simply was not the terrorist country that we were told it was. I discuss it here.

The issue is not the war itself; it is the way the administration misled and lied to Congress and the people about why we should be in the war.

2. The Bush campaigns have repeatedly resorted to slander and inuendo. I discuss it here.

3. The Bush-Cheney campaign in Pennsylvania asked their volunteers to obtain the names and addresses of the members of their churches. This is not only unethical; a church involved in such an action would be in danger of losing their status as a tax-exempt religious organization. Some conservative church leaders have denounced this action, but the Bush-Cheney campaign defended it. I discuss it here.

4. The administration withheld information or doctored information in order to sway people and the Congress to their side. Click on "Secrecy" and "Wide-spread misuse of science" in the left column for some examples.

I cannot vote for an administration that has such disdain for ethics and values, that has so little respect for the people that it is supposed to be representing. I would feel better if more people felt this way, for the character of an administration is of utmost importance.

Lies about the need for war

The issue at hand is not whether we should be at war or not. It is the behavior of the administration in getting us into war -the lies that got us into the war and lost us the respect and trust of the world. "Some people think it's inappropriate to draw a moral line. Not me. For our children to have the lives we want for them, they must learn to say yes to responsibility . . . yes to honesty." George W. Bush, June 12, 1999

The administration got us into war with Iraq for three reasons, they say:

  1. To eliminate Saddam Hussein's WMD. It is clear that he had no WMD, and it is also clear that the administration knew it. In fact, in 2001, both Powell and Condoleezza Rice stated publicly that there were no WMD; two years later, they and the administration told a different story.
  2. To diminish the threat of international terrorism. There was no such threat. It was known that there were no connections between Hussein and Al Qaeda.
  3. To promote democracy in Iraq and surrounding areas. This is hypocrisy. In the 1980s, members of the administration, like Cheney and Rumsfeld, were quite happy to embrace Hussein and Iraq. At that time, even though they knew that Iraq was using chemical weapons against its own people, Cheney and Rumsfeld did not speak out or suggest that the U.S. discontinue its support of Hussein. Instead, they embraced Hussein and Iraq.

Rep. Henry Waxman has released a report of the U.S. House of Representatives (16 March 2004) that identifies 237 misleading statements about Iraq made by President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in 125 public appearances. How can you trust the administration? . Here is the report (pdf file). This webpage contains a search engine that allows you to view all the misleading statements (and see why it is misleading). These are official items from the U.S. House of Representatives.

This website (here it is as text only) shows ten lies made by the administration regarding why we went to war. With each statement, facts are given to prove that it was a lie. You can find hundreds of websites with the same theme.

Whether we should be at war now is a complex issue, and I don't address it. For me, what matters is that the administration lied to get its way. Such behaviour in such a serious context means that the administration cannot be trusted, and an administration that cannot be trusted is a danger to us all.

Dishonest politics

One expects the administration to be honest and open in dealing with Congress and in presenting its case to the people, and Bush said he would be.

But the behavior of this administration has been just the opposite. Besides its misrepresentations and lies about Iraq, here are some examples.

"And together we will create and America that is open .... I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation. ... Whether you voted for me or not, I will do my best to serve your interests and I will work to earn your respect. I will be guided by President Jefferson's sense of purpose, to stand for principle, to be reasonable in manner, and above all, to do great good for the cause of freedom and harmony." George Bush, Acceptance Speech, 13 Dec 2000
  1. The Medicare bill. In November 2003, the House of Representatives passed a medical bill. Because of the rising deficit, they were worried about cost. Bush promised that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But the administration's own analysis in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had told the administration that it would cost over $550 billion. The bill would not have passed had the truth been known. Chief actuary Richard S. Foster was told he would be fired if he revealed the figures to lawmakers. Read about it here. Public Citizen has information on how drug companies and HMOs led an army of nearly 1,000 lobbyists to promote this misguided legislation, spending almost $141 million.
  2. Misuse of science. Click on the link on misuse of science on the left to see just how much this administration has attempted to use politics, hiding of facts, and misrepresentation of facts for its political gain.
  3. Hiding poverty numbers. The number of people living in poverty rose by 1.3 million in 2003. The Census Bureau Report on such things comes out in September. But the Bush administration had it appear in August instead, well before the Republican Convention and when people generally take vacations. Read about it here (here is a local version)
  4. Leaking news. Bush promised to do everything he could to fight the war on terror. Yet, in August, for their own political gain, the administration leaked the fact that alleged terrorist Kahn had been apprehended. Kahn was a key intelligence source, and the leak allowed several terrorists to escape. Read about it here (here is a local version).
  5. Ashcroft repeatedly lied to Congress about the administration's counter-terrorism effort. He told them terrorism had been his number 1 priority before 9/11; records show that he did not include it as one of the department's 7 goals, putting it as a subgoal beneath gun violence and drugs. He said that his predecessor's (Reno) plan did not mention counterterrorism, which was false. He lied about the amount of money that the FBI requested and that the administration gave the FBI. Read about it here (here is a local version).
  6. Condoleezza Rice repeatedly lied to 9/11 Commission. She made over ten false claims. For example, she said that the Bush Administration has been committed to the "transformation of the FBI into an agency dedicated to fighting terror." The truth is that before 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft de-emphasized counterterrorism at the FBI. Moreover, in the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI. Read about it here (here is a local version).

Suppression of rights

Bush says he is for freedom and democracy, but his administration has not acted that way. The administration has held secret --and illegal-- deportation hearings. People have been hindered --sometimes illegally-- from voicing quiet protests at Bush appearances. And others have been investigated for no valid reason --partly because of the Patriot Act.

Many people in the US are really afraid of the suppressive tone of this administration.

"Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil. There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides." John Stuart Mill.

"Restriction on free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." William O. Douglas.

"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

Secret courts suppression of protesters Unwarranted investigations
Search the internet and you can find many more examples of unwarranted investigations and suppression of protestors.

1. Secret Visa courts are illegal. (Article ( local version) in Guardian Newspapers, 27 Aug 2002). The Bush administration held hundreds of deportation proceedings in secret. A federal appeal court found them to be illegal. Judge Damon Keith wrote in his ruling that, "Democracies die behind closed doors." The ruling describes the secrecy surrounding the government's response as "profoundly undemocratic". The ruling concludes that, "The executive branch seeks to uproot people's lives outside the public eye and behind a closed door."

2. Suppression of protest at Bush appearances. A number of people have been hindered or stopped from appearing at Bush evenets, even when these appearances were on public grounds. Some people have been arrested, with the case thrown out of court later. Others have not been allowed into Bush events, even though they were doing nothing wrong. In several situations, dissenters are expected to stay in a restricted zone, away from Bush or his motorcade, while non-dissenters are allowed to approach much more closeley. This kind of suppressionof free speech is frightening. Here are just a few examples, some of which go back to 2002.

Nicole and Jeff Rank (local version) were arrested in Charleston; the judge threw out the charges. Nicole was immediately fired from her job with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but later reinstated with an apology. The City of Charleston said they should not have been arrested.

Daniel Finsel (local version) was arrested simply for carrying a sign at a Bush event.

Nelson (local version), an elected County supervisor in Wisconsin, was kicked out of Bush event for wearing a hidden Kerry shirt (the shirt was not showing, but someone had seen him in it earlier).

20 of 37 members (local version) of a Peace Action group were not allowed to fly from Milwaulkee to a protest in Washington because there names were on a "No fly" list. No one will say how their names got on it.

Anti-Bush students (local version) were completely silenced at their Ohio State Graduation when Bush came to speak.

Bill Neel (local version) was arrested in Butler, Pennsylvania; the district Justice threw the case out and returned his protest sign to him.

Jan Lentz, Sonja Haught, and Mauricio Rosas (local version) two grandmothers and a gay activist, were arrested for displaying dissenting opinions; others with pro-Bush signs were not. All charges were dropped.

3. Unwarranted investigations. Some people have been detained or investigated simply because they spoke out. Others, for what seems to be no reason at all. Here are some examples.

The Kjars were visited by the US Secret Service because they had a bumper sticker "KING GEORGE-Off With His Head".

Barry Reingold (local version) was visited by the FBI for speaking his mind about Bush, terrorism, and Afghanistan at a gymn.

Daniel Muller (local version) asked for 4,000 stamps without the American Flag on them. The police were called, and Muller was interrogated. He didn't get the stamps until the next day, and only after an interrogation by a federal postal inspector.

Incompetence

Suppression of dissent by the Bush administration is mentioned in several places of this website. Judging by what I read about the Iraq war, I conclude that the administration's lack of desire to listen seriously to dissenting opinions -basically their suppression of them- is responsible for his incompetence in leading the war. "I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward

Yes, I mean incompetence. Although the troops have performed admirably, this war has not been led well. Bush may boast loudly about his war on terror, but his actions show incompetence. Do you remember 1 May 2003 (local version; the event used to be mentioned on the WhiteHouse website but was removed) when Bush flew onto the carrier, with a giant sign "Mission Accomplished" on it, and told us that "major combat operations have ended" and that we have prevailed --implying the war was won? Did that show any understanding of the situation? (Six months later, Bush disavowed any connection with that sign, but the White House later said that the White House asked a private vendor to produce it. See this article (local version)) And two weeks before, on 16 April 2003, Gen. Tommy Franks was telling commanders in Baghdad that it was time to make plans to pull forces out of Iraq. They simply did not understand the situation. (See this article (local version).)

Below are some points about the war. Some of them show that the Bush administration did not listen to advice. Others show that the Bush administration did not care about important issues and that they simply did not plan properly.

No plans for rebuilding Iraq Warnings about preventing looting ignored Inadequate planning, wrong expectations
Disbanding the Iraqi army the worst mistake Inadequate troop support Rumsfeld doesn't act on advice
Abu Ghraib fiasco 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives missing since April 2003 Washington Post cites Bush's failure to follow advice
Republican and Democrat Senators accuse Bush administration of incompetence in rebuilding Iraq

1. No plan for rebuilding Iraq. This article (local version)says that post-war planning was non-existent. It talks about a meeting of war planners and intelligence planners in March 2003 (the month the Iraq war started) in which a lieutenant colonol who was giving a briefing on the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war could say only, "To Be Provided".

A veteran State Department officer involved directly in Iraq policy said, "We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory." The report was, "based on official documents and on interviews with more than three dozen current and former civilian and military officials who participated directly in planning for the war and its aftermath." Search the web, and you will find many articles reporting that there was no plan for rebuilding Iraq. To top of page

2. Warnings about preventing looting ignored. After the US troops took Baghdad, the looting began (local version). Hospitals, schools, university buildings, and more were targets. The worst looting was at the Iraq Museum, which contained the largest collection of Near East artifacts in the world. For two days, the looting went on, with no one trying to stop them. Not only the collection but computers, furniture supplies -everything was taken. This looting of so many places showed complete lack of planning by the Bush administration.

The Bush administration was warned about looting! This site (local version)says that archeologists and others spoke repeatedly to the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Pentagon about the need to protect musuems. Further, the U.S. is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, which makes clear that the protection of mseums, hospitals, etc., are the responsibility of the occupying force.

This website (local version) says that the only sites that the US Forces guarded were the Ministry of Oil, the Ministry of Interior, and oil fields. The Bush administration respected and protected oil, but not the Geneva Convention or the people of Iraq. To top of page

3. Inadequate planning, wrong expectations. The administration did not expect the Iraq war to last this long. Remember when Bush landed on a carrier and declared victory, saying, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."? (From his speech on 2 May 2003) Paul Bremer said (local version), "There was planning, but planning for a situation that didn't arise." The Bush administration simply did not forsee what would happen.

On 1 April 2003, Rumsfeld sharply rebuked (local version) a senior battlefield commander for telling reporters that Pentagon planners failed to anticipate the fierce level of Iraqi resistance, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Myers complained that remarks by retired generals on TV was not helpful. These people were voicing rational but dissenting opinions, which the Bush administration did not want to hear.

In November 2003, John McCain criticized the Bush administration's conduct of the war and challenged Rumfeld's assertion that the 132,000 American troops in Iraq can defeat the insurgency in Iraq. "The simple truth is that we do not have sufficient forces in Iraq to meet our military objectives," said McCain.

An article in the Antagonist says that, "Prior to the war, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, said publicly that he thought the invasion plan lacked sufficient manpower, and he was slapped down by the Pentagon's civilian leadership for saying so," and that "During the war, concerns about troop strength expressed by retired generals also provoked angry denunciations by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government, has also said that there were not enough troops in May 2003.

The above paragraphs reinforce my opinion that this administration does not take criticism of its views easily and is swayed more by their ideology than by reason. To top of page

4. Disbanding the Iraqi army the worst mistake. In May 2003, a month or so into the war, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army. The order was reversed a month later, but then it was too late. Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni called the move the Bush administration's "worst mistake" in postwar Iraq. This mistake left a vaccuum. It left hundreds of soldiers with no work. This article looks at the poor planning and follow-through that caused this mistake. To top of page

5. Inadequate troop support. An article in washingtonpost.com says that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez wrote to the pentagon in winter 2004 that "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low." He complained about lack of spare parts for helicopters and tanks. Also, "his soldiers still needed protective inserts to upgrade 36,000 sets of body armor but that their delivery had been postponed twice in the month before he was writing."

This comes on the heels of reports that a group of soldiers refused to go on a mission because their vehicles were dangerously out of repair and didn't have proper armour on them.

On 1 October 2004, Bush said (local version), "When America puts our troops in harm's way, I believe they deserve the best training, the best equipment, and the whole-hearted support of our government. " His actions are not consistent with his words. To top of page

6. Rumsfeld doesn't act on advice. This 30 September 2004 (local version) says that a study commisioned by Rumsfeld says that "the military doesn't have enough people for its current pace of missions." But Rumsfeld is not acting on the commissions recommendations. What is more important, having enough troops to carry out all missions or postponing any such actions until after the election? To top of page

7. The Abu Graib fiasco. We have all seen horrible pictures of Abu Graib, and we know that prisoners were tortured and humiliated. I don't know whether officers were involved or whether orders came from the top to torture in this manner. But at the least, this fiasco shows incompetence at all levels. We storm Iraq as "liberators"; why weren't there procedures in place to ensure that prisoners would be treated properly, so that the Iraqis would see us as friends and not enemies? Why weren't all soldiers and civilians told to respect all Iraqis and their customs, even prisoners? How do you expect to be viewed as friendly liberators if you don't treat people respectfully?

The blame for this fiasco, in my mind, falls squarely on the Bush administration for not preparing soldiers and civilians properly.

See this article (local version) for a good discussion of this issue. To top of page

8. 380 tons of explosives missing. We are just learning (late October 2004) that 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives have been missing since April 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq. A NY Times article (local version) of 25 October 2004 says that the facility was supposed to be under U.S. military control but is now a no-man's land. The U.S. was warned about this stockpile of explosives before the war. Only incompetent planning could have led to such a fiasco, which puts the whole world in danger. To top of page

9. Washington Post cites Bush's failure to listen to advice. On 24 October, the Washington Post Editorial (local version) endorsed Kerry for President. The Editorial found good and bad things to say about both Bush and Kerry. But the Editorial says essentially the same thing I do: Bush's character and ethics did not let him listen to advice, in particular, in planning for postwar reconstruction. The Editorial, says that, "the damage caused by that willful indifference is incalculable." The Editorial also says that "the administration repeatedly rebuffed advice to commit sufficient troops. Its disregard for the Geneva Conventions led to a prison-torture scandal ...."

Bush talks a good game; he has everyone believing that only he can handle the terrorists. However, the facts say that he has been incompetent in leading the war effort.

10. Republican and Democrat Senators accuse Bush administration of incompetence. An article in USA Today (local version), 16 Sept. 2004, says that several Senators, including the two top Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, accuse the Bush administration of incompetence in its efforts to rebuild Iraq. Of $13 billion pledged by other countries to rebuild Iraq, only $1.2 billion had been spent. The article goes into more details.

Transferring full sovereignty. On 24May 2004, Bush said that (local version), "The first of these steps will occur next month, when our coalition will transfer full sovereignty to a government of Iraqi citizens ...." It was a lie, and everyone knew it. He knew he could not transfer full sovereignty, and he has not done so. Why does he lie so purposely? And it was not an error, for he repeated it at least in one other instance.

Flaunting and tampering with the regulatory process

Agencies issue rules and regulations to flesh out and implement laws passed by Congress. Agencies must go through an open and transparent process in making regulations, including obtaining comments from the public and justifying what they do in a written record.

The Bush administration has tampered with this process, sometimes illegally, and has made widespread misuse of this process. In many cases, its use of the regulatory process has not been in the interests of the public.

"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Harry S. Truman

"I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward

Below, we outline some of the things this administration has done to the regulatory process and give you details on some specific cases. Some of this material (but not all) is culled from a Report by OMB Watch (pdf file), a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and advocacy center founded in 1983 that "promotes an open, accountable government responsive to community needs". We urge you to read it to see the extent of what this administration is doing. Many of these points can be found in other places on the internet.

1. Illegally freezing the regulatory process 2. Postponing regulations until after the election 3. Forbidding public release of data
4. Tuberculosis testing: an example of increasing secrecy 5. Protecting coal workers 6. Subtle changes

1. Freezing the regulatory process. On inauguration day 2001, the Bush administration issued a directive to stop the processing of all regulations until it had reviewed them. Some of these regulations had already been published and were to go into affect some time later, and their postponement was illegal. Under governing law, an agency may not adopt a proposal to change a rule's effective date, but the directive suggested that agencies not seek public comment. This one directive illustrates the lack of respect this administration would have for the public throughout its tenure.

Hundreds of regulations, some of which had been in the process of development for years and years were stopped in their tracks. No other administration had ever issued such a blanket statement.

A report of the Majority Staff of the U.S. Senate (pdf file), ordered by Senator Lieberman, discusses this freezing. This report also goes into detail on three regulations that had already been issued and whose suspension was done without the required justification: (1) A rule concerning roadless forests. (2) A rule regulating hardrock mining on public lands. (3) A rule to lower allowable arsenic content in water. Two of these regulations were significantly weakened; the third was adopted only after a long struggle, mainly because the Bush administration could not find the scientific data to back up its case. To top of page

2. Postponing rules until after the election. A NY Times article on 27 September 2004 reports that the administration is postponing the adoption of regulations because of heavy lobbying by industry. One regulation would sharply restict what can be in cattle feed. The article says that the National Cattlemen's Beef Association broke its nonpartisan tradition and endorsed President Bush for re-election after the postponement. Other postponements have to do with prescription coverage under Medicare, healthcare, the environment, and telecommunication. The message is that big business takes preference over the needs and safety of the public. To top of page

3. Forbidding public release of data and other business-pleasing changes. A NY Times article from 27 August 2004 says that a new regulation forbids public release of data relating to unsafe motor vehicles. The article goes on to say that the adminsitration has been quietly changing health rules, environmental initiatives, and safety standards in ways that please business but dismay interest groups that represent the public.

4. Tuberculosis testing: an example of increasing secrecy. This item is from an article in WashingtonPost.com. Since 1993, regulations for dealing with tuberculosis prevention have been under developed. The Bush administration stopped the process when it ame into office. Then, on 31 December 2003, it canceled the process completely.

The article says that this is just one of many example of how the Bush administration ahs been using the regulatory process to redirect government out of the public eye. Bush has canceled more regulatory processes that he inherited than he has completed, and many of them have been canceled after years and years of work. The regulatory process has been changed profoundly, and it is has been at the expense of openness and public scrutiny. top of page

5. Protecting coal workers. An article in the NY Times on 9 August 2004 discusses how the administration is weakening and removing safety regulations for mining coal. One proposal to update technology to better protect workers in two-story-high trucks was scrapped in 2001; since then, 16 miners have been killed in hauling accidents. To top of page

6. Subtle changes. An article in WashingtonPost.com from 17 August 2004 discusses subtle, almost unnoticed changes in regulations that have profound effects. With regard to mountain-top removal to get at coal, a change reclassifying the debris from objectionable "waste" to legally acceptable "fill" makes it easier to dump mining debris into explicitly protected streambeds. One proposal would scale back the federal government's legal obligation to police state mining agencie, by reclassifying certain duties from "nondiscretionary" to "discretionary".

The Haliburton affair: conflict of interest at its worst

The issue of the company Haliburton represents the worst, in terms of conflict of interest and even corruption. It shows how much people in this government can do for their own self-interest and the interest of their friends if not held in check. "There is a fundamental difference of opinion in Washington, and it starts with folks in Washington forgetting whose money we're spending. All that money is not the government's money; it's the working people's money." George Bush, 3 September 2001

The White House would rather you not know about the Haliburton affair. Even though Cheney was CEO of Haliburton for five years before becoming Vice President, this is not mentioned in the White House biography of Cheney (as of 7 August 2004) --see http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/. (In case the White House changes this page, here is what it looked like, without the images, on 7 August 2004).

Below, we give a brief history of Haliburton. But first we note that Haliburton favoritism has been going on (local version) in spite of the Corps of Engineers' chief contracting officer objecting to it. She refused to sign the contract. Her signature is required, but they let it go through with her assistant's signature. She was threatened with demotion after raising the issue. This information has just come to light in the last few weeks. See also this article (local version).

Brief history of Haliburton:

1. Early 1990s. Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, gives contracts to Halliburton to rebuild facilities in Kuwait that had been destroyed in the first Persian Gulf war.

2. Early 1990 to 1993. Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, commissions Halliburton to do a classified (secret) study concerning replacing the U.S. military's logistics by work done by private companies. Halliburton says, yes, a company can do the work. In August 1992, with essentially no bidding, Halliburton is selected by the US Army Corps of Engineers to do all work needed to support the military for the next five years! Thereafter, Halliburton (or its subsidiary KBR) and its military logistics business escalated rapidly. In the ten years thereafter revenues totaled $2.5 billion.

3. 1995-2000. Cheney is CEO of Halliburton. Under Cheney, Halliburton increases its offshore tax havens from 9 to 44, cutting its taxes from $302 million in 1998 to an $85 million refund in 1999. That's almost $400 million they took from taxpayers in one year.

4. During Cheney's tenure at Haliburton, Halliburton did business with countries like Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Iran, and Nigeria even though the US had imposed strict sanctions on them. They skirted sanctions, and they lobbied against sanctions. Some of this business was illegal, and Halliburton was fined for it.

5. Spring 2000. Cheney heads Bush's Vice-Presidential Search committee --while continuing as CEO of Halliburton. He ends up picking himself as Vice President.

6. July 2000. Cheney is asked whether Halliburton or its subsidaries were trying to do business with Iraq. He says no; he had a firm policy that they wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even if it was legal. This was a blatant lie: subsidiaries sold over $73 million in oil-production parts to Iraq.

7. 2000. As CEO of Halliburton, Cheney clears $20 million in one year, after taxes.

8. July 2000. Cheney's severance package from Halliburton (as CEO) is far and above what other company officers got when they left --some say it is as high as $62 million in stocks and stock options.

9. December 2001. KBR (Halliburton subsidiary) is granted an open-ended contract for Army troops supply and Navy construction, wherever U.S. troops go, for the next 10 years (so far, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq). This unique contract has no ceiling on cost. KBR is reimbursed for every dollar spent plus a base fee of 1 percent, which guarantees profit. Plus, they can get a bonus as a percentage of company costs.

10. January 2003. Bush sends a letter to Congress exercising his authority, as president, to waive section 9007, thus removing sanctions and allowing assistance to oil-rich Azerbaijan (see point 4). This administration invites the head of Azerbaijan to the White House, even though this person was the main reason for earlier sanctions against Azerbaijan. Reason? Azerbaijan has oil.

11. September 2003. Cheney states that when he became Vice President, he severed all ties with Halliburton, as required by law. This was a lie. Government accounting offices said that the compensation he continues to receive is a conflict of interest.

12. Dec 2003. Halliburton, without competitive bidding, is given a contract to restore the Iraqi oil sector. It is billed initially as a contract for putting out oil-well fires, something in which Halliburton has little expertise. It turns out that the contract is really for the full restoration of the oil business in Iraq. It is kept secret because of the "emergency conditions". It is one of the highest military logistics contracts in history.

13. June 2004. Cheney has said all along that he had no contact with government officials who coordinated Halliburtons many contracts with the military. A March 2003 Pentagon email refutes this claim. It says that action on a no-bid Halliburton contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. This has to do with a no-bid contract given to Halliburton for rebuilding Iraq.

14. August 2004. The SEC (Security Exchange Comission) levies a fine of $7.5 million on Halliburton for illegal accounting changes in 1998, when Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. Some people think that politics may have shielded Cheney and others from being held more accountable.


Serious doubts remain about whether a company with a record like Halliburton's should even be eligible to receive government contracts in the first place. This company has been accused of cost overruns, tax avoidance, and cooking the books and has a history of doing business in government-sanctioned countries like Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Many of Halliburton's no-bid contracts are allowed because of waivers by the Bush administration that allow government agencies to handpick companies for Iraqi

World opinion

We live in an increasingly smaller -and dangerous- world, and all countries must work together to solve all the problems. The United States, as the one remaining "superpower", bears a special responsibility to use its strength for the good of the world. This requires a president who has the trust and respect of leaders around the world. We had that with Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton.

"But in the international online media, the vast majority of commentators are harshly critical of President George W. Bush. On every continent pundits are faulting Bush for his persona as well as his policies. Most dislike his conduct of the war in Iraq. Many say his attitude toward the rest of the world is contemptuous, misinformed and dangerous." Jefferson Morley, WashingtonPost .com (local version), 30 Aug 2004.

But, through his belligerent, arrogant, uncompromising, extremist attitude, Bush has lost all trust and respect. The message that this administration has sent to the world is (to quote Carl Bernstein), "the imperialist states can do what they want; the semi-colonial states must do what they are told." The support after 9/11 has given way to the vision of the United States as an imperial power of the worst kind. We are now simply an arrogant bully.

Condoleezza Rice sends the message when she defends the administration's refusal to join with all other countries in supporting an international war crimes court. She said, "The United States is special because it is a bigger target with forces all over the world. So maybe there is some difference in interests there." So, we are special. You little guys go work together; we'll save the world on our own.

Jimmy Carter, at the Democratic Convention in summer 2004, said, "Unilateral acts and demands have isolated the United States from the very nations we need to join us in combating terrorism." In just 34 months, he said, "all the goodwill [after 9/11] was squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and calculations."

Being strong does not mean you have to lose respect. John Kennedy was strong, but he had everyone's respect.

To see the opinion the world has, type in "opinion bush world" into the search engine google and read the articles that are found. The bottom of this page contains links to a few such articles.

The administration shows no sign of changing its operations and attitudes toward the rest of the world. Re-election would be a disaster.

Some facts

  1. The table on the left is from a newly released poll (9 September 2004) (local version) taken over the summer.
  2. An opinion poll (local version) by CBSNEWS.com (4 March 2004) reported these percentages of people who had a negative view of Bush: Britain, 66%; Canada, 66%; Spain, 75%; France, 80%; Germany, 80%, Mexico, over 50%, Italy, over 50%.
  3. In June 2003 (local version), a poll showed that nearly 2/3 of the British had an unfavourable opinion of Bush. Asked who is more dangerous to world peace and stability, United States was rated higher than al-Qaeda by respondents in both Jordan (71%) and Indonesia (66%). The US was rated more dangerous than Iran by people in Jordan, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil and more dangerous than Syria by respondents all the countries polled, except for Australia, Israel, and the United States.
  4. This page (local version) contains information on a number of polls like the ones mentioned above.

Do these polls matter? A leader leads with trust and respect. It is obvious that the Bush administration can no longer lead the world.

The isolationist, extremist attitude of the administration

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor, said in June 2004, "It is not only the Iraq policy of the Bush administration that has caused this [the opinion of the world to turn against the United States]. The Bush administration is the first administration since the onset of the Cold War 50 years ago not to place itself in the political mainstream, not to reflect moderation, not to practice at least de facto bipartisanship, but to embrace extremist principles. Inevitably, extremism produces recklessness." The administration has become increasingly isolated from the world, due to its attitudes and its refusal to engage with other countries.

Below is a list of examples. Taken one at a time, one might find valid reasons for it. Taken together, one gets the feeling that this administration feels that it can do everything by itself. It is not leading, it is bullying.

  1. Started the War on Iraq without UN sanction for it.
  2. Refused to join with other countries in the international war crimes court.
  3. Refused to sign agreement on limiting the transfer of small weapons.
  4. Walked out of a biological weapons convention agreed to by 143 nations.
  5. Refused to sign treaty barring anti-personnel land mines.
  6. Withdrew from anti-ballistic missile treaty.
  7. Refused to sign the Kyoto agreement.

Links to a few articles

1. World opinion moves against Bush. Article (local version) by Simon Tisdall in the Guardian unlimited, 23 January 2003.

2. Bush withdraws from the world. Article (local version) by Ronald Asmus in The Age, 21 August 2004.

3. Foreign views of US darken after Sept 11. Article (local version) in the NY Times.

4. Bush turns Europe's consensus on its head. Article (no longer available; obtained from Wayback machine) in the Telegraph [UK], 20 September 2003.

5. Billionaire Soros blasts Bush, calls on President to honor world opinion. article (local version) in Post-gazette.com, 28 February 2003.

6. Mr. Bush is abusing both the UN and international law. Article (local version) by Jonathan Power in New War on Terror, 14 October 2001.

7. World opinion is more hostile to America than at any time in our history. Article (local version) in NPQ by Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1 June 2004.

8. History lesson: GOP must stop Bush. Article (local version) by Carl Bernstein in USA Today, 23 May 2004.

9. Bush demeanor fuels dissent. Article (local version) by Vijay Ramanavarapu in The Lantern, 10 March 2003.

10. Bush at the UN: Washington's war ultimatum to the world. Article (local version) by Editorial board, World Socialist Web Site, 13 September 2002.

11. Bush's unilateralism aggravates world's problems. Article (local version) by Robert F. Drinan, National Catholic Reporter, 10 January 2003.

12. BBC News: World wants Kerry as President, 9/7/2004. Article. (Here's a local, text copy)

Secrecy

The Bush administration would have you believe that it is a government for the people and by the people. The way the government operates suggests just the opposite. It is secretive and manipulative, attempting to show us only what it wants us to see. Below are examples. For more, see this website (local version). "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Harry S. Truman

"I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward

1. Undermining laws that promote public access 2. Curtailing freedom of information 3. Dept. of Justice hides its skeletons
4. Hiding presidential papers 5. Hiding energy task force info 6. Altering an EPA report
7. Blocking an EPA warning 8. Hiding cuts in National Park Services 9. Altering 9/11 facts
10. Opposing the 9/11 commission 11. Censoring the Supreme Court 12. Ending the viewing of coffins
13. Suppressing info on snowmobiles 14. Auto safety info no longer public 15. No protection for federal whistleblowers

1. The Henry Waxman report. An extensive report released by Rep. Henry Waxman shows that the Bush administration has consistently undermined the laws that promote public access to government records while systematically expanding the laws that authorize secret government operations. Here is an official report (pdf file) of the U.S. House of Representatives. Below, I show just a few of the items that I collected before finding this report. To top of page

2. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). When the FOIA was enacted in 1966, President Johnson said, "No one should be able to pull curtains of secrecy around decisions that can be revealed without injury to the public interest." The Clinton memorandum (pdf file) told his government about the importance of the FOIA and instructed them to follow it in letter and spirit. The Ashcroft memorandum (pdf file) does the opposite: it expressly encourages agencies to look for reason to deny access to information. To top of page

3. The U.S. Dept. of Justice. After disregarding requests for more than a year for a consultant's study about the department's efforts to ensure diversity, the department released the 186-page document-with many lines and pages blacked out. It took more effort to get the whole document. It looks like the administration's policies on FOIA (see pt. 1) were being followed. Here are some of the sentences that had been blacked out:

  1. Minorities are substantially more likely to leave the Department than whites.
  2. Minorities are significantly under-represented in management ranks.
  3. Minorities perceive unfairness in a number of human resources practices, such as hiring and promotion.

Here is the blacked-out report (pdf file) and the real report (pdf file). Read about it here (local version). To top of page

4. Presidential papers and executive privilege. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 makes presidential records public property and requires that the records be made public 12 years after a presidency has ended. Therefore, the Reagan-Bush papers should have been made public when Bush, Jr. became president. But Bush immediately signed an excutive order keeping them hidden, and potentially indefinitely. What doesn't Bush want you to see? A coalition has filed suit in federal court, but the case has not yet been settled. Read about it here (local version). To top of page

5. Who was on the energy task force? In January 2001, Bush created an energy task force, under the direction of Cheney. This task force met and submitted recommendations to Congress. Congress asked to see the list of task-force members. The Bush administration refused, and the case is now in the courts. Why shouldn't we all be able to know who was on the committee? Wouldn't you like to know who is making energy policy for the nation? Why the secrecy? To top of page

6. Altering an EPA Report. The White House forced (local version) the Environmental Protection Agency to remove from its 2003 report on the state of the environment large sections that talked about the risks of global warming. For more examples of such actions, click on "Widespread misuse of science" in the left column. To top of page

7. Blocking an EPA Warning. The White House blocked a nationwide alert by the EPA about the danger of a certain kind of insulation that contained a dangerous asbestos for over a year. St. Louis Dispatch, December 29, 2003. (pdf file) To top of page

8. Hiding cuts in National Parks Services. In Spring 2004, the Interior Department was criticized for making cuts in visitors services and then trying to hide the cuts from the public. According to the memo, "the majority of Northeast Region Parks are beginning this fiscal year with fewer operating dollars than in FY03. Additionally, the absorption of pay costs, necessary assessments and other rising, fixed costs have further eroded operating dollars." The memo suggested using the term "service level adjustment" instead of "cut". The memo also said,

We will need to be sure that adjustments are taken from as many areas as is possible so that it won't cause public or political controversy. ...

and

A statement about cutting 10 seasonal positions does tells us how that affects the visitor so you must put it into words that describe service level adjustments to visitors, resource protection, facility operations, etc.

Here is the memo (pdf file). Here is an article about it (local version). To top of page

9. Altering facts during 9/11. Directly after 9/11, the White House forced (local version) the EPA to change its statements about public health risks in NY to make them sound less alarming. To top of page

10. The 9/11 Commission. Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 commission, whose purpose (local version) was to find out how the goverment dealt with terror that morning. He gave in to pressure, and it was created. The administration stalled (local version) in letting the Commission read crucial documents, and the Commission had to ask for an extension of time as well as more funds. These were given only after pressure from Congress and the press. The administration tried to place (article no longer accessible) all sorts of restrictions on who could read certain documents and what they could do with them. To top of page

The administration refused to let anyone from the administration testify before the Commission. Again, only after pressure, did Bush himself and Condoleezza Rice testify, and only under certain conditions. This website (local pdf version) outlines how the administration sought to obstruct and discredit the 9/11 investigation. To top of page

11. Censoring the Supreme Court. In documentation for a case concerning the ACLU and the Patriot Act, the Justice Department blacked out passages that it felt should not be publically released, ostensibly for national security reasons. Here is one passage that was blacked out-not for security reasons but in order to stifle dissent:

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

As the webpage (local version) from which we got this says, this is a blatant misuse of power. To top of page

12. Ending media coverage of returning coffins. The administration banned the filming of coffins with killed soldiers arriving from Iraq. The reason, most people admit, is that it hurt the administration's image. Here's an article on it (local version). To top of page

13. Snowmobiles in Yellowstone. The administration touted the use of "quieter" snowmobiles in Yellowstone, even though they knew months earlier that the new snowmobiles were actually much louder. They simply suppressed the information (local version). To top of page

14. Auto safety data no longer public. A two-paragraph decision buried deep in the Federal Register makes previously public information relating to unsafe automobiles or defective parts unavailable to the public. Few people knew about this act, but awareness is growing. Here's a blog on it (local version) from 18 August 2004. To top of page

15. Bush administration doesn't want whistleblowers. (Article (local version) in the NY Times, 3 Oct 2004.) Whistleblowers are people who report fraud, waste, or wrongdoing when their employers dismiss their concerns. Whistleblowers are acting in the interests of the public, and they need protection. A bill before Congress would increase the very poor protections for federal employees, but the Bush administration doesn't want the new law.

On 15 March 2004 (pdf file), four Congressmen wrote to Bush, asking him and his administration not to retaliate against a Medicare official who came out with the fact that administration officials told him he would be severely reprimanded if he gave certain information to Congress. They cited two recent cases where the Whitehouse had tried to discredit whistleblowers.

Here are examples of what has happened to federal worker whistleblowers under this administration:

Misuse of science
The Union of Concerned Scientists investigated the misuse of science by the Bush administration. So far, over 5300 scientists have signed a statement supporting the resulting report (March 2004), including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors, and university chairs and presidents. "Science, like any field of endeavor, relies on freedom of inquiry; and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS research to genetic engineering to food additives, government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance." President George H.W. Bush, 1990

Here are the findings of the investigation:

1. There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being.

2. There is strong documentation of a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda.

3. There is evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about "sensitive" topics.

4. There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration are unprecedented.

The investigation found not one or two incidences but a widespread practice of abuse, ranging from deleting material in reports to undermining the quality and integrity of the appointment process. The report says that,

This behavior by the administration violates the central premise of the scientific method, and is therefore of particularly grave concern to the scientific community. But it should also concern the American public, which has every right to expect its government to formulate policy on the basis of objective scientific knowledge in policies that affect the health, well-being and safety of its citizens.

Here is the executive summary (as a pdf file), and here is the full report (as a pdf file). If you are a scientist, please take the time to read the discussion and the report and, if you are so inclined, sign the statement of support.

What they do counts, not what they say

If the administration has integrity, ethics, and character, then policies will fall into place,
for the administration will be guided by the good of the country, and
it will engage in open, honest, and meaningful dialog with the whole nation.

If an administration has no integrity, ethics, and character, then the nation better beware.

Politicians may promise something but don't always deliver. They may say one thing but do another.

We tend to get our information from TV, in small messages, political ads, and speeches that are designed to sway us rather than to give us information. In this sense, TV has been the worst thing for politics, for it emphasizes show and entertainment rather than content.

Today, it is best to go by what people do rather than what they say.

"This television image can have its disadvantages. One of the most prevalent drawbacks is that it shifts the electorate's - and the candidate's - attention from his policy to his image. People will judge the candidate on looks rather than ideas." John Gans

"Television inherently simplifies complex ideas into emotional, self-oriented moral and political impulses." Jeffrey Scheur

"His [Kerry's] very skill in oratory may be his undoing, because in the political arena, the era of oratory is over. We live in the moment of the sound bite." Allan Metcalf

I suggest:

  1. Don't be swayed by political ads and speeches.
  2. Use discrimination, and compare what people say with what they do.

We can only estimate what a Kerry administration will do because he has not been president. But he has been a Senator for 20 years, and we can go look at his record there. There have been some issues of his honesty in campaigning again Weld in 1996, and there is talk of his and his wife's money, but I do not find the large patterns of secrecy, lies, abuse of power, and conflict of interest that I see with the Bush administration.

Consequently, I would expect a Kerry presidency to exhibit far more integrity, honesty, and openness -qualities that the Bush administration has lacked. For me, the character of the administration is far more important than its policies. With a good character, the policies will take care of themselves. This administration, through its actions, as discussed in the links to the left, have shown a complete lack of character and integrity.

If you are a scientist (or engineer) and you support the investigative report of the Union of Concerned Scientists, then please sign the statement of support.

And, if you agree in general with this website, tell your friends about it.

Websites

This website is not written lightly. I am a computer scientist. I have been teaching and researching for over 35 years. I generally have little to do with politics, and I do not belong to a political party. No one is paying me to do this. I have no agenda except to see the people of the U.S. work together, in harmony and peace, for the good of everyone in the country and the world.

I believe that the statements in this website are based on facts.

[Sep 11, 2015] Bloody Arseny in the 90's

Moscow Exile , September 9, 2015 at 9:09 pm

Bloody Arseny in the 90's

Here's a Waging Wabbit's wedding day photograph taken some 5 years after he had allegedly participated on the side of Dudayev's breakaway Chechen Republic in the First Chechen War against Russia. He has also been accused of torturing Russian prisoners of war during that conflict.

If these allegations against Yatsenyuk are true, then Noodleman's candidate "Yats" would have been a "brother-in-arms' of that delightful, late and not so lamented Oleksandr Ivanovych Muzychko (aka Sashko Bilyi [Сашко Білий] – "White Sasha"]):

What a lovable old rogue Sasha was!

Oddlots , September 9, 2015 at 10:28 pm

The guy's a monster just based on who he represents.

But I just can't see this bloodless corpse of a humanbeing having the will to commit mayhem on a living, breathing human.

Seriously, how credible do you think this charges are?

Moscow Exile , September 10, 2015 at 12:46 am

Показания на Яценюка дали его подельники
Testimony against Yarsenyuk was given by his accomplices
Members of the UNA-UNSO party leadership, Nikolai Karlyuk and Kyiv journalist Stanislav Klykh, have said that in the 90s the prime minister of the Ukraine tortured and killed Russian soldiers in Chechnya.

That Yatsenyuk was a murderer became known during an investigation into atrocities committed in 1994 by ther members of the UNA-UNSO party leadership Nikolai Karlyuk and Kyiv journalist Stanislav Klykh.

Last year dozens of lawyers unsuccessfully attempted to have them released from a remand prison. In order to secure their release, they "sang" to whole of the Ukrainian mass media, but in vain: on September 15 in the Supreme court of Chechnya there was held a preliminary hearing.

See also: Показания на Яценюка дали украинские националисты Клых и Карпюк

Moscow Exile , September 10, 2015 at 1:08 am

"That Yatsenyuk was a murderer became known during an investigation into atrocities committed in 1994 by the members of the UNA-UNSO party leadership" should read: "That Yatsenyuk was a murderer became known during an investigation into atrocities committed in 1994 by other members of the UNA-UNSO party leadership"

[Sep 09, 2015] They don't call it the Empire of Chaos for nothing

"...My impression is that the West is content with creating chaos if it can not readily control a country – they don't call it the Empire of Chaos for nothing. By that measure, Libya was a smashing success and Iraq is getting there."
.
"...But really it is just self serving BS where the western crusaders are always morally superior and justified in their imperial adventures while the barbarians are inferior in every way and need to be pacified. This syndrome has been afflicting the west for more than 1000 years and shows no evidence of going away in spite of all the cultural progress."
.
"...True. But at least it affirms that, when Russia "invades", or intervenes, it puts in place an alternative to the chaos so typical of western intervention. The West has to learn that when you trash a country, the West's rivals and enemies are just as likely to benefit as any of our friends."
Jeremn, September 8, 2015 at 7:42 am
Interesting analysis of Russian strategy in Ukraine, and beyond. Concludes the strategy is "low cost" and effective, at least compared to recent US adventures:

"What most discussions of a possible Russian invasion of the Baltics share in common is their inability to explain what is in it for the Russians. Exactly why Russia would risk war against the most powerful military alliance in the world led by the United States in order to seize something in the Baltics remains an analytical quandary. Russia's cautious and measured approach against a relatively weak, incapable, and non-aligned Ukraine offers little support to the notion that it would risk war with NATO."

http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/putin-is-a-far-better-strategist-than-you-think/

marknesop, September 8, 2015 at 8:16 am
The trouble is, it assumes – as does every western assessment, without exception – that Russia is engaging in "limited conventional war" in Ukraine; that is, Russia is present in a state military capacity, uniformed soldiers, organized military formations, the lot. And nobody has been able to provide any proof of that at all. It is inconceivable that could be going on in one of the most heavy-surveillance areas on the globe and nobody would see it. You know the USA would provide proof if they actually had it – that "we have plenty of evidence" line is just bunk.
Jeremn, September 8, 2015 at 8:23 am
True. But at least it affirms that, when Russia "invades", or intervenes, it puts in place an alternative to the chaos so typical of western intervention. The West has to learn that when you trash a country, the West's rivals and enemies are just as likely to benefit as any of our friends.

As per Iran, and how after we defeated Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran's two major competitors, we were magically presented with a more powerful Iran – which seemed to appear out of nowhere.

marknesop, September 8, 2015 at 9:31 am

Yes, that's an excellent point. It still irks me, however, that the general public in the Anglosphere is so accepting of major allegations – Russia has battalions of soldiers and heavy armor in Ukraine, but you can't see them although it is largely open fields; Russia shot down MH-17 – without any demonstrated evidence at all. It's as if anything we'd like to believe is no longer off limits just because there's no evidence it is true.

kirill, September 8, 2015 at 12:23 pm

What has disappeared from the NATO propaganda wankfest if it ever even existed is any consideration for motive. Why would Russia deliberately shoot down MH-17? To prove how evil it is? This is beyond ridiculous and points to serious collective cognitive deficiency in NATO mainstream thought. But really it is just self serving BS where the western crusaders are always morally superior and justified in their imperial adventures while the barbarians are inferior in every way and need to be pacified. This syndrome has been afflicting the west for more than 1000 years and shows no evidence of going away in spite of all the cultural progress.

Patient Observer, September 8, 2015 at 5:13 pm

My impression is that the West is content with creating chaos if it can not readily control a country – they don't call it the Empire of Chaos for nothing. By that measure, Libya was a smashing success and Iraq is getting there.

[Sep 04, 2015] Narrative And Reality Of The U.S. War On Syria

"...The US media knows nothing and cares less, it is anything goes, they just sell media consumption / clicks on the intertubes / TV watching, etc. / advertising / Gvmt. propanganda, all of which which changes day by day… the more ppl are confused, the better"
.
"...The sophisticated propaganda apparatus that we enjoy (NOT!) today is a mix of half-truths, false narratives and (falser) counter-narratives. (Some counter-narratives, I think, are from well-meaning people who distrust government and are trying to interpret what is really happening thru the lens of their own (often limited) experience.)"
.
"...Interesting too, that the Ukraine situation is hotting up. Maybe the thinking is that Putin could not handle multiple crises? "
.
"...Bhadrakumar is always the best. But, I think it's realistic to take a step further Flynn's admission about the US "knowing about ISIL" (but not knowing its name) back in 2012. Wouldn't it be more realistic to guess that the US also knew about Saudi defense/intelligence ministry plans to create and fund 'ISIL' from the beginning? Does anyone here think _anything_ going on at a high level in Saudi escapes US intelligence?
.
And then, a step further, you would think US experts would be helpfully guiding the Saudis as to where best to insert ISIL forces, how best to fund/supply them, and so on. Saudi royal family cronies are not the most competent or hardworking administrators, and they're not privy to the intel and experience the US has in the 'our terrorism' specialty, and so it's natural to expect they'd ask for and receive US help with this stuff."
Aug 14, 2015 | M of A

The Washington Post "It Never Happened" piece on Syria documented yesterday is far from the only one that avoids to mention the intimate U.S. involvement in waging war on Syria.

A New York Times piece today falsely claims:

The United States avoided intervening in the civil war between rebels and the government of Mr. Assad until the jihadist group took advantage of the chaos to seize territory in Syria and Iraq.

McClatchy, which is usual better, currently has two pieces by Hannah Allam looking into U.S. involvement in the war on Syria. Unfortunately these are also full of false narratives and unchecked administration propaganda. Obama administration still predicts 'Assad's days are numbered' is a take of what administration officials now claim about their early believes of the war on Syria. It also includes this whoopers:

The Americans were determined to keep the United States out of an armed conflict in Syria, but turned a blind eye as Persian Gulf allies sent weapons to hardline factions with ties to al Qaida.

Years ago the NYT and several other outlets reported that the CIA was the entity which organized the weapon transfers, thousands of tons, for the Saudis and other Gulf countries. The U.S. did not turn a blind eye. It was actively organizing the whole war from the very beginning.

In The 'magic words:' How a simple phrase enmeshed the U.S. in Syria's crisis Hannah Allam lets the former ambassador to Syria Ford claim that the administration never really wanted to ouster Assad but was pressed into it:

Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria at the time, said he initially opposed calling for Assad's ouster for two reasons: it was clear to him that sanctions were the only punishment the White House was willing to use, and that such a call would kill his efforts to start a dialogue with the regime.

Ford said he was up against the same outside pressures other officials listed – influential Republicans, a few senior Democrats, the "very loud" Syrian-American community and foreign governments – but he added one force that's often overlooked.

"To be very frank, the press, the media, was baiting us. It's not like the media was impartial in this," Ford said. "Because once the Republicans started saying he has no legitimacy, the question then became at press conferences every day: Do you think he has legitimacy? What are we supposed to say? Yes, he does?"

Hogwash. Ford was one of the first to press for the ouster of Assad. He even organized the early demonstration and the media training for the "peaceful demonstrators" who were early on killing policemen and soldiers. One of the "revolutionaries" reacts to Ford's claims:

The 47th
Out of all ppl, Robert Ford is talking about Syrians being mislead by the magic words? Ford "promised" us Syrians full support in 2011.

The 47th
In private meetings In damascus, Robert Ford promised his syrian oppo friends full U.S. Support and encouraged Syrians to go on.

The 47th
He even went to fucking Hama, during the biggest protest in Syria's modern history youtu.be/AP1vGBJM4NU

The 47th
I wdnt talk abt ppl misinterpreting U.S public statements, U were ur Admin's amb, say the truth: u promised Syrians the moon, gave them shit

All these media pieces, yesterday's WaPo piece, today's false NYT claims, the McClatchy pieces, are part of the Obama strategy to play as if it was/is doing "nothing" or "just something" while at the time time running a full fledged proxy war against the Syrian government.

Joel Veldkamp lays out and analyses that strategy:

Why does the U.S. only have sixty fighters to show for its $500 million, year-old training program? Because it reinforces the narrative – nurtured by a raft of previous hopelessly inadequate, publicly-announced and -debated programs to support the opposition – of the U.S. as a helpless bystander to the killing in Syria, and of President Obama as a prudent statesman reluctant to get involved. While the Senate berates the Pentagon chief over the program's poor results, the U.S. is meanwhile outsourcing the real fight in Syria to allies with no qualms about supporting al Qaeda against their geopolitical opponents – unless the U.S. is, as before, cooperating directly or indirectly in that support.

Once it is recognized that the "helpless bystander" narrative is false, and that the U.S. has been deeply involved in the armed conflict almost from the start, it becomes both possible and necessary to question that involvement.

What I find astonishing is that the U.S. media are able to have it both ways on Syria. Every other day there is a piece with the false narrative that the U.S. is not and has not been involved in Syria while at the same time the very same media, NYT, WaPo, McClatchy, publish other pieces about the massive "secret" military effort with thousands of tons of weapon shipments and billions of dollars the Obama administration pushes into Syria to wage war against the Syrian people.

The media know that the "helpless bystander" narrative is false. But Joel Veldkamp's hope that this would make it "possible and necessary to question that involvement" is not coming true. Besides in fringe blogs like this one there is no such public discussion at all.

Noirette | Aug 14, 2015 1:19:32 PM | 2

Re. Syria (others...) the US is divided.

Perpetual violent war-mongers (McCain, his acolytes, neo-cons, neo-libs) facing a more 'realistic' foreign policy - Obama and Kerry, see Iran deal.

These parties are fighting amongst each other and pursuing different agendas. Ex.: Ukraine, where the ones are gingerly, half-heartedly, supporting the Minsk 2 agreement and want to get rid of the 'distraction' and leave it for now to the EU and/or Russia to pay for the mess.

The other camp, going for all out-war against Russia, with boots on the ground / powerful arms / bombing / other, in Ukr., attacking Russia through a proxy. - Ukr. can't manage on its own as has now been conclusively demonstrated.

Now that might be good cop-bad cop routine, but overall it explains the 'frozen-for-now conflict' (deathly as it is and not frozen) in Ukraine. Along with the fact that Putin wants nothing to do with this mess and imho? stops the separatists from conquering more territory.

Failed states, characteristics.

... Being open to outside soft take-over and influence. The PTB hob-nob, submit to outsiders (who have some sorta power), and make contradictory alliances in function of interest groups. A failed state cannot truly defend itself, so it deploys what might it can to intimidate, always with allies, proxies, buddies, etc. It agresses militarily only the weak and easily vanquished (nobody objects to that) but gains no advantages from it. On it goes, squandering its ressources.

The destruction of Syria has worked fine. But Assad can't be removed. Now the plan is he is to stay but be 'wound down' or whatever.

The US media knows nothing and cares less, it is anything goes, they just sell media consumption / clicks on the intertubes / TV watching, etc. / advertising / Gvmt. propanganda, all of which which changes day by day… the more ppl are confused, the better!

Jackrabbit | Aug 14, 2015 3:05:34 PM | 6

As b points out, the cat is out of the bag. So this is not about plausible deniability.

The sophisticated propaganda apparatus that we enjoy (NOT!) today is a mix of half-truths, false narratives and (falser) counter-narratives. (Some counter-narratives, I think, are from well-meaning people who distrust government and are trying to interpret what is really happening thru the lens of their own (often limited) experience.)

The "helpless bystander" narrative is complemented by the "ruthless tyrant" narrative. A recent CBS news segment about the demise of the small American armed and trained anti-ISIL force related how hundreds of potential fighters had dropped out. Why? Because they thought *ASSAD* was a worse problem than ISIL!

The propaganda push, coming after recent developments like USA saying it will attack any force that attacks USA-supported militants, leads me to wonder if we're being prepared for a surprise! that forces USA involvement.

Interesting too, that the Ukraine situation is hotting up. Maybe the thinking is that Putin could not handle multiple crises?

Mina | Aug 14, 2015 1:54:29 PM | 5

http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2015/08/10/us-took-willful-decision-to-create-islamic-state/
Bhadhrakumar

harry law | Aug 14, 2015 3:49:52 PM | 8

Putin is well aware of US duplicity, and the West promises to protect the Libya minority, which morphed into Regime change. Iran is even more aware of the US game in Syria, it is for that reason both countries be on their guard in the event that the US, or their proxies, intervene in Syria, which I am sure they would like to do.

I hope it is the case that Assad has things in hand, and that he does not need the help of Iran's military manpower, in the event that he did, I am sure the military alliance between the two would provide such assistance if called for by Assad, this would be entirely within International law, after all the Saudis and Turks have been facilitating the influx of thousands of head chopping fanatics into Syria in breach of International law in their attempt to topple the legitimate Syrian Government.

Joe Tedesky | Aug 14, 2015 11:58:56 PM | 17

Someone please give Zbigniew a call, and ask him how to spin the narrative on Syria. This whole mess the U.S. is squirming around in is a result of it's own doing. For a long time the U.S. has attempted to live two lives. One life as a democracy warrior, the other as a master of deception. Brzezinski went big back in the seventies, when he convinced Jimmy Carter to back the Mujaheddin against Russia.

Smart move, except now every Gulf nation has their personal mercenaries at their disposal. This is going on at the same time that every Joe-Bob in America thinks it's those crazy Muslims. So savage mercenaries they are not, but savage Muslims they must be.

So finally now when people in the White House wake up to the fact that this isn't 1978 they are struck with an epiphany to suddenly change their tune. This shouldn't surprise anyone. This is what they do. No one ever said they do it well. Well, maybe some will say that, but then again this is how it gets done. My one hope is that all people, whether Syrian, Iraqi, Ukrainian, or just down right anyone may live in peace. Why, is this so hard?

plantman | Aug 15, 2015 12:50:20 AM | 18

This is from the WSWS: developments on the ground (in Syria) are underscoring that any diplomatic settlement over Syria will be implemented through a militarized carve-up of the country, spearheaded by the Pentagon and its regional partners and proxy forces.

As part of a deal reached in July between Ankara and Washington, Turkish President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) government leader Erdogan gained US backing for the imposition of a militarized "buffer zone" encompassing hundreds of square miles in northern Syria. The new zone would be occupied by Syrian opposition fighters and reinforced by the US and Turkish air forces, with US forces having been cleared to operate from Turkish bases as part of the agreement.

Once established, the military zone would serve as a staging area for US-backed rebel forces fighting against the Assad government.

Despite their public confidence in Putin's readiness to accept a deal, the Turkish government is clearly preparing its own large-scale military intervention into areas of northern Syria." http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/14/syri-a14.html

Yes, Putin wants a deal, so Turkey and Jordan are positioning themselves to steal parts of Syria before the agreement is made.

But what about the US? The US won't want the Russian deal because they won't be able to install their own stooge in Damascus. So the fighting goes on, Iran gets more involved, and Putin has to decide whether to send troops to avoid another Libya.

What a mess!

fairleft | Aug 15, 2015 4:14:03 AM | 19

Mina @5

Thanks. Bhadrakumar is always the best.

But, I think it's realistic to take a step further Flynn's admission about the US "knowing about ISIL" (but not knowing its name) back in 2012. Wouldn't it be more realistic to guess that the US also knew about Saudi defense/intelligence ministry plans to create and fund 'ISIL' from the beginning? Does anyone here think _anything_ going on at a high level in Saudi escapes US intelligence?

And then, a step further, you would think US experts would be helpfully guiding the Saudis as to where best to insert ISIL forces, how best to fund/supply them, and so on. Saudi royal family cronies are not the most competent or hardworking administrators, and they're not privy to the intel and experience the US has in the 'our terrorism' specialty, and so it's natural to expect they'd ask for and receive US help with this stuff.

fairleft | Aug 15, 2015 5:07:16 AM | 21

Bhadrakumar's piece ends very strong, especially the final paragraph:

The specious plea being advanced by Washington currently is that the US wants to turn Afghanistan into a regional hub to wage a war against the IS - a war by the US and its partners, which, in the opinion of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could last not less than a generation.

This Dempsey guy is a smart general, isn't it? It was under his watch that the IS was finessed and deployed as the instrument of US regional policy to overthrow the established government in Syria and to force Baghdad to allow the return of American troops to Iraq – and now he pops up in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's office in Kabul one fine day two weeks ago to make the proposition that Washington might need an open-ended military presence in Afghanistan for another 15-20 years to wage the global war against the IS.

It will take another Gen Flynn to tell us another time circa 2025 that the IS that subsequently overthrew the established governments in Central Asia, bled white the regions of Xinjiang and North Caucasus and Kashmir, destroyed the Pakistani state and led to that country's disintegration, and kept Iran bogged down in the sheer preservation of its plural society (which is an ethnic mosaic) was actually incubated in the American military bases in Afghanistan.

El Sid | Aug 15, 2015 9:12:34 AM | 23

part 1 of 2
Polar Reorientation In the Mideast (US-Iran)?
Fri, Aug 14, 2015
By Andrew KORYBKO
http://orientalreview.org/2015/08/14/polar-reorientation-in-the-mideast-us-iran-i/

Posted by: okie farmer | Aug 15, 2015 7:22:04 AM | 22

El Sid | Aug 15, 2015 9:12:34 AM | 23

http://thesaker.is/the-saker-interviews-general-ret-amine-htaite-of-the-lebanese-armed-forces/

The Saker has a great interview with Gnl Amine Htaite of the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Good to get an Orientalist point of view these days.

jfl | Aug 15, 2015 9:34:27 AM | 24

@18

Turkish nationalists reject minority government in blow to Erdogan

Hard to tell if the good guys are going to increase their representation or the bad guys ... but I hope to see the hind side of this particular turkey. Looks like the Turks of every species are grousing at Erdogan at every opportunity.


@21

' This Dempsey guy is a smart general, isn't it? It was under his watch that the IS was finessed and deployed as the instrument of US regional policy to overthrow the established government in Syria and to force Baghdad to allow the return of American troops to Iraq – and now he pops up in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's office in Kabul one fine day two weeks ago to make the proposition that Washington might need an open-ended military presence in Afghanistan for another 15-20 years to wage the global war against the IS. '

Dempsey is getting ready for his personal revolution ... through the revolving door to the pot of gold as the end of the rainbow. The US armed forces are now committing to losing wars for ... as long as they can. Afghanistan is one of their major profit centers.

rufus magister | Aug 15, 2015 10:12:34 AM | 26

Plantman at 18 --

You're right to call it a hot mess. The Ukraine, Libya, Iraq and More! Collect and trade them all! Everyone will want a complete set of the "Most Wanted" cards, naturally.

Mike Whitney at Counterpunch is always a good read on the economy. He turns his talents here to Syria, asking the musical question, Is Putin Planning to Sell-Out Assad? He doesn't think so.

Forget about ISIS and Syrian President Bashar al Assad for a minute and, instead, focus on the terms "autonomous zones", "creation of …sanctuaries", "safe zones" and "a confederal Syria."

All of these strongly suggest that the primary aim of US policy is to break Syria up into smaller units that pose no threat to US-Israeli regional hegemony. This is the US gameplan in a nutshell.

In contrast, Russia does not want a divided Syria. Aside from the fact that Moscow and Damascus are long-term allies (and Russia has a critical naval facility in Tartus, Syria), a balkanized Syria poses serious threats for Russia...."

Amongst them, "the probable emergence of a jihadi base of operations" with some of those ops targeting the Russian Federation, and a legitimizing a whole array of bad practices in international relations.

The under-reported diplomacy by Putin, Whitney writes, is aimed at implementation of the Geneva accord of 2012.

Geneva does not resolve the central issue, which is: "Does Assad stay or go?" That question is not answered definitively. It all depends of composition of the "transitional governing body" and the outcome of future elections....

Here's how Lavrov summed it up two days ago:

"I have already said, Russia and Saudi Arabia support all principles of the June 30, 2012 Geneva communique, in particular, the need to preserve government institutions, including the Syrian army. I believe its participation in the effective struggle against terrorists is truly essential."

Whitney allows, "Some will... say that Putin is 'selling out a friend and ally', but that's not entirely true. He's trying to balance two opposing things at the same time." Keep the back of an ally, but get Saudi help to end the jihadi war in Syria.

And even if Assad is removed, the process (Geneva) is such that the next president is not going to be a hand-picked US stooge, but someone who is supported by the majority of the Syrian people. Needless to say, Washington doesn't like that idea.

Some "moderate jihadi" riding in on a Humvee is more to DC's taste.

In as much as Assad the Younger, former London optometrist, is more of a figurehead and less an autocrat than his late father, Ba'ath Party institutions should prove suitably robust and cohesive to have a significant impact on any future government.

Whitney points to the Turkmen militias earlier under discussion [see the "Turkey Invades" thread] and concludes, time is short for Putin to pull off another diplomatic victory and prevent America from crossing another "red line" in its efforts to destroy Syria.

jfl at 24

I'd like to see Erdogan out, but I would note he's survived numerous rounds of substantial discontent. See the links in my nr. 84 in Turkey Invades if you're curious about his political calculations; sadly, he may be correct. He will not see this rejection as a blow, but will welcome it.

And to all you Barflies, I keep saying -- it's not about ISIS, or even Assad. It's all about the PKK and the Kurds. That's the real story, not the official narrative.

Noirette | Aug 15, 2015 11:12:00 AM | 30

As Narrative is in the title….When the protests in Syria broke out, and war began, I awarded the label 'genuine' to some of the early protests, which nobody agreed with iirc. I related these protests to catastrophic drought (which is well documented, > goog) and the unwillingness / incapacity / blindness of the Assad Gvmt in addressing the matter in any way at all.

One major problem was that the drought coincided with liberal moves by Assad - cutting bread subsidies (2008! - food prices R O S E by astonishing %), fuel subsididies for farmers (others too), opening up the banking sector, and totally mismanaging water -> …all done to please the W and 'modernise'.

Which lead to massive destruction of the farming community (very consequent at the time) and ppl flocking to the towns where they could not earn a living. The MSM has recently (March 2015) discovered this, e.g. the NYT - http://tinyurl.com/k5asy5h - which states that 1.5 million ppl moved to cities (idk about that no., seems low, but more were displaced and fell into poverty in other ways. Or fled, leading to further disorganisation and damage. At some point a threshold or tipping point is reached.) The article also mentions refugees from Iraq - a separate issue.

It is natural to be polarised on human decisions, influence, plots, but I really think one should take climate change into account. Note the 'liberalisation moves' were the usual, and Assad agreed but took it very slow - he faced opposition from various quarters, incl. his minister of Economy. Now we see similar but far more radical measures imposed on Greece, Ukraine, like a speeded-up movie.

academic paper, cautious and wordy. mentions the diff. topics

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1

news from 2010, 2-3 million ppl thrown into extreme poverty in Syria

http://www.irinnews.org/report/90442/syria-drought-pushing-millions-into-poverty

Oui | Aug 17, 2015 12:21:18 PM | 49

Erdogan preempted the snap elactions by a snap diktat ...

Erdoğan's declaration of 'system change' outrages Turkey's opposition | Hürriyet Daily News |

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's declaration of a de facto shift in Turkey's administrative system to a presidential system has infuriated opposition leaders, who say the declaration indicates "rule by diktat."

In remarks delivered in his hometown, the Black Sea province of Rize, on Aug. 14, Erdoğan said Turkey had witnessed a change in the president's new role and asked for the constitution to be updated to recognize his de facto deployment of enhanced powers.

"There is a president with de facto power in the country, not a symbolic one. The president should conduct his duties for the nation directly, but within his authority. Whether one accepts it or not, Turkey's administrative system has changed. Now, what should be done is to update this de facto situation in the legal framework of the constitution," he said.

Posted to my diary - Israel Ready to Join the Sunni Alliance Against Assad, Syria.

guest77 | Aug 17, 2015 10:49:49 PM | 51

There is only one history of the Syrian War so far as I am concerned, and the is b's: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/09/a-short-history-of-the-war-on-syria-2006-2014.html

I would suggest that you keep that post updated as we go, though of course maybe it isn't your blogging style. But it's a brilliant piece.

[Sep 03, 2015] Kievs week of violence is a crisis of its own making

Both countries are US clients and US has no use anymore for the nazi dogs of war, i.e. they can protest all they want - they are getting nothing and if they become too obstructive, they will start to disappear one by one.
They might be dangerous but they are nothing compared to money men running the show."
.
"...Occam's razor: the fascist nationalist nutters orchestrated the whole thing, because they don't want any concessions given to the objects of their hatred."
.
Some people think the challenges faced by Ukraine's Poroshenko are now too big to overcome. But those who would like to take his place have not shown themselves capable of doing even half of what he has achieved.
.
Wait...Poroshenko has achieved something? He has done nothing but what he was told. He waged war in the east because John Brennan told him to. And then stopped when Merkel told him to. He is a non-entity."
.
"...Here is two examples of Porkoshenko being a head of occupational government: (1). He destroyed Ukraine's military industrial complex, for it's ties (very profitable by the way) with Russian military, as any obedient CIA stooge will do. (2). He flipped the country geo-politically, from the state that should have benefit from it's position in the middle of the Europe, in to some sort of final frontier, protecting Europe from the hordes of those crazy Russians, all by himself , only crazy person could have come up with this, or an obedient CIA stooge again."
.
"...Let's face it, straight reporting on The Ukraine is hard to come by, given that it's labouring under the 3-line whip of the CIA, MI6 and another global I.S. best not to mention."
.
"...When you back hard right elements (to further your personal political goals, when both parties share a common antagonist) who are prone to violence. Don't cry victim when they disagree with your political overtures & decisions. Acting out that disagreement the only manner they know how to which is through violence. I have no sympathy Poroshenko, for the backlash his government is now facing re: his government's constitutional proposals."
.
"...I chortled with laughter, almost choked, when he suggested that the Kremlin agents are organising the far right nationalists in Ukraine, deliberately causing an outbreak of peace in order to show up the Kiev parties in a bad light! Believe me, Kiev parties can show themselves up all by themselves!"
.
"...I wondered how long it would be for poroshenko to blame putin for the grenade attack. Russia has been a convenient scapegoat for Ukraine to blame for its own failings since the overthrow of yanukovic.
The right wing activists who carried out the grenade attack were at the heart of the maidan protests which also involved violent confrontations with the police. They were also those who tarrgetted ethnic Russians following the overthrow of yanukovic so their actions in opposition to granting extra powers to eastern territories is hardly surprising."
Notable quotes:
"... I talk about the media coverage. At that time "the right wing Party" was just a Putin lie, troubles were cause by Putin, protesters were peaceful and policemen were killed not in terror attacks but were killed democratically. ..."
"... - Ehhh... was it a terrorist attack? Not a peaceful protest democratically fighting bad and corrupt police prohibiting them to freely take the parliament? Because at the Euromaidan 17 policemen were killed and more than 200 injured when peaceful protesters were democratically fighting bad and corrupt police prohibiting them to freely take the parliament... and there were no terror attacks... ..."
"... "Corporatism was one of the ideals of both German Nazism and Italian fascism. They held it as a carrot before the people, as a 'solution' to the class problem. They used it as their 'revolutionary' credentials and in both cases, ditched it completely soon after taking power. The idea of each sector of society being organized to take its place at the high table of the state was always "jam tomorrow." Today's agenda was always "war." ..."
"... It should also be understood that fascist 'corporatism' has nothing to do with the global corporations that are not often bigger than nation states. Modern 'corporatism' only shares a name with the fascist 'ideal.' Not that it any better. ..."
"... Princesss Nuland of the neocons is a nasty murderous piece of work. One to watch. Hopefully somebody will 'putsch' her and her equally loathsome husband. Have they spawned any more little evils? ..."
"... A neo-neocon organised and paid for putsch is hardly "democratic", same as any other US sanctioned regime change i.e Mega Nation Theft. ..."
"... In all matters relating to Eastern Europe the Guardian has pinned its colours to the mast of the "New East Network." Which is essentially controlled by a Mr George Soros, Radio "Free Europe" and the National Endowment for Democracy." All mouthpieces of the state department. Its safest to believe the opposite of everything they tell us. ..."
"... It is very hard to enter EU from the East without visa (and rules for visa application were hardened for Ukrainians). It is very hard to get job without working permit, and for money you need to register. Notice, that all these points are not present in case of refugees traveling to Russia/Belarus. ..."
"... Fast forward to the neo-neocon putsch and princess Nuland boasting of the death and destruction that all those humanitarian $5 billion had purchased as she dispensed biscuits in Maidan, just prior to both sides being shot up by putschist snipers (likely from outside and/or Svoboda, or the Social Nationalists (don't say Nazis don't have a sense of humour!). ..."
"... Its not really a zero-sum game. Russia always maintained that the coup was engineered by the West by encouraging right wing elements and this is just one of a number of incidents that prove that their view was correct. This makes our life difficult in the West because we only think in polar terms -- if Russia is right then they 'win'. Since we cannot allow any situation where Russia 'wins' we go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to prove black is really white. It would be better to ignore Russia's comments and commentaries and just look dispassionately at who the actors are and what they're up to. The answers are staring us in the face. ..."
"... February 24, 2014, right extremist forces (Banderists, Right Sector and neo-Nazis Svoboda) implemented a coup during the Maiden. At the time the US government warned the Ukrainian authorities against using force against these 'pro-democracy protestors' even if, according to the pictures we saw, some of them were neo-Nazis who were throwing Molotov cocktails and other things at the police and smashing up statues and setting fire to buildings. ..."
"... These militias became the spearhead of Ukrainian forces in the East and on them falls much of the war effort in the Civil War. But these militias can not yet be lifted, because otherwise the war in the East could not continue. ..."
"... History always repeats itself. Use low ignorant, racist and violent manpower to take power by force but also to maintain it, but then to dump it as soon as possible because they rare considered, rightly, unpresentable or otherwise dangerous even for those who have instigated, financed and exploited them. Of course, sometimes such situations go out of hand, see the Afghan Mujahidin or ISIS. ..."
"... Now Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk are receiving their own coin back. They supported and reinforced those they now pretend to discover to be thugs. The real puppets are and remain in power while their useful barbarians have become bothersome: infamous, resistant to the point that one can wonder if the latest riot would not be a false flag from Yats and Poro who used the skills of these criminal thugs. Because the latter are not mere free electrons who just decided to meet that day. There is money, people that structure this, a hierarchy, an efficient network and money at will, in which Russia has no involvement. ..."
"... The far right have done all the dirty work during the coup and still doing it on the frontline and have not got enough in return, in their view. Croatia had a similar problem with their extremist veterans who were used by the Croatian right wing HDZ to destabilize social-democrat government. ..."
"... Both countries are US clients and US has no use anymore for the nazi dogs of war, i.e. they can protest all they want - they are getting nothing and if they become too obstructive, they will start to disappear one by one. ..."
"... Occam's razor: the fascist nationalist nutters orchestrated the whole thing, because they don't want any concessions given to the objects of their hatred. ..."
"... The director of Centre of Eurasian researches Vladimir Kornilov noted: "Everybody perfectly understands where the HR department of Ukrainian policy is. It is in the American Embassy". ..."
"... Let's face it, straight reporting on The Ukraine is hard to come by, given that it's labouring under the 3-line whip of the CIA, MI6 and another global I.S. best not to mention. ..."
"... Disgusting man hailing from a disgusting class of politician/businessmen trained by the US to bring death and chaos to any part of the globe that the powers behind the US Government see fit. Prepare for our own Maidan should this class of parasite-sans-frontieres, (read Mikheil Saakashvili), succeed in bringing The Ukraine under the NATO umbrella. ..."
"... I chortled with laughter, almost choked, when he suggested that the Kremlin agents are organising the far right nationalists in Ukraine, deliberately causing an outbreak of peace in order to show up the Kiev parties in a bad light! Believe me, Kiev parties can show themselves up all by themselves! ..."
"... idan 2014 edition? He doesn't ask who armed them in the first place. The author is giving a good impression of being one very confused bloke. ..."
Sep 03, 2015 | The Guardian

Another version has it that the explosion outside parliament was orchestrated by the president's administration or the Ukrainian special services in order to discredit Svoboda and other radical nationalists and to "tighten the screws" on the political life of the country thus justifying control over opposition forces.

This version hardly stands up to criticism. The demonstration was led by MPs who are members of Svoboda but got into parliament as independent candidates. In the 2014 elections Svoboda did not win the 5% of the vote necessary to enter parliament. Four months earlier, in the presidential election, the party's leader, Oleg Tyagnibok, won only a little over 1% of the vote. This week he was photographed, together with other Svoboda activists, trying to drag a soldier out of the human chain formed around parliament into the crowd of protesters. It was a moment very reminiscent of the Maidan days, only that then Svoboda members and their leader were inside parliament. Since then the party has found itself increasingly marginalised.

However, there were other groups represented in the demonstration , among them two that deserve special attention: Oleg Lyashko's radical party and Igor Kolomoisky's Ukrop party. T-shirts with the latter party's emblem were given out free at the demonstration, and those willing to take part were paid to protest. Kolomoisky is considered to be an enemy of President Poroshenko since he was sacked from his position as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Kolomoisky's man in Odessa, Igor Palitsa, also lost his job as governor and was replaced by the former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Immediately after the blast, Lyashko, who is a radical populist with little in common with the radical nationalists, announced the establishment of a campaign to save the nation. Only three or four hours after the explosion, his party had already registered a bill that would block changes to the constitution at times when the country is under military attack. Lyashko came second in the presidential elections, and over the last year his Radical party has gone up in the ratings. It is interesting that articles in the press regularly claim to have evidence that both the Svoboda party and the Radical party have been financed by the same oligarchs, the above mentioned Kolomoisky, Sergey Levochkin – who was head of the presidential administration under Yanukovich and who fled to Moscow after the Maidan – and Dmitry Firtash, who is now being investigated on corruption charges in Austria.

Still, the violence could have a far more banal explanation. To begin with, volunteers who went off to fight in the Donbass for the sake of maintaining Ukraine's unity were radicals from militant groups such as the Right Sector, which sprang up during the Maidan. There were also volunteers who had no affiliation to any party who went to fight. When the Ukrainian army took over the main role in the fighting, many of the volunteers returned home, taking weapons with them.

nnedjo 3 Sep 2015 16:18

Well, the purpose of the constitutional changes in Ukraine should be that rebels in the southeast stop fighting and accept Ukraine as his country, and not Ukrainian nationalists to stop throwing grenades at the police in Kiev. However, these laws passed by the Ukrainian parliament, can contribute very little that the main objective. Their main goal is just to create the illusion that Ukraine really is trying to comply with the requirement of Minsk 2 agreement, and thus to meet the expectations of their Western friends, which means to prevent lifting of sanctions against Russia. And, on the other hand, these laws need to be completely contrary to the expectations of the rebel peoples in Donbas, or in other words to achieve the same thing that the Ukrainian government unsuccessfully tried to achieve with weapons.

It is particularly interesting that the President of Ukraine Poroshenko himself makes no secret at all that it is true what I've previously written, as can be understood, among other things, also from those of his statements:

According to the president, "the threat of break-up of the international pro-Ukrainian coalition" would have increased if the Verkhovna Rada had not voted in favor of decentralization amendments to the constitution on Monday.

It could also lead to the lifting of sanctions, which "are very painfully hitting the aggressor," he said, apparently, referring to Russia, which Kiev blames for sending troops to war-torn eastern Ukraine....

...But what they [Donetsk and Lugansk Regions] have got instead is a lean line about the features of local self-governance," Poroskenko stressed.
So, even though the law that caused the protests in front of parliament has the name of "decentralization", in fact it needs to further strengthen the competence of the central government. Based on this law, the Presidency received the right to appoint a prefect, who with his hand has the discretionary right to dismiss officials elected at the local elections in certain regions. And if they do not like it, they can appeal to the constitutional court in Kiev, where were apparently is known in advance what may be the decision of the constitutional court.

On the other hand, the law on the special status of Donetsk and Lugansk, which was passed earlier, is practically suspended at this point by the recent decision of the President Poroshenko.

In this respect, it is necessary to emphasize two things.

Although according to the Minsk 2 arrangement, the special status of the Donbas region should have been incorporated as an integral and permanent part of the Ukrainian Constitution, the law, which is now suspended, does not meet any of these two demands.

This law therefore is attached only as an annex to the Ukrainian constitution, and its validity is limited to just three years. And, according to the idea of Ukrainian legislators, the law can come into force only after the local elections in Donbass which would be held under the previous Ukrainian legislation, and when Ukrainian forces take control over the whole territory of Ukraine, including its entire border with Russia.

Until then, they will be consider that Donbas region is temporarily occupied part of Ukrainian territory, and officials of the People's Republic of Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republic will be considered as terrorists. And since with the terrorists must not be negotiations, leaders of the LNR and DNR were completely excluded so far from discussions about the law on the special status, which is also contrary to the Minsk 2 agreement, given that it explicitly requires just that.
All in all, they are asking the pro-Russian rebels that lay down their arms voluntarily, without getting anything in return. Or more accurately, to get just a little bit of what they are looking for and only for a period of three years. So, congratulations on wishful thinking, but the question is whether it is achievable at all.

LimaCPapa -> ridibundus 3 Sep 2015 15:48

I first learned about this when a new Ukrainian student introduced himself, and we asked why the name he gave was not the name on his papers. He explained (with clear annoyance) that he had to use a Ukrainian name. He had to keep it while he was here as well, because it was the name in his passport. Now he's free of all that and uses his Russian name. Needless to say, he did not return to Ukraine. Another Ukrainian has since confirmed that the same thing was true for her passport. In both cases, issued in the early 2000s. So who's lying then?

beakybloom -> gablody 3 Sep 2015 13:34

What's inherited??.. The bankrupt economy, loss of Crimea, loss of Donbass, 6000 dead, civil war, downing of Malaysian airliner with 300 souls on board, Odessa massacre, murders of political opponents, the nazi parliament, stupid laws glorifying Ukraine's nazi past, no visa-free access to EU, Nazis throwing grenades at the police???..

Nothing here is inherited except the absence of visa-free access to EU

a "show on the road" ? On IMF funny money? For how long? It's a shitshow, and unsustainable to boot.


nnedjo -> Chirographer 3 Sep 2015 13:28

The putinposters are still reeling with the news that the Ukrainian government is fighting "Nazis" in Kiev,...

It will be possible to say just when the news arrives that the organizers of these demonstrations were sentenced to a few tens of years in prison, and that guy who threw this grenade from which the Guardsmen killed, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

What is quite unbelievable judging by the past behavior of government from Kiev.

Chillskier -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 10:43

Georgia tried:
http://agenda.ge/news/26188/eng
Apparently Interpol red notices cannot be issued against US stooges.

Chillskier -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 10:20

The piece of shit she CHOSE to work with.
Jewish neo-con skunk and neo-Nazi thug seems like a match made in heaven.

jezzam -> Chillskier 3 Sep 2015 10:19

Go ahead then. I can't wait. Neither can Poroshenko. His best option is passive resistance when Putin launches his next land grab. Russia will be forced to give it back eventually when they are totally bankrupt

Bosula -> RVictor 3 Sep 2015 08:55

The congregation is mostly made up of ethnic Ukrainians, members of a community that numbers hundreds of thousands and has been growing rapidly since the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.


This is what the Guardian reported on 13 May 2015 - this was JUST for Poland:

"Last year Poland issued 331,000 permits for short-term work to Ukrainians, up 50% on 2013, says Marta Jaroszewicz, a migration expert at the Centre For Eastern Studies (OSW), an independent Warsaw thinktank funded by the Polish government.

She estimates that there are now 300,000-400,000 Ukrainians in Poland, as many as twice the officially recognised number. In January and February, the number of residence applications by Ukrainians in the Mazovian voivodeship – the province which includes Warsaw – was up 180% on the same months of 2014."

There are other articles for other neighbouring countries bordering Ukraine, but the Guardian is a pretty authoritative source.

Since this story the number crossing the border to leave Ukraine has increased significantly.


FlappyCat 3 Sep 2015 08:20

Poroshenko to Transnistria..
Yats to Macedonia and
Saakishwilly to Tajikistan.


oleteo -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 08:12

I read the Gorby's interview where he said 'Yes' about the NATO promises.But he's a fool nevertherless to beleive the promises,written or verbal from his enemy.


elias_ -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 08:07

>>He's trying to provoke Putin.

Hmm in that case you have proved Poroshenko is a fu##ing idiot. Only an idiot would set out to provoke the leader of a neighbouring country into invading. Is that what you lot voted him in for? No, it isn't. He should be making peace and securing the future for his people. Face it, your leader is taking orders from Pyatt and you know it.

BigBanana 3 Sep 2015 07:50

"Kolomoisky's man in Odessa, Igor Palitsa, also lost his job as governor and was replaced by the former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili"

Jeez, Saakashvili is a stupid appointment for a very long list of reasons. He's the idiot who got Georgia dismembered after misjudging the situation terribly.

It's as if Poroshenko is deliberately trying to fuck things up.

HuffingHume -> normankirk 3 Sep 2015 07:41

All of the ex-Soviet Union, with the exception of the Baltic states, are horribly corrupt dysfunctional kleptocracies run by Soviet era bigwigs who carved up their state's assets up for themelves, leaving most of their fellow countrymen in poverty. This is the reason why many Ukrianians want to be more 'European'; because they want to be more like Poland and the Baltic States, rather than in the Russian orbit, in which every state has barely made it out of the 80's.


Dimmus -> Alex Hughes 3 Sep 2015 07:15

"It was the right wing Svoboda Party that started the trouble, definitely not a 'peaceful protest' as you make out. "

I talk about the media coverage. At that time "the right wing Party" was just a Putin lie, troubles were cause by Putin, protesters were peaceful and policemen were killed not in terror attacks but were killed democratically.

RVictor -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 07:14

Putin has a record of false flag operations, starting with the Moscow apartment block bombing performed by the FSB when he was head and which brought him to power.

And the proof is ... o, yes, - something written by oligarch in exile! Btw., here is a short list of admitted FF operations be US and it's vassals. Remember "Iraq WMD"?

oleteo -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 07:10

Why being invaded by Putin, Ukraine is trading a discount for gas, [and asks for ] deferral of loan?

irishinrussia -> Alex Hughes 3 Sep 2015 07:03

It's irony. He is implying that when protesters the west likes kill policemen then they at peaceful demonstrators, perhaps defending themselves against brutal security forces, at worst any violence is the action of a few hotheads or extremists among overwhelmingly peaceful, democratic victims of the state. However, when the very same protesters attack our guys (Poroshenko), they are radicals, extremists and terrorists, perhaps abetted by shadowy enemies of freedom and democracy (FSB).

PanoptikonicallyKool -> Briar 3 Sep 2015 06:15

Shhh!!!! You are not supposed to say things like that! 'US backed coup'? That is not part of the story. And it's ancient history history, no connection to current events. In fact it didn't even happen, according to repectable news sites. Or they don't mention it, so it must not have happended . The US, as the article states, or rather doesn't state, or rather doesn't even mention, has nothing to do with political events inside Ukraine, that's why we never read anything about it. Did Russia do it or not do it? That's the only serious question for anything that happens in Ukraine.

US involvement in Urkaine? Harrruuumph! Conspiracy theory! And don't bring it up again!

Dimmus 3 Sep 2015 06:15

"But the media has been busy throwing up theories about who has most to benefit from this terrorist attack. "

- Ehhh... was it a terrorist attack? Not a peaceful protest democratically fighting bad and corrupt police prohibiting them to freely take the parliament? Because at the Euromaidan 17 policemen were killed and more than 200 injured when peaceful protesters were democratically fighting bad and corrupt police prohibiting them to freely take the parliament... and there were no terror attacks...


ositonegro -> BastaYa72 3 Sep 2015 06:11

"Corporatism was one of the ideals of both German Nazism and Italian fascism. They held it as a carrot before the people, as a 'solution' to the class problem. They used it as their 'revolutionary' credentials and in both cases, ditched it completely soon after taking power. The idea of each sector of society being organized to take its place at the high table of the state was always "jam tomorrow." Today's agenda was always "war."

It should also be understood that fascist 'corporatism' has nothing to do with the global corporations that are not often bigger than nation states. Modern 'corporatism' only shares a name with the fascist 'ideal.' Not that it any better.

RVictor -> oleteo 3 Sep 2015 06:01

Poroshenko Blames Russia For Police Deaths

paulrou -> kennyboy 3 Sep 2015 05:21

How can anyone not take the US state department's line. It is the truth. Ergo, everyone else is paid by the Russians.

Калинин Юрий -> elias_ 3 Sep 2015 04:59

He does not answer the questions, he blames Putin in all the world's sins and universe disasters. Global warming - Putin, extreme heat in the EU - Putin, police conflicts in the USA - Putin. Ask him, wh has scratched a car by a shopping mall last month - Putin!

RVictor -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 04:53

The West has not broken international law since the Iraq invasion.

Support and organization of governments overthrow all around the world? War in Libya? Killing with drones on foreigns territories? Bombing of Syria territory?

Theo Humbug -> normankirk 3 Sep 2015 04:52

Princesss Nuland of the neocons is a nasty murderous piece of work. One to watch. Hopefully somebody will 'putsch' her and her equally loathsome husband. Have they spawned any more little evils?

RVictor -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 04:49

Why does Georgia not get Interpol to issue an arrest warrant for Saakashvili? Ukraine would have to comply. The answer is obvious. They would not get one because the charges against Saakashvili are politically motivated, like most of the corruption charges in Russia.

Right - like any West institution Interpol is so-o-o independent, exactly like International Court!

Theo Humbug -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 04:49

I have come to realise that Jizzem is just a Turing Bot.

Theo Humbug -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 04:48

HAHAHAHAHA... Are you serious? Which planet are you on? Do you think people forget that quickly? A neo-neocon organised and paid for putsch is hardly "democratic", same as any other US sanctioned regime change i.e Mega Nation Theft.

jonsid -> Mark Elliott 3 Sep 2015 04:46

In all matters relating to Eastern Europe the Guardian has pinned its colours to the mast of the "New East Network." Which is essentially controlled by a Mr George Soros, Radio "Free Europe" and the National Endowment for Democracy." All mouthpieces of the state department. Its safest to believe the opposite of everything they tell us.

Theo Humbug -> Chirographer 3 Sep 2015 04:41

You clearly have a very bad memory. The Russian offer of cancelling debt and very reasonable prices for fuel was very attractive to the ELECTED government of Victor Yanukovych and far far better than the EU offer, which was why they were all for accepting the Russian offer and aligning more with Moscow..

But the USA can't have any country deciding it's own fate if it is not in accord with the Lords of this Universe.

The neocon organised and paid for putsch, Maidan Shootings, Odessa burnings, put a stop to any agreement beneficial to the Ukrainians and opened the way for the IMF to come in and steal the wealth of yet another country.

There is no excuse for anybody not to know these recorded and verifiable FACTS.

elias_ -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 04:36

You are fixated on Putin - you must be a not so secret admirer. Why don't you answer Tomov's question. What has Poroshenko achieved since becoming President?

RVictor -> careforukraine 3 Sep 2015 04:34

It is very hard to enter EU from the East without visa (and rules for visa application were hardened for Ukrainians). It is very hard to get job without working permit, and for money you need to register. Notice, that all these points are not present in case of refugees traveling to Russia/Belarus.

So I show you official numbers of registered refugees in EU - and amount of unregistered cannot be high due to immigration laws and functioning police system.

On over side, number of 400000 is taken from nowhere - go on and proof it.

Salut_Salut -> jezzam 3 Sep 2015 04:32

If you are such a hard-core proponent of sanctions policy, then may be you can name the beneficiaries of it in EU? Farmers? Businesses? Common people? Methinks - only politicians following in the wake of Uncle Sam's guidelines. The President of Russia is no way a role model or a paragon country leader, but seeing him behind every corner is nothing but a bout of anti-Russian paranoia. People of that long-suffering country aren't actually represented by him only.

Theo Humbug 3 Sep 2015 04:29

How far back does history go?

Lat week, last month, Maidan Square, the fall of the Soviet Union?

If taken that far back, then people will surely remember Ronnie Raygun's promises to Gorbachev that no NATO forces would encroach on former Soviet territory. Ehh?? What??

Fast forward to the neo-neocon putsch and princess Nuland boasting of the death and destruction that all those humanitarian $5 billion had purchased as she dispensed biscuits in Maidan, just prior to both sides being shot up by putschist snipers (likely from outside and/or Svoboda, or the Social Nationalists (don't say Nazis don't have a sense of humour!).

So called separatists voted to stay with Russia, with whom they identified, despite the lies and propaganda from the US/West/Nato including premature accusations of responsibility fro the shooting down of MH17 .. funny how 1) the US never released it's data (another Pentagon "plane"?) 2) that has all gone very quiet... Wonder what they found?

Perhaps the putschist regime and/or their neo-neocon pay/puppet-meisters have woken up to the very real danger of putting nazties withing 'Cooee' of nuclear weapons?

Of course, one does not need to be a nazti to call for nuclear mass murder. The blond plaited heroine of the right, the ex jailbird, ex Prime Minister (for ganesh sake!!) Tymoshenko called for the nuking of Donbass, if I remember correctly.

Russian now has the major Western forces and neonazis on their border. President Putin has to deal with these murderers and the great unwashed, living in their encapsulating bubbles of Newspeak and reality cooking shows, are told by the Mudorc press and other propagandists that it is Russia that is pure evil.

I wish there were a god.

Tony Cocks -> danhudders 3 Sep 2015 03:59

" The airliner was almost certainly downed by a Russian crew "

But of course you have not one shred of evidence to support your statement in which case would you agree it is valueless and was a waste of your time posting it in the first place.

RVictor -> careforukraine 3 Sep 2015 03:49

I think he said refugees crossed the border ........i am not sure that all refugees fill out the application form?

400000 ? Look on the current 100000's refugees wave from the Asia/Africa to get an expression how it looks like. Or on the last year summer wave of Ukrainian refugees in Russia - with large refugee camps for temporary placements etc. You cannot get 400000 refugees to go "unseen" - especially in case of relatively good-maintained land border.

martinusher 3 Sep 2015 03:09

Its not really a zero-sum game. Russia always maintained that the coup was engineered by the West by encouraging right wing elements and this is just one of a number of incidents that prove that their view was correct. This makes our life difficult in the West because we only think in polar terms -- if Russia is right then they 'win'. Since we cannot allow any situation where Russia 'wins' we go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to prove black is really white. It would be better to ignore Russia's comments and commentaries and just look dispassionately at who the actors are and what they're up to. The answers are staring us in the face.

(If you need any indication that something's not quite right in Ukraine then you only have to look to the appointment of Saakashvili as the governor of Odessa last summer. He's best known for his role as a Georgian politician, someone who, among other things, provoked a disastrous confrontation with Russia.)

SHappens 3 Sep 2015 03:07

To begin with, volunteers who went off to fight in the Donbass for the sake of maintaining Ukraine's unity were radicals from militant groups such as the Right Sector, which sprang up during the Maidan.

February 24, 2014, right extremist forces (Banderists, Right Sector and neo-Nazis Svoboda) implemented a coup during the Maiden. At the time the US government warned the Ukrainian authorities against using force against these 'pro-democracy protestors' even if, according to the pictures we saw, some of them were neo-Nazis who were throwing Molotov cocktails and other things at the police and smashing up statues and setting fire to buildings.

These forces were subsequently beaten in the elections, thus rejected by the Ukrainian people. However the first act of Poroshenko was to legitimate these irregular and illegal militias which, absent in Parliament, have received the far more important power of arms, courtesy of the new mixed Ukrainian-American government. Basically the only difference between the parliamentary majority and the far-right groups is that the first take orders from the West, the latter don't.

These militias became the spearhead of Ukrainian forces in the East and on them falls much of the war effort in the Civil War. But these militias can not yet be lifted, because otherwise the war in the East could not continue.

History always repeats itself. Use low ignorant, racist and violent manpower to take power by force but also to maintain it, but then to dump it as soon as possible because they rare considered, rightly, unpresentable or otherwise dangerous even for those who have instigated, financed and exploited them. Of course, sometimes such situations go out of hand, see the Afghan Mujahidin or ISIS.

Now Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk are receiving their own coin back. They supported and reinforced those they now pretend to discover to be thugs. The real puppets are and remain in power while their useful barbarians have become bothersome: infamous, resistant to the point that one can wonder if the latest riot would not be a false flag from Yats and Poro who used the skills of these criminal thugs. Because the latter are not mere free electrons who just decided to meet that day. There is money, people that structure this, a hierarchy, an efficient network and money at will, in which Russia has no involvement.

Still, Poroshenko and Yatsenuk want more war and call for lethal arms supply. All this while the rating of Ukrainian is now CC with negative outlook.

RVictor -> Bosula 3 Sep 2015 03:02

400,000 refugees crossed the borders from Ukraine into the EU over the past year.

You are lying (surprise, surprise!):

"There were 4,603 applications for international protection in Germany, 3,600 in Poland, 2,956 in Italy, 1,962 in Sweden, 1,763 in France, 200 in Moldova, 60 in Romania, 60 in Hungary and 20 in Slovakia," the UNHCR findings highlighted.

vr13vr 3 Sep 2015 02:16

"Russian TV focused on the events outside the Ukrainian parliament to prove to viewers that chaos reigns in Ukraine. "

And doesn't chaos indeed reign in Ukraine? I thought that was beyond obvious and doesn't need any additional proof.

vr13vr 3 Sep 2015 02:13

How about the more obvious explanation that Maidan, so much encouraged and celebrated by the West, had taught Ukrainians that it is Ok to attack the police, try to pull away their shields (see the photo above), through molotov cocktail at them (there was a picture on Monday) and grenades in order to pass certain laws in their Rada.

vr13vr 3 Sep 2015 02:11

How exactly Russia is "profiting" from this? is this author just throwing the sentences around or is he required to fulfill some anti-Russia quota in his article?

ArtofLies -> Jonathan Stromberg 3 Sep 2015 02:09

There are undoubtedly going to be further problems with these nationalists, oh come on, we can call the neo-nazi's or neo-fascists here, just because the journalists above the line cant be seen to be propagandising for fascists does not mean that we have to play those semantic games.

the fact is this is the second time these fascists have attacked the police, this time with grenades, the last time it was molotov cocktails, but the media wont criticise them because there is money to be made in the ukraine, not everything is privatised yet and i hear there are still dreams of fracking ukraine to prosperity.

nishville -> Jonathan Stromberg 3 Sep 2015 01:43

The far right have done all the dirty work during the coup and still doing it on the frontline and have not got enough in return, in their view. Croatia had a similar problem with their extremist veterans who were used by the Croatian right wing HDZ to destabilize social-democrat government.

Both countries are US clients and US has no use anymore for the nazi dogs of war, i.e. they can protest all they want - they are getting nothing and if they become too obstructive, they will start to disappear one by one.

They might be dangerous but they are nothing compared to money men running the show.

drrust 3 Sep 2015 01:38

Again you are instigating that the Minsk agreements were reached by western or international powers in general, implying that angloamerica was part of this. The agreement was a sole and very sucsessful initiative of Mrs Merkel, who took a reluctant Holland with her who solely sensed a chance to be viewed as a statesman. The UK had already transports of war material underway.

elias_ -> Bosula 3 Sep 2015 01:14

There's million in Russia although many of them may be hiding to avoid military service. Look on the bright side, there's another 40 million of them and I bet most will want to move into the land of milk and honey which is Europe.

MaoChengJi 2 Sep 2015 23:31

"But despite profiting from it, Russia is very unlikely to have perpetrated it"

Oh no, say it ain't so! How can any trouble in this world be caused by something that is not The Dark Lord Putin?

And how is Russia 'profiting' from this, I'd like to know? Isn's this rather a case of the western Russophobe industry suffering a loss?

Well, for sure the Russophobe industry suffering a loss is an undeniable victory for all humanity, but putting it as 'Russia profiting'?.. Oh well, russophobes are weird creatures, I've noticed it a long time ago.

retarius 2 Sep 2015 22:47

Occam's razor: the fascist nationalist nutters orchestrated the whole thing, because they don't want any concessions given to the objects of their hatred.

eric lund 2 Sep 2015 20:43

How the USA rule sway the destinies of Ukraine flooding it with blood

One can get an impression that authorities of Ukraine, totally dependent on State Department of USA, are doing anything – searching for spies, begging for money, getting weapons from USA and Europe, suppressing dissidence, self-advertising and desperate propaganda, but not taking the steps to peaceful regulation of conflict in South-East of the country and its economic rise.

According to the last research of Kiev international institute of sociology the rating of president Petr Poroshenko has fallen three times, down to 13,6%, other candidates don't even get 5%. When authorities are so unpopular, it is only left for them to turn the screws and continue witch hunting at full throttle.

The director of Centre of Eurasian researches Vladimir Kornilov noted: "Everybody perfectly understands where the HR department of Ukrainian policy is. It is in the American Embassy".

In order to strengthen his worthless power Poroshenko fired seemingly over powerful chief of Service of Safety Valentin Nalivaychenko, who had been transmitting information which often put Poroshenko himself in not very bright light, to representatives of USA. And new chief of Service of Safety Vasiliy Gritsak, who is very close to Poroshenko and was the head of his own service of safety, at one dash arrested 40 colonels and generals allegedly for dissidence in his department.
Danger is getting closer for Home Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov. The chief military prosecutor Of Ukraine Anatoliy Matios claimed that members of criminal organization 'Tornado', made on the base of militia and appointed by Avakov from former criminals, had organized secret place in basement floor of school to torture illegally captured people. The Ukrainian patriarch Filareth presented a medal for sacrificing and love for Ukraine, so to say for perverted sadism while torments, which are unofficially legalized by Ukrainian authorities.

At the same time the level of aggression of Ukrainian militaries is only picking up speed. Thus, the Ambassador of Ukraine in USA Valeriy Chalykh without any scruples stated: We are getting weapons, including lethal, and nobody can prohibit it to independent Ukraine. The other thing is that it is not common to disclose these countries, but they are more than 10, only from Europe. We have different level of technical and military cooperation, and at this stage it is only going further.

Chillskier -> Paul Moore 2 Sep 2015 20:42

Here is two examples of Porkoshenko being a head of occupational government:

  1. He destroyed Ukraine's military industrial complex, for it's ties (very profitable by the way) with Russian military, as any obedient CIA stooge will do.
  2. He flipped the country geo-politically, from the state that should have benefit from it's position in the middle of the Europe, in to some sort of final frontier, protecting Europe from the hordes of those crazy Russians, all by himself , only crazy person could have come up with this, or an obedient CIA stooge again.

So it is what Ukraine g-ment does, not what putin tells.


EugeneGur -> Chirographer 2 Sep 2015 20:35

everything would have been wonderful if Ukraine had not decided to finally reject the brotherly embrace of Putin's Russia

Not everything, because by that time Ukrainian authorities have already ruined a lot. However, there is little doubt that Ukraine would've been a hell of a lot better off if it hadn't followed the path of the coup and indulged in anti-Russian hysteria. Has your mother ever told you that quarreling with your neighbors is never a good idea?

Looking at the situation objectively, it is a good thing that the Kiev government is trying to follow the Minsk plan.

Objectively? You? It would be a good thing if it were but it doesn't. These constitutional changes have nothing to do with the requirements for the regional autonomy set out in Minsk II. Nor have they been agreed to by the Donbass representatives, which makes the whole thing pointless. But even these miserable changes had to be pushed through by Nuland, because Rada initially refused to approved them. There are 13 points in Minsk II and so far Kiev fulfilled none of them.

Jeff1000 2 Sep 2015 20:30

Some people think the challenges faced by Ukraine's Poroshenko are now too big to overcome. But those who would like to take his place have not shown themselves capable of doing even half of what he has achieved.

Wait...Poroshenko has achieved something? He has done nothing but what he was told.

He waged war in the east because John Brennan told him to. And then stopped when Merkel told him to. He is a non-entity.

Julian1972 -> truk10 2 Sep 2015 19:54

I know! I know!

Still, when the US funds its various Intelligence Agencies and Covert Overseas Operations Organizations to levels beyond that which most of the rest of the world combined spend on their actual militaries, it's hard not see why they end up being suspected of having sticky fingers in various pies.

Poor, innocent US...after all, all that money's just being spent on ergonomic seating and biodegradable paperclips, right? Hahahaha!

nnedjo 2 Sep 2015 19:51

There is one more possible theory, which seems that the author has failed to notice.
Thus, due to the fact that the proposed legislation is far from what was envisaged by Minsk 2 agreement, and in particular is far from what would satisfy the pro-Russian rebels, the following question arises:
Does this event may have been aimed to strengthen the claim that this bill is the most that Ukraine can offer to the pro-Russian rebels, because, "for God's sake, even for this Ukrainians began to kill each other in the middle of Kiev"?


TomFullery -> Chillskier 2 Sep 2015 19:47

You are right about Ukraine's economy. I visit fairly often and each time I get more Hryvnia for my Euros. Plus the restaurants are empty so you are guaranteed good service from serving staff desperate for a tip to supplement their meagre wages (so much for joining the US "democratic" system!).

Strange that the Nazi putsch in Kiev has benefited me (who wouldn't piss on them if they were burning) rather more than 99% of Ukrainians.

Although I do notice that the Kiev Nazis seem to have taken one step in the direction of moderation - the shrine to the Nazi Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera which was there erected about the time of the putsch has now disappeared (most likely moved to a less conspicuous location).

Julian1972 -> desnol 2 Sep 2015 19:44

Dead right.

In penning the written equivalent of 'The Picture That Fooled the World':

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/guest/LM/lm-f97/LM97_Bosnia.html

maybe, at least, his 'confusion' is a symptom of his conscience trying to find it's voice. Hehehe, maybe there's hope for him yet?

Let's face it, straight reporting on The Ukraine is hard to come by, given that it's labouring under the 3-line whip of the CIA, MI6 and another global I.S. best not to mention.

NorthOfTheM25 2 Sep 2015 19:42

The Ukrainian regime in as much as they try so hard to have a resemblance of 'western values' (whatever that means) & to avoid behaving like the powers that be at the Kremlin. At the end of the day have the same approach in how they apportion blame & deflect attention from their obvious failings.

When you back hard right elements (to further your personal political goals, when both parties share a common antagonist) who are prone to violence. Don't cry victim when they disagree with your political overtures & decisions. Acting out that disagreement the only manner they know how to which is through violence.

I have no sympathy Poroshenko, for the backlash his government is now facing re: his government's constitutional proposals.

TomFullery -> jezzam 2 Sep 2015 19:35

His Ukraine policy has two main prongs.

1. Make Putin realise that military aggression against his neighbours carries too high an economic penalty to be worthwhile.

Nothing got military until the US-instigated Nazi putsch in Kiev. Strategic imperatives trump short term economic considerations and Russia has reacted skilfully to the attack by the US using Ukraine as a proxy (much to Ukraine's detriment)

2. Support Ukraine economically until it becomes a prosperous liberal democracy, like the rest of Europe (Russia excepted of course).

Ukraine will be asset-stripped by US corporations. Ukraine will not be a prosperous, liberal democracy in your lifetime and neither will the US.

His policy seems to be working very well.

Oh dear!

Chillskier -> normankirk 2 Sep 2015 19:33

Link to the story that will challenge the spotless mind of jezzam:
http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2015/08/28/ukrainischer-oligarch-bereichert-sich-an-iwf-krediten/

Oligarchs in Ukraine are doing extremely well, obviously not a concern for a coup sponsors.

normankirk -> jezzam 2 Sep 2015 19:33

Want an example of a twist?

Kerry warning Poroshenko against resuming hostilities, retaking territory in breach of the Minsk agreement, then less than a week later Nuland rushing to Kiev to egg Poroshenko on, thoroughly endorsing his plans

Hanwell123 -> Knapping 2 Sep 2015 19:28

He was the idiot who jumped the gun in the CIA plan to create a war in 2008. He went before the whistle shelling an unprotected and unwarned city hours before he was supposed to. One of Asias prize fools. So Poroshenko's made him - a non Ukrainian - Governor of Odessa. Great stuff Poro!

TomFullery -> jezzam 2 Sep 2015 19:27

Despite Yanukovich's corruption he did a decent job of steering Ukraine down the middle path between Russia and the US/EU and he was nobody's proxy. As for his corruption he was a mere pickpocket compared to the like of Timoshenko who is not on any Ukrainian, EU or US corruption list!

This wasn't good enough for the neocons in Washington who wanted the whole country - hence their instigation of the Nazi putsch in Kiev. It's gone downhill all the way for the Ukrainian people since then considering they have lost a sizeable chunk of territory and now likely having to move to some sort of federal system.

On top of those miseries they now have Finance and Economics ministers from Lithuania and Poland parachuted in by the US and given Ukrainian citizenship on the day of their inauguration to their respective posts. They also have US stooge and ex-Georgian president Sakaashvili and fugitive from Georgian justice parachuted in as governor of Odessa. Let's not forget Joe Biden's son who was appointed to the board of directors of one of Ukraine's biggest energy companies very shortly after the Nazi putsch.

At least the east of the country is out of the hands of US corporate predators but it's a certainty that agreements will be signed (if not already) to turn massive tracts of Ukrainian farmland in the west of that country to US GM giants. I wonder how those US-loving west Ukrainians are going to react when the horrible reality of US-style "democracy" hits home.

NorthOfTheM25 -> truk10 2 Sep 2015 19:24

Stop it, you are embarrassing yourself & sound like a bitter divorcee who has lost a legal battle. Nothing you have said has little bearing with the article.

But I guess each time the key trigger words Russia, Ukraine, Kremlin, Stalin & Moscow are mentioned then just like Putin bots, you are also activated from your dwelling under the bridge to reel out the tired & repetitive anti Putin bellicose rants.

normankirk -> jezzam 2 Sep 2015 19:22

except it is the oligarchs who are prospering. Kolomoisky is under investigation for diverting 1.8 billion of IMF money to his own Cyprus bank account. Poroshenkos profits have increased astronomically while all Ukrainians are taking pay cuts.


luckyjohn -> alpamysh 2 Sep 2015 19:03

Yanukovych contributed a lot to radicalise Ukrainian society. He planned his survival in office by manipulation - stressing Tyannybok's importance to voters so that in the end there would be a choice - Tyaynybok or himself Yanukovych for president. Of course - Yanukovych then wins because the radical Tyahnybok is too "dangerous" to vote in. So much for your democratically elected president Yanukovych! So the presence of radical elements in Ukrainian society is in fact Yanukovych's doing. He was a very divisive president who played on divisions in Ukraine rather than trying to heal them as well as being thoroughly corrupt.


virgenskamikazes 2 Sep 2015 18:37

I would believe the Western version if, after ousting Yanukovich, they would do a 21st century, EU version of a Marshall Plan. If the EU had said to Yanukovich "we want to flood Ukraine with Euro with very low interest and in long term, for investment in infrastructure and industrialization projects - given that you cut ties completely with Russia" and Yanukovich had said "no" to that, than I think it would be fair for the Ukranian people to oust him.

But the EU offered a humiliating, absurd shock therapy style reform, that's why Yanukovich "no". Even imediate full EU, EZ membership was not on the table.

The thing is, the Ukrainian people bought on the fantasy that they could mass emigrate to central Europe overnight had Yanukovich said "yes", that only them had economic problems, that the West is the promised land, that we are still in the Cold War, etc.

Had Yanukovich hold on tight on power until two months ago, after the Greek tragedy, I doubt there would be political strength for the USA and the Ukrainian far-right to oust him.

Beckow -> ArthurJenkinson 2 Sep 2015 18:32

He wrote a long article with bizarre conspiracy theories in order to confuse a very simple attack by a Ukrainian nationalist mob on the police, killing 3 policemen.

The "theories" are there to obfuscate and confuse. We are close to the end game in Kiev and it will not be pretty. And the angry hysteria among Washington, London and Berlin sponsors of this madness will also get uglier. They don't like to lose so they would prefer just about anything to admitting to being defeated in Ukraine.


Julian1972 2 Sep 2015 17:43

Poroshenko's assertion that Russia is to blame for this week's murder of policemen is of the same Frankenstein DNA as his assertion that Russia was behind the downing of Flight MH17 and that the Eastern part of The Ukraine's population are not democrats rising up against an illegal putsch which brought him to power but are simply 'Kremlin puppets'...and therefore justifiably crushed by the same type of gunfire that otherwise had Maidan martyrs held up as 'heroes'. (Even though it was members of their own side doing the shooting, hahaha).

Disgusting man hailing from a disgusting class of politician/businessmen trained by the US to bring death and chaos to any part of the globe that the powers behind the US Government see fit. Prepare for our own Maidan should this class of parasite-sans-frontieres, (read Mikheil Saakashvili), succeed in bringing The Ukraine under the NATO umbrella.


BastaYa72 -> alpamysh 2 Sep 2015 17:43

You can't even tell the difference between 'neo-fascist' and 'Nazi'.

If either term comes into your tiny mind it obviously defaults to imagining scenes from the last days in the Führerbunbker - whatever turns you on.

Also, the IMF has always favoured right wing corporatist regimes, preferably with as little democracy as possible.


desnol 2 Sep 2015 17:41

The author's puzzlement and confusion are directly proportional to how little he understands the situation in Ukraine. He keeps wondering about various scenario's, each more absurd than the previous.

I chortled with laughter, almost choked, when he suggested that the Kremlin agents are organising the far right nationalists in Ukraine, deliberately causing an outbreak of peace in order to show up the Kiev parties in a bad light! Believe me, Kiev parties can show themselves up all by themselves!

And then, almost at the very end of the article, after all his fanciful, surreal speculation, Andrey Kurkov hits the nail on the head with


"Still, the violence could have a far more banal explanation."

But even then he gets it all skewed up, blaming the fact that Ukranian army went to fight the separatists for the fact that the far right thugs are now armed and throwing bombs in Kiev. Doesn't he realise they were armed and throwing bombs in Maidan 2014 edition? He doesn't ask who armed them in the first place.
The author is giving a good impression of being one very confused bloke.

domeus -> thenewstranger 2 Sep 2015 17:30

At least he is an improvement on all the other Guardian journalists who report on Russia and Ukraine. He connects the right wing group of people behind the killing of the of the policeman in Kiev with those those who volunteered to kill their fellow countrymen in Odessa and throughout the eastern and southern regions. Autonomy for the regions would have solved the problem then and prevented the unnecessary bloodshed and suffering. But Nuland had other plans and the western media acted accordingly.

Jessica Roth -> alpamysh 2 Sep 2015 17:14

The Maidan "protestors" were the ones who broke the cease-fire, shooting at both the Berkut and their own people. The forensic evidence proved it. Did you not listen to the Urmas Paet-Baroness Ashton phone call?

The "impeachment" of Yanukovich was illegal under the Ukraine constitution, which required a 75% vote. Even with the US-trained thugs forcing MPs to the floor at gunpoint, only 72% of the Ukraine parliament was present for the vote. Poroshenko has no more business being President than the burnt and raped corpses of the people his Azov Nazis butchered in Odessa and Mariupol do. (Although the corpses would probably do a better job.)

bonhiver 2 Sep 2015 16:49

I wondered how long it would be for poroshenko to blame putin for the grenade attack. Russia has been a convenient scapegoat for Ukraine to blame for its own failings since the overthrow of yanukovic.

The right wing activists who carried out the grenade attack were at the heart of the maidan protests which also involved violent confrontations with the police. They were also those who tarrgetted ethnic Russians following the overthrow of yanukovic so their actions in opposition to granting extra powers to eastern territories is hardly surprising.

ositonegro 2 Sep 2015 16:44

The Azov battalion also declared they would bring the war to Kiev if not sated in Dombass. You make a fascist revolution and the next move is to institutionalize it. Hitler did this very well, destroying the populist SA movement and assassinating their leaders and incorporating the remainder into the regular army. Then fascism could move forward with the whole state support.

But in Ukraine the EU-US used fascism to make the coup then tried to reign it in. The fascists however cannot be institutionalized. They are still a powerful street movement with the added benefit of having been trained and armed and given military space to grow. Now they are pushing for policy dominance over the regular bourgeois political forces and using bombs to do it. The Azov Battalion always said they would take the war back to Kiev if they felt betrayed.

It has to be understood that Poroshenko is not a fascist, despite coming to power on the back of their efforts. The EU-US do not want the fascists in power. How could Ukraine enter the EU with an outright fascist government? But they are playing with fire, using these street forces and then renouncing them. It will come a time when they do not have either the legitimacy of the power to stop another coup against themselves, and this time with no restraints. Then what will the EU do?

While Greece founders under unsustainable debt and Eurogroup dictatorship, Ukraine is given sweeteners, relieving 20% of their debt - something unimaginable with Greece. But you can't stop a tsunami with Canderel.

[Sep 03, 2015] The Afterthought of Nagasaki

August 13, 2015 | Antiwar.com

Seven decades ago, the US dropped one atomic bomb on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki, Japan. The journalistic hook of that nice, big 7-0 means that mainstream outlets had an excuse to look back and consider the decision to use the nukes. The conclusion remains mixed. There's some (vital) uncomfortableness with the idea that the grand old US remains the only nation to use such a weapon on human beings. But it never feels like a true black mark on the US, because, well, we won't let it be one.

It is true some people – and some polls suggest – that the anti-nuke side of things wins out more and more when we look at the passage of time. Yet, it doesn't feel that way when the subject is discussed. Perhaps if you directly ask whether nuking was justified (a surprisingly low 56 percent say yes in a 2015 Pew Research Center poll), you may get one type of answer. But even ostensibly neutral history books that most children use in most schools reaffirm this constant narrative of justification. The bombing ended World War II, and America did it, and Hitler lost, and so it must have been good and right. It's easy to believe this, and easier still if you don't spend too much time thinking about it. I read a great deal of history before I realized that some very war-friendly, establishment people like Gen. Dwight Eisenhower disputed the necessity of the bombing.

Another, narrower aspect of the question of justification lies with the second bombing. "Hiroshima" is historical shorthand for the use of atomic bombs on human beings, the way Waco is shorthand for the tragedy with the Branch Davidians, and Columbine means (what was once) the most horrifying school shooting. That's how humans talk about things. But when we say Hiroshima, what do we mean? Do we mean the fact of both bombs? Or just the first one? The afterthought that is the bombing of Nagasaki rather brilliantly sums up the lack of care on the part of the defenders of the act. Let us say – though we are wrong – that the first bomb on August 6 is morally acceptable because because we have a crystal ball that proves a land invasion is otherwise necessary and it will kill one million people. (Presumably, our crystal ball also tell us unequivocally that horrifically punishing citizens for the crimes of their government is all right if you really feel like it. )

Given all of that, what makes the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9 acceptable? Nagasaki was the last minute replacement for Kokura, which had blessed smoke and haze cover preventing the dropping of the bomb. Kyoto had previously been suggested as a target, but was too beautiful. A dozen and a half other cities were on the list earlier that spring, and Nagasaki was taken off, and then later hand written on the draft strike order in late July. A decision this momentous and horrifying was borderline spur of the moment.

Now, the parody news site The Onion actually sums up the Nagasaki situation brilliantly (except for a predictable French joke). Their headline reads "Nagasaki Bombed 'Just for the Hell of it.'" The sub: "second A-bomb would have just sat around anyway, say generals." The entire faux article is worth a read. It's painfully damning.

Three days is the patience that the US had for killing 40,000 or not. Three days for the Japanese government to surrender. Three days is how much the people of Nagasaki were worth. That speaks volumes about priorities. You cannot argue that this was some cold math problem that cannot be regretted or coo that the US was doing it to save everyone's lives when you read about the bumbling, last minute journey to drop Fat Man on Nagasaki. This is brilliantly relayed in a recent New Yorker piece written by nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein. The whole piece is essential reading, but two details that stuck out to me were the following. The warning leaflets that hawks point to even in casual debate about the issue as proof the US meant to preserve some life? Those warnings of a terrible weapon to come? They came on August 10.

Also illuminating is a list of some of the closest targets to ground zero. Yes, Fat Man took out a torpedo factory and a Mitsubishi plant. Nearby were also: "Nagasaki Prison, Mitsubishi Hospital, Nagasaki Medical College, Chinzei High School, Shiroyama School, Urakami Cathedral, Blind and Dumb School, Yamazato School, Nagasaki University Hospital, Mitsubishi Boys' School, Nagasaki Tuberculosis Clinic, Keiho Boys' High School."

Wellerstein also has a blog post from two years ago which asks "Why Nagasaki?" In it he goes over theories not as to why the city was picked, but why another nuke was dropped at all. "No really, we mean it" is the official version. But as Wellerstein wisely notes, this is silly. Did the US expect the Japanese to think this impossible new weapon had been a fluke? Some kind of magic incantation? That's a terrifyingly weak excuse for killing so many people – making sure they EXTRA got the point. So indeed is one theory that both plutonium and uranium bombs needed to have proven they were worth the Manhattan project's enormous cost. Wellerstein doubts that one, but it certainly has a ringing confirmation bias for those against the military industrial complex.

Wellerstein suggests that though Nagasaki almost escaped unscathed:

"To stop the atomic bombing would have been the unusual position. Go back to that original target order: the only distinction is between the "first special bomb" and the "additional bombs," not a singular second special bomb." And in his New Yorker Piece, he also notes that Truman appears to have been uncomfortable destroying another city full of "all those kids."

So there you go. There were only two nukes dropped, and none since. It could have been worse. But this was not a country weighing competing interests like stopping Imperial Japan and not slaughtering people. This was "hit 'em again to make sure they're down." A week would be too long to wait? Ten days? A month? It seems that even people willing to do something as horrific as nuke a city could wait a little bit to see if they must do it again. But, no. Because if it is on the table – if you have just done it – then you will do it again. The Onion wasn't kidding.

And so they say two nukes ended the war, but what if the US had stopped at one? How do we know that wouldn't have worked? Or they had needed five, or ten, or twenty nukes, all of Japan in a rubble? Would that have been just as necessary as two? That's the margin of error war works with: scores of thousands of lives lost. Maybe we needed to do it once, maybe twice. One or two bombs. Three if we can finish that last one. The lack of specificity which doomed Nagasaki is haunting, and it proves that the hawks are guessing just as much as anyone else.

Lucy Steigerwald is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and a columnist for VICE.com. She previously worked as an Associate Editor for Reason magazine. She is most angry about police, prisons, and wars. Steigerwald blogs at www.thestagblog.com.

/ukraine. /guardian_slips. Polit*/ Neocolon*/ /predator_state. /disaster_capitalism. Propaganda/ fighting_russo*/ /nulndgate. /far_right /color_revolutions.

[Sep 03, 2015] Sorry, General, but the title greatest "purveyors of radical Islam" does not belong to the Iranians. Not even close. That belongs to our putative ally Saudi Arabia. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said... Our Radical Islamic BFF, Saudi Arabia
http://nyti.ms/1LTh6K6
NYT - Thomas L. Friedman - Sep 2

The Washington Post ran a story last week about some 200 retired generals and admirals who sent a letter to Congress "urging lawmakers to reject the Iran nuclear agreement, which they say threatens national security." There are legitimate arguments for and against this deal, but there was one argument expressed in this story that was so dangerously wrongheaded about the real threats to America from the Middle East, it needs to be called out.

Retired generals and admirals urge Congress to
reject Iran nuclear deal http://wapo.st/1JjkfNm
Washington Post - August 26

That argument was from Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, the retired former vice commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, who said of the nuclear accord: "What I don't like about this is, the number one leading radical Islamic group in the world is the Iranians. They are purveyors of radical Islam throughout the region and throughout the world. And we are going to enable them to get nuclear weapons."

Sorry, General, but the title greatest "purveyors of radical Islam" does not belong to the Iranians. Not even close. That belongs to our putative ally Saudi Arabia. ...

[Sep 03, 2015] The Inevitability of a War President by Lucy Steigerwald by Lucy Steigerwald

Sep 03, 2015 | Antiwar.com
In April, former president George W. Bush told a group of supporters that he wanted to sit out of his brother's campaign because voters have an aversion to the Oval Office becoming a family affair. On September 10, W. will be the man in charge at a fundraiser for Jeb in New York City.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush being assisted by George W. Bush is just one sign that the new class of would-be presidents is shamelessly, painfully close to what we have seen before. And this includes their stance on keeping American empire strong.

Indeed, there's a reason the Bushes have done so well in politics. Back in 2013, Barbara Bush said that she didn't want to see another member of the clan as president. The country, she said, had had enough Bushes. Back then, this seemed like a refreshing acceptance that yes, maybe a father and son should be the limit, and we didn't need to add a brother with the same damned name to the Oval Office. But Mrs. Bush backed off these comments two years later – presumably once she got the memo that Jeb was serious.

Never mind that. The novelty of Bushes paying lip service to the danger of dynasty is long gone. Bush W. and Jeb have managed to sound nuanced and even self-deprecating when they talk about their family's hunger for power. A flicker of self-awareness means only more savvy campaigning. Oh, I know you're all sick of Bushes! This isn't a dynasty! But gosh, I just have so many swell ideas, how could I not run?!

That same name is bad enough. But Bush palling around with his brother's foreign policy buddies – including none other than Paul Wolfowitz – is enough to make him a truly frightening candidate. And no, being browbeaten into admitting the War in Iraq was not wise does not count as knowing such an endeavor was inherently disastrous. This progress is particularly underwhelming when you consider the fact that W. is also one of Jeb's foreign policy advisers.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to her exceedingly arguable credit, doesn't pull that card of shucks, I know you don't want another Clinton, but…. Nor do her supporters. For them it is "her turn" and her family tie to a former president is nothing but a win. Her warmongering bonafides are already well-established, however that does not matter to her fans. Anyone dying for a Hillary Clinton presidency is a straw liberal who cares about power quotas for oppressed minorities such as rich, well-educated, white American women. Never mind the real oppressed minorities being bombed abroad, it's time for a woman president!

In the face of a potential choice between a Bush and a Clinton, no wonder the lunatic, xenophobic populist train of Donald Trump's candidacy has pulled out of the station and is chugging along so fiercely. In an alternate universe, Trump is a ballsy businessman who never supported the war in Iraq, and wants to have a powerful military that is never used. In reality, he's a principle-less, self-aggrandizing cipher who clearly says whatever comes to mind. No matter his occasional flashes of what appears to be sense, is there anyone who believes President Trump would be restrained, and would stress diplomacy over war? The man thinks absurd, walrus-faced hawk John Bolton, the former UN ambassador, is a good foreign policy adviser.

Rounding out the GOP class are happy interventionists such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, former Gov. Scott Walker, and neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Many of these candidates have no chance, but regardless of differences in focus, all of them are painfully pro-Israel, and all are willing to use military force against ISIS. No Republican candidate is for the deal with Iran. Almost none of them have expressed the slightest desire to have a less aggressive foreign policy. Rand Paul is the obvious exception there, and he still seems a bit less gung-ho about war-making than the rest of them. Still, he's gone appallingly hawkish during the last few months. Besides, enthusiastic or "regretful" war-making is most often just an aesthetic choice. Are you going to make sad faces after bombing, or are you going to act like a cowboy? It may not matter so much in the end, not unless a president – and a Congress, and a country – is truly dead set on avoiding war.

(Oddly, the completely ignored, polling at less-than-one-percent Lincoln Chafee has the positive legacy of being the only Republican senator to vote against the war in Iraq. His campaign website even says he "will end drone strikes, torture of prisoners, and warrantless wiretaps." He switched parties, however, making him even more of a dub to partisans.)

Now, Bernie Sanders is one feasible candidate who has a promising, if slightly underwhelming anti-interventionist history. He does not, however, seem terribly interested in making anti-interventionism a prominent point of his campaign. When I asked former Rep. Ron Paul about this in an interview which went up on the site last week, Paul qualified some of Sanders' antiwar bonafides, but admitted that the man had some good principles. Unfortunately for folks such as Ron Paul, Sanders is a democratic socialist who has subsequently alarming policy goals to anyone interested in a smaller government all around.

So, those are our choices if we're looking for even a scrap of antiwar feeling. A demagogue with nightmare hair who claims he won't use the military much, but changes his mind on issues every other day (except for xenophobia). A socialist who also hates open borders. A chip off the old block but not enough, who seems to have taken a neocon turn. The third Bush in 30 years, who can be successfully pushed into halfway admitting that his brother made a mistake when he began a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and destabilized an entire region. An antiwar Democrat with no chance in hell. It's going to be a long election.

Lucy Steigerwald is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and a columnist for VICE.com. She previously worked as an Associate Editor for Reason magazine. She is most angry about police, prisons, and wars. Steigerwald blogs at www.thestagblog.com.

[Sep 03, 2015] Who Is Listening to Dick Cheney by Lucy Steigerwald

"...So yes, Cheney should be mocked, disrespected, and condemned for now. His ideas should be ripped to pieces. But it isn't entirely about him, or whether any of the 2016 GOPers want to explicitly tout his ideas for the world. Cheney is not subtle. Republicans and Democrats today, at this moment, have to be more coy about their imperial ambitions. Often, the only real difference is the honesty. Forget this dangerous notion that warmongering is so last decade. It is part of our daily life. Forget the idea that since we all boo and hiss when Cheney's name appears in a byline, the threat of him is long gone. It isn't. When the leading candidate with antiwar credentials says he supports a limited drone war, you can be assured that the problem is bigger than Cheney, and bigger than the neocons. "
Antiwar.com

Who Is Listening to Dick Cheney?

by Lucy Steigerwald, September 03, 2015

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Dick Cheney is a former vice president who had an enormous effect on public policy, and therefore on history. He should be interviewed by media outlets. He should be asked tough questions about every single aspect of his tenure in the White House. We cannot pretend that Cheney does not belong in history books, or that he will vanish if we just wish hard enough.

But the line should be firmly drawn. Cheney is part of history, and there he should stay. But not so much that we pretend he is toothless and apolitical. He should not be steered out as a fun toy, the way Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright and other, shall we say, controversial politicians have been on stunt-cast on shows ranging from Gilmore Girls to The Colbert Report.

Most importantly, Dick Cheney's new attention-grabbing attempts should be ignored. The man was given a much longer leash than most VPs to wreck the world. He's done. Unfortunately, Dick doesn't think so himself.

George W. Bush has been unfairly praised for mostly keeping his nose out of President Obama's business. But Obama has had his own wars in Libya, and all over the MIddle East via drone. He doesn't really need the advice of any warmongers beyond his own cabinet.

The question now is who among the 2016 contenders might be the most eager to learn from Cheney. Because Cheney and his daughter Liz do have lots of opinions to share. A whole book of them, in fact. It is called Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. Last week, The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt.

It seems Cheney and Lil Cheney know that it's "more than likely" a nuclear weapon will be not just acquired by Iran, but that someone will use one due to catastrophic effects of the Iran deal.

Forget Obama's claim on the word. Audacity thy name is Cheney. Not only is he shamelessly happy to defend the war he started, he is also ready to tell the whole world how America should act. Best of all, he is ready to predict the long-term effects of foreign policy decisions. He is practically a seer, as long as you ignore his incessant refrain that Saddam Hussein was tied in some way to 9/11.

Government is magic like that. But few people are quite as bold as Cheney when it comes to defending a 1.7 trillion-dollar boondoggle that killed hundreds of thousands.

Some people aren't worried about this nostalgia for 2003. The Washington Post's Paul Waldman look at CheneySquared's bid for attention and remained unperturbed. Waldman seems to think that the class of 2016 is not going to give the Cheney spirit attention, so why worry? After all, nearly every candidate – including Jeb Bush! – has suggested that the Iraq war was a mistake as it was fought. Cheney stands almost entirely alone as a national politician in his conviction that it was a good war.

So what?

Pardon my pessimism, but the price of allowing Dick Cheney's freedom is eternal vigilance. His special brand of warmongering may not be in fashion at this precise moment, and neither is the 2003 war he championed, but it can always return in force. Just about every GOP candidate for the nomination has suggested or implied that Obama is a foreign policy wuss. That is, we need a more aggressive policy than the one practiced by the man who claims the right to assassinate anyone – including American citizens – and has waged a robotic, undeclared war that has left thousands of casualties.

It feels so easy now to assume the neocons are ancient history. W. left office with historically low approval ratings. We've heard and made ten thousand jokes about supervillain Cheney. His heart is weak, and he's out of power. In short, we're all superior to our 2003 selves, and would never again tolerate such an aggressive, arrogant war.

We would, if we were pushed. The American people have a low stamina for long wars, but a strong appetite for starting a new one when they are told it is essential. The idea that the official summary of the Iraq war as a "mistake" means we can relax is a dangerous one. Nobody running with a shot in hell believes that in any substantial way. They believe they have to say it was a mistake, because the popular winds now blow that way. Their war, if they felt they needed to fight one, would be different. Your war is always different.

If the hawks are smart, they will keep going to war by fits and starts. Then they can remake the world the way they wish to. Drone wars are "better" than boots on the ground in Iraq, so not Obama or Bernie Sanders can say anything about them. The cheaper drones get, the easier it will be to keep a constant, psychologically traumatizing presence in countries with which we cannot even be bothered to declare war.

Perhaps ISIS will be met with full military force, perhaps the Iran-hawks will gain an upper hand, but not necessarily. It's easier to just send a few more advisers and troops back into Iraq. Make your allies bomb instead. Regardless, as The Nation noted this week, the civilian casualties that result from these engagements will remain minor news. Civilian casualties are boring. Keep that war on the backburner, and after a few more years, 2003 will be a thousand years ago, and then maybe the Cheney crowd will come back.

So yes, Cheney should be mocked, disrespected, and condemned for now. His ideas should be ripped to pieces. But it isn't entirely about him, or whether any of the 2016 GOPers want to explicitly tout his ideas for the world. Cheney is not subtle. Republicans and Democrats today, at this moment, have to be more coy about their imperial ambitions. Often, the only real difference is the honesty.

Forget this dangerous notion that warmongering is so last decade. It is part of our daily life. Forget the idea that since we all boo and hiss when Cheney's name appears in a byline, the threat of him is long gone. It isn't. When the leading candidate with antiwar credentials says he supports a limited drone war, you can be assured that the problem is bigger than Cheney, and bigger than the neocons.

Lucy Steigerwald is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and a columnist for VICE.com. She previously worked as an Associate Editor for Reason magazine. She is most angry about police, prisons, and wars. Steigerwald blogs at www.thestagblog.com.

[Aug 31, 2015] Violent Protest Follows Kiev Vote on Autonomy for East Ukraine By ANDREW E. KRAMER

A grenade was thrown at police defending Parlament buiding. One person was killed, 125 were injured, 12 people are being operated on and one soldier is in deep coma. Doctors have refused to give any forecasts on the condition of another five people. Ukraine's Deputy Interior Minister Vasily Paskal, journalists of Ukrainian TV channel 5 and channel 1+1 as well as a French correspondent were also among the injured. According to the Ukrainian Health Ministry 21 people received gunshot wounds. One died. And look how NYT cover the event. Compare with coverage of Charlie Hebdo.

The results of a fiercely contested parliamentary vote over autonomy for eastern Ukraine were counted on Monday, partly in blood: 265 in favor, three major parties opposed and one dead policeman.

About 120 other officers were also wounded in an attack during a protest that intensified after Parliament approved a measure on constitutional changes that could grant autonomy to parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

The authorities said a man later identified as a member of a nationalist party had thrown a grenade at the police lines.


Old Nick, NYC

Shocking development -- Kievans hurting Kievans -- and can only give comfort to the enemies of Ukraine. The fallout from this remains to be seen.

In any event, leadership demands that legislation be better explained to the people; there is a good argument to be made for entirely abandoning the Eastern areas to their own devices, even to the Russian exchequer.

http://censor.net.ua/photo_news/349932/tyagniboka_zasnyali_vo_vremya_primeneniya_sily_k_boyitsu_natsgvardii_fotoreportaj

Издание "Главком" обнародовало фотографии, на которых в первых рядах митингующих, которые пошли на правоохранителей, запечатлены Тягнибок и экс-нардеп от "Свободы" Юрий Сиротюк. При этом Сиротюк держит в руке дубинку.

Около полудня в понедельник митингующие попытались прорваться ближе к зданию парламента сквозь линию милиции. В ходе столкновения "свободовцы" вытащили из строя нескольких бойцов Национальной гвардии. Их позже избили. Спустя полтора часа, уже после голосования в Раде, митингующие бросили в правоохранителей взрывное устройство.

[Aug 31, 2015] http://censor.net.ua/video_news/349901/vzryv_granaty_vozle_verhovnoyi_rady_video

This is the site controlled by Kolomoyski

censor.net.ua

Ukrainian man
UPD 15:00
Як повідомили Громадському у прес-службі ГУМВС в Києві, особу, яка кинула гранату у правоохоронців затримано.
UPD 14:50
Один із правоохоронців помер. Про це Громадському повідомив голова КМДА Віталій Кличко. Як стверджує джерело Громадського в МВС з місця подій, на місці вибухнуло дві гранати. За інформацією співрозмовника, гранати кинули протестувальники від "Свободи". Двоє правоохоронців у критичному стані.
ypetrm
"Около 90 раненых под Радой в том числе несколько человек в тяжелом состоянии. Это результат брошенных нескольких взрывных устройств со стороны людей в футболках партии "Свободы", устроившими драку с Нацгвардией под ВР. Источник: http://censor.net.ua/n349911"

Никакой пощады уродам, которые на акции несогласия с политикой власти убивают ни в чем неповинных сограждан.

ANTIkomment
Зачинщики драки под Радой - Тягнибок и Сиротюк? (ФОТО)

а от такі обличчя крупним планом тобі знайомі?
сподіваюсь що мову розумієш...

Игорь Сейшелов
видео как под верховной радой было столкновение

уже десятки ранены и 1 погиб, жесть...
http://kometanews.net/news/one/v_silovikov_pod_vr_brosili_bojevuju_granatu_desjatki_ranenyh_i_odin_pogib

Мисквамакус Кусакус
Это не ргд 5. Взрыв этой гранаты дает меньше дыма и дым черно-серый, а не белый. Про Ф-1 молчу, жертв было бы десятками. Что рвануло - х.з. Думаю самоделка с начинкой "очумелые ручки". Про гранату - погорячились. Хотя при воздействии ргд 5, мог быть подобный сценарий по раненным и убитому. Но думаю, что это не штатная граната-взрывное устройство.
Игорь Сейшелов
место после столкновений и новая драка под отелем "КИЕВ" - лужи крови и осколки
http://kometanews.net/news/one/mesto_stolknovenija_posle_vzryva_luzhi_krovi_i_oskolki_foto
Иван Карпов
Как вы уже заебали, ебаные майданутые твари!Идите нахер,на передовую, перед орками гавноросскими ,траяпаками своим помашите!!.,Косить всех нахер с пулемета,пока резиной ,потом если не поможет на боевые перейти!Взяли убили ни в чем не повинного, 24ех летнего парнишку!
Gera Kruger
Обращаюсь к киевлянам - будьте бдительны и внимательны сегодня на вечерних и ночных улицах города. Свободовские твари готовят несколько провокаций с целью "защиты своих "незаконно задержанных побратимов".
Не поддавайтесь на провокации - на кону стоит все. В бижайшее время против террориста Тягнибока будет возбуждено уголовное дело, а деятельность ВО Свобода будет запрещена.
Сама партия будет признана террористической.

[Aug 31, 2015] Ukrainian guardsman killed in protests against vote on rebel autonomy

Guardianista with their classic British elite hypocrisy did not put this news on the front page... Real number of casualties is unclear. Initially five killed officer were reported by Ukrainian authorities. According to the Ukrainian National Guard about 50 officers sustained injuries.
Note how those neoliberal stooges report the grenade attack on police defending Parliament Building (clearly a terrorist act) which as attack on Parliament is worse then Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris: "A Reuters TV cameraman at the scene said several police officers were knocked off their feet by a grenade explosion."
Aug 31, 2015 | The Guardian

A Ukrainian national guardsman has died and many more have been injured in clashes with nationalist protesters outside parliament in Kiev, the interior minister said.

A Reuters TV cameraman at the scene said several police officers were knocked off their feet by a grenade explosion. Two officers were treated for wounds at the scene and there were pools of blood on the street, the cameraman said.

Clashes had erupted outside parliament in Kiev on Monday as politicians gave initial approval to constitutional changes granting more autonomy to pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The western-backed constitutional reforms are required under the terms of a peace deal signed in February, which called for Kiev to implement "decentralisation" by the end of this year. But critics have branded the reforms "un-Ukrainian".

A total of 265 politicians voted in favour of the reforms at a stormy session of parliament, with protests both inside and outside the buidling.

Dozens of demonstrators scuffled with police, Agence France-Presse journalists said. Protesters fired at least one grenade that sent up a cloud of black smoke outside the building. Teargas was used by both sides, an AFP correspondent said.

An adviser for the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said one person had died. "A soldier from the National Guard has died of a gunshot wound in the heart," the adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, said. "Apart from using grenades, the provocateurs were using firearms, fired secretly."

The controversial reforms have been sought by Kiev's western allies, who see them as a way of trying to end the armed conflict in the east that has claimed more than 6,800 lives over the past 16 months.

The bill has sparked heated debate in Ukraine where opponents see it as an attempt to legalise the de facto rebel control of part of Ukraine's territory.

The reform bill grants more powers to regional and local politicians, including in the eastern areas currently under rebel control.

But contrary to separatists' expectations, it does not definitively hand the largely industrial eastern region the semi-autonomous status that the insurgents are seeking.

According to the text of the draft legislation, the region's status needs to be defined by a separate law.

Kiev and the west accuse Russia of backing the rebels militarily and deploying its troops to the conflict zone, claims that President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin have repeatedly denied.

A group of Ukrainian politicians had earlier on Monday disrupted the parliament to block the vote on the constitutional reforms, which they condemned as "anti-Ukrainian" and "pro-Vladimir Putin".

Politicians from the Radical party – part of the pro-western coalition behind President Petro Poroshenko – had also blockaded the speaker's rostrum in an attempt to halt the crucial session.

Members of the extreme-right Pravy Sektor group blocked traffic outside the parliament, while several hundred activists from the nationalist party Svoboda rallied outside the building against the western-backed reform.

At the weekend, Poroshenko met politicians from the pro-presidential coalition who oppose the reform in an attempt to persuade them to change their minds.

[Aug 31, 2015] Social netwrok reaction on event in front of Ukranian Parlament

Українська правда

У понеділок під Верховною Радою сталися сутички між силовиками та мітингувальниками, які вимагали не ухвалювати зміни до Конституції.

Після голосування парламенту, мітингувальники пішли штурмом на Раду і почали кидати димові шашки.

Потім хтось кинув у лави міліції і Нацгвардії бойову гранату.

Пусть вам мой пост покажется агрессивным или упадническим, но очень захотелось написать. Сегодняшнее голосование за изм...

Posted by Sevgil Musaieva-Borovyk on 31 августа 2015 г.

Пів години намагалися з Єгор Соболєв та Руслан Сидорович запобігти бійкам мітингувальників з нац. гвардією перед Верховн...

Posted by Семен Семенченко on 31 августа 2015 г.

Схоже, Олександр не зрозумів яка трагедія сталась сьогодні під стінами Верховної Ради. Дуже сподіваюсь що вбивця українс...

Posted by Sergiy Karazy on 31 августа 2015 г.

Я не удивлюсь, если некоторые депутаты пойдут митинговать под суд, где будут избирать меру пресечения террористу, сканди...

Posted by Сергій Лещенко on 31 августа 2015 г.

90 человек ранено, включая бойцов Нацгвардии, прошедших АТО. Насколько мне известно, представители партии "Свобода" пози...

Posted by Рычкова Татьяна on 31 августа 2015 г.

Міліція затримала близько 30 осіб, серед яких, начебто, і того, хто кинув гранату під Радою.

Про мавпу і гранату... Ще до початку активних сутичок перед Радою, в кулуарах мене журналісти запитали: навіщо підніма...

Posted by Віктор Чумак on 31 августа 2015 г.

Удивляться не стоит. Политики как играли в свои игры, так и играют. Взрыв - логичное следствие. Политическая игра, а страдают невиновные.

- Artur Orujaliev (@arturclancy) August 31, 2015

Навіть якщо гранату під ВР кинув не якийсь дурнуватий фанатик, а це була спланована провокація, ті політичні сили, що були там, мають нести відповідальність в першу чергу.

Posted by Дмитрий Ларин on 31 августа 2015 г.

Я была на митинге перед Радой с самого начала. Было несколько групп протестующих. Вкладчики с плакатами "Финансы и Кре...

Posted by Sevgil Musaieva-Borovyk on 31 августа 2015 г.

Завжди був проти будь-яких домовленостей з Москвою. Завжди вважав, що розраховувати на гнилу політику сучасної Європи не...

Posted by Дмитро Ярош on 31 августа 2015 г.

Граната под парламентом - это терроризм. Любая политическая сила, причастность которой к этим событиям будет доказана, д...

Posted by Mustafa Nayyem on 31 августа 2015 г.

!! Около 90 раненых под Радой в том числе несколько человек в тяжелом состоянии. Это результат брошенных нескольких взры...

Posted by Арсен Аваков on 31 августа 2015 г.

Те, що Аваков так оперативно "призначив винних", свідчить про одне – провокація була ним і спланована. Путінським шляхом...

Posted by Олег Тягнибок on 31 августа 2015 г.

Шановні політікі, не пишіть зараз, що вам шкода і ви невинні. Винні всі, хто організував, хто не врахував, хто не передб...

Posted by Ярина Боренько on 31 августа 2015 г.

Рознімали зараз разом Семен Семенченко бійки мітингувальників з міліцією.Рознімали і матюкалися.Ми захищали Парламен...

Posted by Єгор Соболєв on 31 августа 2015 г.

Я против внесения изменений в Конституцию. Категорически против. Я противник минских договорняков. Я не поддерживаю поли...

Posted by Юрий Касьянов on 31 августа 2015 г.

Если организаторы митинга не могут контролировать людей которых позвали - нах такие митинги и таких организаторов.

Posted by Михаил Ткач on 31 августа 2015 г.

Сутички під ВР

Posted by "Українська правда" on 31 августа 2015 г.

Политические силы, выводящие своих сторонников под Раду, должны понимать все последствия своих действий. В том числе, пр...

Posted by Тарас Березовец on 31 августа 2015 г.

Виродка який кинув бойову гранату в правоохоронців повинно бути знайдено й покарано. Це не політична боротьба, це тероризм. Свобода , за обставин, має бути зацікавлена в цьому найбільше.

Posted by Sergiy Karazy on 31 августа 2015 г.

Проглядається наперед спланований геббелівсько-кегебістський сценарій. Його складова частина - криваві провокації та зав...

Posted by Олег Ляшко on 31 августа 2015 г.

"Свобода" все більше доводить, що є партією вузьколобих мудаків. І якщо раніше вони були просто безтолковими, то зараз с...

Posted by Олег Шанковський on 31 августа 2015 г.

Бросили гранату дебилы и провокаторы, пытающиеся мирную акцию сделать немирной. Однозначно это недопустимо. Гранаты дол...

Posted by Олексій Гриценко on 31 августа 2015 г.

Те, що Аваков так оперативно "призначив винних", свідчить про одне – провокація була ним і спланована. Путінським шляхом...

Posted by Олег Тягнибок on 31 августа 2015 г.

Независимо от целей, которые стояли перед исполнителями провокации возле парламента – граната в качестве аргумента медве...

Posted by Андрей Демартино on 31 августа 2015 г.

Многие в ленте уже бросились проклинать митингующих - "придурки, дебилы, метают гранаты". Я бы не спешил делать выводы ...

Posted by Денис Казанский on 31 августа 2015 г.

_ABM_ _ 31.08.2015 17:21

После того, как "Свободу" прокатили в Верховну Раду Андрей Ильенко говорил: "Посмотри, как теперь будет выглядеть парламент без нашей фракции и не захотят ли украинцы опять получить "Свободу" в качестве инструмента для выполнения определенных заданий". Интересно какие такие "задания" он имел ввиду, уж не подрыв ли гранаты в толпе? Думаю, что такую "Свободу" украинцы не захотят иметь...

Відповісти | З цитатою

IP: 188.230.83.---

Roman Martyniuk _ 31.08.2015 17:04

свободка давно вже показала своє справжнє неадекватне жадібне до грошей обличчя, косячи під неонацистів і продаючи землю у Львові і області. Чого тільки варті баньки тягнибакса і губи фаріонихи..

Відповісти | З цитатою

IP: 195.225.146.---

Sergey Nemo _ 31.08.2015 16:50

пукало:
А що ти пропонуєш? Перевибори президента? Є кандидатура? Що так дратує свободу у змінах до Конституції? Що так дратує всіх інших? Як можна сьогодні таке витворяти?

Відповісти | З цитатою

IP: 46.118.143.---

Анастасия Евтушенко _ 31.08.2015 16:49

полянин2013:

тебя расстрелять первого провокатора - ты ПС не трожь! Если бы не они - Путин уже в Варшаве был бы!

Відповісти | З цитатою

IP: 78.111.187.---

полянин2013 _ 31.08.2015 16:37

Провокаторы Кремля - Правый Сектор , перешли уже межу. Это следовало ожидать, так как этим провокаторам прошло безнаказанно провокация 19 января 2014 г., на Грушевского. И пока их не пересадить или перестрелять, - ничего путнего в Украине не будет.

[Aug 31, 2015] Ukraine Reignites - 1 Killed, 50 Injured After Grenade Attack On Parliament

Aug 31, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Amid the Ukraine government's vote for constitutional changes to give its eastern regions a special status (that it hopes will blunt their separatist drive) protests have turned deadly as RT reports 50 Ukrainian nation guards have been injured in a greande blast near parliament in Kiev.
  • *1 UKRAINE NATIONAL GUARDSMAN KILLED TODAY: INTERIOR MINISTER
  • *UKRAINE NATIONAL GUARDSMAN WAS SHOT DEAD, MINISTER AVAKOV SAYS

The clashes began earlier in the day...

Rada violence pic.twitter.com/P8nXRKxrvo

- Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) August 31, 2015

https://youtu.be/03v3nwJMyA0

Following, as Reuters reports, Ukraine's parliament on Monday voted for constitutional changes to give its eastern regions a special status that it hopes will blunt their separatist drive...

At a rowdy session, a total of 265 deputies voted in favor in the first reading of a "decentralization" bill, backed by President Petro Poroshenko's political bloc and his government - 39 more than that required to go through.

But many coalition allies, including former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, spoke against the changes and it is open to question whether Poroshenko will be able to whip up the necessary 300 votes for it to get through a second and final reading later this year.

Approval of legislation for special status for parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which are largely controlled by Russian-backed separatists, is a major element of a peace agreement reached in Minsk, Belarus, in February.

Though a ceasefire is under pressure from sporadic shelling and shooting which government troops and rebels blame on each other, Western governments see the deal as holding out the best possible prospect for peace and are urging Ukraine to abide by the letter of the Minsk agreement.

But they have not turned deadly as a greande attack leaves 50 national guard injured...

At least 50 Special Forces troops have been injured during clashes in front of the parliament in Kiev, the Ukrainian National Guard said. Crowds of protesters came to oppose amendments to the constitution that would provide for decentralization of the country.

Tweets from journalists at the scene said supporters of the radical group Right Sector were brutally attacking police officers.

"A combat grenade has been thrown at the Ukrainian special forces. Some of the servicemen from [Ukraine] National Guard have been seriously injured. Their life is in danger," Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Kiev's Interior Ministry, wrote on his Facebook page.

Another video of the hostilities developing in Kiev:

https://youtu.be/rGciYFcVcaU

timeless21

soros must be mad

TeamDepends

It's blood sacrifice time, citizens. The lucies want chaos, and by Soros they are going to get it!

wesson

1.5 years ago, Same groups, same people, same organisation, same methods. But it was "freedom" and "the choice of European Union"

Latina Lover

Another country destroyed by the USSA, a CIA public works project, courtesy of Nudelman's Building Democracy (tm) in Ukraine project.

realmoney2015

There are always reasons for the war hawks to lead are young men into war. That's why we need a president in office that will uphold the Constitution. That means that he/she cannot take our country to war. Congress was given that power.

If only there was a candidate who actually stands for that and the rest of Constitution! Oh wait there is one candidate who does...

Latina Lover

My bet is on Azov and the Right Sector. The USSA needs to step up the game against Russia, thus Porky and the Rat must be retired in favor of the Ukie Lunatic Nazi fringe.

Latina Lover

Post communism, the Ukie Oligarchs claimed that by receiving privatized state assets for almost nothing, they would build a capitalist society similar to the US, bring prosperity, European values and modernity to all citizens of the Ukraine.

It was, of course, a big lie. The Ukraine is now the worlds worst performing economy over the last 24 years, with many Ukrainians looking back to the communist era with wistful eyes. The truth is that most Ukrainians lived better under communism than oligarchic/crony capitalism.

Enki Anu

It's funny, Newland's husband name is Kagan ( Khaghan ).
Khaghans were supreme leaders in Khazaria's destroyed Empire.
Destroyed by Vikings ( Russians ).

Sushi von Gestern

Rewind back two Shemitas...

"Two men posing as press photographers, one of them a former Israeli Colonel and Mossad agent, were arrested INSIDE the Mexican congress on October 10, 2001 armed with 9-mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, three detonators, and 58 bullets, but were released following intense pressure from the Israeli Embassy. "We believe that the two Zionists terrorist were going to blow up the Mexican Congress. The second phase was to mobilize both the Mexican and US press to blame Osama bin Laden. Most likely then Mexico would declare war on Afghanistan as well, commit troops and all the oil it could spare to combat Islamic terrorism."

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/mex.html

JustObserving

I am sure demented "mass-murderer" Putin will get the blame even as the Nobel Prize Winner continues to drone women and children and wedding parties.

The war in Ukraine may explode at any point. Just as the Neocons wanted.

Latina Lover

Of course Russian agents were behind the attack...perfect false flag to declare war on Russia and ask for NATO's protection. Only problem is that the Eurowimps will definitely back out, and the USSA pro american Ukies will suffer another humiliating defeat. Anyone who thought they could beat Russia on her home turf deserves to eat the Nudelman cookies.

McCormick No. 9

The Ukraine is just a diversiinary tactic to distract Russia from Syria. The Iran nuke deal is designed to neutralize Iran while the CIA backed ISIS forces weaken Assad. In this crazy plan, the fanatcial ISIS forces will be defeated (after they defeat Assad) by moderate rebel forces. Yeah, right.

Wile-E-Coyote

Putin's passport will be found in perfect condition inside the grenade crater.

Vylahkinnen

Now I get it! That Polish Minister - what a smart man! He told us that Poland expected hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Ukraine. Now it makes perfect sense...yeah.

terry44

Well there's plenty of space there, half of the Poles have moved to England.

Vylahkinnen

I must admit that I never understood why they still call it England. Are there still English people around? Have you seen one? Don't worry. I won't come over. It's already such a crowded place. Density pop/km˛ = 262! I live as a mad hermit and I die as one.

beijing expat's picture

It's a marketing gimmick.

Freddie

+1

The Daily Mail had some more Putin hate yesterday. Putin would not let gangs of child molesters like Jimmy Saville exist in Russia. Jimmy Saville dies but no one in his gang of pedophile is arreested. This went on for decades with top people in govt and in power. CHILDREN. This also happenes in western Europe including Belgium. These f**Kers need to be put in wood chippers for harming children.

England has Islamic gangs of rapists attacking English CHILDREN and the English police do nothing.

Cameron, Milliband, Clegg - all stooges for the Red Shield and the City of London Satanists.

And these evil Satanic shits have the nerve to call Putin a monster. Putin and the Russians are (predominantly) Christians. The Bolsheviks were not. Same people in charge in Kiev.

Winston Churchill

Was the Reichstag badly damaged ?

silverer

Good excuse for the US to roll in more hardware.

OzViking

5 billion dollars spent on destabilizing Ukraine, the gift that keeps on giving.......................

TeamDepends

But we got the gold, which is worth way more than 5 billion digidollars.

SMC

Reads like a false flag. Cui Bono.

beijing expat

Headline should read "Poroshenko's Thugs in brutal crackdown on peaceful democracy protesters."

Insurrexion

Cui Bono is correct.

What about the fecking "Western" Separatists?"

Jorge Soros and Vicky "Cookie Snookums" Nudelman are on "The List" to receive the Ludovico Technique amongst other pantry pleasantries.

No worries my droogs...

Love, from the Lorova Milk Bar.

Alexa

shovelhead

Right Sektors "Hand Grenades for Peace" Program is working splendidly.

No "decentralization" and no special status for Eastern provinces.

"Vote right or good night" is the message sent from Vicky & Co. with love.

Wer're buying ALL of Ukraine...not just the broke-ass parts, and don't you forget it.

Latina Lover

I was wondering when you would show up, with your false flag BS. The good news is no one believes anything that comes from the Ukrainian ministry of Truth, ukies least of all.

BarkingCat

>>>> The good news is no one believes anything that comes from the Ukrainian ministry of Truth, ukies least of all.
<<<<<

Are you sure about that statement?
Have you ever been to Ukraine?

Let me give you a comparative example: how many people in the US believe what NBC, CBC, ABC CNN, MSNBC and Fox News tells them?
Yes Ukrainians, like most citizens of former Eastern Block countries are very skeptical, but the propaganda is thick and plenty gets through.
Russia is an easy target in most of those countries. People there do not draw a distinction between USSR and Russia.
...which is ironic, considering that at least 2 post WW2 leaders of the USSR came from Ukraine and
the most brutal one was a Georgian.

Latina Lover

The latest opinion polls in the Ukraine give Porky and the Rat single digit positive ratings, with most ukies rating corruption and a very badly perfoming economy more important than the civil war against Donbass.

22winmag

Ukraine never stopped burning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4jIASQzwXw&list=PLw613M86o5o5zqF6WJR8zu...

Mike Masr

Ukraine a Bloody Mess, Courtesy of Victoria Nuland

http://russia-insider.com/en/mess-nuland-made/ri8700

Yttrium Gold Nitrogen

I wonder whether they too will be deemed "peaceful protesters" as they were presented in 2013, or will Porky use force against them. Actually, I wonder what will happen next. Throwing a grenade can be characterized as an act of terrorism.

Will the so called "anti terrorist operation" expand to include Kiev too? What will Porky do now? He can't play it down, and yet using force against the so called "patriots" (= ukie nationalists/nazis) may not resonate well with the society, costing him vital support. I think he's ready to call Putin and ask him for advice :-) Yeah, Porky's between a rock and a hard place.

Latina Lover

l'll bet Porky is keeping his private jet fueled and ready to bug out to Tel Aviv.

Kina

Another creation of the CIA, a Ukrainian 'ISIS' gone rogue.


Mike Masr

What next after the neocon rape of Ukraine?

http://www.rt.com/op-edge/311635-ukraine-crimea-kiev-washington/

[Aug 29, 2015] So Wrong for So Long

"...For starters, neoconservatives think balance-of-power politics doesn't really work in international affairs and that states are strongly inclined to "bandwagon" instead. In other words, they think weaker states are easy to bully and never stand up to powerful adversaries. Their faulty logic follows that other states will do whatever Washington dictates provided we demonstrate how strong and tough we are. This belief led them to conclude that toppling Saddam would send a powerful message and cause other states in the Middle East to kowtow to us. If we kept up the pressure, our vast military power would quickly transform the region into a sea of docile pro-American democracies."
.
"...Moreover, neocons believe military force is a supple tool that can be turned on and off like a spigot. If the United States uses force and things go badly, they seem to think the nation can just pull out quickly and live to fight another day. But that's not how things work in the real world of politics: Once forces are committed, the military brass will demand the chance to win a clear victory, and politicians will worry about the nation's prestige and their own political fortunes. The conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia should remind us that it's a lot easier to get into wars than it is to get out of them, but that lesson has been lost on most neoconservatives."
.
"...They claim their main goal is spreading freedom and democracy (except for Palestinians, of course), but they have no theory to explain how this will happen or how toppling a foreign government with military force will magically cause democracy to emerge. Instead, they believe the desire to live in freedom is hardwired into human DNA, and all one has to do is remove the bad guys at the top. Once they are gone, the now-liberated population will forget past grievances, form political parties, embrace tolerance, line up for orderly elections, accept the resulting outcomes willingly, and offer grateful thanks to Uncle Sam."
Aug 21, 2015 | Foreign Policy

Over the past few weeks, proponents of the nuclear deal with Iran - from President Barack Obama on down - have marshaled a powerful attack on some of the deal's most prominent opponents. Specifically, they've been pointing out an indisputable fact: Many of the individuals and organizations that are most actively lobbying and speaking out against the deal helped dream up the idea of invading Iraq or worked hard to convince Congress and the American people to go along with the idea. The logic of the pro-deal camp is simple: Given that the opponents were so catastrophically wrong about the Iraq War, no one should listen to their advice today.

I agree with this basic argument, of course, but opponents of the deal do have one line of defense against the "Wrong on Iraq, Wrong on Iran" meme. It is possible someone could have been dead wrong about the wisdom of invading Iraq in 2003, but nonetheless be correct to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran today. None of us is infallible, and it is at least conceivable that Bill Kristol, Elliott Abrams, James Woolsey, Fred Hiatt, Max Boot, et al. could have blown it big-time in 2002 - but be absolutely right this time around.

Conceivable, I suppose, but highly unlikely. Why? Because their views in 2002 aren't independent from the views they're expressing today. On the contrary, their earlier support for the Iraq War and their opposition to the Iran deal stem from the basic neoconservative worldview that informs their entire approach to foreign policy.

To be more specific, the problem isn't that these people just happened to be embarrassingly wrong about Iraq. After all, plenty of other people were equally misguided back then, including many people who now support the deal today. Nor is the problem the neocons' stubborn and morally dubious refusal to admit they were wrong and take responsibility for the lives and money they squandered.

No, the real problem is that the neoconservative worldview - one that still informs the thinking of many of the groups and individuals who are most vocal in opposing the Iran deal - is fundamentally flawed. Getting Iraq wrong wasn't just an unfortunate miscalculation, it happened because their theories of world politics were dubious and their understanding of how the world works was goofy.

When your strategic software is riddled with bugs, you should expect a lot of error messages.

What are the main flaws that consistently lead neoconservatives astray?

  1. For starters, neoconservatives think balance-of-power politics doesn't really work in international affairs and that states are strongly inclined to "bandwagon" instead. In other words, they think weaker states are easy to bully and never stand up to powerful adversaries. Their faulty logic follows that other states will do whatever Washington dictates provided we demonstrate how strong and tough we are. This belief led them to conclude that toppling Saddam would send a powerful message and cause other states in the Middle East to kowtow to us. If we kept up the pressure, our vast military power would quickly transform the region into a sea of docile pro-American democracies.

    What happened, alas, was that the various states we were threatening didn't jump on our bandwagon. Instead, they balanced and then took steps to make sure we faced significant and growing resistance. In particular, Syria and Iran (the next two states on the neocons' target list), cooperated even further with each other and helped aid the anti-American insurgency in Iraq itself. Neocons were outraged by this behavior, but it shouldn't have surprised anyone who understood Realism 101. At the same time, long-standing U.S. allies were upset by our actions and distanced themselves from us or else they took advantage of our excesses and free-rode at our expense. In short, the neoconservatives' belief that the United States could browbeat and intimidate others into doing our bidding was dead wrong.

    Today, of course, opposition to the Iran deal reflects a similar belief that forceful resolve would enable Washington to dictate whatever terms it wants. As I've written before, this idea is the myth of a "better deal." Because neocons assume states are attracted to strength and easy to intimidate, they think rejecting the deal, ratcheting up sanctions, and threatening war will cause Iran's government to finally cave in and dismantle its entire enrichment program. On the contrary, walking away from the deal will stiffen Iran's resolve, strengthen its hard-liners, increase its interest in perhaps actually acquiring a nuclear weapon someday, and cause the other members of the P5+1 to part company with the United States.

  2. The neoconservative worldview also exaggerates the efficacy of military force and downplays the value of diplomacy. Military force is an essential component of national power, of course, but neocons tend to see it as a magical tool that can accomplish all sorts of wonderful things (such as the creation of workable democracies) for which it is not really designed. In reality, military force is a crude instrument whose effects are hard to foresee and one which almost always produces unintended consequences (see under: Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc.). So it was in Iraq, and the results of a direct military conflict with Iran would be equally unpredictable.

    Moreover, neocons believe military force is a supple tool that can be turned on and off like a spigot. If the United States uses force and things go badly, they seem to think the nation can just pull out quickly and live to fight another day. But that's not how things work in the real world of politics: Once forces are committed, the military brass will demand the chance to win a clear victory, and politicians will worry about the nation's prestige and their own political fortunes. The conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia should remind us that it's a lot easier to get into wars than it is to get out of them, but that lesson has been lost on most neoconservatives.

  3. Third, the neoconservatives have a simplistic and ahistorical view of democracy itself. They claim their main goal is spreading freedom and democracy (except for Palestinians, of course), but they have no theory to explain how this will happen or how toppling a foreign government with military force will magically cause democracy to emerge. Instead, they believe the desire to live in freedom is hardwired into human DNA, and all one has to do is remove the bad guys at the top. Once they are gone, the now-liberated population will forget past grievances, form political parties, embrace tolerance, line up for orderly elections, accept the resulting outcomes willingly, and offer grateful thanks to Uncle Sam.

    It would be nice if that Pollyannaish scenario were accurate, but such views betray near-total ignorance of the prerequisites for meaningful democracy and the actual history of democratic growth in the West itself. In fact, the development of liberal democracy was a long, contentious, imperfect, and often violent process in Western Europe and North America, and anyone familiar with that history would have known the neocons' formula for democratic change was doomed from the start.

  4. Fourth, as befits a group of armchair ideologues whose primary goal has been winning power inside the Beltway, neoconservatives are often surprisingly ignorant about the actual conditions of the countries whose politics and society they want to transform. Hardly any neoconservatives knew very much about Iraq before the United States invaded - if they had, they might have reconsidered the whole scheme - and their characterizations of Iran today consist of scary caricatures bearing little resemblance to Iran's complicated political and social reality. In addition to flawed theories, in short, the neoconservative worldview also depends on an inaccurate reading of the facts on the ground.

  5. Last but not least, the neoconservatives' prescriptions for U.S. foreign policy are perennially distorted by a strong attachment to Israel, which Max Boot (and others) have described as a "key tenet" of the entire movement. There's nothing wrong with such attachments per se, of course, but it has crippled their ability to give sensible policy advice to U.S. politicians. In particular, neoconservatives tend to believe that what's good for Israel is good for the United States - and vice versa - which is why they see no conflict between their attachment to Israel and their loyalty to the United States. But no two states have identical interests all the time, and when the interests of two countries conflict, people who feel strongly about both are forced to decide which of these feelings is going to take priority.

Over the past few weeks, some proponents of the deal have pointed out - correctly - that some opponents don't like the deal because they think it is bad for Israel and because the Netanyahu government is dead set against it. As one might expect, pointing out these obvious facts has led some opponents of the deal to accuse proponents (including President Obama) of anti-Semitism. But as Lara Friedman, J.J. Goldberg, and Peter Beinart have made clear, this charge is absurd, even laughable. Among other things, it appears a majority of American Jews support the deal - and so do plenty of distinguished figures in Israel's own national security establishment. If anything, it is Netanyahu's efforts to persuade American Jews that it is their duty to support him, rather than their own president, that echoes those hateful anti-Semitic canards about "dual loyalty."

Instead of being a serious criticism, this familiar smear is really just a way to change the subject and to put proponents of the deal on the defensive for pointing out the obvious. Fortunately, in this case the charge just doesn't seem to be sticking, and its appearance is just another sign that opponents don't have rational arguments or solid evidence to justify their opposition.

The bottom line: The fact that the neoconservatives, AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents, and other groups in the Israel lobby were wrong about the Iraq War does not by itself mean that they are necessarily wrong about the Iran deal. But when you examine their basic views on world politics and their consistent approach to U.S. Middle East policy, it becomes clear this is not a coincidence at all. Support for the Iraq War and opposition to the Iran deal flow from the same flawed premises, and that's why following their advice today would be as foolish as it was back in 2003.

Choices2014

I take a much narrower view as to what motivates neocons-it definitely is not ideology. They have infiltrated most of the "think" tanks, they have infiltrated many of the cabinet level departments, and have infiltrated all levels of political activity. To me, that indicates a hunger for power and money and it has been very successful. Huge sums of money support these people and their constant push for war. Finally, it is all orchestrated my Netanyahu and the Likuds. The neocons and their AIPAC, WaPo, et al take their script from Netanyahu and because of the money and their positioning in the Foreign Policy establishment, it seems impossible to counteract. Indeed, depressing and tragic for the United States.
Lost in america
I think it is a mistake to throw all of these positions and policies altogether. Actually, opposition to the treaty may seem bipolar because of the political marketing by the Administration. But there are varied rationales: Some people are against the deal deal because they do not trust Iran under any circumstances. Some are against the deal because we could have negotiated a better deal. Some want more compensation for past Iranian transgressions. Some believe that the treaty is too open ended and allows nuclear development too soon. Some Americans do not believe that you should make a treaty with a nation unless they release your hostages. Some see that Iran has problems and we should not let them off the hook so easily. The best argument for the treaty is that sanctions are weakening anyway. To believe that the treaty will make Iran a better citizen is similar to the belief if you make Iraq a democracy, this will lead to a better world. The Neocons are similar to the people who support the treaty. They are idealistic and probably making the world worse.
exMod 27
Why does everyone expect the US to carry the weight? What is in our National Interest? Israel and the Sunni Arab/Turks want a weaker Persia/Shia/Iran so they can dominate the region. A weak Iran means a weak Syria and a weaker Shia presence in the region. (looking at you Hizbollah). That is why a good number of Arabs and Jews oppose the deal. They don't want ANY deal that lifts sanctions on Iran. So, where does that leave the US? 10 years ago, with oil prices sky high, we would have to back the Sauds. 30 years ago, with the Great Bear still running around, we would have to backed the Israelis. Today? Oil is flowing and Putin is driving Russia into a ditch. What is in our National Interest? Commerce. I don't understand today's Republican party. Led by fools.
WilliamSantiago
BDL2010 is correct: "You could say the same thing about liberals." My bet is that Prof Walt would have supported any deal coming out the Obama Administration. So I challenge him to state exactly what the minimum deal with Iran would have been that he would find unacceptable.

I note 2 points of logic: (i) The notion of "the myth of a better deal" is a contrary-to-fact conditional. There is no way to know if Prof. Walt is correct especially has he has provided no evidence that a better deal could not have been or could not be forthcoming. (ii) It's simply name calling to label an opposing point of view a "myth," then define what strawman necons believe as that myth, then knock down the strawman (with little evidence even for this poor task).

Further, I note an interesting aspect of the deal that even the most neophyte negotiator would have avoided. We gave away for certain the only lever we had (the sanctions) in return for a promise to be fulfilled in the future. And we found out this week that a major portion of the promise will be verified by our opponent in the negotiation. "This used car is in fine shape. Buy it now and I'll come over tomorrow and verify that there isn't sawdust in the transmission."

Prof. Walt is entitled to his opinion. But intellectual honesty requires that he pressure test his opinion by finding the best, not the worst or vaguest arguments against his conclusion instead of setting up strawmen and knocking them down. Unfortunately, setting up strawmen is a favorite tactic of our commander in chief.

bdl2010
More political BS. You could say the same thing about liberals. Case in point, how is Libya going? How about Syria? Right now there is a major refugee crisis due to instability in both of these nations. In one we took action and in the other we failed to. So if you want to pen an article about how neo-cons are always wrong then you need to follow it up with how liberals are not always right either. I'd hope that at some point in the future we would start to realize that we need a foreign policy that transcends political parties. When other nations look at our policies they see that it is America that is enacting it. They do not see Republicans or Democrats to blame. It's due time for us all to grow the hell up and get our act together.
samamerco
I disagree in one main point. While most politicians consider the results of the war in Iraq to be negative, neocons see the same results as positive. It removed a major threat to Israel (Saddam) and caused unending social upheaval in the countries surrounding it that continues today. The neocons also see a similar result of war with Iran as positive from the Israeli point view. Who really cares about the interests of the United States?
Xenophon
@samamerco Well stated and right on the mark.
Mark Thomason
This is a wonderfully clear explanation of a very complex subject, a real tour de force.

I'd add two smaller points.

One, it is hard to get out once we start a war, even when we win. WW2 was as overwhelming a win, unconditional surrender, as one could ever hope to get. Yet after all these years, we are still in Germany, Italy, and Japan, and we are in them because of WW2 and how we ended it. Once in, we couldn't get out even by total victory.

Two, while come neocons may believe in spreading democracy, they did not act as if that was their goal when they had the chance. They imposed government, and supervised the "election" of puppets. It was more like lip service cover for another goal we know was close to the heart of the leaders: make the Middle East safe for Israel no matter what it does, even for continued expansion and a Greater Israel. American power was misused to do that, and it failed as completely as did the excuse of bringing democracy.

Jinzo
Most people that oppose this deal have legitimate reasons for doing so, obviously there are some that just don't want a deal full stop for selfish reasons. Obama and Kerry have not come even close at all to a deal of any resemblance to what they initially set out to achieve for the American people. Despite Obamas rhetoric about "its this deal or war", I doubt anyone can seriously contemplate Obama of all people starting a war with Iran and the next president will be faced with the fact that Iran is no feable Iraq, not that Iraq itself have been a walk in the park. The talk that "if this deal is rejected that our European allies will ease sanctions unilaterally" totally overlooks the fact they these same allies applied sanctions on Russia which is much more costly to them then the Iran sanctions are. Lifting the UN restrictions on military equipment and missile technology has to be changed, this should only happen if Iran proves it has stopped their state sponsorship of terrorism, also Iran been allowed to provide their own samples to the international inspectors to verify that they haven't been cheating in the past is just unbelievable, mind boggling, how could anyone think this is acceptable? Imagine an athlete that was suspended for taking drugs being allowed to provide his own urine samples to the sports league. Imagine a criminal in the court of law being the only person to submit evidence of his own guilt or innocence. Imagine if the police pullied over a intoxicated driver, only to let him go cause he said "he hadn't been drinking", but you don't have to imagine something so ridiculous cause this kind of circus act is exactly what's now playing out between Iran and the IAEA. There has to be a better deal then this poor excuse of a 'deal'.
Mark Thomason
@Jinzo "Most people that oppose this deal have legitimate reasons for doing so"

No, they don't.

Negotiators rarely get all of their initial demands. Anyway, "what they set out to achieve" is here defined as what Netanyahu dreamed of getting, not Obama's real goals.

Toot Sweet
They are wrong so often because they are ideologues. And like all ideologues, they are dogmatic and care little for facts, criticism, or compromise. For them, the ends justify the means which explains why they distort and dissemble with great ease, and never apologize.
Anise
So, neo-cons are ignorant bullies who are killing the rest of us. How do we stop them?
Ggee
This piece is just like the neo-cons: sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

In the end, though, it always comes down to straining for the opportunity to lambaste Israel. Even when the President flips out and attacks his detractors as war-mongers in league with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard; when hordes of pro-deal lobbyists representing every P5+1nation descend on Capital Hill (as is their right); when virtually every western nation already has sent representatives in the last few weeks to negotiate commercial deals with Tehran even before the mullahs have demonstrated good faith; even as morally neutered "realist" academics spout off while drenched with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Syrian and other innocents but continue to sit in judgment of their inferiors -- even with all that and so much more, it's always the right time to attack Israel.

The writer is always very busy telling us not only that Israel is a big drag on the U.S., but now offers psychological analysis that Israel's supporters are clinically incapable of having well considered opinions that differ from his own, notwithstanding abundant proof of his own impenetrable bias. Which is to say, what a load of crap.

bpuharic -> Ggee
You didn't read the article. What he said was the right has a power fetish. That's why neocons get it wrong
ozziem
@Ggee

RE:

In the end, though, it always comes down to straining for the opportunity to lambaste Israel.

It seems abundantly obvious that your are among the people who places Israel's interests ahead of those of the United States. Why don't you just move there?

Chris F

"The logic of the pro-deal camp is simple: Given that the opponents were so catastrophically wrong about the Iraq War, no one should listen to their advice today." Mr. Walt, this is a logical fallacy and you should have been done with it when you admitted so. Though you acknowledge the fallacy, you still go on to defend it. You never got specific on how "these people just happened to be embarrassingly wrong about Iraq" but I guess you mean the WMD. True, no nukes were found, but lots and lots of other weapons, including chemical weapons, were found. The New York Times did a huge report on this.

So, your assertion that we shouldn't listen to opponents of the deal because they were wrong on Iraq is highly debatable, and if that's what support for the Iran deal rests on, the case is very weak indeed.

As for the neo-con worldview question, occupation has worked pretty well in Japan, South Korea, Germany and others in the long run, so one could be forgiven for looking at the long line of overall successes and thinking it would work in Iraq if we were honest and clear about what we were going to do with Iraq - that is undertake a multi-generational transformation of Iraqi society through occupation. It should also be remembered that there was a lot of support for the US enforcing UN resolutions as part of the Iraq invasion. If the neo-cons were so wrong and we can't listen to them now, then ditto for the Democrats who supported the war and the countries in the UN who also supported it.

"This belief led them to conclude that toppling Saddam would send a powerful message and cause other states in the Middle East to kowtow to us." Also debatable. Qaddafi saw what happened in Iraq and gave up his weapons program. Even Kim Jong Il was reportedly freaked out as he watched the invasion. We'll never know how things could have been shaped if the US was consistent in its mission.

"Among other things, it appears a majority of American Jews support the deal - and so do plenty of distinguished figures in Israel's own national security establishment." Of course, there will be some people on both sides. But this is a rare moment when the Israeli left and right, Jew and Arab, are in overwhelming agreement over how bad the deal is. That is no small feat. As for American Jews, I was at the well attended anti-deal rally in Los Angeles last month and judging by how many different groups showed up, your assertion here is also incorrect. Jews, Arabs, Christians, Democrats, Republicans, Palestinians, Israelis and gay activists all showed up and all were against the deal. This is LA, the biggest home of liberal Jews outside of NYC.

I also saw Ted Cruz speak at one of the largest Persian Jewish synagogues in LA (maybe the country) last month. The place was over capacity and the fire marshal showed up. The subject was the Iran deal and Cruz got multiple standing ovations. Again, we're talking about liberal Jewish LA. So, you may have read a few articles by Jews who support the deal, but I have seen up close thousands of American Jews in liberal LA, many of them Iranian, who are disgusted with this deal.

[Aug 23, 2015] Netanyahu pressed for Iran attacks, but was denied: ex-defense chief

Looks like Bibi is a certified warmonger. Something like George Bush of Israel
Aug 23, 2015 | Reuters
... ... ..

In interviews to his biographers aired late on Friday by Israel's Channel Two, Barak said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had wanted military operations against Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

... ... ...

  • In 2010, the Israeli leadership wanted an attack but the military said it did not have "operational capability," said Barak, defense minister between 2007 and 2013, and prime minister in 1999-2001.
  • In 2011, two ministers in a top security forum convened to discuss an attack changed their mind and decided against it, Barak said.
  • In 2012 the timing coincided with a joint military exercise with the United States. "We intended to carry it out," Barak said, but going ahead with an attack on Iran while U.S. forces were conducting the exercise would have been bad timing. "You're asking and demanding America to respect your sovereignty when making a decision to do it even if America objects and it's against her interests, you can't go in the opposite direction and force America in when they're here on a drill that was known ahead of time," Barak said.

Netanyahu's spokesman could not be reached for comment.

[Aug 22, 2015] The Riddle of Obama's Foreign Policy by Robert Parry

his vision is more ideological than strategic
"...My view of Obama is somewhat different. It strikes me that Obama is what you might call a "closet realist." He understands the limits of American power and wants to avoid costly military entanglements. But he also doesn't want to challenge the neocon/liberal-hawk dominance of Official Washington.
In other words, he's a timid opportunist when it comes to reshaping the parameters of the prevailing "group think." He's afraid of being cast as the "outsider," so he only occasionally tests the limits of what the neocon/liberal-hawk "big thinkers" will permit, as with Cuba and Iran."
"...An elitist would keep the public in the dark while letting the hasty initial judgments stand, which is what Obama has done."
"...Kissinger: "To me, yes. It means that breaking Russia has become an objective; the long-range purpose should be to integrate it.""
"...But Obama the Timid Soul – afraid of being ostracized by all the well-connected neocons and liberal hawks of Official Washington – doesn't dare challenge the "group think," what everybody knows to be true even if he knows it to be false. In the end, Obama the Elitist won't trust the American people with the facts, so these international crises will continue drifting toward a potential Armageddon."
August 22, 2015 | therealnews.com | 0 Comments

By Robert Parry. This article was first published on Consortium News.

For nearly seven years of his presidency, Barack Obama has zigzagged from military interventionist to pragmatic negotiator, leaving little sense of what he truly believes. Yet, there may be some consistent threads to his inconsistencies, writes Robert Parry.

Nearing the last year of his presidency, Barack Obama and his foreign policy remain an enigma. At times, he seems to be the "realist," working constructively with other nations to achieve positive solutions, as with the Iran nuclear deal and his rapprochement with Cuba. Other times, he slides into line with the neocons and liberal hawks, provoking ugly crises, such as his "regime change" tactics in Honduras (2009), Libya (2011), Syria (over several years) and Ukraine (2014).

Yet, even in some of those "regime change" scenarios, Obama pulls back from the crazier "tough guy/gal" ideas and recognizes the catastrophes such schemes could create. In 2013, he called off a planned bombing campaign against the Syrian military (which could have led to a victory for Al Qaeda or the Islamic State), and in 2014, he resisted a full-scale escalation of Ukraine's war against ethnic Russian rebels resisting the new U.S.-backed political order in Kiev (which could have pushed the world to the brink of a nuclear war).

Yet, Obama also won't stand up to the neocons and liberal hawks by sharing crucial information with the American people that could undermine pro-intervention narratives.

For instance, Obama has held back the latest U.S. intelligence analysis describing who was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack that almost precipitated the U.S. war on the Syrian military, and he won't release the intelligence assessment on who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014, the tragedy which ratcheted up the crisis with Russia over Ukraine.

In both cases, I'm told U.S. intelligence analysts have backed off early rushes to judgment blaming the Syrian government for the sarin attack, which killed hundreds, and the Russian-backed eastern Ukrainian rebels for the MH-17 crash, which killed 298 people. But Obama has left standing the earlier propaganda themes blaming the Syrian and Russian governments, all the better to apply American "soft power" pressure against Damascus and Moscow.

Thus, Obama's foreign policy has a decidedly zigzag nature to it. Or as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently described Obama: "On the prudential level he's a realist. But his vision is more ideological than strategic," a typically cryptic Kissingerian phrasing that I interpret to mean that Obama is a prudent realist when it comes to major military actions but – short of all-out war – ideologically embraces neocon/liberal-hawk interventionism.

My view of Obama is somewhat different. It strikes me that Obama is what you might call a "closet realist." He understands the limits of American power and wants to avoid costly military entanglements. But he also doesn't want to challenge the neocon/liberal-hawk dominance of Official Washington.

In other words, he's a timid opportunist when it comes to reshaping the parameters of the prevailing "group think." He's afraid of being cast as the "outsider," so he only occasionally tests the limits of what the neocon/liberal-hawk "big thinkers" will permit, as with Cuba and Iran.

Obama is also fundamentally an elitist who believes more in manipulating the American people than in leveling with them. For instance, a leader who truly trusted in democracy would order the maximum declassification of what the U.S. intelligence community knows about the pivotal events in Syria and Ukraine, including the sarin attack and the MH-17 shoot-down.

An elitist would keep the public in the dark while letting the hasty initial judgments stand, which is what Obama has done.

Redirecting Conventional Wisdom

Obama never trusts the people to help him rewrite the narratives of these crises, which could create more space for reasonable compromises and solutions. Instead, he leaves the American public ignorant, which empowers his fellow "smart people" of Official Washington to manage national perceptions, all aided and abetted by the complicit mainstream U.S. media which simply reinforces the misguided "conventional wisdom."

Despite his power to do so, Obama won't shatter the frame of Official Washington's fun-house mirror of reality. That's why his attempt to invoke the memory of President John F. Kennedy's famous "we all inhabit this small planet" speech at American University in 1963 fell so flat earlier this month when Obama went to AU and offered a pedestrian, point-by-point defense of the Iran nuclear deal without any of Kennedy's soaring, universal rhetoric.

Presumably Obama feared that he would be cast as a starry-eyed idealist if he explained to the American people the potential for using the Iran agreement as a way to begin constructing a more peaceful Middle East. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's Pragmatic Appeal for Iran Peace."]

These limitations in Obama's personality and world view have probably doomed his legacy to be viewed as an overall failure to reshape America's approach to the world, away from a costly and confrontational strategy of seeking endless dominance to one favoring a more respectful and pragmatic approach toward the sensitivities and needs of other nations.

I realize some Obama critics feel that he is simply a tool of American imperialism putting a slightly less offensive face on the same interventionist policies. And no doubt he has served that role in many instances. He even boasted during his Iran speech that "I've ordered military action in seven countries." If some other world leader – say, Russian President Vladimir Putin – had made that claim, we would be hearing demands that he be dragged before the World Court as a war criminal.

But there is also the Obama whom Kissinger described as "on the prudential level he's a realist." And there is significant value in sidestepping the maximalist catastrophes that would be caused by policies favored by the neocons and liberal hawks, such as U.S. bombing to destroy the Syrian military (and open the gates of Damascus to a reign of Sunni terrorism) or a U.S. military escalation of the Ukraine crisis (to the point of a nuclear showdown with Russia).

While Obama's modicum of "realism" may seem like a modest thing, it isn't when you recognize that Official Washington's favored choices could contribute to the mass executions of Syria's Christians, Shiites, Alawites and other minorities under the swords of the Islamic State or could provoke a thermonuclear war with Russia that could end all life on the planet.

That acknowledgement aside, however, Obama has fallen far short of any profile in courage as he's allowed dangerously false narratives to develop around these and other international conflicts. The most hazardous of all is the Putin-bashing storyline about Ukraine, which holds that the entire ugly civil war was part of some nefarious scheme cooked up in the Kremlin to recreate the Russian Empire.

Though this notion that the Ukraine crisis was simply a case of "Russian aggression" is held by virtually every important person in Washington's current power circles, it was never true. The crisis was provoked by a U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, which overthrew Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Putin reacted to that provocation; he didn't instigate it.

Kissinger's Take on Ukraine

And if you don't believe me, perhaps you might listen to Henry Kissinger who explained the reality in a July interview with National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn, who noted: "we have witnessed a return, at least in Washington, DC, of neoconservatives and liberal hawks who are determined to break the back of the Russian government."

Kissinger: "Until they face the consequences. The trouble with America's wars since the end of the Second World War has been the failure to relate strategy to what is possible domestically. The five wars we've fought since the end of World War II were all started with great enthusiasm. But the hawks did not prevail at the end. At the end, they were in a minority. We should not engage in international conflicts if, at the beginning, we cannot describe an end, and if we're not willing to sustain the effort needed to achieve that end. …"

Heilbrunn: "How do you think the United States can extricate itself from the Ukraine impasse - the United States and Europe, obviously?"

Kissinger: "The issue is not to extricate the United States from the Ukrainian impasse but to solve it in a way conducive to international order. A number of things need to be recognized. One, the relationship between Ukraine and Russia will always have a special character in the Russian mind. It can never be limited to a relationship of two traditional sovereign states, not from the Russian point of view, maybe not even from Ukraine's.

"So, what happens in Ukraine cannot be put into a simple formula of applying principles that worked in Western Europe, not that close to Stalingrad and Moscow. In that context, one has to analyze how the Ukraine crisis occurred. It is not conceivable that Putin spends 60 billion euros on turning a summer resort into a winter Olympic village in order to start a military crisis the week after a concluding ceremony that depicted Russia as a part of Western civilization.

"So then, one has to ask: How did that happen? I saw Putin at the end of November 2013. He raised a lot of issues; Ukraine he listed at the end as an economic problem that Russia would handle via tariffs and oil prices.

"The first mistake was the inadvertent conduct of the European Union. They did not understand the implications of some of their own conditions. Ukrainian domestic politics made it look impossible for Yanukovych to accept the EU terms [for an association agreement] and be reelected or for Russia to view them as purely economic. …

"Each side acted sort of rationally based on its misconception of the other, while Ukraine slid into the Maidan uprising right in the middle of what Putin had spent ten years building as a recognition of Russia's status. No doubt in Moscow this looked as if the West was exploiting what had been conceived as a Russian festival to move Ukraine out of the Russian orbit. …

"If we treat Russia seriously as a great power, we need at an early stage to determine whether their concerns can be reconciled with our necessities. We should explore the possibilities of a status of nonmilitary grouping on the territory between Russia and the existing frontiers of NATO.

"The West hesitates to take on the economic recovery of Greece; it's surely not going to take on Ukraine as a unilateral project. So one should at least examine the possibility of some cooperation between the West and Russia in a militarily nonaligned Ukraine. The Ukraine crisis is turning into a tragedy because it is confusing the long-range interests of global order with the immediate need of restoring Ukrainian identity. …

"When you read now that Muslim units are fighting on behalf of Ukraine, then the sense of proportion has been lost." [For more on this reference, see Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists."]

Heilbrunn: "That's a disaster, obviously."

Kissinger: "To me, yes. It means that breaking Russia has become an objective; the long-range purpose should be to integrate it."

When Kissinger Makes Sense

It may be a little scary when Henry Kissinger makes relative sense, but that's only in contrast to the current dominant neocon/liberal-hawk "big thinkers" of Official Washington.

For Obama the Realist, the most practical way to begin moving toward a pragmatic resolution of the Ukraine crisis would be to stop the endless propaganda emanating from the U.S. State Department and repeated by the mainstream media and start telling the public the full truth – how the crisis really began, why the mantra "Russian aggression" is false, what on earth the U.S. government thinks it's doing collaborating with neo-Nazis and Islamic jihadists in killing thousands of ethnic Russian Ukrainians, and who was responsible for the key escalating moment, the shoot-down of MH-17.

But Obama the Timid Soul – afraid of being ostracized by all the well-connected neocons and liberal hawks of Official Washington – doesn't dare challenge the "group think," what everybody knows to be true even if he knows it to be false. In the end, Obama the Elitist won't trust the American people with the facts, so these international crises will continue drifting toward a potential Armageddon.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

[Aug 21, 2015] Redneck Engineering at its finest

OldPhart
TM31-200-1 Department of the Army Technical Manual, Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques, References

Redneck Engineering at its finest.

http://www.amazon.com/Unconventional-Warfare-Techniques-References-31-200-1/dp/0975900978

Jorgen

It's available for free at these links:

http://www.ganino.com/military_manuals

or

https://archive.org/details/military-manuals?&sort=-downloads&page=1

[Aug 16, 2015] Deal or War': Is Doomed Dollar Really Behind Obama's Iran Warning?

"..."At that point, I think much of the world would have had enough of the US use of the international payments system to dictate to others, and they would cease transacting in dollars."
The US dollar would henceforth lose its status as the key global reserve currency for the conduct of international trade and financial transactions..."
.
"...Many analysts have long wondered at how the US dollar has managed to defy economic laws, given that its preeminence as the world's reserve currency is no longer merited by the fundamentals of the US economy. Massive indebtedness, chronic unemployment, loss of manufacturing base, trade and budget deficits are just some of the key markers, despite official claims of "recovery.""
.
"..."If the dollar lost the reserve currency status, US power would decline," says Roberts. "Washington's financial hegemony, such as the ability to impose sanctions, would vanish, and Washington would no longer be able to pay its bills by printing money. Moreover, the loss of reserve currency status would mean a drop in the demand for dollars and a drop in willingness to hold them. Therefore, the dollar's exchange value would fall, and rising prices of imports would import inflation into the US economy.""
.
"...Doug Casey, a top American investment analyst, last week warned that the woeful state of the US economy means that the dollar is teetering on the brink of a long-overdue crash. "You're going to see very high levels of inflation. It's going to be quite catastrophic," says Casey. He added that the crash will also presage a collapse in the American banking system which is carrying trillions of dollars of toxic debt derivatives, at levels much greater than when the system crashed in 2007-08.... "Now, when interest rates inevitably go up from these artificially suppressed levels where they are now, the bond market is going to collapse, the stock market is going to collapse, and with it, the real estate market is going to collapse. Pension funds are going to be wiped out… This is a very bad situation. The US is digging itself in deeper and deeper," said Casey, who added the telling question: "Then what's going to happen?"..."
.
"...President Obama's grim warning of "deal or war" seems to provide an answer. Faced with economic implosion on an epic scale, the US may be counting on war as its other option..."
August 15, 2015 | ronpaulinstitute.org

US President Barack Obama has given an extraordinary ultimatum to the Republican-controlled Congress, arguing that they must not block the nuclear accord with Iran. It's either "deal or war," he says.

In a televised nationwide address on August 5, Obama said: "Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any US administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option: another war in the Middle East. I say this not to be provocative. I am stating a fact."

The American Congress is due to vote on whether to accept the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed July 14 between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers – the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Republicans are openly vowing to reject the JCPOA, along with hawkish Democrats such as Senator Chuck Schumer. Opposition within the Congress may even be enough to override a presidential veto to push through the nuclear accord.

In his drastic prediction of war, one might assume that Obama is referring to Israel launching a preemptive military strike on Iran with the backing of US Republicans. Or that he is insinuating that Iran will walk from self-imposed restraints on its nuclear program to build a bomb, thus triggering a war.

But what could really be behind Obama's dire warning of "deal or war" is another scenario – the collapse of the US dollar, and with that the implosion of the US economy.

That scenario was hinted at this week by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Speaking in New York on August 11, Kerry made the candid admission that failure to seal the nuclear deal could result in the US dollar losing its status as the top international reserve currency.

"If we turn around and nix the deal and then tell [US allies], 'You're going to have to obey our rules and sanctions anyway,' that is a recipe, very quickly for the American dollar to cease to be the reserve currency of the world."

In other words, what really concerns the Obama administration is that the sanctions regime it has crafted on Iran – and has compelled other nations to abide by over the past decade – will be finished. And Iran will be open for business with the European Union, as well as China and Russia.

It is significant that within days of signing the Geneva accord, Germany, France, Italy and other EU governments hastened to Tehran to begin lining up lucrative investment opportunities in Iran's prodigious oil and gas industries. China and Russia are equally well-placed and more than willing to resume trading partnerships with Iran. Russia has signed major deals to expand Iran's nuclear energy industry.

American writer Paul Craig Roberts said that the US-led sanctions on Iran and also against Russia have generated a lot of frustration and resentment among Washington's European allies.

"US sanctions against Iran and Russia have cost businesses in other countries a lot of money," Roberts told this author.

"Propaganda about the Iranian nuke threat and Russian threat is what caused other countries to cooperate with the sanctions. If a deal worked out over much time by the US, Russia, China, UK, France and Germany is blocked, other countries are likely to cease cooperating with US sanctions."

Roberts added that if Washington were to scuttle the nuclear accord with Iran, and then demand a return to the erstwhile sanctions regime, the other international players will repudiate the American diktat.

"At that point, I think much of the world would have had enough of the US use of the international payments system to dictate to others, and they would cease transacting in dollars."

The US dollar would henceforth lose its status as the key global reserve currency for the conduct of international trade and financial transactions.

Former World Bank analyst Peter Koenig says that if the nuclear accord unravels, Iran will be free to trade its oil and gas – worth trillions of dollars – in bilateral currency deals with the EU, Japan, India, South Korea, China and Russia, in much the same way that China and Russia and other members of the BRICS nations have already begun to do so.

That outcome will further undermine the US dollar. It will gradually become redundant as a mechanism of international payment.

Koenig argues that this implicit threat to the dollar is the real, unspoken cause for anxiety in Washington. The long-running dispute with Iran, he contends, was never about alleged weapons of mass destruction. Rather, the real motive was for Washington to preserve the dollar's unique global standing.

"The US-led standoff with Iran has nothing to do with nuclear weapons," says Koenig. The issue is: will Iran eventually sell its huge reserves of hydrocarbons in other currencies than the dollar, as they intended to do in 2007 with an Iranian Oil Bourse? That is what instigated the American-contrived fake nuclear issue in the first place."

This is not just about Iran. It is about other major world economies moving away from holding the US dollar as a means of doing business. If the US unilaterally scuppers the international nuclear accord, Washington will no longer be able to enforce its financial hegemony, which the sanctions regime on Iran has underpinned.

Many analysts have long wondered at how the US dollar has managed to defy economic laws, given that its preeminence as the world's reserve currency is no longer merited by the fundamentals of the US economy. Massive indebtedness, chronic unemployment, loss of manufacturing base, trade and budget deficits are just some of the key markers, despite official claims of "recovery."

As Paul Craig Roberts commented, the dollar's value has only been maintained because up to now the rest of the world needs the greenback to do business with. That dependency has allowed the US Federal Reserve to keep printing banknotes in quantities that are in no way commensurate with the American economy's decrepit condition.

"If the dollar lost the reserve currency status, US power would decline," says Roberts. "Washington's financial hegemony, such as the ability to impose sanctions, would vanish, and Washington would no longer be able to pay its bills by printing money. Moreover, the loss of reserve currency status would mean a drop in the demand for dollars and a drop in willingness to hold them. Therefore, the dollar's exchange value would fall, and rising prices of imports would import inflation into the US economy."

Doug Casey, a top American investment analyst, last week warned that the woeful state of the US economy means that the dollar is teetering on the brink of a long-overdue crash. "You're going to see very high levels of inflation. It's going to be quite catastrophic," says Casey.

He added that the crash will also presage a collapse in the American banking system which is carrying trillions of dollars of toxic debt derivatives, at levels much greater than when the system crashed in 2007-08.

The picture he painted isn't pretty: "Now, when interest rates inevitably go up from these artificially suppressed levels where they are now, the bond market is going to collapse, the stock market is going to collapse, and with it, the real estate market is going to collapse. Pension funds are going to be wiped out… This is a very bad situation. The US is digging itself in deeper and deeper," said Casey, who added the telling question: "Then what's going to happen?"

President Obama's grim warning of "deal or war" seems to provide an answer. Faced with economic implosion on an epic scale, the US may be counting on war as its other option.

Reprinted with permission from RT.

[Aug 16, 2015] Iran Nuclear Deal: Why Empire Blinked First

August 14, 2015 | ronpaulinstitute.org

We've now spent three weeks watching American politicians argue needlessly over the Iran nuclear deal. For or against, they all miss this one salient point: It is the US that needed to end this standoff with Iran – not the other way around.

For years we have been hearing that US sanctions "were biting" and had "teeth." Sanctions, it was said, would "change Iranian behaviors," whether in regards to the Islamic Republic's "support of terrorism," its "calculations" over its nuclear program, or by turning popular Iranian sentiment against its government.

Here is US President Obama spinning the fairytale at full volume:

"We put in place an unprecedented regime of sanctions that has crippled Iran's economy…And it is precisely because of the international sanctions and the coalition that we were able to build internationally that the Iranian people responded by saying, we need a new direction in how we interact with the international community and how we deal with this sanctions regime. And that's what brought President Rouhani to power."
There is, of course, scant evidence that any of this is true.

If anything, on the economic front, the net effect of sanctions has been to rally Iranians behind domestic production and thrift – establishing both the discipline and policy focus necessary to sustain the country indefinitely. A 2013 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report explains this unintended consequence of sanctions:

"There is a growing body of opinion and Iranian assertions that indicates that Iran, through actions of the government and the private sector, is mitigating the economic effect of sanctions. Some argue that Iran might even benefit from sanctions over the long term by being compelled to diversify its economy and reduce dependence on oil revenues. Iran's 2013-2014 budget relies far less on oil exports than have previous budgets, and its exports of minerals, cement, urea fertilizer, and other agricultural and basic industrial goods are increasing substantially."
Sanctions didn't succeed on the political front either. By in large, Iranians did not hold their leadership responsible for sanctions-related economic duress, nor did they seek rapprochement with the West as a way out. The US continues to flog the narrative that Iranians elected President Hassan Rouhani in a bid to "moderate" foreign policy stances, but a survey conducted by US pollster Zogby Research Services in the immediate aftermath of Rouhani's election turns that premise on its head:

Ninety-six percent of Iranians surveyed agreed with the statement that "maintaining the right to advance a nuclear program is worth the price being paid in economic sanctions and international isolation." Of those polled, a mere five percent of Iranians felt that improved relations with the US and the West were their top priority.

No, sanctions have not worked in any of the ways they were intended.
So if the Iranians were not 'dragged' to the negotiating table, then what was the sudden incentive behind a multilateral effort to forge a deal in 2015 - 36 years after the first US non-nuclear sanctions were levied against the Islamic Republic, and nine years after the UN Security Council first issued nuclear-related sanctions?

Keep in mind that both the Iranians and the permanent members of the UNSC have offered up proposals to end the nuclear deadlock since 2003. So why, this deal, now?

Could it be that the Americans had simply blinked first?

And the world turned

It must be understood that much of this nuclear brouhaha has nothing to do with Iran actually possessing or aspiring to possess nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic neither has nuclear weapons, nor does it profess to want them.
US intelligence agencies, over the years, have conceded that Iran has not even made the "decision" to pursue weaponization, and the IAEA has repeatedly stated in 52 periodic assessment reports that there has been "no diversion"of nuclear materials to a weapons program.

In short, all the fuss has really only ever been about containing, isolating and taming a developing nation with aspirations that challenge Empire's hegemony.
Iran was never going to be able to change the rules of the game single-handedly. That is, until the game itself shifted hands and direction.

In 2012, cracks in the global economic and political power structures started to shift dramatically. We started to see the emergence of the BRICS, in particular Russia and China, as influential movers of global events. Whether it was a shift in trading currencies from the conventional dollar/euro to the rupee/yuan/ruble, or the emergence of new global economic/defense institutions initiated by BRICS member states, the world's middle powers began to assert themselves and project power on the international stage.

But it was in the vast and complicated Middle East arena that old power and new power came to clash most ferociously.

In November 2011, the year of the Arab uprisings, the BRICS announced their first collective foreign policy statement, urging the rejection of foreign intervention in Syria's internal affairs.

By 2012, it started becoming clear that the crisis in Syria was being heavily fomented by external players, including the three UNSC Western permanent members, the US, UK and France and their regional allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and NATO-member Turkey.

In 2012, it also became clear that Al-Qaeda and other militant Islamist fighters were dominating the opposition inside the Syrian military theater and that these elements were being backed by the United States and its allies.

The American calculus, at this point, was to allow and even encourage the proliferation of fighters prepared to unseat the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, anticipating that at some future date they could then reverse the gains of radicals.

Assad did not fall, but extremism – fueled by funding, arming and training from US allies – entrenched itself further in Syria.

This did not go unnoticed in Washington, which has always struggled to make a coherent case for its Syria strategies. The rise of ISIS (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and the flood of jihadists into the Syrian theater began to change the American calculations. The US began to work on hedging its bets…and that is when Iran began to factor significantly in America's Plan B.

That Plan B began in mid-2012, just as Saudi Arabia's incoming intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan was preparing for a violent escalation in Syria, one that would exacerbate the Islamist militancy in the Levant exponentially.

That July, secret backchannel talks between the United States and Iran were established in Oman, kicked off, according to the Wall Street Journal, by "a pattern of inducements offered by Washington to coax Tehran to the table."

Take note that the Americans initiated this process, not the allegedly "sanctions-fatigued" Iranians, and that this outreach began when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was at the helm, not his successor Rouhani.

Iran – or bust

Iran's elite Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani said a few months ago: "Today, there is nobody in confrontation with [IS] except the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as nations who are next to Iran or supported by Iran."

If you look at the array of ground forces amassed against Islamist radicals from Lebanon to Iraq, they consist almost entirely of elements allied with the Islamic Republic, or are recipients of weapons and sometimes training provided by the Iranians.

There are no combat forces from Western states and none from their Arab or Turkish allies within the region.

'Boots on the ground' are essential in asymmetrical warfare, but the US military will continue to oppose inserting its troops into direct combat situations in Syria and Iraq.

In a Telegraph op-ed on the eve of the Vienna nuclear agreement, Britain's influential former ambassador to Washington Christopher Meyer wrote:

"Whether we like it or not, we are in de facto alliance against ISIL with Assad of Syria and with Iran, the implacable foe of our long-standing ally, Sunni Saudi Arabia…. if ISIL is able to expand further in the Middle East, won't this unavoidably lead to the conclusion that our strategic ally in the region for the 21st century must be Iran?"
This is the conundrum Washington began facing in 2012. And so it set in motion a face-saving strategy to enable itself to "deal" with Iran directly.

The Vienna Agreement

Here's what the Iran nuclear deal does – besides the obvious: it takes the old American-Iranian "baggage" off the table for the US administration, allowing it the freedom to pursue more pressing shared political objectives with Iran.

The Iranians understood full well in Vienna that they were operating from a strong regional position and that the US needed this deal more urgently. The Americans tried several times to get Iran to expand discussions to address regional issues on a parallel track, but the Iranians refused point-blank. They were not prepared to allow the US to gain any leverage in various regional battlefields in order to weaken Iran's position within broader talks.

Although the Iranians are careful to point out that the Vienna agreement is only as good as the "intentions" of their partners, this deal is essentially a satisfactory one for Tehran. It ensures rigorous verification that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program, which is great for a country that doesn't seek one.
It also provides Iran with protections against 'over-inspection' and baseless accusations, dismisses all UNSC resolutions against the Islamic Republic, recognizes the country's enrichment program, provides extensive international sanctions relief, binds all UN member-states to this agreement (yes, Israel too) and nails down an end-date for this whole nuclear saga.

The deal also frees up Iran to pursue its regional plans with less inhibitions.
"What the president (Obama) and his aides do not talk about these days - for fear of further antagonizing lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have cast Iran as the ultimate enemy of the United States - are their grander ambitions for a deal they hope could open up relations with Tehran and be part of a transformation in the Middle East," reads a post-Vienna article in the New York Times.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, commenting after the deal, said: "I know that a Middle East that is on fire is going to be more manageable with this deal and opens more potential for us to be able to deal with those fires, whether it is Houthi in Yemen or ISIL in Syria and Iraq than no deal and the potential of another confrontation with Iran at the same time."

"The Iran agreement is a disaster for ISIS," blares the headline from a post-agreement op-ed by EU foreign affairs chief Frederica Mogherini. She explains:

"ISIS is spreading its vicious and apocalyptic ideology in the Middle East and beyond…An alliance of civilizations can be our most powerful weapon in the fight against terror…We need to restart political processes to end wars. We need to get all regional powers back to the negotiating table and stop the carnage. Cooperation between Iran, its neighbors and the whole international community could open unprecedented possibilities of peace for the region, starting from Syria, Yemen and Iraq."
Clearly, for Western leaders Iran is an essential component in any fight against ISIS and other like-minded terror groups. Just as clearly, they have realized that excluding Iran from the resolution of various regional conflicts is a non-starter.
That is some significant back-tracking from earlier Western positions explicitly excluding Iran from a seat at the table on Mideast matters.

And stay tuned for further policy revisions - once this train gets underway, it will indeed be "transformative."

As for the Iran nuclear deal…except for some hotheads in Congress and the US media, most of the rest of the world has already moved on. As chief US negotiator and undersecretary for political affairs, Wendy Sherman said recently: "If we walk away, quite frankly we walk away alone."

The balance of power has shifted decisively in the Middle East. Washington wants out of the mess it helped create, and it can't exit the region without Iran's help. The agreement in Vienna was reached to facilitate this possibility. Iran is not inclined to reward the US for bad behavior, but will also likely not resist efforts to broker regional political settlements that make sense.

It was not a weak Iran that came to the final negotiations in Vienna and it was not a crippled Iran that left that table.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (for once) aptly observed:

"It is stunning to me how well the Iranians, sitting alone on their side of the table, have played a weak hand against the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain on their side of the table. When the time comes, I'm hiring (Iran's Supreme Leader) Ali Khamenei to sell my house."
Iran just exited UNSC Chapter 7 sanctions via diplomacy rather than war, and it's now focusing its skill-sets on unwinding conflict in the Middle East. If you're planning to challenge Empire anytime soon, make sure to get a copy of Iran's playbook. Nobody plays the long game better - and with more patience.

Reprinted with permission from RT.

[Aug 16, 2015] The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Republicans Cant Face the Truth About Iraq

"...For Cheney and his oil pals, conquering Iraq would secure the Arab world's biggest oil reserves for Uncle Sam and offer a central military base in the region. For Washington's bloodthirsty neocons, pulverizing Iraq would remove one of Israel's most determined enemies, crush the only Arab nation that might challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly, and cost Israel nothing. Invading Iraq produced the slow disintegration of the Mideast so long sought by militant Zionists."
.
"...It all worked brilliantly, at least from Israel's viewpoint. Not, however for the US. Bush's invasion shattered Iraq, led to al-Qaida and ISIS, and left Washington saddled with a $1 trillion-dollar bill instead of the $60 million cost estimated by Wolfowitz. The Mideast is in a tailspin, Palestinians are totally isolated, and Egypt, the region's key nation, is run by an Arab-fascist military dictatorship."
August 15, 2015 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Gov. Jeb Bush repeated one of the biggest falsehoods of our time during the recent presidential candidate debate: "we were misled (into the Iraq War) by faulty intelligence."

US intelligence was not "misled." It was ordered by the real, de facto president, Dick Cheney, to provide excuses for a war of aggression against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

PM Tony Blair, forced British intelligence services to "sex up" reports that Iraq had nuclear weapons; he purged the government and the venerable broadcaster BBC of journalists who failed to amplify Blair's lies. Bush and Blair reportedly discussed painting a US Air Force plane in UN colors and getting it to buzz Iraqi anti-aircraft sites in hope the Iraqis would fire on it. Bush told Blair that after conquering Iraq, he intended to invade Iran, Syria, Libya and Pakistan.

In fact, Iraq had no "weapons of mass destruction," save some rusty barrels of mustard and nerve gas that had been supplied by the US and Britain for use against Iran. I broke this story from Baghdad back in late 1990.

Tyler Drumheller, who died last week, was the former chief of CIA's European division. He was the highest-ranking intelligence officer to go public and accuse the Bush administration of hyping fabricated evidence to justify invading Iraq.

Drumheller was particularly forceful in denouncing the Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball," whose ludicrous claims about mobile Iraqi germ laboratories were trumpeted before the UN by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. "Curveball's" claims were outright lies and Powell, whose career was ruined by parroting these absurd allegations, should have known better.

"Curveball" was an 'agent provocateur' clearly sent by a neighbor of Iraq to help promote a US attack on that nation. Whether it was Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Israel that sent Curveball," we still don't know. All three fabricated "evidence" against Iraq and passed it to Washington. That is where US intelligence was indeed misled. But that's only a minor part of the story.

A Washington cabal of pro-Israel neocons, oil men, and old-fashioned imperialists joined to promote a grossly illegal invasion of oil-rich Iraq. One of its senior members, former Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, admitted that weapons of mass destruction was chosen as the most convenient and emotive pretext for war. Orders went out to CIA and NSA to find information linking Iraq to 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction.

Some of the worst torture inflicted on suspects kidnapped by CIA's action teams was designed to make them admit to a link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was, of course, none. But administration officials, like the odious Condoleeza Rice, kept broadly hinting at a nuclear threat to America.

Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, polls showed a majority of Americans believed Iraq was threatening the US with nuclear attack and was behind 9/11. Amazingly, a poll taken of self-professed evangelical Christians just before the US attacked Iraq showed that over 80% supported war against Iraq. So much for turning the other cheek.

Most of the US media, notably the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, amplified the lies of the Bush administration. TV networks were ordered never to show American military casualties or civilian dead. Those, like this writer, who questioned the rational for war, or who wouldn't go along with the party line, were blanked out from print and TV.

For example, I was immediately dropped from a major TV network after daring mention that Israel supported the 2003 Iraq war and would benefit from it. I was blacklisted by another major US TV network at the direct demand of the Bush White House for repeatedly insisting that Iraq had no nuclear capability.

Very few analysts, journalists, or politicians took time to ask: even if Iraq had nuclear weapons, how could they be delivered to North America? Iraq had no long-range bombers and no missiles with range greater than 100kms. Perhaps by FedEx? No one asked, why would Iraq invite national suicide by trying to hit the US with a nuclear weapon?

The most original answer came from George W. Bush: nefarious Iraqi freighters were lurking in the North Atlantic carrying "drones of death" that would attack sleeping America. This hallucination was based on a single report that the bumbling Iraqis were working a children's model airplane that, in the end, broke and never flew. What inspired such a phantasmagoria? Pot, too much bourbon, LSD, or thundering orders from Dick Cheney to find a damned good excuse for invading Iraq.

For Cheney and his oil pals, conquering Iraq would secure the Arab world's biggest oil reserves for Uncle Sam and offer a central military base in the region. For Washington's bloodthirsty neocons, pulverizing Iraq would remove one of Israel's most determined enemies, crush the only Arab nation that might challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly, and cost Israel nothing. Invading Iraq produced the slow disintegration of the Mideast so long sought by militant Zionists.

It all worked brilliantly, at least from Israel's viewpoint. Not, however for the US. Bush's invasion shattered Iraq, led to al-Qaida and ISIS, and left Washington saddled with a $1 trillion-dollar bill instead of the $60 million cost estimated by Wolfowitz. The Mideast is in a tailspin, Palestinians are totally isolated, and Egypt, the region's key nation, is run by an Arab-fascist military dictatorship.

Tyler Drumheller was the only senior CIA officer to stand up and tell Americans they were lied into an unnecessary, illegal war. Today, we have Iraqi déjŕ vu anew as the lie factories and fear mongers work overtime to promote war with Iran.

Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.

[Aug 09, 2015] Seven countries near bankruptcy

Aug 08, 2015 | usatoday.com

Moody's Investors' Service rates seven countries Caa1 or worse, several tiers lower than Ba1, which still carries a significant credit risk. These countries are approaching or have narrowly escaped bankruptcy. Ukraine is rated Ca, which is currently the lowest credit rating of any country reviewed by Moody's.

... ... ...

Ukraine

> Moody's credit rating: Ca
> Moody's outlook: Negative
> 2015 Gov't debt (pct. of GDP): 94.1%
> 2015 GDP per capita (PPP): $8,278

Ukraine's conflict with Russia over its annexation of Crimea continues to fuel the country's financial problems. While the IMF approved Ukraine's debt restructuring plan in March, Ukraine has the worst credit rating of any country reviewed, downgraded this year from Caa3 to Ca, the second lowest possible level. Creditors can expect a 35% to 65% recovery rate on loans issued by the country. According to Moody's, "The likelihood of a distressed exchange, and hence a default on government debt taking place, is virtually 100%."

The same day that Moody's issued the downgrade, the National Bank of Ukraine announced the establishment of the Financial Stability Council. According to Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Valeriia Gonatreva, the Council's function will be to "take a comprehensive and systemic approach to identify and mitigate the risks threatening the stability of the banking and financial systems of the country."

[Aug 09, 2015] The main points of this Gorbulin-Poroshenko Plan

marknesop.wordpress.com

yalensis, August 7, 2015 at 2:54 pm

Op-ed by Sergei Markov, a Russian political analyst who is considered to be close to the views of the Kremlin:

http://rusnext.ru/recent_opinions/1438977256

According to Markov, Kiev was only interested in the first part of the Minsk Accords, namely in a panic to stop counter-offensive of Novorossiya army, after their debacle at Debaltsevo.

But they have zero interest in carrying out the rest of the accords.

Plus, according to Markov, Kiev is under instructions from their American masters, to continue the war at all costs.
According to Markov, Kiev is actually carrying out a plan called the "Gorbulin-Poroshenko Plan", and I googled Gorbulin, but couldn't get any more information, so I don't know who this person is.

But the main points of this Gorbulin-Poroshenko Plan are said to be:

1. Kiev does not take on any (Minsk) obligations which involve peace-making moves.
2. Full blockade (of Donbass).
3. Continue artillery shelling of residential areas of Donbass, kill as many civilians as possible.
4. This in order to make life unbearable in Donbass.
5. The goal is to turn the residents against their leaders, in DPR and LPR.
6. Weaken Russia with sanctions.
7. Planning a military blitzkrieg against Donbass, on the model of the attack of Croatian army against Serbian Krajina.
8. NATO will station troops in Kharkov, Zaporozhie and Dnipropetrovsk.
9. NATO will beef up Ukrainian army and prepare for fatal strike against Donbass.
10. The police state/dictatorship in Ukraine will be strengthened.

marknesop, August 7, 2015 at 5:45 pm

Volodymyr (Ukraine has to spell it differently so they can all high-five each other, the way the British deliberately misspell "tire") Gorbulin is the former National Defense and Security Council (NDSC) Secretary, now a personal adviser to Poroshenko. Looks a right Himmler type.

[Aug 09, 2015] Mikhail Saakashvili is lesson to US neoconservatives Color revolutions can be reversed

"...MS: Well, one obvious similarity is that Saakashvili, who was the president of Georgia in 2008, has reappeared in Ukraine as a roving gunslinger, as it were, appointed by [Ukraine President Petro] Poroshenko to be governor of the Odessa region, even though he's not a Ukrainian nationalist – there's plenty of non-Ukrainian nationals in the government of Kiev at the moment. And in Georgia itself, Saakashvili is wanted for various crimes against the state, including embezzlement, and so on. And the current government of Georgia – I was reading just yesterday - is not prepared to participate in any sort of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine and Crimea. That, in a way, is also a lesson to the neoconservatives in the West is that your color revolutions – like the Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili to power – they can be reversed. There seems to be a much more rational leadership in Tbilisi now that sees itself in a balance between Russia and the Western powers and pursuing an independent policy, and not one of a crazy confrontation with a big neighbor like Russia."
Aug 09, 2015 | RT Op-Edge

On the anniversary of the 2008 South Ossetia conflict, it appears that that act of Georgian aggression was just a dry run for the events now unfolding with disastrous consequences in Ukraine, Martin Summers, journalist and political commentator, told RT.

On August 8, 2008, the Georgian military launched a full-scale military offensive against South Ossetia, killing many civilians, as well as Russian peacekeepers, while triggering a 5-day conflict. Yet Russia was condemned in the Western media for starting the hostilities.

RT: Why was everyone so quick to blame Russia for initiating the war when Europe's own observers on the ground were indicating otherwise?

Martin Summers: Well, it's part of the narrative of neo-Russian imperialism, which was very common in the West at the time, and still is. And also, of course, the whole thing was premeditated by the Georgians in collaboration with Western intelligence agencies. They didn't decide to attack South Ossetia just off their own bat. And Saakashvili… was very much their man. He's been removed from power in Georgia, as you know, and has reappeared in Odessa, Ukraine.

RT: A few months after the war in South Ossetia, Western public opinion had started to shift. News outlets and politicians were saying that it was Georgia that had started the conflict, but perhaps that narrative did not gain as much attention.

MS: No, it didn't. If you've got a general narrative of Russia as the bogeyman, it takes a lot of contrary evidence for public opinion to be shifted. I think the facts that the Russian intelligence knew that something was afoot and they were prepared so that when Saakashvili began the aggression it was dealt with firmly and quickly and the war was over fairly quickly. Russia – or South Ossetia, if you'd like – clearly won and the West was left feeling that they had to justify what had happened, but they really couldn't. And in many ways, what happened in 2008 was actually a dry run for what we've seen happening in Ukraine over the last several years. At that stage, the US neoconservatives, who were pushing for a confrontation with Russia in the Caucasus, got their fingers burnt and they should have learned their lesson from that and this kind of thing was not going to work. And of course it also changed attitudes inside Russia because those groups within the establishment in Russia, who were pursuing a conciliatory policy towards Western powers, were made to look silly because the Western powers had deliberately provoked a confrontation that was unnecessary.

RT: So what is the extent of the similarities now with regards to Ukraine?

MS: Well, one obvious similarity is that Saakashvili, who was the president of Georgia in 2008, has reappeared in Ukraine as a roving gunslinger, as it were, appointed by [Ukraine President Petro] Poroshenko to be governor of the Odessa region, even though he's not a Ukrainian nationalist – there's plenty of non-Ukrainian nationals in the government of Kiev at the moment. And in Georgia itself, Saakashvili is wanted for various crimes against the state, including embezzlement, and so on. And the current government of Georgia – I was reading just yesterday - is not prepared to participate in any sort of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine and Crimea. That, in a way, is also a lesson to the neoconservatives in the West is that your color revolutions – like the Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili to power – they can be reversed. There seems to be a much more rational leadership in Tbilisi now that sees itself in a balance between Russia and the Western powers and pursuing an independent policy, and not one of a crazy confrontation with a big neighbor like Russia.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Malcolm stark 12 hours ago

i remember CNN interviewed a young American girl who visited family in Georgia , as soon as she started to thank the Russian soldiers who saved her and her family from Georgian troops , the reporter cut the interview

it is one youtube 9fBGtXS66VM
western media propaganda

edit : Fox news

[Aug 08, 2015]About the value of top secret documents

Yves Smith August 8, 2015 at 1:40 am

No, you are wrong on this. It's more complicated than you think. Henry Kissinger sought out Daniel Ellsberg as one of his top priority meetings as a new government official . Ellsberg was highly respected as a world-reknown decision theorist, and as one of the most insightful people on Vietnam, having spend substantial time on the ground (as opposed to cloistered in Saigon) on behalf of the DoD and State. Ellsberg's description of that encounter from his book Secrets:

"Henry, there's something I would like to tell you, for what it's worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You've been a consultant for a long time, and you've dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you're about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.

"I've had a number of these myself, and I've known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn't previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.

"First, you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all - so much! incredible! - suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn't, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn't even guess. In particular, you'll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn't know about and didn't know they had, and you'll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.

"You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you've started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn't have it, and you'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't….and that all those other people are fools.

"Over a longer period of time - not too long, but a matter of two or three years - you'll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn't tell you, it's often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn.

"In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. Because you'll be thinking as you listen to them: 'What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?' And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I've seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself.

"You will deal with a person who doesn't have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you'll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You'll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you'll become something like a moron. You'll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours."

Kurt Sperry August 8, 2015 at 4:32 pm

That doesn't really read to me as any sort of refutation of my skeptical assessment. This above top secret stuff is in Ellsberg's words "often inaccurate" and can thus lead or be used to lead the target away from more correct analyses by its inflated putative authority. As the sources for this in all likelihood cannot be fact checked or held accountable in any immediate way, it will tend to become an ad hoc vector for the deliberate injection of misinformation or highly biased analyses into the highest levels of policy decision making processes that can be used to influence policy outcomes in a completely opaque and unaccountable way. To cite the most obvious example, the entire Iraq War II was built around a false set of these "above top secret" assertions of fact that were fed to the highest levels of the executive, and in hindsight these could have been pretty easily debunked entirely using open sources. This "above top secret" intelligence turned out to be complete garbage and a major war was launched based on this garbage, which clearly says to me that "The stuff the spooks/deep staters/whatever tell the POTUS is probably in large measure just scaremongering bullshit tailored to elicit or lead the target towards a self serving set of policy choices."

Given this, it just feels "foily" to me to uncritically accept that there is a large body of highly secret and objective facts that top level decision makers have access to. If that stuff went through any real vetting or rigorous fact checking processes, Iraq War II would never have even happened. History says clearly and unambiguously that a system to do that fact checking isn't in place and thus the notion of a 'large body of highly secret and objective facts' is at best a distortion and probably often a complete fiction.

Neocons/ /media_military /nulandgate. Fighting_russo*/ Neoliberalism/ Neocolon*/ /color_revolutions. /deep_state. /predator_state.

[Aug 08, 2015] Tyler Drumheller, CIA officer who exposed U.S. reliance on discredited Iraq source 'Curveball,' dies at 63

Aug 06, 2015 | The Washington Pos

Tyler S. Drumheller, a high-level CIA officer who publicly battled agency leaders over one of the most outlandish claims in the U.S. case for war with Iraq, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Fairfax County. He was 63.

The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Linda Drumheller.

Mr. Drumheller held posts in Africa and Europe over a 26-year career during which the CIA's focus shifted from the Cold War to terrorist threats. He rose to prominent positions at CIA headquarters, serving as chief of the European division at a time when the agency was abducting al-Qaeda suspects on the continent and U.S. allies there faced a wave of terrorist plots.

But he was best known publicly for his role in exposing the extent to which a key part of the administration's case for war with Iraq had been built on the claims of an Iraqi defector and serial fabricator with the fitting code name "Curveball."

In contrast to Hollywood's depiction of spies as impossibly elegant and acrobatic, Mr. Drumheller was a bulky, rumpled figure who often seemed oblivious to the tufts of dog hair on his clothes.


"I always thought of him as an overfed George Smiley," said Bill Murray, a former CIA colleague, referring to the character in John le Carré spy novels known for his espionage acumen but unassuming appearance.

Mr. Drumheller spent the bulk of his career as an undercover officer seeking to avoid public attention. But after retiring in 2005, he emerged as a vocal critic of the George W. Bush administration's use of deeply flawed intelligence to build support for its decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Curveball, who had defected to Germany in the late 1990s, was the primary source behind the administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq had developed biological weapons laboratories - lethal germ factories supposedly built on wheels or rails to evade detection.

The claim was included in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech as well as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations designed to marshal international support for intervention in Iraq.

"We had failed," he wrote. "It was bad enough that we had not prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and we were being blamed for that. Now the nation was about to embark on a war based on intelligence I knew was false, and we would surely be blamed for that, too."

A scathing 2005 report on the intelligence failures in Iraq did not mention Mr. Drumheller by name but concluded that officials in the agency's European division had "expressed serious concerns about Curveball's reliability to senior officials at the CIA," and that the warnings were inexplicably dismissed.

The allegation touched off a bitter feud. When then-CIA Director George J. Tenet denied that he had ever been warned about Curveball, Mr. Drumheller fought back in public, saying that "everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening."

Mr. Drumheller was widely quoted in news accounts and appeared on the CBS program "60 Minutes."

No mobile germ warfare labs were found, and the defector, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, has since admitted that the story was a fiction he fed to German intelligence while seeking asylum.

The blow-up over Curveball coincided with Mr. Drumheller's retirement from the CIA "I think he was really proud of standing up against the war," Linda Drumheller said in an interview. "That was his personal greatest achievement."

The son of an Air Force chaplain, Tyler Scott Drumheller was born in Biloxi, Miss., on April 12, 1952. He spent part of his childhood in Germany before attending the University of Virginia. He graduated in 1974 with a history degree and did postgraduate work in Chinese at Georgetown University before being hired by the CIA in 1979.

He met Linda Blocher while she was working at the spy agency as a secretary in the Africa division, and proposed to her in a stairwell at CIA headquarters after learning that he would soon be sent to Zambia. It was the first in a series of stops for the couple that would also include South Africa, Portugal, Germany and Austria. Two and sometimes three pet dogs accompanied every move.

Besides his wife, of Vienna, Va., survivors include a daughter, Livia Phillips of Great Falls, Va.; a sister, Alecia Ball of Chester, Va.; and a grandson.

Mr. Drumheller's affable manner made it easy for him to form lasting connections with people throughout his career, Linda Drumheller said. He also had a prodigious memory, she said, that enabled him to keep track of cryptonyms, children's birthdays and Detroit Tigers statistics.

Mr. Drumheller "understood human nature," Murray said. "Beneath that pleasant and fun kind of personality, he understood exactly what people were and what he was dealing with. Good or bad."

Mr. Drumheller had retained a young CIA recruit's enthusiasm for much of his career. But he seemed to grow tired of the internal conflicts after the Sept. 11 attacks. In his memoir, he wrote that in retirement he asked to have his Distinguished Career Intelligence medal delivered by mail rather than returning to headquarters for a ceremony.

When the envelope arrived, he wrote, "I opened it up and fell into a bit of a reverie, reflecting on my career and the years past, the successes and the friends gained, the colleagues lost and the mistakes made."

Juceam, 5:10 PM EDT

Drumheller's preoccupation with Curveball apparently did not allow him to uncover the real motivator for the Bush decision to invade Iraq.

The US invaded Iraq for Israeli national security interests, not those of the US. Iraq with WMD posed no threat to the US. They posed a potential threat to Israel.

In their book, The Israel Lobby, John Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt argue that among the more important impetuses for George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the Israel lobby. Important evidence for this allegation was the central role played in propagandizing for the war by Israel lobby Neoconservative figures such as:

Richard Perle-was chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.
Paul Wolfowitz -Deputy Defense Secretary, and member of Perle's Defense Policy Board.
Douglas Feith-Under Secretary of Defense and Policy Advisor.
David Wurmser-Special Assistant to the under-secretary for arms control and international security.
Lewis (Scooter) Libby -Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff.
John Hannah- National Security aide to Dick Cheney.
Douglas Feith established in the Pentagon the Office of Special Projects (OSP).

The OSP forged close ties to an ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon's office in Israel. The purpose of the unit was to provide key people in the Bush administration "with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorize." Thus, the OSP was getting cooked intelligence not only from its own intelligence unit, but also from an Israeli cell.

the3sattlers, 8/7/2015 10:24 AM EDT

"Sidney Blumenthal, a confidant who was paid by the Clinton Foundation, told the Select Committee on Benghazi Tuesday that the information he supplied the sitting Secretary of State came from a "respected former high-ranking CIA official," ...Sources close to the Benghazi investigation identified the official as Tyler Drumheller, a 25-year veteran of the CIA who retired from the agency in 2005 and has since worked in private consulting." Was it purposeful by WAPO to ignore this? Unimportant? Better to remember Iraq than more recent events? Tyler Drumheller RIP.

Even WAPO obits are biased and disgraceful. Great work, Miller.

jfschumaker, 8/6/2015 8:53 PM EDT

It's a great pity that Mr. Drumheller's doubts about "Curveball" were not more widely shared. It might have saved the country from a disastrous mistake, the invasion of Iraq.

That said, it's pretty clear that the political decision to launch the war was already made, and the intelligence was just gathered up to provide support for the idea, not to vet it.

It's also interesting that the Washington Post obit does not contain any information on Mr. Drumheller's most recent claim to fame, that he was reportedly Sidney Blumenthal's source for information provided to Secretary Clinton on Libya. I'm sure there must be a reason for that, but it escapes me. Washington is, after all, still "This Town." http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tyler-drumheller-ma...


[Aug 08, 2015]Keeping Ukraine whole

"...It does make a lot of sense from a psychopathic point of view. Psychopaths do not suffer from the effects of cognitive dissonance that we do. When faced with contradictions, hypocrisy and lies, we normal human beings suffer physiological discomfort and mental confusion. Psychopaths know that it weakens us and use the reversal of reality (if you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one) as a weapon against us. "
marknesop, August 6, 2015 at 9:51 am
I see. No goal should be so sacred as the one of "keeping Ukraine whole". But in dozens upon dozens of other examples, the USA has been enthusiastically behind the breakup of countries which resulted in the carving out of pro-western enclaves, and in fact hopes for Russia that it will be broken up into ethnic states. Yep, I believe that.

And I actually would have expected better from Nancy Pelosi – just as Kirill suggested, she is propagating the myth that Russia vetoing the tribunal means there will not be an investigation that leads to the truth. I personally think that is hopeless now anyway, the west is determined to whitewash Ukraine's role in it, but such investigations as there are going to be are proceeding unimpeded. How could anyone say anything so blatantly stupid in public? Russia simply refused to agree to accept the UN's verdict and the UN's awarding of punishment for it. After being told by the UN to quit whining after the attack on its Embassy in Kiev by Ukrainians, I think Russia is quite realistic on the issue of what it might expect in the way of fair treatment from the UN.

yalensis, August 6, 2015 at 3:16 pm
This doesn't make any sense!
American State Department accuses Russia of not doing enough to help them (='Muricans) fight Islamic state (IGIL=ISIS=ISIL=whatever).
State Department spokesperson Mark Toner, who looks like a barely-resuscitated zombie IMHO, chides Russia for not being engaged enough in the struggle against Islamic extremism.

[yalensis: If I was Russian government, I would respond thusly: "Jesus H. Christ what do you want from me? You want me to fight YOU? What is this, the fight club? I should fight YOU and bleed so that YOU can get your rocks off? You creepy zombie-looking fellow…. and by the way, this is highly illogical….."]

james@wpc, August 6, 2015 at 3:59 pm
It does make a lot of sense from a psychopathic point of view. Psychopaths do not suffer from the effects of cognitive dissonance that we do. When faced with contradictions, hypocrisy and lies, we normal human beings suffer physiological discomfort and mental confusion. Psychopaths know that it weakens us and use the reversal of reality (if you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one) as a weapon against us.

This is especially effective when they know that we know that they are lying. When they can get a response like Yalensis' above, they laugh because they have direct evidence that they are causing internal distress. Mission Accomplished.

To observe this in action, watch RT's Crosstalk when Peter Lavelle has a neocon think tank representative on. He (and it is usually a 'he') will reverse the truth without batting an eyelid. This then sends Peter and the other guests into animated protests. Meanwhile, the neocon sits there placidly and you may even detect a little smile – read smirk – on his face, confident that the others do not understand how he is controlling them.

Of course, once you see that the 'big lie' and the hypocrisy are signs of psychopathy and you know what psychopathy involves, they can no longer control you.

marknesop, August 6, 2015 at 4:15 pm
Incredible. The USA assumes unto itself the freedom to break any law so long as doing so allows it to achieve its objective. Having been frustrated in its desire to simply go in and bomb Syria until Assad submitted, it created an armed opposition to the armed opposition it had already created against Assad, then announced smugly that it would defend the opposition from the opposition, and if government forces got in the way, well, that'd just be too bad for them. Pilots do not know shit about what's going on on the ground, they just bomb targets they are told to bomb, so the people who always wanted to get Assad and remove him are in charge of assigning bombing targets in Syria. How is this in any way legal? It's not, is the short answer, but the USA has gone completely rogue and recognizes no authority but its own needs and desires.

Russia should announce that it will be delivering the S-400 system to Syria so that Syria can "defend itself", and that anyone who fires upon those delivering the systems will receive return fire, while once the system is in place, anyone who attacks government forces may be shot down. Assad has a marked advantage in this conflict, in that everybody is the enemy. He doesn't have any identification problems.

[Aug 08, 2015] What language are these people speaking?

"...One of the first thoughts that struck me when I listened to the infamous Nuland/Pyatt tape (Vicky's f**k the EU moment) was 'what language are these people speaking?' There was barely a coherent utterance from either party. Reading the comments above from Marc Veasey and Nancy Pelosi, it seems the US Congress must select its Ukraine 'specialists' by excluding anyone who can form sentences. "
yalensis, August 6, 2015 at 2:50 am
Members of U.S. Congress in Kiev today, expressing their fervent support for the Kiev junta, while not forgetting to mix metaphors as much as humanly possible.

Congressman Marc Veasey of Texas, a member of the Armed Services Committee:

Congressman Veasey.

Well, obviously, we want to see Ukraine push back the separatists. We believe that we want them to be successful in Crimea obviously and want to be supportive as much as we possibly can. On this trip we met with officials here in our U.S. Embassy. We also met with government officials and it's very important to us. We want to see Ukraine whole.

Q: What are the next steps to support Ukraine for the International Tribunal, [MH]17 air crash investigation?

[Demoratic Party] Leader [Nancy] Pelosi. Well, I think it was said very well when they said – when Russia vetoed the U.N. Security Council resolution that it was – that would make one suspicious or ask the question 'why?' Why would there not be the interest of everyone on an organization called the Security Council of the United Nations to have an investigation that would lead to the truth? And that's what people need to hear: the truth. And that's what's so important – taking us back to here. This is about shedding light about the angels, the heroes and the Heavenly Hundred – identified in so many ways for their courage to shed light on the need for more transparency and more light here.

Fern, August 6, 2015 at 6:01 am
One of the first thoughts that struck me when I listened to the infamous Nuland/Pyatt tape (Vicky's f**k the EU moment) was 'what language are these people speaking?' There was barely a coherent utterance from either party. Reading the comments above from Marc Veasey and Nancy Pelosi, it seems the US Congress must select its Ukraine 'specialists' by excluding anyone who can form sentences.

[Aug 08, 2015]Can the United States Stop a War With Russia?

"...America is heading for war with Russia. Some call the current situation "an increase of hostility" or "Cold War II." There are two sides to this story. I believe that American journalists from all political persuasions are not offering critical analysis. Understanding the Russian side and taking their arguments seriously can help prevent serious consequences."
.
"...Russia sees the US as the aggressor, surrounding Russia with military bases in Eastern Europe at every opportunity since the collapse of the Soviet Union."
observer.com

America is heading for war with Russia. Some call the current situation "an increase of hostility" or "Cold War II." There are two sides to this story. I believe that American journalists from all political persuasions are not offering critical analysis. Understanding the Russian side and taking their arguments seriously can help prevent serious consequences.

Americans believe that Russians are fed propaganda by the state-controlled media. If Russians only could hear the truth, the thinking goes, they would welcome the US position. This is not so. There are more than 300 TV stations available in Moscow. Only 6 are state-controlled. The truth is that Russians prefer hearing the news from the state rather than the Internet or other sources. This is different from almost any other country. It is not North Korea where the news is censored. Each night during the Crimea crisis, anyone could watch CNN or the BBC bash Russia.

With regard to Ukraine, Russia has drawn a red line: It will never allow Ukraine to be part of NATO. Russia sees the US as the aggressor, surrounding Russia with military bases in Eastern Europe at every opportunity since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US sees Russia as the aggressor against its neighbors. A small misstep could lead to war. This time the war will not be "over there." The Russian bombers flying off the California coast on July 4th clearly demonstrate this point. Russians understand that the US has not fought a war on its soil since the civil war. If new hostilities start, Russia will not let the war be a proxy war where the US supplies weapons and advisors and lets others do the "boots on the ground" combat. Russia will take the war to the US. How did we reach this critical point in such a short time?

Russia sees the US as the aggressor, surrounding Russia with military bases in Eastern Europe at every opportunity since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US sees Russia as the aggressor against its neighbors.

First, some background. I moved to Moscow two and a half years ago. I went to Russia to build a non-government funded news channel with editorial views consistent with the Russian Orthodox Church. I have completed that task and returned to the west. I see both sides of this escalating conflict and unless there is a change in thinking, the result will be catastrophic. When I first arrived, the relationship between the US and Russia seemed normal. As an American, my ideas were welcomed, even sought after. At the time, Mr. Obama planned to attack Assad's army in Syria for crossing the "red line" for a chemical weapon attack. Russia intervened and persuaded Syria to destroy its chemical weapons. Mr. Putin had helped Mr. Obama save face and not make a major blunder in Syria. Shortly after, Mr. Putin wrote an editorial published in the New York Times, which was generally well-received. Relations appeared to be on the right course. There was cooperation in the Middle East and Russia phobia was easing.

Then Russia passed a law that prevented sexual propaganda to minors. This was the start of tensions. The LGBT lobby in the West saw this law as anti-gay. I did not. The law was a direct copy of English law and was intended to prevent pedophilia, not consenting relationships between adults. Gay relations in Russia are not illegal (although not accepted by the majority of the public). Regarding gay protests, they were restricted from view of children. I saw this in the same way that we in America restrict children from seeing "R" rated films. The punishment for breaking this law is a fine of less than $100. Double-parking a car in Moscow carries a heavier fine of $150. Nonetheless the reaction was overwhelming against Russia.

The boycott of the Sochi Olympics was the West's way of discrediting Russia. Russia saw this boycott as an aggressive act by the West to interfere with its internal politics and to embarrass Russia. Sochi was for Russians a great source of national pride and had nothing to do with politics. For the West, this was the first step in creating the narrative that Russia was the old repressive Soviet Union and Russia must be stopped.

Then came the color revolution in the Ukraine. When the president of Ukraine was overthrown, from a Russian viewpoint this was a Western organized coup. The overthrow of a democratically elected president signaled that the West was interested in an expansion of power, not democratic values. The leaked recorded conversations of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt suggested that the US was actively involved in regime change in the Ukraine. For Russia, the Ukrainians are their brothers, much more than any other group. The languages are similar; they are linked culturally and religiously. Kiev played a central role in the Christianization of Russia. Many Russians have family members in Ukraine. For Russians, this special relationship was destroyed by outside forces. Imagine if Canada suddenly aligned itself with Russia or China. The US would surely see that as a threat on its border and act decisively.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, from an American viewpoint, the borders of Eastern Europe were frozen. However in the late 1990s, the borders of Yugoslavia changed, breaking that country apart. Russians had accepted Kiev's rule of Crimea since 1954 as a trusted brother might watch a family property. But when that brother no longer is a part of the family, Russia wanted Crimea back. Crimea also wanted Russia back. Crimeans speak Russian and are closely tied to their 300-year Russian heritage. From the Russian point of view, this was a family matter and of no concern to the West, The sanctions imposed were seen as aggression by the West to keep Russia in its place.

Sanctions are driving Russia away from the West and toward China. Chinese tourism in Russia is at record levels. More transactions are now settled directly between Rubles and Yuan, with the US dollar's role as middleman being limited. Although the dollar remains strong now, this is deceptive. China has created the AIIB bank to directly compete against the IMF for world banking power and the US is having trouble preventing its allies from joining. This is the first crack in US financial domination as a direct result of sanctions.

We are moving closer and closer to a real war. Republicans and Democrats talk tough on foreign policy towards Russia. When all politicians are in agreement, there is no discussion of alternative approaches. Any alternative to complete isolation of Russia and a NATO build up on Russia's borders is a sign of weakness. Any alternative to this military build up is criticized as "appeasement," likened to the failed foreign policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain toward Nazi Germany between 1937 and 1939.

Liberal Democrats historically are anti-war, but not this time. In the Czech Republic, there was the start of an anti-war movement when NATO paraded its military along its borders. "Tanks but no thanks" became a rallying cry. Czechs became uncomfortable with a muscle flexing approach to the standoff. Only a lone libertarian, Ron Paul raises a critique of the wisdom of this military build up.

The mistake that will cost America dearly is the assumption that Russia has the same ambitions as the Soviet Union. The cold war strategy used against the Soviet Union cannot be repeated with the same result. The Soviet Union was communist and atheistic. Modern Russia has returned to its Christian roots. There is a revival in Russian Orthodoxy with over 25,000 new churches built in Russia after the fall of Communism. On any Sunday, the churches are packed. Over 70% of the population identifies themselves as Orthodox Christians. Combine this religious revival with renewed Nationalism and Russia is growing in self-confidence.

A war with Russia cannot be won economically. Russia has oil and an abundance of natural resources. It occupies the largest landmass in the world.

The Marxist ideology followed by the Soviet Union was evangelistic. Only when the whole world became communist will Marxist principles be realized. When collective farms missed their goals, it was because the whole world wasn't communist yet, not because the ideology destroyed individual initiative. For this reason, the Soviet Union needed to dominate the whole world. For modern Russia, world domination is not its goal. Russia wants to keep its Russian identity and not lose it to outside forces.

Russian history is filled with invaders trying to conquer Russia. Napoléon and Hitler are only the latest examples. Russia has always prevailed. Driving in from the airport, you can see exactly how close Hitler came to Moscow. You are also reminded that it was here that he was stopped. Russia is sure that they will repel the newest invader NATO.

A war with Russia cannot be won economically. Russia has oil and an abundance of natural resources. It occupies the largest landmass in the world. It is growing in its ability to replace goods restricted from the west. A proxy war using the Ukrainian army will not solve the problem.

There is still time to make a deal. More sanctions, and more isolation from the West are not the way to resolve differences. The US flexing its military muscle will not solve the problems. War is not the answer but too often in history becomes the only solution when two sides refuse to see the other's point of view.

Jack Hanick recently completed the development of a state of the art television network in Moscow, built without government funding. Its evening news program broadcasts to 65 million homes in Russia across eight time zones. Previously Jack was a TV director, where he won the New York Emmy in 1994 for best director. His biography of Desmond Tutu also won a New York Emmy. Currently Jack is Chairman of the Board of HellasNet, a group of TV stations in Greece.

[Aug 08, 2015] Alliance between Ukrainian neo-Nazis and Russian fascist groups and individuals

Aug 06, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

yalensis, August 6, 2015 at 2:21 am

Saker has interesting piece about the attempted alliance between Ukrainian neo-Nazis and Russian fascist groups and individuals.

This was in reference to the July 25 demonstration of Right Sektor, Azov, et al, in support of Russian "political prisoners".

A new group which promotes this "nationalist internationale" calls itself "Petr i Mazepa", they favor a reconciliation between Ukrainian and Russian fascists, and claim to represent "Russian nationalists" who also respect "Ukrainian nationalists".

Saker goes on to discuss how the annual "Russian March" (of Russian nationalists, on 4 November) has a majority which is pro-Ukrainian junta.

This is, they sided with Ukrainian Junta against Novorossiya. There is also a video of that Russian March, which shows that the majority of the parties taking part in it, had an anti-Novorossiyan position . But that fact is not very rare position: one of the organizers of Russian March, Denis Tyukin, said in 2014 that " all Russian nationalist youth is supporting Ukraine ". Tyukin, member of the National-Socialist party "Russkie" had been also in the demonstration of 25th of July in Kiev (image below).

And it is not only Tykin, the head of the Russkie movement, Dmitry Dyomushkin, has called in the past for a "Slavic March" in Ukraine to express support for Ukrainian nationalists .

This is interesting development, because it shows that a goodly segment of the Russian nationalist right, just like the liberals, are flocking to see Ukraine as their preferred model of nation-building!

[Aug 07, 2015]What Lindsey Graham Fails to Understand About a War Against Iran

Earlier this week, Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican from South Carolina, used a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to stage a theatrical display of his disdain for the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran.

The most telling part of his time in the spotlight came when he pressed Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to declare who would win if the United States and Iran fought a war:

Here's a transcript of the relevant part:

Graham: Could we win a war with Iran? Who wins the war between us and Iran? Who wins? Do you have any doubt who wins?

Carter: No. The United States.

Graham: We. Win.

Little more than a decade ago, when Senator Graham urged the invasion of Iraq, he may well have asked a general, "Could we win a war against Saddam Hussein? Who wins?" The answer would've been the same: "The United States." And the U.S. did rout Hussein's army. It drove the dictator into a hole, and he was executed by the government that the United States installed. And yet, the fact that the Iraqi government of 2002 lost the Iraq War didn't turn out to mean that the U.S. won it. It incurred trillions in costs; thousands of dead Americans; thousands more with missing limbs and post-traumatic stress disorder and years of deployments away from spouses and children; and in the end, a broken Iraq with large swaths of its territory controlled by ISIS, a force the Iraqis cannot seem to defeat. That's what happened last time a Lindsey Graham-backed war was waged.

Recommended: What ISIS Really Wants

But one needn't be an opponent of the Iraq war to glean its basic lessons.

Hawkish pols have a tendency to harken back to the late 1930s exclusively, but one need only look to the eve of World War I (to the Czar in Russia and the German Kaiser, say) to see that two countries can and do fight wars that both end up losing.

A war against the U.S. would likely be a disaster for Iran. And rigorous attempts to game out such a conflict suggest that it could be very bad for the U.S. as well.

My colleague Peter Beinart has written about this:

Robert Gates, who led the CIA under George H.W. Bush before becoming George W. Bush and Barack Obama's defense secretary, has said bombing Iran could prove a "catastrophe," and that Iran's "capacity to wage a series of terror attacks across the Middle East aimed at us and our friends, and dramatically worsen the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere is hard to overestimate."

Meir Dagan, who led Israel's external spy service, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has warned that an attack on Iran "would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program." In the aftermath of a military strike, he added, "The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible."

Says Jeffrey Goldberg, another colleague, "War against Iran over its nuclear program would not guarantee that Iran is kept forever away from a bomb. It would pretty much guarantee that Iran unleashes its terrorist armies against American targets."

In 2004, my colleague James Fallows observed an Iran war game led by Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who spent more than two decades conducting war games at the National War College and other military institutions––and whose prescience about aspects of the Iraq War, derived from simulations, came far closer to what happened than anything Senator Graham predicted.

Recommended: The Case for Reparations

Said Fallows:

The most important hidden problem, exposed in the war-game discussions, was that a full assault would require such drawn-out preparations that the Iranian government would know months in advance what was coming. Its leaders would have every incentive to strike pre-emptively in their own defense. Unlike Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a threatened Iran would have many ways to harm America and its interests.

Apart from cross-border disruptions in Iraq, it might form an outright alliance with al-Qaeda to support major new attacks within the United States. It could work with other oil producers to punish America economically. It could, as Hammes warned, apply the logic of "asymmetric," or "fourth-generation," warfare, in which a superficially weak adversary avoids a direct challenge to U.S. military power and instead strikes the most vulnerable points in American civilian society, as al-Qaeda did on 9/11. If it thought that the U.S. goal was to install a wholly new regime rather than to change the current regime's behavior, it would have no incentive for restraint.

What about a pre-emptive strike of our own, like the Osirak raid? The problem is that Iran's nuclear program is now much more advanced than Iraq's was at the time of the raid. Already the U.S. government has no way of knowing exactly how many sites Iran has, or how many it would be able to destroy, or how much time it would buy in doing so. Worse, it would have no way of predicting the long-term strategic impact of such a strike. A strike might delay by three years Iran's attainment of its goal-but at the cost of further embittering the regime and its people. Iran's intentions when it did get the bomb would be all the more hostile.

Here the United States faces what the military refers to as a "branches and sequels" decision-that is, an assessment of best and second-best outcomes. It would prefer that Iran never obtain nuclear weapons. But if Iran does, America would like Iran to see itself more or less as India does-as a regional power whose nuclear status symbolizes its strength relative to regional rivals, but whose very attainment of this position makes it more committed to defending the status quo. The United States would prefer, of course, that Iran not reach a new level of power with a vendetta against America. One of our panelists thought that a strike would help the United States, simply by buying time. The rest disagreed.

Iran would rebuild after a strike, and from that point on it would be much more reluctant to be talked or bargained out of pursuing its goals-and it would have far more reason, once armed, to use nuclear weapons to America's detriment.

Lindsey Graham's notion that the question of war between America and Iran is coherently reducible to "we win" or "they win" is facile, dangerous, and especially galling from a man who ought to have learned better from the last war he urged. Even the most severe Iranian losses would not necessarily mean that "we win."

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/what-lindsey-graham-elides-about-a-war-against-iran/400148/?UTM_SOURCE=yahoo

Read more from The Atlantic

An Introverted Writer's Lament

My Outrage Is Better Than Your Outrage

Si

One thing these war mongers do not realize is; by America getting involved in these small regional fights all around the world is making us weaker not stronger. An old bear who fights multiple fights with small bears, receives multiple scars and finally is overtaken by competing bears. Russia and China are just waiting on side lines for this opportunity. Let's not foreign entities, like AIPAC get us involved in these local wars. America's interest should be set at higher and moral goals.

Ronald Mayle

For one. If we were not war mongers we would be speaking German or French right now. We would still be kissing the rear end of a queen. Russian banks are failing and China's economy is tied into ours. We fight that is who we are

Elizabeth A

Many Americans were speaking German before the world wars. It's time to quit the Chamberlain, Pearl Harbor, Holocaust, deranged John Wayne Brain Cold Warrior nonsense! Germany could not handle an invasion across the English Channel, 20 miles and not the 3,500 across the Atlantic Ocean. Germany was roughly the size of Ohio. Japan was roughly the size of California. Neither had the population or production or ability to invade, beat or defeat us over here or over there. So, save it because we are no longer scared! Are the commies gonna still get us too?

thomas

Si, you are absolutely correct. We are squandering our resources all around the globe fighting bush wars on behalf of others while the two nations that are actual existential threats to the US build their military assets for the confrontation both have openly acknowledged that they foresee coming down the road. Both Great Britain and Rome in their empire days fell for this trap of over extension and military exhaustion.

TruTH

If victory is defined as who can kill more opposing soldiers, then the US has won all the wars its been part of since WWII.
However, if we look at the objective of any war being completed then we've lost all the wars since WWII (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq).
So to answer Lindsey Graham - we will win by killing more opposing soldiers but lose because our objectives would not be completed.

Brad

My political beliefs, ideas, and my opinion on this deal put aside... that was just absolutely ridiculous. To talk about War, middle east politics and lives and future of millions of people as if we are talking about a UFC fight ( who would win? IDK, who won the Iraq war? what about the Afghanistan war? or Vietnam? or Korean war? can we honestly say that we "won" those wars? what did we win exactly?) that is just absolutely infuriating!! I tell you who would win a war with Iran, NOBODY WINS ANYTHING! WE ALL LOSE!

Sam Spade

The Iranians do not understand the nature of Satan's brothel. It is all about the money honey! Senator Lindsey Graham, like most American politicians, sides with those who bribe him. Sweet nothings whispered in the ear are not enough! You got to shell out some of them shekels to get some of that orgasmic bliss. The Iranians should get smart and start showering our political prostitutes with gold and silver. If they shell out love gifts, they will surely get some of that passionate love and affection (multiple ovations and ejaculations) which are now exclusively reserved for those handsome circumcised dashing gentlemen at AIPAC/Zionist/Israel.

Rudy t. Miller

Bernie Sanders: "While much more work remains to be done this framework is an important step forward. It is imperative that Iran not get a nuclear weapon. It also is imperative that we do everything we can to reach a diplomatic solution and avoid never-ending war in the Middle East. I look forward to examining the details of this agreement and making sure that it is effective ‎and strong."

Sanders vehemently OPPOSED the war in Iraq, one of the few in Congress who did. NO MORE CLINTONS OR BUSHES IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
Bernie Sanders for President, 2016!

[Jul 31, 2015] Moscow Must Burn Ukraines Christian Taliban Pledges Anti-Russian Crusade

07/30/2015 | Zero Hedge

"Like the majority of Ukrainian people, I think (the new leadership) is bad ... They steal a lot. When Yanukovich was stealing, that was bad. But these people are clearing up when the country is at war, so they are guilty on two counts. This is marauding."

Those are the words of Dmytro Korchynsky, the commander of "Saint Mary", a volunteer battalion that, like Ukraine's official forces, is fighting to subdue the Russian- backed separatists who control the eastern part of the country.

Korchynsky - who spoke to Reuters - shares his generalized disaffection for the Poroshenko government with other Ukrainians who feel that little has changed since the ouster of Viktor Yanukovich.

"The (Maidan) revolution was interrupted by the aggression (in the east) and the patriots left Maidan and went to the east to protect Ukraine. Only 10 percent of people in positions of power are new; the rest are all the same, pursuing the same schemes they always did", says Serhiy Melnychuk, an MP and volunteer battalion founder who also sat down with Reuters.

Over the course of the last year, Ukraine has become the battleground for a proxy war between Russia and the West. It's one of several pieces currently in play on the geopolitical chessboard, and its citizens, like those of Yemen and Syria (fellow pawn nations), have been forced to endure a humanitarian crisis while more "consequential" countries sort out how the spoils will be divided and how borders will be redrawn.

Some Ukrainian nationalists however, have chosen to take matters into their own hands, taking up arms against the separatists and likening themselves to a "Christian Taliban" bent on ensuring that "Moscow burns."

Here's more from a Reuters special report on Ukraine's "maverick battalions":

From a basement billiard club in central Kiev, Dmytro Korchynsky commands a volunteer battalion helping Ukraine's government fight rebels in the east.

A burly man with a long, Cossack-style moustache, Korchynsky has several hundred armed men at his disposal. The exact number, he said, is "classified."

In the eyes of many Ukrainians, he and other volunteer fighters are heroes for helping the weak regular army resist pro-Russian separatists. In the view of the government, however, some of the volunteers have become a problem, even a law unto themselves.

Dressed in a colorful peasant-style shirt, Korchynsky told Reuters that he follows orders from the Interior Ministry, and that his battalion would stop fighting if commanded to do so. Yet he added: "We would proceed with our own methods of action independently from state structures."

Korchynsky, a former leader of an ultra-nationalist party and a devout Orthodox Christian, wants to create a Christian "Taliban" to reclaim eastern Ukraine as well as Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. He isn't going to give up his quest lightly.

"I would like Ukraine to lead the crusades," said Korchynsky, whose battalion's name is Saint Mary. "Our mission is not only to kick out the occupiers, but also revenge. Moscow must burn."

Most of Ukraine's almost 40 volunteer battalions grew out of squads of protesters who battled the Berkut riot police during the protests on Kiev's Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti, which began in November 2013.


After the protests toppled President Viktor Yanukovich, pro-Russian separatists rose up in the east of Ukraine in April, 2014, demanding independence from the new government in Kiev, which they called a "fascist regime." In response, several leaders of the Maidan protests raced east with fellow protesters to try to stop the rebel advance.

Numerous brigades and battalions formed haphazardly, with most leaders accepting anyone willing to fight. Serhiy Melnychuk, who founded the Aidar battalion in eastern Ukraine and is now a member of parliament, said he signed up people between the ages of 18 and 62 and "from the homeless to pensioners."

Irregular though theses forces were, some acquired weapons from the Defense Ministry, officials and battalion leaders said. Others received money and equipment from wealthy oligarchs. They became powerful forces in the struggle against pro-Russian separatists.

In his billiard club headquarters, commander Korchynsky of the Saint Mary battalion made his disdain for the government plain. "Like the majority of

Ukrainian people, I think (the new leadership) is bad ... They steal a lot. When Yanukovich was stealing, that was bad. But these people are clearing up when the country is at war, so they are guilty on two counts. This is marauding."

He said the revolution that began with the Maidan had been interrupted, but would one day be completed. He did not say when.

If so, he will have to confront Poroshenko. On July 16, the president, decried the problems posed by unspecified "internal enemies" of the country. He told parliament: "I will not allow anarchy in Ukraine."

So in the end, we suppose the question is whether US weapons shipments to Kiev will be handed out to Ukraine's "Christian Taliban" and whether they, like their namesake, will one day turn those weapons back on the US once the Russians have been expelled.

Scratch that. The real question is this: what does George Soros think?

[Jul 28, 2015] A Foreig n Enemy is a Tyrant's Best Friend by Dan Sanchez

Antiwar.com

Cold wars freeze despotism in place, and thaws in foreign relations melt it away

by Dan Sanchez, July 28, 2015

Print This | Share This

Iran Great Satan

The recent Iran nuclear deal represents a thaw in the American cold war against that country. It is a welcome sequel to the Obama administration's partial normalization with Cuba announced late last year.

Hardliners denounce these policies as "going soft" on theocracy and communism. Yet, it is such critics' own hardline, hawkish policies that have done the most to ossify and strengthen such regimes.

That is because war, including cold war, is the health of the state. Antagonistic imperial policies - economic warfare, saber-rattling, clandestine interventions, and full-blown attacks - make the citizens of targeted "rogue states" feel under siege.

This activates what Randolph Bourne called their "herd mind," inducing them to rally around their governments in a militaristic stampede so as to create the national unity of purpose deemed necessary to defend the homeland against the foreign menace. When you lay siege to an entire country, don't be surprised when it starts to look and act like a barracks.

Rogue state governments eagerly amplify and exploit this siege effect through propaganda, taking on the mantle of foremost defender of the nation against the "Yankee Imperialist" or "Great Satan." Amid the atmosphere of crisis, public resistance against domestic oppression by the now indispensable "guardian class" goes by the board. "Quit your complaining. Don't you know there's a cold war on? Don't you know we're under siege?"

Moreover, cold wars make it easy for rogue state governments to shift the blame for domestic troubles away from their own misrule, and onto the foreign bogeyman/scapegoat ("bogeygoat?") instead. This is especially easy for being to some extent correct, especially with regard to economic blockades and other crippling sanctions, like those Washington has imposed on Cuba, Iran, etc.

Imperial governments like to pretend that affairs are quite the reverse, adopting the essentially terrorist rationale that waging war against the civilian populace of a rogue state will pressure them to blame and turn against their governments. In reality, it only tends to bolster public support for the regime.

The imperial "bogeygoat" is an essential prop for the power of petty tyrants, just as rogue state bogeymen are essential props for the power of grand tyrants like our own. Thus, it should be no surprise that the staunchest opponents to the Iran nuclear deal include both American and Iranian hardliners. Just as there is a "symbiosis of savagery" between imperial hawks and anti-imperial terrorists (as I explain here), there is a similar symbiotic relationship between imperial and rogue state hardliners.

The last thing hardliners want is the loss of their cherished bogeygoat. Once an emergency foreign threat recedes, and the fog of war hysteria lifts, people are then more capable of clearly seeing their "guardians" as the domestic threat that they are, and more likely to feel that they can afford to address that threat without exposing themselves to foreign danger. This tends to impel governments to become less oppressive, and may even lead to their loss of power.

Thus after Nixon normalized with communist China and belatedly ended the war on communist Vietnam, both of those countries greatly liberalized and became more prosperous. Even Soviet reforms and the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet Union only arose following American detente.

Simultaneously, as the American cold wars against communist Cuba and communist North Korea continued without stint for decades, providing the Castros and Kims the ultimate bogeygoat to feature in their propaganda, the impoverishing authoritarian grip of those regimes on their besieged people only strengthened.

Similarly, ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the puppet dictator that the CIA had installed over Iran in a 1953 coup, the Ayatollahs have been able to exploit ongoing hostility from the American "Great Satan" to retain and consolidate their repressive theocratic power.

All this is an object lesson for US relations with Putin's Russia, Chavista Venezuela, and beyond. Disastrously, it is being unheeded.

Even while thawing relations with Iran, the Obama administration has triggered a new cold war with Russia over Ukraine. This has only made Russian President Vladimir Putin more domestically popular than ever.

And even while normalizing relations with Cuba, Obama recently declared Venezuela a national security threat, imposing new sanctions. As journalist Alexandra Ulmer argued, these sanctions "may be godsend for struggling Venezuelan leader," President Nicolas Maduro. As Ulmer wrote in Reuters:

"Suddenly, the unpopular leader has an excuse to crank up the revolutionary rhetoric and try to fire up supporters, copying a tactic used skillfully for more than a decade by his mentor and predecessor, the late socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez.

A new fight with the enemy to the north may also help unite disparate ruling Socialist Party factions and distract Venezuelans from relentless and depressing talk about their day-to-day economic problems."

[Jul 27, 2015] For Greece, Oligarchs Are an Obstacle to Recovery

Notable quotes:
"... ordering an employee to withdraw the money in bags of cash. ..."
Dec 05, 2012 | The New York Times

ATHENS - A dynamic entrepreneur, Lavrentis Lavrentiadis seemed to represent a promising new era for Greece. He dazzled the country's traditionally insular business world by spinning together a multibillion-dollar empire just a few years after inheriting a small family firm at 18. Seeking acceptance in elite circles, he gave lavishly to charities and cultivated ties to the leading political parties.
But as Greece's economy soured in recent years, his fortunes sagged and he began embezzling money from a bank he controlled, prosecutors say. With charges looming, it looked as if his rapid rise would be followed by an equally precipitous fall. Thanks to a law passed quietly by the Greek Parliament, however, he avoided prosecution, at least for a time, simply by paying the money back.

Now 40, Mr. Lavrentiadis is back in the spotlight as one of the names on the so-called Lagarde list of more than 2,000 Greeks said to have accounts in a Geneva branch of the bank HSBC and who are suspected of tax evasion. Given to Greek officials two years ago by Christine Lagarde, then the French finance minister and now head of the International Monetary Fund, the list was expected to cast a damning light on the shady practices of the rich.

Lavrentis Lavrentiadis embezzled money from a bank he controlled, prosecutors say

Instead, it was swept under the rug, and now two former finance ministers and Greece's top tax officials are under investigation for having failed to act.
Greece's economic troubles are often attributed to a public sector packed full of redundant workers, a lavish pension system and uncompetitive industries hampered by overpaid workers with lifetime employment guarantees. Often overlooked, however, is the role played by a handful of wealthy families, politicians and the news media - often owned by the magnates - that make up the Greek power structure.

In a country crushed by years of austerity and 25 percent unemployment, average Greeks are growing increasingly resentful of an oligarchy that, critics say, presides over an opaque, closed economy that is at the root of many of the country's problems and operates with virtual impunity. Several dozen powerful families control critical sectors, including banking, shipping and construction, and can usually count on the political class to look out for their interests, sometimes by passing legislation tailored to their specific needs.

The result, analysts say, is a lack of competition that undermines the economy by allowing the magnates to run cartels and enrich themselves through crony capitalism. "That makes it rational for them to form a close, incestuous relationship with politicians and the media, which is then highly vulnerable to corruption," said Kevin Featherstone, a professor of European Politics at the London School of Economics.

This week the anticorruption watchdog Transparency International ranked Greece as the most corrupt nation in Europe, behind former Eastern Bloc states like Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia. Under the pressure of the financial crisis, Greece is being pressed by Germany and its international lenders to make fundamental changes to its economic system in exchange for the money it needs to avoid bankruptcy.

But it remains an open question whether Greece's leaders will be able to engineer such a transformation. In the past year, despite numerous promises to increase transparency, the country actually dropped 14 places from the previous corruption survey.

Mr. Lavrentiadis is still facing a host of accusations stemming from hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made by his Proton bank to dormant companies - sometimes, investigators say, ordering an employee to withdraw the money in bags of cash. But with Greece scrambling to complete a critical bank recapitalization and restructuring, his case is emblematic of a larger battle between Greece's famously weak institutions and fledgling regulatory structures against these entrenched interests.

Many say that the system has to change in order for Greece to emerge from the crisis. "Keeping the status quo will simply prolong the disaster in Greece," Mr. Featherstone said. While the case of Mr. Lavrentiadis suggests that the status quo is at least under scrutiny, he added, "It's not under sufficient attack."

In a nearly two-hour interview, Mr. Lavrentiadis denied accusations of wrongdoing and said that he held "a few accounts" at HSBC in Geneva that totaled only about $65,000, all of it legitimate, taxed income. He also sidestepped questions about his political ties and declined to comment on any details of the continuing investigation into Proton Bank.
Sitting in the office of his criminal lawyer last month, relaxed, smiling and dressed in a crisp blue suit and red-and-blue tie, Mr. Lavrentiadis said he found it puzzling that he had been singled out in reports about the Lagarde list when other powerful figures appeared to evade scrutiny.

"My question is, 'Why me?' " he said. "I'm the scapegoat for everything."

In the interview, Mr. Lavrentiadis depicted himself as an outsider and upstart, an entrepreneur in a small country dominated by old families who frown on newcomers. "I am not from a third-generation aristocratic family," he said repeatedly.

Indeed, by some lights, Mr. Lavrentiadis fell in part because he rose too quickly and then failed to secure enough of the right friends to protect him, a perception he did not dispute.

[Jul 24, 2015] Ron Paul Iran Agreement Boosts Peace, Defeats Neocons

"...I was so impressed when travel personality Rick Steves traveled to Iran in 2009 to show that the US media and government demonization of Iranians was a lie, and that travel and human contact can help defeat the warmongers because it humanizes those who are supposed to be dehumanized."
Jul 20, 2015 | ronpaul.com

The agreement has reduced the chance of a US attack on Iran, which is a great development. But the interventionists will not give up so easily. Already they are organizing media and lobbying efforts to defeat the agreement in Congress. Will they have enough votes to over-ride a presidential veto of their rejection of the deal? It is unlikely, but at this point if the neocons can force the US out of the deal it may not make much difference. Which of our allies, who are now facing the prospect of mutually-beneficial trade with Iran, will be enthusiastic about going back to the days of a trade embargo? Which will support an attack on an Iran that has proven to be an important trading partner and has also proven reasonable in allowing intrusive inspections of its nuclear energy program?

However, what is most important about this agreement is not that US government officials have conducted talks with Iranian government officials. It is that the elimination of sanctions, which are an act of war, will open up opportunities for trade with Iran. Government-to-government relations are one thing, but real diplomacy is people-to-people: business ventures, tourism, and student exchanges.

I was so impressed when travel personality Rick Steves traveled to Iran in 2009 to show that the US media and government demonization of Iranians was a lie, and that travel and human contact can help defeat the warmongers because it humanizes those who are supposed to be dehumanized.

As I write in my new book, Swords into Plowshares:

Our unwise policy with Iran is a perfect example of what the interventionists have given us-60 years of needless conflict and fear for no justifiable reason. This obsession with Iran is bewildering. If the people knew the truth, they would strongly favor a different way to interact with Iran.

Let's not forget that the Iran crisis started not 31 years ago when the Iran Sanctions Act was signed into law, not 35 years ago when Iranians overthrew the US-installed Shah, but rather 52 years ago when the US CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian leader Mossadegh and put a brutal dictator into power. Our relations with the Iranians are marked by nearly six decades of blowback.

When the Cold War was winding down and the military-industrial complex needed a new enemy to justify enormous military spending, it was decided that Iran should be the latest "threat" to the US. That's when sanctions really picked up steam. But as we know from our own CIA National Intelligence Estimate of 2007, the stories about Iran building a nuclear weapon were all lies. Though those lies continue to be repeated to this day.

It is unfortunate that Iran was forced to give up some of its sovereignty to allow restrictions on a nuclear energy program that was never found to be in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But if the net result is the end of sanctions and at least a temporary reprieve from the constant neocon demands for attack, there is much to cheer in the agreement. Peace and prosperity arise from friendly relations and trade – and especially when governments get out of the way.

This column was published by the Ron Paul Institute.

[Jul 24, 2015]Ukrainian politician Tatiana Montyan interview: All sides of the conflict suck (article + video)

"...Attitude of the population to the government is clear: the Prime Minister's approval rating isn't just the size of a molehill - a molehill compared to his rating is Mount Everest. The "Narodny Front" party is going down in flames, and they are stealing as much as they can while they still can. "
.
"...So, for the sake of American ambitions, EU bit itself in the penis."
.
"...Ever since last November the wartime economics has taken hold of Ukraine. If a country goes on wartime economy even for a couple months, it takes hold – and it's like a hard drug addiction, an addict can only be saved by chaining him to a lamppost and not giving him any drugs. The first time I went to East Ukraine, our bus, which was packed with poor locals that took a day to make the trip that used to take mere hours, was stopped and extensively searched by both sides, 6 or 7 times. But through the windows we could see columns of semi-trucks going through both UAF and NAF checkpoints without any delays."
.
"...< But the fun thing is that> all the nationalists were screaming "Glory to Ukraine", "Ukraine for Ukrainians", and now we have Georgians, <Americans and Latvians> in top government positions. They even no longer have a law that a government official has to speak Ukrainian in official capacity. "
.
"...<It takes about $10,000 per semi truck to get through the "blockade" > - it depends on the price of the goods in the truck . For example, I heard that to be allowed to control a checkpoint you have to pay the military bosses a million dollars a month. So if you pay a million dollars just to stand at the checkpoint, you can imagine how much people are making. As for who physically controls those checkpoints - it's not clear. When I was getting out of the DPR, with a smuggler, we were driving through a rural checkpoint and I'm not even sure which side it was on, but there was a guy who lives in Kiev in my neighborhood, he even recognized me and let me through without paying. So I have no idea who manages those things - I told you, in the morning it could be one set of guys, and in the evening somebody can come up, kill them and take over the checkpoint. I don't exclude the possibility that at some checkpoints it can even happen more than once per day. You know how they say - "In the bad part of Kiev, an iPhone can change hands several times a day, and outlive a quite few owners". That's how it is. "
.
"...And the people are being conscripted, sixth wave of it already - people being caught literally on the city buses, students are caught in universities... People are running away - I was asked what is the journalist Kotsaba is in jail for - he's there for protesting illegal forced conscription, because he was protesting against the government grabbing all those people, stealing the food they are supposed to get, stealing the ammo and weapons they are supposed to have and selling them to the DPR and LPR... And the people obviously have realized all this by now, and have no desire to die in some encirclement to fill the oligarch's wallets. "

... ... ...

Interviewer:

Almost a year and a half after the coup in Kiev, a lot of details have already come to light, so what do you think were the aims of the people who engineered it and people who carried it out? Go as high up the ladder as you can.

Montyan:

< Major oligarch> Firtash already said everything, completely cynically and honestly, under oath in a court in Vienna:

Of course, there was a group of oligarchs that wanted the EuroAssociation to be signed for their commercial interests. But the greedy and stupid Europeans gave completely unacceptable economic conditions - and Putin offered Yanukovich a ton of money for free, so Yanik changed his mind. The oligarchs decided "we need to do something about this", and it started...

Maybe they didn't to want to destroy the country quite so much, but then Americans joined in with Nuland's cookies, McCain and the whole circus - as always, they thought fighting a proxy war with Russia to the last Ukrainian is a splendid idea!

Putin was also completely happy to fight Americans - and also to show the entire world that Ukrainians are completely unable of running a country, that Ukraine is a totally "failed state". And of course, compared to our idiot usurpers, even Putin and his bunch of crooks can be made to look like extremely competent managers. Not to mention that our current president can be controlled through his factory in Lipetsk, Russia.

So everybody's happy - Putin even recognized Poroshenko as the legitimate president - even though he didn't have to, <Poroshneko is unconstitutional>, but he did because it's beneficial to him. Not to mention Crimea, which was given up for two and half billion < cash>, as we now know.

So now Crimea is being dismantled**, similar to what Americans did to Latvia - they turned that country into a border checkpoint, and Putin will turn Crimea into a military base.

I think that all these pointless Ukrainian checkpoints at the entrance are intentional, because they block traffic, they block tourists, and core of Crimean economy was random tourists - because the people who come there on organized tours don't spend money in local economy and they don't buy local food, they have everything included in the resorts. So the plan is very simple, especially since the Crimean channel bringing water for agriculture has been blocked by our government. The Tatars will probably leave to Turkey, because all the businesses, restaurants and all that stuff aren't going to be viable anymore. The retired will slowly die out naturally. So what will be left are shipbuilding facilities, the big resorts which now look cute and have really been restored - unlike Ukraine that has never invested local infrastructure - so it will be much like what America did with the Baltics, where for example in Latvia only the center of Riga is still buzzing, the rest is completely dead, and the schoolchildren leave abroad as entire classes the moment they graduate.

So everybody's happy, except Ukrainians.

Well, and most Europeans are starting to ask questions - "Why do we need this?". Officially, they lost a hundred billion due to sanctions, really, much more, and Russians are laughing at them - "Okay, Spaniards, we make our own ham now, where you going to sell yours?". And of course, the worse the situation Ukraine gets, the sooner crowds of our criminals will start running across the border to EU, and what are they gonna do with em? So, for the sake of American ambitions, EU bit itself in the penis. And I think they deserve everything their greed has caused - if they gave us even somewhat acceptable deal, Yanik might have taken it.

So I don't think what happened has been really planned by anybody. The process has gone completely out of control from the very beginning - because you can't start a fire in your common home! You never know what's going to catch fire first! It's dumb to start chopping down a tree that you are all sitting on! But turns out we had plenty of degenerates who thought that they won't get hurt when the country goes down. So oligarchs have devalued their own factories, and their own country.

And the main beneficiary is China! Because America forced Russia into China's arms. And I think China will eventually engulf and assimilate Russia now.

By the way, last April, "Xinhua" - the official press agency of the Republic of China, has voiced the opinion of the Chinese Communist Party on the issue. It says, roughly : "America and Europe have destroyed the Ukrainian state and plunged the country into civil war. Of course, they will not help Ukrainians fix the mess caused by their meddling, because they are bankrupt both financially and morally. Their "democracy" is only empty talk, and in practice all the "progressive" attempts to export it lead to untold human suffering." The Chinese already said this over a year ago.

= On Russian government

<interesting part so moved to top; others are more or less in order>
Interviewer: The Russian government it doesn't seem to be very homogeneous, not as much as people think. Do you see, in Russian government, some forces that are benevolent?

Montyan:
I know some people who are reasonable, but I won't say their names, because they're waiting until Putin would naturally die or get pushed away from power. They think it's easier to let Putin and his gang steal for ten more years than to destroy the country like we did in the Maidan. And they're completely right.


=About the change of heart in Ukrainian society:


The attitude in society is changing, even the most brainwashed now understand that there is something wrong with this war. Fewer and fewer people are willing to go volunteer - to die and get eaten by dogs in some encirclement. Fewer and fewer people donate money and food to private organizations supplying the Army. And of course, things like the Military Prosecutor General talking live on air above the police battalions raping and killing people in the warzone does not encourage people to go join <the good fight>. Basically, people that didn't understand it with their brains finally started understanding it through their empty wallets and empty fridges.

… ... ...

Ever since last November the wartime economics has taken hold of Ukraine. If a country goes on wartime economy even for a couple months, it takes hold – and it's like a hard drug addiction, an addict can only be saved by chaining him to a lamppost and not giving him any drugs. The first time I went to East Ukraine, our bus, which was packed with poor locals that took a day to make the trip that used to take mere hours, was stopped and extensively searched by both sides, 6 or 7 times. But through the windows we could see columns of semi-trucks going through both UAF and NAF checkpoints without any delays.

So that was complete "proof in the pudding" for me that this war is a sham. This is "wartime economy" will continue until both sides run out of people who still believe that they are fighting for a cause, and not for their bosses wallets.

Attitude of the population to the government is clear: the Prime Minister's approval rating isn't just the size of a molehill - a molehill compared to his rating is Mount Everest. The "Narodny Front" party is going down in flames, and they are stealing as much as they can while they still can.

Journalist Boyko recently described very nicely how the Police Minister Avakov and Co. set fire to that oil depot by Kiev in order to take over the poor gas station chain - and by the way, the idiot Head of State Security Nalivaichenko has accused the Prosecutor General even though the Prosecutor General's men were actually trying to save that chain.

Not because of any respect for the law, of course, but because of their own financial interests, but anyway. So the head of State Security has spoken against the Prosecutor General, made it clear to everybody that he is completely retarded, so they voted in the Parliament to remove him. Moreover, some people even managed to get something for voting – for example, <head of Samopomosh' fraction> Sadovoi, who supposedly has bargained for a permission to put his men as the head of the local customs service and the Prosecutor's office. So in general, that's how it is.

... ... ...

= On Ukrainian politics

Interviewer:
So the current Ukrainian regime has two large groups centered around the Prime Minister and the president…

Montyan:
They aren't really "centered" - those crooks don't have friends, they have interests. Groups are constantly rearranged based on who managed to screw over whom, and everybody's planning to screw over each other all the time. For example, Firtash decided to blab his mouth in an Austrian court, and the President decided that's enough to kick Firtash's people out of government - because they had an agreement not to talk about the agreement they had. <Nalivaichenko was one of these men. Also he was fired for snitching to Americans about corruption in the President's faction>. The next rearrangement is going to happen after the elections...

= On Jewish domination of Ukrainian government, media and business

Interviewer:
In the Ukraine currently, the government, business, mass media - it's all dominated by Jewish people, and not the nicest representatives of that ethnicity. And they are less than 1% of the total population. What do you think of this disproportional representation?

Montyan:

I have nothing against Jews, nothing at all. I don't think I'm dumber than them. It's an old quote, attributed to Churchill - "Why aren't Englishmen anti-Semitic? They do not consider themselves to be dumber than the Jews".

Also, the Jews themselves don't think Poroshenko and all those other guys are Jews - they consider them a-holes, Yid traitors, etc. Read what our prominent Jewish people are writing.

Yes, of course, a nation that for many years - millennia, even, needed to develop their brains and their solidarity, of course that's an advantage. But if anybody thinks that Jews are any different from other ethnicity - they are much the same. Look at Israel - they have much the same disagreements that we have over here. So, in Ukraine, they have better education,have their social capital, so that's what happens - < they get to the top>. This isn't because somebody's naturally superior or inferior, it is not good or bad, that's just how it is.

< But the fun thing is that> all the nationalists were screaming "Glory to Ukraine", "Ukraine for Ukrainians", and now we have Georgians, <Americans and Latvians> in top government positions. They even no longer have a law that a government official has to speak Ukrainian in official capacity.

= On the reasons for Donbass rebellion, the current situation, and the huge difference between DPR/LPR

I think the situation in Donbass was initially fueled by the local oligarchs to blackmail the Kiev government, saying –"If you pressure us, we will split". And Russia immediately thought - "How awesome and very convenient!"

By now, Plotnickiy is controlled from Russia, and I think Zaharchenko as well. DPR and LPR are similar in that respect – although they are completely different types of government, there are now checkpoints and customs between them, so they are two very different republics that are not administratively connected. You know, Donetsk always considered Lugansk their inferior younger brothers.

The situation in the DPR is much more organized - back in April 4th, that was the point where all the non-organized armed bands had to either disband or integrate into the DPR Army. After that all the bands were forcibly disarmed, those caught on rapes, robberies, drug dealing etc. were sent to remove minefields where most of them died, or shot on the spot. In the LPR, the situation is much different - the territories controlled by various bands are still present. For example, Mozgovoi has been killed, but his group still controls territory, there are other groups like Dremov, <Kozityn's men>, etc. Plotnickiy is mostly sitting in Lugansk, being accused of stealing humanitarian aid. And that's how LPR exists.

Russia helps both republics to survive, of course, <with aid and currency>. So the situation is frozen for now. People are making a ton of money on various checkpoints, there is a whole smuggling business all around there, so you can get into the DPR and LPR without any ID because there are "stalkers" who know how to get through the minefields, know how to get around checkpoints. The large checkpoints make money on large convoys, and there are tons of small checkpoints on country roads that are controlled by anybody who can. There are even horror stories of a car coming up to a rural checkpoint, "peasants" getting out, killing everyone and taking over the checkpoint, and taking bribes instead of those killed. So that's how they live. As I said, wartime economy will not stop by itself, just like a drug addict will not stop taking drugs, so it can only be stopped by USA, Russia or Europe, but they don't want to do it for now.

Interviewer:

Do you consider the national elites the organizers, the oligarchs?

Montyan:

How can you consider our oligarchs to be independent? Of course they are controlled from abroad, much like the DPR/LPR government controlled by Russia. It's a fight between Russia and US to the last Ukrainian.

Interviewer:

Why do you think Donetsk and Lugansk have not unified all the past year?

Montyan:

I say again - those are completely different entities ruled by a completely different people with completely different interests. I'd been to both - they are different countries, different continents even. The people are wrong to confuse them, there is nothing in common in any way. Both are controlled by Moscow, but the situation is different ... there is even a different mentality. In DPR - they got centralized, very quickly organized, exterminated or exiled those who could not be controlled, and in LPR all that is still going on.

Interviewer:

So how "People's" are the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk?

Montyan:

Somewhat more "People's" than here, that's actually true.

They got rid of some of the oligarchs - actually the only big one left is Ahmetov, and they also make him pay up. In the DPR , I was talking on the Oplot TV channel that they took from Ahmetov, I was given a ride by a their minister on a car they took from the oligarch Kluev, and they told me they took the Starobeshevo Power Plant from Yanukovich - as a result they pay half the price for electricity that we do!

And the funniest thing is that I'm being accused of riding in the car taken from an oligarch, by the same people who took over Yanukovich's house and Pshonka's properties in Kiev! Do these people think at all?

Interviewer:

Do the governments of the People's republics and the Kiev government work together?

Montyan:

Of course! They are just stealing whatever they can. By now, everybody talks about giant cargo shipments going between DPR and LPR and Kiev, while people are fighting each other the frontlines. Of course, this is impossible without the governments on both sides being complicit - I do not quite know who specifically is involved, I doubt we'll ever find out, but it's clear they work together because otherwise they wouldn't be making such huge shipments.

<It takes about $10,000 per semi truck to get through the "blockade" > - it depends on the price of the goods in the truck . For example, I heard that to be allowed to control a checkpoint you have to pay the military bosses a million dollars a month. So if you pay a million dollars just to stand at the checkpoint, you can imagine how much people are making. As for who physically controls those checkpoints - it's not clear. When I was getting out of the DPR, with a smuggler, we were driving through a rural checkpoint and I'm not even sure which side it was on, but there was a guy who lives in Kiev in my neighborhood, he even recognized me and let me through without paying. So I have no idea who manages those things - I told you, in the morning it could be one set of guys, and in the evening somebody can come up, kill them and take over the checkpoint. I don't exclude the possibility that at some checkpoints it can even happen more than once per day. You know how they say - "In the bad part of Kiev, an iPhone can change hands several times a day, and outlive a quite few owners". That's how it is.

= About Mozgovoi and his murder:

He was a non-typical commander. He was charismatic, played a local Che Guevara, really tried to pass justice in the area he controlled... He was confiscating drugs by the pound and burning them on the central square of Alchevsk. He personally came to resolve conflicts - almost down to family squabbles. He was playing Robin Hood, and people loved him. This is shown by the number of people who came to his funeral - the people now saying bad things about him, I don't think such a number of people would even bother coming to spit on their graves if they die.

But Mozgovoi was very inexperienced at running a city, and running any sort of government, really. The maximum he could do is deliver humanitarian aid, organized by him for the population. He had four free canteens running for the people. When I was there, he was arguing with the Russian customs because they weren't letting through food, and he was shouting - what will I feed my soldiers, my civilians, children in our kindergartens... He didn't much care for the elections or stuff like that - non-typical.

Anybody could have killed him - from local drug dealers for burning all the drugs, to anybody else, he did not fit in there and did not have powerful backers. There is only one road there - plant an EID, sit and wait for him to come. And that's that's how it happened. As far as Moscow's backing, he was due to go there, but did not make it in time.

= About future plans of the oligarchs and direction of the country:

I have no idea what the oligarchs think. I don't think they think far - the are just stealing what they can, while they can.

And the people are being conscripted, sixth wave of it already - people being caught literally on the city buses, students are caught in universities... People are running away - I was asked what is the journalist Kotsaba is in jail for - he's there for protesting illegal forced conscription, because he was protesting against the government grabbing all those people, stealing the food they are supposed to get, stealing the ammo and weapons they are supposed to have and selling them to the DPR and LPR... And the people obviously have realized all this by now, and have no desire to die in some encirclement to fill the oligarch's wallets.

So obviously conscription isn't going very well - people understood that they are being basically used as cattle for slaughter.

Interviewer: If Donbass completely leaves Ukraine, and after Crimea, could that trigger a process like in Yugoslavia, could Ukraine split into several fragments?

Montyan: Where will Donbass go? Russia clearly stated they don't want Donbass.

How will DPR, LPR survive independently? I have no idea. As unrecognized states? Kiev under the control of the nationalists, and DPR and LPR by themselves - they are not capable of surviving. They will slowly rot, the fabric of the state would keep on failing and degrading further, so without external interference, without some reformatting, this situation cannot be resolved. This situation cannot be solved from the inside - by people inside the cage. Only the people who set it up can stop it, and for now they have no desire to do so.

= On fixing the mess:

Fixing the country is not that hard, and wouldn't take that long, but for now, nobody wants it. I could fix it in a couple years, probably. The mechanisms are commonly known, they had been used successfully multiple times - as long as you have the desire to do it, it's not hard. But nobody wants to do it! The elite needs to be at least minimally interested in not just robbing the country for its resources, but thinking about the future. For now, the people who are getting to the top are those looters from the checkpoints - because, for now, that's the most profitable business. When it becomes less profitable, then things may change - that's basic economics. In Ukraine, we can see how capital takes over the people and the state, the judiciary, the executive... All the branches of government and all the the state-owned corporations are being taken over by oligarchs, . Now they're talking about actually handing over the Customs Service to a private corporation. Thus, state monopolies are being replaced by oligarch monopolies.

District governments are a sham, local governments are a sham - because every "state-owned" local government service is actually being controlled by specific people who get money.

When there's no open mechanisms showing where the money comes into the state and how it gets out, then the game turns into "King of the Hill" - whoever climbs to the top steals as much as he can before he gets kicked off, then he runs away to another country with the stolen money and laughs those he left behind.

= On Russian government (originally here, moved to top)


= On demonizing Putin:

Putin is just some guy. What's the difference who is the talking head at the top? He's just a <product of a system>. Here, Poroshenko is already the exact same thing as Yanukovich, exactly. There are cartoons - you take Yanukovich, curl his hair, you get Poroshenko!

It doesn't matter who "Putin" is, doesn't matter what the name is. They are determined by what the country is. Don't like Yanukovich? Look in the mirror.

The president is the same as the country, as the people. I ask them - you don't like Yanukovich? Is it him putting trash in your yard? Are the oligarchs making penis drawings all over your elevator? Which government official urinated by your door? It is done by the population, by you, and because you are like that - Yanukovich is like that. It's like that in every country.

If you don't find any compassion for journalists who are put in jail just for voicing their opinion, why do you ask for justice for yourself? If you are ready to throw homemade grenades at police, why do you think cops should not beat you up? That's so weird - <those people don't understand> that justice has to be for everybody, not just "justice for us and injustice for our enemies".

= On civilians suffering in Donbass and Russian army:

What do you mean I don't talk about civilians in warzone? I pity all civilians in the warzone, because they being shot at by all sides. They are stuck there, in this zone of chaos, they're being screwed over by everybody.

I do have to say people don't believe me, <and that's scary>.

When I came back from my first trip to the East, I told them Ukrainian Army nearly killed me at the Alchevsk cemetery, but people tell me "It's Mozgovoi". He was standing right next to me!

"Then it's Dremov" - he was on the phone telling us to run!

"Then it's Kozitsyn" - he was in a complete different direction, look at the maps! Still, nobody believes me.

In the end, after I showed pictures of all the gravestones damaged with shrapnel and maps of the area, some did... But people were really convinced <separatists are shelling themselves>.

But yes, both sides are shooting. Armies don't much care for civilians. In Lugansk, for example, UAF were standing at the Metallist and shelling the city with unguided rockets - I was where they landed, even visited local businessman Aleksandr Nigoves, found Grad pieces by his destroyed house, there's plenty of videos and all... Eventually UAF hit something - either in Russia, or right on the border, so Russian Army came in through Izvarino and crushed them, went through the positions <UAF set up in towns> Khryaschevatoe and Novosvetlovka, and wiped them off the face of the earth. Chased the UAF into an encirclement, and left 5 days later. In Novosvetlovka, 300 out of 600 houses are destroyed, around 600 locals perished.

And who are the good guys here? That's how it is. That's war. It doesn't have a good and a bad side - it's murder, horror and suffering.

Inteviewer:

Do you think something similar could happen in Kiev?

Montyan:

How can I know what's going to happen in this madhouse? What goes through the sick mind of some heavily armed idiots somewhere? Anything can happen.
In the near future, more people will come back from a from the warzone and join street gangs, especially when the standard of living goes down. Even now, they are shooting cops with AKs to rob a gas station for $40, what's going to happen next?


= About "de-Sovietization" law:

Yes, they have nothing better to do than rename everything. Let's destroy the factories and highways, because the damn communists built them.

Everything we see here, everything in Ukraine, was built by the Soviet Union. And a lot of it is on the edge of the physical collapse. 70 to 90% of infrastructure - various sewerage, heating, power lines - they're starting to fall down. Since "independence", they were patched up when they failed, but no investments in replacement or renewal. And when the communist-built houses start falling down - that's going to be real hell... But for now, the <dark Soviet legacy> still stands.


= About role of history in politics:

I'm completely amazed by the people who let the past affect their present and future. History is for historians, for professional historians! I would personally prohibit using history in propaganda - because history already happened, <it's over and done with>! The historical figures being put on the posters that marchers run with - those people are gone! They lived their lives, in their conditions, and bringing them into the present is completely retarded!

Live your own lives, here and now, and don't try to use historical figures in your propaganda - because the vast majority of those historical figures, if you met them face to face, would chop off your head as soon as you started spouting your drivel!


= About the nature of a "nation":

Interviewer:
Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations - is it one nation that's been divided, or no?

Montyan:

No. I don't think a nation exists as a separate entity. For me, an African from Papua New Guinea who believes in civil rights is closer than nationalist extremists beating people in Kiev. I refuse to think I'm part of the same nation as them, and they probably don't think I'm part of "their" nation either.

But that said, we can live in the same country, as long as it has laws and they do not have the right to attack people. They can have their views, if they don't have the capacity to make their sick fantasies a reality. As long as we have a decent civil and criminal law, and have the capability to punish those who violate it, that's all we need for people to coexist.

Take Jews - they are so different! Some of them have gay parades in Jerusalem, run around in latex, and others walk around in complete black garb and pray constantly. And they live together in the same country, don't kill each other, because they have decent civil law, all the questions had been solved, each millimeter of land has a clear established owner, and there's nothing to argue about. They can talk about their views on TV and newspapers but that's it.

= On Ukrainian sovereignty:

What kind of sovereignty are you even talking about? Ukraine's territory is broken into pieces controlled by various foreign powers. <The "revolution" only made it worse>: if you break apart a crappy shed, you will only be able to build several smaller and crappier sheds out of the fragments. So now they built Kiev shed, DPR and LPR sheds in place of what once was a decent country.

VIDEO (English voiceover)



< I recommend clicking the gear symbol on the bottom-right of the video and increasing playback speed to 1.5x, that will save you 30 minutes and is completely understandable).


Previous video with Montyan:


Notes:
*Take our recent darling Shilova, for example - she managed to get involved with both Yanukovich's corruption and Lyashko's radicals before becoming a "separatist", not to mention being a member of half a dozen political parties before. Of course, she could have an honest change of heart _this_time_... but that's what she must have said many times before.

** About Montyan's points on Crimea: Crimea saw over twice the amount of airport traffic this year compared with the last, so the economy is gaining traction. Yes, I bet the economy still suffers overall with the peninsula being in a complete blockade by Ukraine (not only people and goods but also water and often power), and only joined to Russia by a ferry. Still, "littlehirosima" is currently in Crimea and tells me life is good there for now. And once a bridge gets built, or nationalists get chased out of Kiev, it should get a lot better.

*** "Homemade firecracker grenades" - Ukraine has no laws against selling extremely powerful firecrackers. They are almost at hand grenade level, and can definitely kill or maim, especially with nails&bolts taped as fragments. Here's a video of such a "big firecracker" shredding a toilet (common pastime in East Europe, heh). The firecracker is actually far from the biggest one, but the video is just hilarious:


**** I cut out the part of the big video where Montyan talks about gay rights because, first of all, it has nothing to do with the Novorossiya war or Ukrainian politics, and second, because her genetics arguments are wrong, although she may be right about human rights aspect.

[Jul 23, 2015]First Thoughts About The Iran Deal

"...BUT, since when has American opinion against war ever mattered? 1848? 1898? 1916-17? 1938-1941? 2001 and subsequently? When our oligarchs want war, we end up with a black flag, or backdoor to war ... and always go blindly off to war. And, it is always the 'exceptional/indispensable' us against the evil them!"
.
"...Diplomats also came up with unusual procedure to "snap back" the sanctions against Iran if an eight-member panel determines that Tehran is violating the nuclear provisions. The members of the panel are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, the European Union and Iran itself. A majority vote is required, meaning that Russia, China and Iran could not collectively block action."
.
"...The Iran deal will allow oil to flow to Europe. It is a temporary measure to try and keep Russia out of business with the EU. The ultimate fear of the Atlanticists is collaboration between Russia and Germany."
Jul 14, 2015 | M of A

The deal itself is a major infringement on Iran's sovereignty extorted though a manufactured crisis about an Iranian nuclear weapons program that does not and did not ever exist. To see the hypocrisy of it just count the nukes:

... ... ...

The U.S. has a bad record of sticking to international deals it made. North Korea was promised two civil nuclear electricity plants to be build by the United States for stopping its nuclear activities. None was build and North Korea restarted its weapon program. Libya agreed to give up the tiny preliminary nuclear program it had and the U.S. destroyed the state.

Netanyahoo's puppets in the U.S. congress will do their best to blockade the current deal. Should they not be able to do so attempts will be made to press the next U.S. president into breaking the agreement.

Iran must now be very careful to not get trapped into more concessions or even a war.

Tom Murphy | Jul 14, 2015 7:14:13 AM | 1

But recall how ruthless the actions against Iran have been.
See video mentioning terrorist attacks against Iran: Iran Deal Reached on Peaceful Nuclear Program

okie farmer | Jul 14, 2015 9:59:25 AM | 5

I wonder how many nukes are aimed right at Iran

None. Why bother, everyone knows Iran has NO nukes. This is all about Israel's hegemony in the region which includes their best ally KSA.

harry law | Jul 14, 2015 10:45:31 AM | 8

In some respects the Iranians can claim a victory [of sorts] since they never intended to produce a nuclear weapon in the first place, all the concessions made by them only put them into the same position as before. They can still enrich uranium, as much as they need to fuel their reactors and for medical isotopes, and, in theory, can look to grow rich by selling its vast reserves of oil and gas to the West and open up its lucrative home market to investors from all over the world. Possibly a win win for Iran, to the consternation of Israel and the Saudi perverts. As our host rightly say's the devil is in the detail, and many people will try and distort the interpretation of the text. The bottom line in my opinion is the US electorate do not want another war in the middle east. That much was made clear when the warmongers received condemnation from ordinary Americans when strikes against Syria were proposed. Now the Iranians can concentrate on helping Syria and Hezbollah eliminate the anti-human Jihadis.

DamascusFalling | Jul 14, 2015 11:19:18 AM | 10

The bottom line in my opinion is the US electorate do not want another war in the middle east. That much was made clear when the warmongers received condemnation from ordinary Americans when strikes against Syria were proposed. Now the Iranians can concentrate on helping Syria and Hezbollah eliminate the anti-human Jihadis.
-----------------------
Public opinion clearly means little, voting might account for even less. We'll soon have a new presidential regime that can decide whatever they want to do, and the public will just follow along, or at least the media substitutes that represent the 'national discussion' will anyway

okie farmer | Jul 14, 2015 12:57:12 PM | 16

http://tass.ru/en/world/808492
Moscow expects Washington to drop missile defense shield plans

Lavrov stressed that Russia expects Washington's move towards giving up plans on creating the missile defense shield in Europe after the deal on Iran's nuclear program has been reached.

Speaking on the deal in a "broader context," Lavrov reminded that US President Barack Obama said in 2009 in Prague that there would be no more need to create a European segment of the missile shield should a solution be found to Iran's nuclear issue.
"That's why we drew the attention of our American colleagues to this fact today and we will expect a reaction," Lavrov stressed.

ToivoS | Jul 14, 2015 1:28:04 PM | 17

In general this looks like a very good deal for the Iranians. It is also a good deal for the US since it will reduce the chances of war. There a two points that are problematical however.

One is that the arms embargo will continue for 5 years. Iran is still threatened by an air attack by Israel. Does this mean Russia will not be able to deliver the S-300 antiaircraft missiles they already ordered and paid for? This sounds like a major concession.

Two concerns the inspection of Iran's conventional military sites. Iran rejected the demand for "unfettered" access to their military sites. However they agreed to this:

Iran will allow UN inspectors to enter sites, including military sites, when the inspectors have grounds to believe undeclared nuclear activity is being carried out there. It can object but a multinational commission can override any objections by majority vote. After that Iran will have three days to comply. Inspectors will only come from countries with diplomatic relations with Iran, so no Americans.

"Inspectors have ground to believe" leaves many opportunities for Israel to fabricate some documents and send them to the "inspectors" which I presume will be IAEC personnel. Under Amano the IAEC has been a tool of the US. Israel has been sending fabricated documents to that agency for some time.

Mike Maloney | Jul 14, 2015 4:01:45 PM | 28

Virgile @ 25 says, with some understatement that "One of their [KSA's] option left is to weaken Iran by creating troubles in countries where Iran has influence: Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. Yet until now this strategy has shown to be inefficient and dangerous."

The Kingdom will not change its strategy. Its takfiri proxies have been very successful so far. The blowback is going to be a shattered EU, as more displaced persons arrive on Greek beaches. Member states will fight among each other. Greece is already on its way to being another Serbia. Marine Le Pen should do quite well. A Brexit will probably make a lot of sense to the English in another two years.

okie farmer | Jul 14, 2015 5:50:33 PM | 33

TRNN
Col Wilkerson on the Iran deal
https://youtu.be/uOfr9OuCv6E

Rg an LG | Jul 15, 2015 1:38:26 AM | 35

The alleged 'deal' is way over my head. So, no comment ...

BUT, since when has American opinion against war ever mattered? 1848? 1898? 1916-17? 1938-1941? 2001 and subsequently?

When our oligarchs want war, we end up with a black flag, or backdoor to war ... and always go blindly off to war. And, it is always the 'exceptional/indispensable' us against the evil them!

Does that mean war with Iran? I have no idea, but if our owners want the US at war, we will find a way ... no matter who the enemy might be. Living near Texas, maybe even the 7 states of Jade Helm 15?

Do have a day ... whatever flavor it may be.

Harry | Jul 15, 2015 3:16:31 AM | 36

The deal is a bit better than I expected, Iran did an amazing job of withstanding an insane pressure from the West. Iran had to make some big concessions, but they are non-essential. Countries' economy will boom and Iran would become a legit region superpower, this naturally created a hysteria in Israel and Saudi.

The main problem, US has reneged on every single agreement with Iran before, and they can easily do it with current deal. Consider two points:

"Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency had "entered into an agreement to address all questions" about Iran's past actions within three months, and that completing this task was "fundamental for sanctions relief.""

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-deal-is-reached-after-long-negotiations.html

Amano will do as US says, and if US wants for IAEA to not give a green light, thats what he'll do. Amano has been doing it for years.

Diplomats also came up with unusual procedure to "snap back" the sanctions against Iran if an eight-member panel determines that Tehran is violating the nuclear provisions. The members of the panel are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, the European Union and Iran itself. A majority vote is required, meaning that Russia, China and Iran could not collectively block action.

So if anyone says "Obama wont allow this deal to be tanked", so what? Next president will be able to, at will. Under any bogus pretext of Iran's non-compliance, US with its minions will be able to re-start sanctions and there is nothing Iran, Russia or China can do about that.

Granted, EU by that time will have invested tens of billions in Iran, mass flowing of goods, and more importantly - EU is desperate for alternative to Russia's oil/gas, and Iran is a perfect choice. Therefore if US wants to sanction Iran again, it will face serious intransigence from EU, nonetheless US is still superpower with a lot of clout over minions, so they'll have to comply. Just like EU doesnt want to pay for US proxy-war in Ukraine, but are forced to. Just like they were forced to even initiate sanctions on Iran before and lose hundreds of billions in the process.

zingaro | Jul 15, 2015 5:12:35 AM | 38

"US will face serious intransigence from EU"...

huh, EU from which planet ? last time I checked they pretty much all insisted on committing suicide on US-demanded sanctions (while US laughed and evaded pretty much these same sanctions at will)...

dahoit | Jul 15, 2015 1:06:24 PM | 55

I forgot;The Zionist neocon warmongers at the NYTS and Wapo, of course, say Iran is untrustworthy.
The ultimate pot kettle remark.

linda amick | Jul 15, 2015 2:13:32 PM | 56

The Iran deal will allow oil to flow to Europe. It is a temporary measure to try and keep Russia out of business with the EU. The ultimate fear of the Atlanticists is collaboration between Russia and Germany.

Johnboy | Jul 15, 2015 11:06:56 PM | 66

@36 "Amano will do as US says, and if US wants for IAEA to not give a green light, thats what he'll do."

Absolutely. The IAEA will be *the* litmus test for how genuine the USA is regarding this agreement, precisely because Amano does as he is told.

So if he reports that the Iranians have answered all questions regarding "PMD" to the IAEA's satisfaction then, well, heck, everyone can conclude that Obama really is serious about this agreement, because Amano would have been told by the USA to reach that conclusion.

Alternatively, if Amano can't be satisfied No Matter What then you know for a certainty that he is being obstinate on the orders of Obama. Which means that the USA has no intention of ever allowing Iran to re-engage with the rest of the world.

Amano's inability to act independently makes him the perfect yardstick for judging the USA's real intentions.

We could spend years dissecting *this* statement or *that* complaint from various Notable Americans. We can then argue for/against where that official's true loyalties are, and it's all totally unnecessary.

Just keep your eye on the puppet over at the IAEA, because it is abundantly clear that
(a) he doesn't think for himself, and
(b) he answers to only one master.

So what he says on any issue will be a true, unadulterated representation of what the USA really, truly, means, precisely because he will mouth words without any considerations of petty politics or the need to jerk off the critics.


[Jul 23, 2015]Iran Deal Heads Toward Showdown With Adelson's GOP

Jul 15, 2015 | LobeLog

The Iran nuclear deal announced in Vienna yesterday means that the tough international negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran are finally over. But now attention shifts to the 60-day period during which Congress has the option of voting to approve or disapprove the agreement or doing nothing at all. A resolution of disapproval, as Obama most recently warned yesterday, will provoke a presidential veto. At that point, the question will be whether the opponents can muster the necessary two-thirds of members in both chambers of Congress to override, effectively killing by far the most promising development in U.S.-Iranian relations since the 1979 revolution.

This process not only represents a key test of Obama's ability to deliver his most significant foreign-policy achievement to date. It also sets up a major showdown between the GOP's single biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, and the president of the United States.

Adelson is a big supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and finances Israel's largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, often referred to as "Bibiton," or Bibi's paper. He makes no secret either of his hawkish views toward Iran or his animosity toward the Obama administration. Adelson has proposed launching a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran as a negotiating tactic and was treated as a guest of honor during Netanyahu's controversial speech before Congress last March. (A number of pundits speculated about Adelson's role in securing Netanyahu's invitation from Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).)

Adelson and the Republicans

The casino magnate, whose net wealth is estimated by Forbes at $29.4 billion, and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam Adelson, are heavily invested in the current GOP members of the House and Senate.

In the 2014 election cycle, Adelson was the biggest single donor to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC closely tied to Boehner and dedicated to electing Republicans to the House, according to public filings. He contributed $5 million-or nearly 40%–of the Fund's $12.6 million in total contributions. Boehner's Super PAC's second largest contributor, and only other seven-figure donor, was Chevron. It contributed a mere $1 million.

The loyalty of Republican senators to the Las Vegas-based multi-billionaire may run even deeper. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson reportedly contributed up to $100 million to help the GOP retake the Senate last year.

Adelson's close relationship with Netanyahu is well documented, but his influence in Congress will soon be tested.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) already pledged to Netanyahu that he would "follow your lead" before a January vote on the Kirk-Menendez sanctions legislation. Graham joked about having the "first all-Jewish Cabinet in America [if elected president] because of the pro-Israel funding," an apparent reference to the critical role played by campaign contributions by Adelson and other wealthy supporters of Israel-a number of whom are on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition-in making or breaking Republican presidential candidacies. (The Adelsons' generosity in 2012 virtually singlehandedly kept alive the presidential candidacy of former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who told NBC that Israel's survival was "the central value of [Adelson's] life.")

Yesterday, Graham declared that the Iran deal was "akin to declaring war on Israel and the Sunni Arabs." Not to be outdone, other GOP candidates, most of whom, no doubt, are also seeking Adelson's endorsement and financial support, slammed the deal.

Jeb Bush, for instance, denounced the agreement as "appeasement." Having received a bitter complaint from Adelson, Bush had earlier distanced himself from his father's secretary of state after James Baker publicly criticized Netanyahu at a J Street conference earlier this year. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), reportedly an Adelson favorite, blasted the accord as "undermin[ing] our national security," while Gov. Scott Walker characterized it as "one of the biggest disasters of the Obama-Clinton doctrine." And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) described it as "a fundamental betrayal of the security of the United States and of our closest allies, first and foremost Israel."

All of these candidates may, of course, truly believe what they are saying (no doubt having personally studied the 100-plus-page agreement in detail). But Adelson's largesse may also have played a role in their summary rejections of a deal that has been negotiated over more than three years and that has been endorsed by Washington's most important NATO allies, not to mention the overwhelming majority of recognized U.S. non-proliferation, nuclear policy, Iran, and national security experts.

GOP Reservations about Adelson

But other Republicans, including those who don't necessarily harbor the national ambitions that require raising tens of millions of dollars from wealthy donors, may feel some reservations about the growing influence Adelson exercises over their party's leadership. Indeed, a closer look at Adelson, beginning with the way his gambling interests may not precisely align with the values of the party's social conservatives, suggests a degree of disconnect between the man and a core Republican constituency.

Adelson's interests in China, which many Republicans believe poses the greatest long-term threat to U.S. national security, may also be cause for concern. After all, in order to run his highly profitable Macau-based casinos, Adelson would presumably require some friendly relations, or guanxi, with the Communist government in Beijing. Indeed, reports that Adelson played a key role-at the personal behest of Beijing's mayor-in scuttling a proposed House resolution opposing China's bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics on human-rights grounds should give pause to some elements in the party, including both China hawks and neoconservatives who profess a devotion to democracy. The fact that Adelson also faces accusations of ties to Chinese organized crime groups at his Macau properties and that a former Sands executive charged him with personally approving a "prostitution strategy" at his properties should raise a few questions in the minds of some Republicans. Adelson has rejected all these charges, which may soon be tested in court.

And despite having personally promoted the use of U.S. military (and nuclear) forces against Iran and funded a number of hawkish groups, including the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, that have similarly advocated the threat or use of U.S. military force, Adelson appears at least ambivalent about his own service in the U.S. armed forces.

Speaking to a group in Israel, in July 2010, Adelson said:

I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF … our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he'll come back– his hobby is shooting - and he'll come back and be a sniper for the IDF. … All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart.

With a deal now reached in Vienna, Adelson is undoubtedly placing calls to the GOP leadership in Congress urging them to vote down a nuclear accord supported by an overwhelming number of experts in the relevant fields, as well as a majority of Americans, according to the latest polls. How they respond will tell us a great deal not only about Adelson's influence in the Republican party, but also about the impact of enormously wealthy, highly focused, one-issue donors on U.S. foreign policy and national security.

Image: DonkeyHotey via Flickr

[Jul 23, 2015] The Coup 1953, The CIA, and The Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations Ervand Abrahamian

"...The 1953 coup became a model. The arming and training of the local military, the bribing of local officials, the use and abuse of the United Nations, the propaganda against the target, the stirring up of confusion and chaos, the kidnapping and deportation, the misinformation campaigns. Abrahamian points out that even U.S. diplomats in Iran at the time didn't know the U.S. role in the coup. The same is almost certainly true today about Honduras or Ukraine. Most Americans have no idea why Cuba fears an open internet. Just foreign backwardness and stupidity, we're supposed to think. No there's an ideology that both fueled the ongoing age of the CIA / USAID / NED coup and has been reinforced by its criminal adventures."
Amazon.com
David Swanson on June 18, 2015
Quite a Coup The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations deals with such an engaging topic that even this new book can't really make it boring, hard as it seems to try. When asked what historical figure I would most like to bring back to life and have a talk with I tend to think of Mossadeq, the complex, Gandhian, elected leader, denounced as both Hitler and a communist (as would become part of the standard procedure) and overthrown in an early CIA coup (1953) -- a coup that encouraged dozens more around the globe and led straight to the Iranian revolution and to today's Iranian distrust of the United States. I'm more inclined to believe that current Iranian distrust of the U.S. government is well-merited than blaming it on a long-ago coup implies, but the coup lies at the root of Iranian and worldwide skepticism about generous U.S. intentions.

It's also an interesting fact, supported by this case, that some of the best government actions, taken by any government around the world, have occurred just prior to various U.S.-backed violent coups -- and I include in that category the U.S. New Deal, followed by the unsuccessful Wall Street coup attempt rejected by Smedley Butler. Mossadegh had just done, among other things, these: Slashed the military budget 15%, launched an investigation into weapons deals, retired 135 senior officers, caused the military and police to report to the government rather than to the monarch, slashed stipends to the royal family, restricted the Shah's access to foreign diplomats, transferred the royal estates to the state, and drafted bills to give women the vote and protect the press and the independence of the Supreme Court and taxing extreme wealth by 2% and giving workers healthcare and upping peasants' share of the harvest by 15%. Facing an oil embargo, he cut state salaries, eliminated chauffeured cars for high officials, and restricted luxury imports. All of that was in addition, of course, to the cause of the coup: his insistence on nationalizing the oil from which a British company, and Britain, had been profiting enormously.

The bulk of the book is actually the lead-up to the coup, and much of the emphasis is on proving other historians wrong in their interpretations. Supposedly, historians tend to blame Mossadeq for intransigence, as well as to blame the U.S. action on its Cold War ideology. The author, Ervand Abrahamian, on the contrary, blames the British and Americans, and explains why this was centrally a question of who would control the oil lying underneath Iran. My reaction to that was the same as yours might be: No kidding!

So, reading this book is a bit like reading criticism of the corporate news after you've avoided the corporate news. It's good to see such outrageous lunacy debunked, but on the other hand you were getting along just fine not knowing it existed. Reading Richard Rorty, who gets an odd mention on the last page of the book, is somewhat similar -- it's great to see a fine critique of the stupid things philosophers think, but not knowing they thought them wasn't really so unpleasant either. Still, in all of these case, what you don't know can hurt you. What a group of bad historians thinks about the history of U.S.-Iranian relations can inform current diplomacy (or lack thereof) in ways that are easier to spot if you know exactly what these people have deluded themselves with.

Abrahamian does document numerous historians who believe the British were reasonable and ready to compromise, whereas -- as the author shows -- that actually describes Mossadeq, while the British were unwilling to do any such thing. His inclusion of Stephen Kinzer in the list of historians getting it wrong is probably the most stretched, however. I don't think Kinzer actually believes that Mossadeq was to blame. In fact, I think Kinzer not only blames the United States and Britain, but he also openly admits that what they did was a really bad thing (in contrast to Abrahamian's emotion-free recounting).

Abrahamian gives extreme importance to the economic motivation, as opposed to racism for example. But of course the two work together, and Abrahamian documents both of them. If Iranians looked like white Americans, the acceptability of stealing their oil would be less clear in all minds, then and now.

The 1953 coup became a model. The arming and training of the local military, the bribing of local officials, the use and abuse of the United Nations, the propaganda against the target, the stirring up of confusion and chaos, the kidnapping and deportation, the misinformation campaigns. Abrahamian points out that even U.S. diplomats in Iran at the time didn't know the U.S. role in the coup. The same is almost certainly true today about Honduras or Ukraine. Most Americans have no idea why Cuba fears an open internet. Just foreign backwardness and stupidity, we're supposed to think. No there's an ideology that both fueled the ongoing age of the CIA / USAID / NED coup and has been reinforced by its criminal adventures.

[Jul 22, 2015] Hundreds of Ukrainian right-wingers rally against govt

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Hundreds of Ukrainian right-wingers were rallying in Kiev on Tuesday to protest against government policies in the wake of a deadly stand-off between radical nationalists and police in the country's west.

The radical Right Sector group was one of the most militant factions in the massive protests in Ukraine's capital that prompted pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country in February 2014. Since the war broke out in eastern Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russia separatists several months later, the Right Sector has fought on the government side.

However, Right Sector militants keep running into disputes with local Ukrainian authorities and Amnesty International has accused the group of holding civilians as prisoners and torturing them. The activists claim they are trying to clamp down on corruption and nepotism but Ukrainian authorities accuse Right Sector of using violence to reach its goals.

Speaking Tuesday at the national Right Sector congress, group leader Dmytro Yarosh called for a referendum to impeach President Petro Poroshenko and his government.

Yarosh also called for the recognition of volunteer battalions and their right to carry arms as well as introducing martial law, which he said, will help defeat the rebels in the east.

Right Sector supporters gathered on Tuesday evening on Kiev's main square to support Yarosh's motion. Most of them were civilians and appeared to be unarmed, although some young men wore camouflage.

Yarosh told the supporters at the square that the new government that replaced Yanukovych's regime was only about "changing names" but not the political system.

"We are an organized revolutionary force that is opening the new phase of the Ukrainian revolution," he told the rally.

The Right Sector leader garnered about 1 percent of the vote in the May 2014 presidential election. His radical anti-Russian stance prompted the Kremlin to dismiss the uprising in Kiev as a neo-Nazi coup.

The Ukrainian government has attempted to rein in the volunteer battalions who often took frontline positions in eastern Ukraine where soldiers were reluctant to go by encouraging them to join the National Guard and police forces. In reality, hundreds of men in government-controlled eastern Ukraine still carry arms without any authorization.

Two Right Sector members were killed earlier this month after the group attacked police in the western city of Mukacheve with gunfire and grenades. Police responded and then surrounded some gunmen in a wooded area of Mukacheve and have been trying to negotiate their surrender since then.

Right Sector insists that the men were trying to confront local policemen who he said were involved in a major smuggling business in the region.

Yarosh accused the government of deploying troops and weaponry to hunt down the Right Sector members instead of focusing on the war in the east: "Our guys were spilling their blood (in the east) but now they are being punished behind the lines."

In a sign that he does not control the men in Mukacheve, he said Tuesday he did not know for sure how many men were still out there but said it was likely to be nine. He also dismissed reports that Right Sector fighters are roaming the country with the arms they were given to fight the rebels in the east.

The stand-off in Mukacheve has caused a split in Right Sector with several dozen fighters quitting the battalion to join other battalions in protest.

  1. Right Sector gunmen take boy hostage in western Ukraine Associated Press
  2. At least 2 dead in in Ukraine sports club attack Associated Press
  3. Ukraine PM says reforms continue despite 'lunatic' lawmakers Associated Press
  4. Far right group challenges Ukraine government after shootout Reuters
  5. Ukraine nationalists in standoff with security forces after two killed AFP
eco123eco

The march on Kiev is coming. Old enemies and new allies are getting closer and closer day after day. The time of Poroshenko is running out, falling to the same corruption as the former Yanukovych. Corruption increased ten fold buy selling off Ukrainian Business to foreign investors. Poroshenko is a world puppet running the Ukraine like a world business with him being the CEO responsible for increasing the profits of the world before the Ukraine. Is it too much to ask for a united Ukraine against corruption?

Blood was spilled, lives lost, all because a government fired upon its own people in protest. Now those very same protesters have been led down the same path again marching on Kiev against corruption. They have discovered corruption doesn't go away because you change the name of your government, and indeed it gets worse when in secret the new government in power has been murdering and torturing more Ukrainians than its predecessor whom also was corrupt to the point of murdering and torturing Ukrainians.

The Ukraine must indeed be united as one Ukraine. It must become independent of West or East as it is the last great front where West and East ideology meet upon mutual terms. For this reason it is of vital importance to both West and East alike and that is a wealth like no other nation currently has. Even America is divided West and East, North and South, but it is still one America. Groups such as the Right Sector only exist because they have suffered under the corruption of others, and have taken it upon themselves to fight corruption at the highest levels with only one Ukraine, united West and East as a global front where West and East meet as equals, partners to solve world conflicts from West to East or East to West.

The Ukraine is now the keeper of World Peace capable of going forward with hope. Protesters all share one thing in common, they have lived under inhumane and harsh conditions, many have given their lives for a better way, many more will continue to give their lives for the same. Government has failed in the Ukraine, it is failing again dividing the Ukraine causing Civil War. Ukrainian killing Ukrainian, simply because the Ukraine can't form a unified government bringing West and East together in peace. Peace must be achieved, many lives are being lost, the people of the Ukraine are suffering and corruption is still the rule of law in the Ukraine.

All Ukrainians must take a good look at themselves, at what they are becoming. They must decide their futures as their governments continue to fail influenced by East and West. It is the Ukraine that should influence the East and West, the Ukraine that should be one nation united where difference and opinion come together for the best the Ukraine has to offer the world on a grand scale. The future awaits the Ukraine, will it be divided because Ukrainians could not negotiate with Ukrainians of Russian descent? Lives have been lost, many have died and suffered, many still are and it is sure to get worse before better. In the American Civil War, neither side really won, one side just decided it was best for America and the people to end the killing so it gave up in peace. From that moment forward America became a greater nation.

The Ukraine and the many peoples of the Ukraine are far more important than any amount of profit, corruption or greed, and it's time the Ukraine start acting like it by achieving its own world independence through peaceful negotiations. It's time the Ukraine regain it's independence and set aside its difference for the sake of the people who have died and continue to suffer. The dying and suffering must end, and if it should end in Civil War then it's time for the war to commence to end the dying and suffering at all cost in every part of the Ukraine. The past is over, the future is waiting, the world is watching, drawing lines in the sand, rallying armies to march across the Ukraine, foreign armies ready to kill Ukrainians over the failure of Ukrainians to achieve their own peace and independence.

To Be

Here are some very true facts about WW2 they don't teach you....

The bankers and industrialists and royal families were all concerned after what happened in Russia after the revolution that killed czar and his family (who were related to almost every other royal family) and the industrialists and bankers didn't want to lose their assets to the communist revolution. So they took things into their own hands.

Bankers and top corporations tried to take over America in the 1930's. Heinz, Colgate family, Dupont family, Birdseye family, Rockefellas and more. Major General Butler warned FDR in time to stop it.

Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush ran the Union bank and loaned Hitler extremely large sums of money to fund the war. Henry Ford was awarded the highest Nazi medal by Hitler (who also kept a life size painting of Ford) for his part in building the tanks and such for Germany.

The president of AT&T personally flew to Germany after the start of the war to hook up a state of the art communications for Hitler. Coke sold millions of bottles of soda to Germans during the war. Rockefella's supplied oil, and the list goes on.

This is no joke... these men and more quite literally built the Nazi party and got off scott free with more power and money then ever.

They treated Germany as an "investment". The use of concentration camps was much more widespread then they make you think. They used them as sources of slave labor to try and recoup their investment in the Nazi war machine. Over 15 thousand were used.


If all this seems far fetched or made up then I urge you to use the internet you have at your disposal. These same families control our media and our education too.

Of course you wont find direct links but the info is certainly there. Knowledge is our best weapon if we want to save our country.

Christopher Harrison

Agreed , more and more info is now coming out about what really happened during WW2 thanks to the internet and You Tube. Go to You Tube and check out the video series The Best Enemies Money Can Buy with Professor Anthony Sutton form the Hoover Institute talking in 1964. It will blow your mind how much US corporations were working with Hitler through subsidiaries and the German company IG Farben. And yes it was the Rockefellers and the Rothschild and the Bushes

G.

You are brave T/To be. You forgot the headmaster Rothschild who said ( Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws)

b

This article says hundreds protested but the Ukranian paper (KyivPost) says it was thousands... this story/problem is bigger than what our own media wants us to know.

Christopher Harrison

Why is it not being considered that it was these fascists that shot down MH-17 as another false flag? After all, it was they who shot people at the 1stMaidan from the Hotel Ukraine where they were headquartered. The BBC captured them shooting at the BBC's own film crew. They also are on film burning 45 people alive in Odessa and beating them with baseball bats as they jumped from windows. They also shot people point blank on camera in Mariupol. Their Neo-Notzee battalions have been shooting artillery at civilians towns for a year and even Human Rights watch has said they commit atrocities. Hence the reason 1.3 million refugees fled TO RUSSIA. This stuff isn't that difficult to understand, here they are again and this time they are going after the new government. No one is safe, even in Europe, while these guys are around. It's time to get rid of them once and for all before they shoot down another airliner or gain access to nuclear fuels rods.

Madeski

Most Western media tried hard to ignore this story thinking it would just go away, but because many of us also read and watch the Russian news also especially RT, we knew the true situation in Ukraine and that things will soon get out of hand and snowball into an armed confrontation between the western backed Govt and their militia who have a different ideology but are together in the fight in the east only because the 2 parties view the East as Pro-Russia that most be crushed.


Michael

More violent thugs. What a mess the CIA and NATO have caused for Ukraine, Russia, and European security.

BrainPick

Any place where instability can be implemented NED/CIA will be there.

OdessaFile

BrainPick --They arrived long before it.

Stephen

Another fine mess the stupid US government has created. These thugs of the Ukrainian far right are N@zi lovers. Their Fathers & Grandfathers fought for Hitler & ran the death camps on behalf of Hitler & N@zi Germany in WW2. This is what many Americans do not understand & it's very clear the foolish American government was not expecting this. Just like Iraq & Taliban central the US went into the Ukraine & put a weak leader in charge who would be a lap puppy to the US government but also will fail because the US puppet cannot lead & control his own country.

james 8

If Kololmsky is involved in subversive activities that compromise the National security of Ukraine than Nationalize all his assets in Ukraine and later sell them off to the private sector of the economy . These assets need to be broken down so that they do not continue to be a monopoly and a threaten national security . In this way Ukraine can also break the Oligarch control on the country . Drastic measures are needed . The country can not be sacrificed for the benefit of a few billionaires that enriched themselves by stealing from the Ukrainian people .

Fvok Yo

Buk missle explodes above an airplane, and 50 to 150 yards above it. How can you possibly explain the
focal schrapnel damage to the mh17 with a Buk. You cant. Moreover, a Buk strike would instantly depressurize the aircraft, resulting in immediate incapacitation of the pilot and crew. The pilot was alert after the initial (not a BUK ) strike, and contacted ATC, but the Ukraine has refused to release that communication. Of course for the hollywood drama to play out, the missle absolutely has to be a Buk. An air to air missle would have had to be done by the Ukranians, or outside forces assisting the Ukranians.

maxcrusader

"...but Ukrainian authorities accuse Right Sector of using violence to reach its goals."

I'm sure they had no problem when the same Right Sektor helped the junta government get into power through a coup.

Eye Of Horus

The US orchestrated coup in Kiev has guaranteed the collapse of the US. The world is no longer willing to fund a govt that's gone insane by continuing to use the dollar in trade settlement and to buy treasuries. It's only a matter of time until we get to that tipping point where there's a stampede for the exits and the US manifests into the 3rd world sh|thole that it already is. Parts of the country is already there. The rest will follow.

Gary and Minge

"The radical Right Sector group was one of the most militant factions in the massive protests in Ukraine's capital that prompted pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country in February 2014. "

and here we were fed all this garbage about "peaceful protest" and "evil president" . In fact US "NGO's" created this organization training most of them in Baltic states.
US treatened then president Yanukovich with sanctions "and more" if he so much "try to disperse this peaceful protest" .
McCain was taking pictures at maidan with this neo-na_zies between anti government speeches, Nuland fed them cookies, Pyatt [US ambassador and man who really in charge in Ukraine] called them "will of the people"
McCain made sure they get weapons, they were coming to US visiting McCain among other US congressman telling how bad "Russians" are showing picture of "invasion" , using Georgia 2008 pics.
No one cared, no one paid attention of Amnesty international reports of tortures of civilians in war zone. They been called 'true patriots" by most US media outlets.
Now that the monster no longer needed lets call them "Ukrainian al quida "

Here is more examples of what those "volunteer battalions" up to
google search : " Ukrainian volunteer battalions | meet heroes from "Tornado" battalion. [English Subtitles]

Video with English Subtitles

Commenter

I'm waiting for evidence to appear that would link Yarosh and Right Sector to the snipers on Midan. That would take away any public support they may currently have and allow the government to crack down on them hard. I would venture to say that we have not seen this yet because there is still a hot war in the East but if they remove themselves from the front line there, Right Sector will quickly outlive it's usefulness.

John

Another pogrom in Kiev will be more devastating! Watch the real Ukraine, Ukraine is Europe! Let gay Europe witness all the brutality!
Government of Ukraine is instructed by CIA chief of station in Kiev what to do next!
Here is possible scenario: Poroshenko will order troops to "pacify" "Right Sector"-those troops trained by US. "Right Sector" has combat experience and would out power freshly trained "boy scouts". By the way, Porosehnko's family is not in Ukraine, he is not an idiot to have his children in the middle of total chaos!

Gabriel

The combination of Oligarchs and Neo Nazi troops could be very dangerous for the future of Ukraine, if any.

Pynk

Manipulated by, used by, and then betrayed by the corrupt elite power brokers?

SAY IT AIN'T SO!


Rick Harner

Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has been on a steady path to imploding. Corruption, mass demonstrations in 2004, revolution in 2014, Crimea seized, civil war in the east, neo-fascist groups in the west... How much more can this country withstand before it completely comes apart?

Commenter

The Right Sector members till the rest of their live will be on the run from justice. No government needs them. Just today NYT published a story on some Cilian junta policeman sentenced for killing people half a century ago. The burning in Odessa of people will never be forgotten too. So better look for your ratholes starting right now.

Madeski

Since Last year Yahoo has been calling them 'revolutionaries, freedom fighters, nationalists'

Today Yahoo is calling them 'Right Wingers, radical Right Sector group and one of the most militant factions' in this article, what happened? Can somebody please explain to us?

Yachob

US state dep and our spin doctors have been "refining" the image of provincial #$%$ Bandero-stan Right Wing for more than a year. Clear signs of progress: all have clean hair cut, clean uniform, no signs of swastika, no Confederate flags: a striking difference from rabid bidlo on Maidan. Now Ukrainian %nazi% seemed to be under control. and this is just a theater, a show of political diversity but foremost a warning of the Kiev regime to those, who really oppose Parashenko and %nazism%.


Dana

Most analysts indicate that The Right Sector and other Ultra-Nationalists are supported by only a small percentage of Ukrainians. The same thing was said about the National Socialists with respect to Germany in the 1920s. It is very important that the central government in Kiev not underestimate the threat represented by Ultra-Nationalists.

Glenn

This is media hype. There are major parts of the story that were not included. Those things were not included so readers would be left with an image of fascists marching in Kiev in the hundreds calling for Poroschenko's ouster and the imposition of martial law, because that will look scary to readers who don't know that much about what is going on in Ukraine recently.

Two weeks ago in Mukacheve, an upstart smuggling gang got entangled with local authorities and did not want to pay them off with bribes. The well-established smugglers were pressuring the local police to demand newcomer prices, because their new competition was unwanted. So the new kids on the block decided not to pay the bribes, and called in fellow militia strongmen from across the country for a show of force to intimidate the local cops into backing down. It turned into a violent confrontation and a gunfight at the ok corral. The Ukraine federal authorities responded rapidly with superior force, and the majority of militiamen scattered for the provinces. The remaining two dozen militia stayed because they were close family relations withe the smugglers still held in jail. This has caused an uproar in the militia's national leadership, because the majority interest - nationalist politics - has been undermined by an attempt by a small faction to enforce a new smuggling business venture by using militia men to assert power over local police. Corruption is plain on both sides. Right Sector's rally in Kiev is their attempt to re-assert their political message and call for unity. Meanwhile, several chapters of Right Sector have walked out in disgust - somewhere close to 20% of their membership is on the way out because they did not sign up for smuggling and armed enforcement gangs. They signed up to kill Russians, and to kill Russians only.

This news piece is not telling you anything much about all of that, and that is what is going on. There is no violent mob calling for the government to step down. It is just a fascist rally to try to stem the loss of membership after one faction inside Right Sector with ties to organized crime did some very stupid and damaging things to their nationalism image.

[Jul 14, 2015]Kiev forced to fight its own fascist militias

Jul 14, 2015 | The Times

A pro-government Ukrainian militia accused of neo-Nazism has fought a gun battle with the country's security forces that left at least three dead and several police vehicles destroyed by rocket-propelled grenades.

The fighting marks the first clash between Kiev and one of the country's "volunteer battalions" who have led the fight against pro-Russian separatists.

The fierce confrontation in the city of Mukachevo, near Ukraine's western border, involved members of Right Sector, a controversial nationalist group. Three policemen were among six injured, officials from the Ukrainian interior ministry said.

A stand-off with Ukrainian police continued yesterday while Right Sector announced that

[Jul 14, 2015] Tensions rising in Ukraine as far-right militia's boobytraps injure two police

"...This negotiation is quite impossible because Kiev, even if you wanted to negotiate honestly, is pushed by the nationalist forces, all those Right Sectors, "volunteers" and "heroes of Maidan." Poroshenko has to please the nationalistic crowd so the honest negotiations is just a dream. Besides, all those "volunteer battalions" had declared from the first day that the Minsk agreement would apply to them. They've been having major marches in Kiev over the last couple of weeks, menacing marching in full fatigues and face masks and demanding resumption of the war in the East."
.
"...Madam "F*ck the EU" Nuland's engineered coup is not going according to plan. She used Ukrainian nationalism as a cause, enticing Ukrainian Nationalists and supposed Ukrainian NAZIs (the right sector) both of whom hate Russians as dupes to aid her coup. Now that the illegitimate IMF and Soros funded Kiev junta has consolidated their hold on government, they dare not have any Ukrainian Nationalists or anyone who would care and honestly work on behalf of Ukrainian citizens any role in the new government. Instead, foreign IMF collaborators are given instant Ukrainian citizenship and posted in important ministerial jobs. No doubt, the nationalists were promised a part in the government if they aided in the coup. Now that madam Nuland is ignoring them, they no doubt aren't very happy, posing a threat the the Poroshenko junta. Poroshenko's remedy, on advice of madam Nueland no doubt, seems to purposely create tension with the nationalists so that they could be classified as terrorist and either jailed or killed. "
.
"...Madam Nuland is the classic intelligent, over educated idiot. Knows nothing about Ukraine but because of her education, her high position in the state department (no doubt by connection) and her arrogant demeanor has led her to believe she could do no wrong. Thus far, her civil war in Ukraine has resulted in more than 6000 dead Ukrainians, mostly civilians including children. Not only that, madam Nuland has destroyed what was a united Ukraine and it will never be whole again. Eastern Ukrainians will never reconcile with those who waged war against them for no reason at all. Her chocolate oligarch, Poroshenko, on her advice chose to intentionally bomb and shell civilians. Killing civilians is a war crime. This puts Porosenko in the same league as Hitler and other war criminals of history."
.
"... Ha, moderate rebels. Reminds me of Syria. Ukraine may be heading the same way.
.
"...Well, it is, of course, hard to tell what's going on there, what kinds of deals are being made, but indeed it sound like Poroshenko is trying to rein neonazis in a little bit, while Yatsenyuk, the PM and a Nuland's stooge, is betting on them. What a mess, what a shame."
.
"...Maidan raised expectations and shrunk resources. The inevitable disillusionment and bloody struggle for remaining resources will destroy Ukraine. The people in the West who aided the violent overthrow of the elected government, who over-promised and played geo-political games, they should be held accountable. From State Department to EU busy-bodies (Sikorski and Bildt), to media cheerleaders, to human rights professionals - all of them must explain what gave them the right to meddle and unravel a relatively prosperous country of over 40 million."
.
"...What was bound to happen is happening. There is a long story of the good guys turning bad but they never learn. This is no exception, it could have been avoided in due time by not accepting these groups as units into the military for they have dangerous ideologies incompatible with democracy. What is more amazing though is that the EU supported these guys all along by remaining silent. As long as they were killing in the east of the country it was fine and that tells a lot about the whole Ukraine situation which is politically driven."
.
"...No, Kiev doesn't struggle with armed nationalist groups. It encouraged, organized and armed them. It even came up with the patriotically sounding name for them, "volunteers," so now they are pretty legitimate."
.
"...Finally western media are starting to report the fact that Poroshenko and his government have absolutely no control of the far right militia that got them in poeer and fought in East Ukraine. No peace deals or Minsk agreements will be implemented while there are out of control and armed to the teeth people fighting in the east for either side. They do not care about agreements."
.
"...Not all unicorns and rainbows in Nulandistan it appears."
Jul 14, 2015 | The Guardian

vr13vr -> ilyasilyas 14 Jul 2015 15:23

"I suppose this is the end of the Right Sector, since the government machine is much stronger than a small organisation. "

It is not necessarily at all. They were promoted into "heroes defending Ukraine" and there is simply not enough political will to squash them. They will have to come up with some sort of a pact, just as they did last year during their elections and when they formed the Right Sector into "National Guards." They will essentially split the spheres of influence.

As for the government machine, Ukrainian army doesn't want to fight. They are ill prepared and lack motivation to fight, especially inside their country. Right Sector, on the other hand is more seasoned, organized, and more aggressive. It has advantage over the army. Poroshenko doesn't have strength to squash it either by force or politically.

vr13vr -> ilyasilyas 14 Jul 2015 15:16

This negotiation is quite impossible because Kiev, even if you wanted to negotiate honestly, is pushed by the nationalist forces, all those Right Sectors, "volunteers" and "heroes of Maidan." Poroshenko has to please the nationalistic crowd so the honest negotiations is just a dream. Besides, all those "volunteer battalions" had declared from the first day that the Minsk agreement would apply to them. They've been having major marches in Kiev over the last couple of weeks, menacing marching in full fatigues and face masks and demanding resumption of the war in the East.

Debreceni 14 Jul 2015 15:09

Mission accomplished. The German-dominated EU and the US turned Ukraine into a failed state. The new Russophobic regime alienated the only country, which cared about the Ukrainian people and which was ready to help: Putin's Russia. Their wish has been granted: now they are part (and a colony) of Europe and never will be free again. Ukraine is Europe' Mexico ruled by drug lords, mafia bosses, soldiers of of fortune, adventure capitalists, outsiders and common criminals. Feel sorry for them.

SHappens -> Havingalavrov 14 Jul 2015 15:07

I understand from what Ukraine has face by Russia's armed and led war against its people, that it didn't have many options of who could help them.

Oh come on, they could have refrained from the ATO. Ukraine doesn't need to defend themselves they just have to stop attacking the east and make a reconciliation, how does that sound? You seem to advocate a full war.

VictorWhisky 14 Jul 2015 15:07

Madam "F*ck the EU" Nuland's engineered coup is not going according to plan. She used Ukrainian nationalism as a cause, enticing Ukrainian Nationalists and supposed Ukrainian NAZIs (the right sector) both of whom hate Russians as dupes to aid her coup. Now that the illegitimate IMF and Soros funded Kiev junta has consolidated their hold on government, they dare not have any Ukrainian Nationalists or anyone who would care and honestly work on behalf of Ukrainian citizens any role in the new government. Instead, foreign IMF collaborators are given instant Ukrainian citizenship and posted in important ministerial jobs. No doubt, the nationalists were promised a part in the government if they aided in the coup. Now that madam Nuland is ignoring them, they no doubt aren't very happy, posing a threat the the Poroshenko junta. Poroshenko's remedy, on advice of madam Nueland no doubt, seems to purposely create tension with the nationalists so that they could be classified as terrorist and either jailed or killed.

It seems madam Nuland and her Zionist collaborators had no problem getting in bed with the Ukrainian NAZIs, who were the major force and contributed to the success of the coup. Now madam Nuland has turned against the Nationalists and the Right Sector. Sasha Biley, a right sector leader appeared on video claiming he would be arrested by the Kiev junta police and assassinated or sent to Russia to have them do it. The next day, the was shot dead by the Kiev junta's police in a shout out. Why would they want him dead? He was one of the major leaders who helped in madam Nuland's coup. In fact, he was one of the most violent leaders. Did he know who hired the snipers on the Maidan and promised to spill the beans if he was not given a government post? Dead men tell no tales.

As corrupt as Yanukovich was he never ordered the Ukrainian army to bomb and shell their own people. Poroshenko has ordered the Ukrainian army to bomb and shell Eastern Ukrainian civilians whose only crime is to refuse to recognize madam Nuland's illegitimately installed Kiev junta. It was not the Eastern Ukrainians that mobilized and advanced on Kiev, it was the Ukrainian army that was mobilized and ordered to advance on Eastern Ukrainians. Madam Nuland is the classic intelligent, over educated idiot.

Knows nothing about Ukraine but because of her education, her high position in the state department (no doubt by connection) and her arrogant demeanor has led her to believe she could do no wrong. Thus far, her civil war in Ukraine has resulted in more than 6000 dead Ukrainians, mostly civilians including children. Not only that, madam Nuland has destroyed what was a united Ukraine and it will never be whole again. Eastern Ukrainians will never reconcile with those who waged war against them for no reason at all. Her chocolate oligarch, Poroshenko, on her advice chose to intentionally bomb and shell civilians. Killing civilians is a war crime. This puts Porosenko in the same league as Hitler and other war criminals of history.

Tee7467 -> vr13vr 14 Jul 2015 14:58

Ha, moderate rebels. Reminds me of Syria. Ukraine may be heading the same way.

JoePope 14 Jul 2015 14:54

Its hard to feel any sympathy for Kiev government and their Western sponsors- they brought this on themselves.
A joke photo was doing rounds on twitter this weekend with desperate looking Poroshenko holding up a sign which reads "Putin bring the army!"
That would be poetic justice.

ilyasilyas 14 Jul 2015 14:48

Interestingly, the western media did touch this topic despite the fact that it does not go along with the anti-Russia line. Let's see how this incident ends.

I suppose this is the end of the Right Sector, since the government machine is much stronger than a small organisation. Moreover, the Ukrainian media started to talk a lot about the RS, writing all sorts of crimes they committed and etc.

Maidan heroes are no longer heroes but criminals.

I just hope the country will climb out of the shithole it got in. I'm sure people of the Western part of Ukraine do not want war as well as people in the East. The whole thing just got out of control. Everybody shoot freeze and then start negotiating. It's very hard to negotiate when people shoot each other.

geedeesee 14 Jul 2015 14:40

These guys have no qualms about killing police officers - we saw that on Maiden - they haven't suddenly changed.

MaoChengJi 14 Jul 2015 14:37

Well, it is, of course, hard to tell what's going on there, what kinds of deals are being made, but indeed it sound like Poroshenko is trying to rein neonazis in a little bit, while Yatsenyuk, the PM and a Nuland's stooge, is betting on them. What a mess, what a shame.

vr13vr -> SHappens 14 Jul 2015 14:17

But remember, these armed nationalists were viewed as "moderate rebels." They were helping to overthrow the previous government and they were eager to fight in the East of the country. But then again, we've heard the story about the good and moderate rebels before.

Beckow 14 Jul 2015 14:16

Maidan raised expectations and shrunk resources. The inevitable disillusionment and bloody struggle for remaining resources will destroy Ukraine. The people in the West who aided the violent overthrow of the elected government, who over-promised and played geo-political games, they should be held accountable. From State Department to EU busy-bodies (Sikorski and Bildt), to media cheerleaders, to human rights professionals - all of them must explain what gave them the right to meddle and unravel a relatively prosperous country of over 40 million.

Poroshenko orders police "to disarm illegal groups", and one wonders why that has to be "ordered", why was post-Maidan tolerating armed groups? These are the wages of engaging in an armed street uprising, of Nuland giving cookies to armed demonstrators, EU politicians posing with assorted mobs as they were fighting police. Imagine any of this in any European country, imagine how quickly and brutally it would be suppressed, look at everything from Occupy, Frankfurt, kettling in London. So why was street uprising supported by EU in Kiev? And what can EU do now?

vr13vr 14 Jul 2015 14:15

"Right Sector grew in popularity after it played a lead role in the tumultuous mass protests that overthrew president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014"

So, after all the back and force, we finally agree that the infamous Maidan was led by the armed nationalist militia rather than peace loving democratic people who wanted to join EU? Ouch, that's the first step.

Pterinochilus 14 Jul 2015 14:15

That´s exactly what happens when you arm, encourage and embed yourself with armed neo-nazis.

SHappens 14 Jul 2015 14:11

What was bound to happen is happening. There is a long story of the good guys turning bad but they never learn. This is no exception, it could have been avoided in due time by not accepting these groups as units into the military for they have dangerous ideologies incompatible with democracy. What is more amazing though is that the EU supported these guys all along by remaining silent. As long as they were killing in the east of the country it was fine and that tells a lot about the whole Ukraine situation which is politically driven.

vr13vr 14 Jul 2015 14:11

"[The event] highlights Kiev's struggles with ... armed nationalist groups who have helped it fight pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. "

No, Kiev doesn't struggle with armed nationalist groups. It encouraged, organized and armed them. It even came up with the patriotically sounding name for them, "volunteers," so now they are pretty legitimate.

thenewstranger 14 Jul 2015 14:05

Oh, interesting. I suppose those guys are peacefull, democratic protesters from Maidan. Or maybe dictator Yanukovich masked in Right sector again kill it's own citizens.

IvanYur 14 Jul 2015 13:39

Finally western media are starting to report the fact that Poroshenko and his government have absolutely no control of the far right militia that got them in poeer and fought in East Ukraine.

No peace deals or Minsk agreements will be implemented while there are out of control and armed to the teeth people fighting in the east for either side. They do not care about agreements.

goatrider 14 Jul 2015 13:35

Not all unicorns and rainbows in Nulandistan it appears.

[Jul 14, 2015] Russia and the west are quits for good as far as any hope of alliances is concerned, because the west is just too untrustworthy

"...Sherr is the archetypal think tank expert. The most interesting part in that biographical sketch – was reading that he was born in New York and holds dual US-UK citizenship. "
.
"...The self-delusion, hypocrisy and deceit of Western leaders, policy makers and analysts has no limits. This panel exemplifies this. "
.
"...Whenever I see his name, though, I'm reminded of a piece he wrote on Ukraine years ago, long before Maidan. ... it's called "Realism About Ukraine Part I – Internal Conditions. James Sherr, Conflict Studies Research Centre, UK Defence Academy". Read it over carefully; this dates from June 2005, and I found his assessment of the competitors for power to be frank and realistic, especially that on Tymoshenko. "
.
"...I have no idea who this guy actually is but, just from that statement I would say he's an empty vessel in moral terms."

marknesop, July 10, 2015 at 7:56 am

I think Russia and the west are quits for good as far as any hope of alliances is concerned, because the west is just too untrustworthy. However, it is my personal opinion that much of the demonization of Putin is intended to make him respond in kind with bellicose rhetoric which will allow him to be cast as an unstable, ranting dictator. Moreover, he seems to see the trap or for whatever reason is avoiding it, choosing instead to keep his criticism mild, measured and slightly mocking. So if that is the strategy, it's failing pretty badly, and it is the western media which looks unhinged.
Published on 15 Jun 2015
What You Need To Know:
✓ Russia needs to win a conclusive victory fairly quickly because this conflict is not economically sustainable for them;
✓ Since the post-Cold War order was established Russia has wanted to discuss the new world order with the West;
✓ Some in the West now understand that this is long term struggle, but it is unclear how much longer some EU members states will support the sanctions;
✓ It is unlikely that Russia will target Georgia next, rather, the next two countries will be Moldova and Belarus because they are more vulnerable;
✓ Things are being achieved in Ukraine primarily because of the civil society which is increasingly strong and self-confident.

"The appearance of a stalemate is deceptive. If the West's sanctions remain in place and the oil price remains low it will be very difficult for the Russian state to function in the way it does now," James Sherr, associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House told Hromadske. The current occupation regime in Donbas is not sustainable economically and Russia no interest in subsidizing it, said Sherr, the situation, therefore, will not remain frozen forever.

"They [Russia] need to win a conclusive victory fairly quickly or time starts to work against them. This creates a dangerous situation because they are under pressure to do something more here," said Sherr. "It might not mean they will take Mariupol but it might mean the kind of military offensive that produced Minsk 1 and 2".

Since the post-Cold War order was established Russia has wanted to discuss the new world order with the West, said Sherr. Russia does not see this as conflict with Ukraine, it views as a conflict in Ukraine but with the West. According to Sherr, the solution from Russia's perspective is to have that conversation with the West, not only about Ukraine but about elsewhere in the former Soviet space, central and eastern Europe.

Some in the West now understand that this is long term struggle, said Sherr. In 2015, the West has been more realistic about what it is facing compared to 2014, when many were talking about the 'Ukraine Crisis' – as if it was something short term. However, the West is also more tired now than it was last year, explained Sherr. Several EU states who imposed sanctions on Russia at the cost of their own economies thought that they would have an effect within a few months. It might take a couple of years and thus it is questionable whether or not they will continue to support the policy, Sherr told Hromadske.

In terms of developments in the rest of the region, according to Sherr, it is unlikely that Russia will target Georgia next. Firstly, the Georgians are very astute and secondly, NATO has a much higher profile there so there is more certainty that they will respond. The next two countries will be Moldova and Belarus because they are more vulnerable. Nobody wants to see Putin defeated more than Alexander Lukashenko because he knows if he is not defeated in Ukraine, he will be next, said Sherr.If Moldova is attacked it is far from certain if the EU or NATO will respond. Romania would respond but it is unclear how. At the moment Russia is doing everything to make Moldova dysfunctional, said Sherr. In the Baltic region, furthered Sherr, one of the dangers is miscalculated accident. It is unclear what could happen if a Russian military plane collided with an SAS Boeing, for instance.

Sherr also discussed the question of Ukraine's energy dependence. According to him, steps have been taken towards making Ukraine more energy efficient. Ukraine is now surviving with a very low level of imports from Russia compared to what it was. However, there is still work to be done improving investor confidence.

One of the worst realities for Ukraine, according to Sherr, is that the system and the culture of power has survived 2 revolutions and is now surviving a war. Things are being achieved in Ukraine primarily because of the civil society which is increasingly strong and self-confident. The state, however, is still a major problem for people "so far much more talk about change than real change.

Hromadske International's Nataliya Gumenyuk spoke with James Sherr on May 28, 2015.

et Al, July 10, 2015 at 2:46 pm
Another prick in the wall.
Warren, July 10, 2015 at 7:43 am

Published on 21 Apr 2015
Lecture by James Sherr about Russia's Challenge to the West' organized by Center for Security and Strategic Research, March 4, 2015.

James Sherr is one of top experts on Russia in the United Kingdom. He is an associate fellow and former head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs "Chatham House".

He was a fellow of the Conflict Studies Research Centre of the UK Ministry of Defense from 1995 to 2008. He has published extensively on Soviet and Russian military, security and foreign policy. He has spent last weeks in Kiev.

Moscow Exile, July 10, 2015 at 8:15 am
James Sherr
Warren, July 10, 2015 at 8:55 am
Sherr is the archetypal think tank expert. The most interesting part in that biographical sketch – was reading that he was born in New York and holds dual US-UK citizenship.

Sherr and Lucas are the most erudite and loquacious Russophobes in the Anglosphere.

marknesop, July 10, 2015 at 10:53 am
Whenever I see his name, though, I'm reminded of a piece he wrote on Ukraine years ago, long before Maidan. I never had any success linking it because it was an odd document, and the link always led to the wrong story, about an air show in Lvov. Let me see if I can find it again.

Yeah; it's still a weird one, it opens in a new window, so you'll have to google it yourself; it's called "Realism About Ukraine Part I – Internal Conditions. James Sherr, Conflict Studies Research Centre, UK Defence Academy". Read it over carefully; this dates from June 2005, and I found his assessment of the competitors for power to be frank and realistic, especially that on Tymoshenko.

He describes her as "an electoral ally [of Yushchenko] but a personal rival, is not averse to confrontation and seems determined to exercise authority without limit. If Yushchenko has confused leadership with inspiration, she has confused it with control and, to the astonishment of many in Ukraine's business sector, these controls are taking the form of Soviet style 'administrative measures' which extend to the micro economy.". Later he opines (unclear whether this was Tymoshenko's decision or Yushchenko's, but I believe the former), "But this defence cannot be stretched to justify price controls on meat or subsidies on electricity, and the decision to increase public sector salaries by almost 57 per cent flies in the face of economic reality". You go, James.

Northern Star, July 10, 2015 at 10:27 am
"James Sherr is one of top fascist Nazi moron stooges.."

end of story

Warren, July 10, 2015 at 7:45 am

Published on 14 May 2015
Lennart Meri Conference 2015

Saturday, April 25

Tim Owen, July 10, 2015 at 3:45 pm
Might return but only got as far as 4:49 where his nibs suggested that ALL the EU wants is a "borderlands" – oh, the irony – that is, what was it?… "quiet, stable and prosperous" while the inscrutable Russians positively YEARN for a humanitarian disaster on its, you know, ACTUAL border.

I have no idea who this guy actually is but, just from that statement I would say he's an empty vessel in moral terms.

Warren , July 10, 2015 at 7:17 pm
The self-delusion, hypocrisy and deceit of Western leaders, policy makers and analysts has no limits. This panel exemplifies this.
xxx July 10, 2015 at 5:16 pm
Give it a few years at this rate, and you'll be able to get gobbled by your boyfriend on the sidewalk and people will surround you and applaud while the police do a burlesque pantomime beside you in their rainbow vinyl uniforms. I am curious in an academic sort of way to see how far the pendulum will swing as the western democracies vie with one another to see who can be the most gay and hedonistic. This has all happened before, for anyone who never studied history – it was called the Roman Empire. And it will end in tears; you'll see.
Pavlo Svolochenko , July 10, 2015 at 5:21 pm
More recently, in Weimar.

Imagine a visitor to Berlin in 1925. Would he even recognise the place ten years later?

Warren, July 10, 2015 at 7:13 pm
The acceptance of homosexuality is the most potent example of a civilisation that is decadent. Tolerating and indulging in such degeneracy and perversion, demonstrate that such a civilisation no longer cares for its future and no longer has any morals.
marknesop, July 10, 2015 at 9:57 pm
I am absolutely fine with the acceptance of it, because it is not a "problem" for society like alcoholism or chainsaw juggling or diabetes. Healthy homosexuals pay taxes and consume products and laugh and drink and have fun like all the rest of us.

Although I am liberal in my politics I am a social conservative in that I do not care for overt sexual displays in a public setting unless it is a strip club, where presumably you knew what you were getting into when you came in and that's your choice. I do not want to know how you and your partner do it, and I don't want to be forced into thinking about it by having to run down an endless rainbow tunnel surrounded by prancing boys in pink jockstraps.

Just keep it to yourself and confine your lust to significant glances exchanged with one another, and we'll be just fine. Being forced to play gooseberry to overt gay displays is embarrassing and uncomfortable for me, and just when we were beginning to internalize the lesson that thinking about your fellow citizens' feelings was important, the tolerance train pulled into the station and the rule book was thrown away in favour of celebrating homosexuality.

I don't have anything against it – I'm just not interesting in being dragged into a neverending boogie of celebration of it. I'm even less interested in it just so my country can thumb its nose at other countries and say "Beat that, you anti-gay brute!"

[Jul 14, 2015] Canada's Embassy Gave Shelter to Maidan Protesters in Kiev

Sputnik International

The Canadian embassy in Kiev was used as a haven for anti-government protesters during the uprising that toppled the government of former President Viktor Yanukovych, Canadian media reported.

Former Maidan Activists Start Fighting Against Ukrainian Police - Reports
"It began, according to several sources in Kiev and Ottawa, when one of the protesters being chased by riot police waved a Canadian passport at embassy security. Once the door was open, the individual was quickly followed by other demonstrators armed with sticks and paving stones," The Canadian Press reported on Sunday.

Roman Waschuk, the current Canadian ambassador in Kiev, confirmed the account in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.

He acknowledged the protesters were camped in the main lobby for at least a week, which is something neither the country's Foreign Minister nor the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ever publicly stated.

"I understand there was a Canadian passport holder associated in some way with the group," Waschuk noted adding that opening of the embassy doors was "a gesture designed to react and to reach out to the people suffering in the turmoil."

But some of Canada's European allies, speaking on anonimity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said the fact protesters were allowed to stay for so long and operate freely made it appear Canada was an active participant in regime change, and not just lending morale support.

[Jul 14, 2015] Ukraine government in armed standoff with nationalist militia

"... Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing.
False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical and only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a say."

.
"...this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor Ukrainian people. This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists were used as a proxy force to oust Gaddafi."

The Guardian

HollyOldDog gimmeshoes 13 Jul 2015 20:40

The Georgian authorities have asked Interpol to put a Red notice on Mikheil Saakashvili as the request to Ukraine to return him for trial in Georgia was refused.
ww3orbust PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 20:22
That does not detract from the fact that the Ukranian cabinet has been chosen by the US state department. Natives of the US, Georgia and Lithuania were hastily granted Ukrainian citizenship in order to maintain an iron grip on Ukraine, while accusing Putin of appointing majors or governors - in his capacity as head of state?
ww3orbust 13 Jul 2015 20:16
Amazing, nothing at all mentioned by the BBC. It does not fit in to their narrative to see the country descend into a new stage of anarchy, between the people who murdered police and protesters on Maidan square, and the US state department installed cabinet. Presumably if Right Sector refuse to disarm and continue torturing civilians and murdering police, the BBC will continue to ignore it and focus instead on its Russo-phobic narrative, while accusing Russia of propaganda with the self-righteous piety that only the BBC are capable of. Or god forbid, more stories about what colour stool our future king has produced this week.
jgbg Omniscience 13 Jul 2015 18:42

Diverse Unity sounds much better than Nazi

http://rt.com/files/news/russia-national-unity-day-celebrations-976/russian-attend-demonstration-national-261.jpg

The thing is, Ukraine is unique in allowing their Nazi thugs to be armed and have some semi-official status. Everywhere else (including Russia), governments are looking to constrain the activities of Nazis and prosecute them where possible.

jgbg Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 18:26

If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.

Them and Svoboda. If it had just been Orange Revolution II, with a simple change of Jewish oligarchs in charge, there might have been some complaints but little more. It is the Russian-hating far right that has brought about the violence and everything that has happened since.

PrinceEdward GreatMountainEagle 13 Jul 2015 18:22

Last I heard, Ukraine owes China billions for undelivered Grain.

HollyOldDog gimmeshoes 13 Jul 2015 18:11

But the Euro maidan press is just an Ukrainian rag that invents stories to support its corrupt government in Kiev.

jgbg PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 17:54

I forget the article, but in the comments I mentioned that multiple Georgians were being appointed to high level positions by Kiev, and some Russophobe called me a liar.

Not a few days later, Shakashvilli was appointed governor of Odessa. An ex-president of another country, as governor of a province in another one! Apparently, none of the millions upon millions of Ukrainians were qualified for the job.

Sakashvilli's former Minister of Internal Affairs in Georgia, Eka Zguladze, is First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Of course, the Georgian people removed these chumps from power the first chance they got but the Ukrainian electorate haven't had any say in the appointments of foreigners in their country.

Vatslav Rente , 13 Jul 2015 17:44

Well ... when it comes to Ukraine, the need to stock up on popcorn. This bloody and unpredictable plot is not even in the "Game of Thrones." And this is only the middle of the second season.
Today Speaker of the "RS" Andrew Sharaskin, said: Sports Complex in Mukachevo where the shooting occurred, was used as the base of the separatists DNR.
- A place 1,000 kilometers from Donetsk! But it's a great excuse to murder the guard in the café and wounded police officers.
I think tomorrow will say that there have seen Russian Army tanks and Putin - 100%
"Ukraine is part of Europe" - the slogans of the Maidan in action...

jgbg gimmeshoes , 13 Jul 2015 17:42

Pravyi Sektor were not wrong. However, you cannot have armed groups cleaning up corruption outside the law...that only works in Gotham City.

Right Sector weren't trying to clean up corruption, they were simply trying to muscle in on the cigarette smuggling business. If Right Sector cared about crime and public order, they wouldn't be driving around, armed to the teeth, in vehicles stolen in the EU. (In the video linked in the article, all of their vehicles have foreign number plates. At least one of those vehicles is on the Czech police stolen vehicle database: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/pravy-sektor-mel-v-mukacevu-auta-s-ceskymi-spz-fqj-/zahranicni.aspx?c=A150713_102110_zahranicni_jj)

Right Sector are no strangers to such thuggery - remember their failed attempt to extort a casino in Odessa?

Laurence Johnson, 13 Jul 2015 17:18
The EU and the US have stated on many occasions that there are "No Right Wing Nationalists" operating in Ukraine and its simply propaganda by Putin.

So there shouldn't be anything to worry about should there ?


Stas Ustymenko hfakos 13 Jul 2015 15:15

Yes, yes. You seem to tolerate Medvedchuk and Baloga mafias way better, for years.
Transcarpathian REgion is the most corrupt in all of Ukraine (which is quite a fit). What we see here is a gang war in fatigues.


tanyushka Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 15:14

sorry i posted the same above... i was just to hasty.. sorry again...

in the main picture of the same article it's interesting to notice the age of most of the conscripted soldiers... they are in their 30's, theirs 40's and even in their 50's... it's forced conscription, they are not volunteers... while all the DPR & LPR soldiers are real volunteers...

an uncle, the father of a cousin, was conscripted in Kherson... my cousin had to run away to South American to say with an aunt to avoid conscription... many men are doing it in Ukraine nowadays... not because they are cowards but because they don't want to kill their brothers & sisters for the benefit of the oligarchs and their NATO masters (and mistresses...)

did you know that all the conscripts have to pay for their own uniforms and other stuff, while in the National Guard and the oligarchs batallions everything is top quality and for free... including bulletproof vests and other implements courtesy of NATO

Demi Boone 13 Jul 2015 15:13

Well finally they reveal themselves. These Ukraine Nationalists are the people who instigated the anarchy and shootings at Maidan and used it as an excuse to wrongfully drive out an elected President and in the chaos that followed bring in a coup Government which represents only West-Ukraine and suppress' East-Ukraine. You are looking at the face of the real Maidan and not the dream that a lot of people have tried to paint it to be.

Stas Ustymenko MartinArvay 13 Jul 2015 15:11

Many Right Sector members are indeed patriots. But it looks like the organisation itself is, sadly, much more useful for providing thugs for hire than "justice".

BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:20

But seriously, the naval base is probably the reason, it is too important for some interests to have a less-reliable (Ukrainian) in charge, this is a job only for the most trusted poodles. If things had gone differently, the tie-eatimng chap would have been appointed Mayor of Sebastopol.

BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:15

There appears to be a Quisling-shortage in Ukraine at present.

Stas Ustymenko obscurant 13 Jul 2015 13:32

More accurately, Kolomoyskiy is Ukrainian oligarch. Who happens to be ethnically, culturally and, by all accounts, religiously, a Jew.

Stas Ustymenko Kaiama 13 Jul 2015 13:24

Ukrainian Volunteer Corps of the Right Sector fighting in Donbass is two battalions. How is this a "key organization"? They are a well-known brand and fought bravely on some occasions, but the wider org is way too eager to brandish arms outside of combat or training. They will be reigned in, one way or another, and soon.

GameOverManGameOver Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 12:02

Shh shh shh. This news does not exist yet in the western media, therefore it's nothing but Russian propaganda.

Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 11:54

It gets worse - soldiers from the UA are now refusing to follow orders in protest against the total anarchy sweeping the chain of command, and their lack of rest and equipment.

Story here.

EugeneGur , 13 Jul 2015 11:21

Tensions have been rising between the government and the Right Sector militia that has helped it fight pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.

Finally, the Guardian decided to report the actual new after satisfying itself with ample discussion of the quality of Russian cheeses. Right sector "helped" to fight "separatists"? Really? Does Alec Luhn know that there are currently two (!) RS battalions at the front and 19 (!) inside Ukraine? They are some warriors. Now they are occupying themselves fighting as criminals they are for the control of contraband.

At the ATO zone, they help consists of plundering, murdering and raping the local population. They enter a village, take everything of value from houses and then blow them up. They rape women and girls as young as 10 years old. They've been doing this for more than a year, and we've been telling you that for more than a year. But apparently in the fight against "pro-Russian separatists" everything is good. These crimes are so widespread, even the Ukrainian "government" is worried this will eventually becomes impossible to deny. Some battalions such as Shakhtersk and Aidar have been officially accused of crimes and ompletely or partially reformed.
Examples:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/EUR50/040/2014/en/
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bfb_1413804655

Jeremn, 13 Jul 2015 11:16

Ukraine, what a mess. As though it was ever about the people. It was a grab for resources, 19-century style. But with 21st-century stakes. You can see what the West is after when you look at the US-Ukraine Business Council. It bring NATO, Monsanto and the Heritage Foundation under one roof:

The US-Ukraine Business Council's 16-member Executive Committee is packed with US agribusiness companies, including representatives from Monsanto, John Deere, DuPont Pioneer, Eli Lilly, and Cargill.

The Council's 20 'senior Advisors' include James Greene (Former Head of NATO Liason Office Ukraine); Ariel Cohen (Senior Research Fellow for The Heritage Foundation); Leonid Kozachenko (President of the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation); six former US Ambassadors to Ukraine, and the former ambassador of Ukraine to the US, Oleh Shamshur.

Stas Ustymenko Jeremn 13 Jul 2015 11:14

You'd be surprised, but I like Bandera (controversial as he was) way more than I trust some people who wrap themselves in his red-and-black Rebel banner. Yarosh included. Banderite rebellion ended 60 years ago. Its major goal was establishing a "united, free Ukrainian state"; by contrast, stated ultimate goals of the Right Sector are way murkier; I'm not sure even most of the movement's members are clear on what these are.
With present actions, Right Sector has a huge image problem in the West. If it will come to all-out conflict, no doubt the West will back Poroshenko government over a loose confederation of armed dudes linked by the thin thread of 30ies ideology (suspect even then). And the West will be right.

Stas Ustymenko Nik2 13 Jul 2015 11:03

Methinks you're way overselling a thug turf war as "major political event. Truth is, the region has been long in the hands of organized crime. The previous regime incorporated and controlled almost all organized crime in the country, hence no visible conflict. Now, individual players try to use temporary uncertainty to their advantage. Right Sector claims they were trying to fight the smuggling, but this doesn't sound plausible. The word is, what's behind the events is struggle for control over lucrative smuggling between two individuals (who are both "businessmen" and "politicians", members of Parliament). Both are old-school players, formerly affiliated with Yanukovitch party. One just was savvy enough to buy himself some muscle under Right Sector banner. Right Sector will either have to straighten out its fighters (which it may not be able to do) or disappear as a political player. I fail to see how people see anything "neo-Nazi" in this gang shootout.

PaddyCannuck Cavirac 13 Jul 2015 10:21

Nobody here is an apologist for Stalin, who was a brutal and cruel despot, and the deportations of the Crimean Tatars were quite indefensible. However, a few observations might lend some perspective.

1. Crimea has been invaded and settled by an almost endless succession of peoples over the millennia. The Crimean Tatars (who are of Turkic origin) were by no means the first, nor indeed the last, and cannot in any meaningful sense be regarded as the indigenous people of Crimea.
2. The Crimean Tatars scarcely endeared themselves to the Russians, launching numerous raids, devastating many towns, including the burning of Moscow in 1571, and sending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Russians into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
3. The deportations took place in 1942 - 1943 against the backdrop of World War II, when a lot of bad stuff happened, including -
4. The American (and also Canadian) citizens of Japanese ethnicity who had their property confiscated and were likewise shipped off to camps. Their treatment, if anything, was worse.

Sevastopol, Pearl Harbor. What's the difference? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

tanyushka Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 10:10

http://rt.com/news/207899-un-anti-nazism-resolution/

http://www.un.org/en/ga/third/69/docs/voting_sheets/L56.Rev1.pdf

do these links answer your question?

tanyushka 13 Jul 2015 09:55

meanwhile last night & this morning, just to distract the people of what is going on in the West, Kiev launched a massive shelling over Donetsk and other places in Donbass using weapons forbbiden by the Minsk agreements, including Tor missiles, one of which fell at a railway station but didn't explode... it was defused by emergency workers but the proof is there if you care to see... it was thesecond biggest attack since the cease fire...

Nik2 6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:53

Not exactly. By now, BBC has made good coverage of these events in Ukrainian and Russian languages, but not in English. It looks like BBC considers that Western public does not deserve the politically sad truth about armed clashes between "champions of Maidan Revolution" and "new democratic authorities, fighting corruption". Western public should not be in doubt about present-day "pro-European" Ukraine. And "The Guardian" still has only one article on the issue that could be a turning point in Ukrainian politics. This is propaganda, not informing about or analyzing really serious political events.

VictorWhisky 13 Jul 2015 09:51

This is the IMF hired guns now going after the very people who helped the Wall Street IMF shysters in the illegitimate coup and the set up of the illegitimate Kiev junta, a mix of half Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian mongrels. Furthermore, instead of bringing in the people who helped overthrow Janukovich into the government fold, the IMF is placing it's foreign collaborators in ministerial positions by making them instant Ukrainian citizens, while keeping the right wing, without whose help the coup would not have succeeded, out of government and slowly trying to eliminate them with their private foreign mercenary force. Madame "F*ck the EU Nuland from the US state department bordello, a devout Zionist, enticed these supposed Ukrainian NAZIs to help her in her dirty deeds, no doubt with promises of power sharing. So madame Nuland was perfectly willing to get in bed with the Ukrainian NAZI devils (her Jewish friend should be proud) and when the dirty deed was done, she is now turning against Ukrainian nationalists in the attempt to have outside forces in control of Ukraine. Madame Nuland is not as intelligent or capable as portrayed, because if she was, she would have known Ukraine has a very delicate and very complicated political structure and history with nearly half the country speaking Russian and more loyal to the Russians than to the US. An intelligent person familiar with Ukrainian history would know any attempt of placing a US stooge in Kiev would certainly result in a civil war. She no doubt got her position not by intelligence but by connections. More than 6000 Ukrainians, human beings, innocent men women and children, have died in madame Nuland's engineered coup, putting her in league with her mentor, Henry Kissinger, aka the butcher of Vietnam. That intelligent idiot's policies resulted in the death of 3 million Vietnamese and 50,000 young Americans. Does madame Nuland intend to sacrifice that many Ukrainians to prove her ultimate stupidity?

Jeremn Luminaire 13 Jul 2015 09:51

The conscripts didn't want to shoot their fellow Ukrainians. The nationalists don't believe the people in the east are their fellow Ukrainians.


Jeremn DrMacTomjim 13 Jul 2015 09:43

Yes. But meanwhile the Atlantic Council tells us this is why more Ukrainians admire nationalists.

Because they were lovely guys, evidently, and their "popularity" has nothing to do with armed thugs beating you up if you say anything against them (or the state prosecuting you for denying or questioning their heroism).


Jeremn jezzam 13 Jul 2015 09:35


Ukrainian media, reporting Ukrainian government official:

In his article for the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (Weekly Mirror) newspaper Ukrainian Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema wrote that 74 peaceful citizens and 12 policemen had been killed in Kyiv downtown on February 18-20, 2014, while 180 citizens and over 180 law enforcers had suffered gunshot wounds.

12 police dead in two days, 180 wounded with gunshot wounds.

Still Kremlin lies?


Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 09:30

Thank God Ukraine is finally free and democratic. The old autocratic regime actually had the gall to make running street battles illegal - but those dark days are in the past. In the liberated Ukraine you are free spend the dollar a day you get paid on a bullet proof vest so the rampant Nazi street gangs don't kill you.


Jeremn SHappens 13 Jul 2015 09:26

You'd be surprised, there are Bandera-lovers in the UK too. There's a Bandera museum. And there is this lot, teaching Christian values to children. And telling them that Bandera was a hero. Future Right Sector supporters being crafted as we type.

6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:24

The Ukrainian sub-saharan African minimum wage is now being accompanied by Somali-style politics.

Luckily, the Russians have liberated Crimea so piracy on the high seas isn't an option for the Ukrainians.


6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:18

Apparently, UAVs generously supplied to Ukrainians by the Canadian taxpayers are being put to good use smuggling cigarettes into Slovakia.

6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:12

The BBC are bravely sticking to their decision not to report this story. Congratulations are in order for such dedication.

The graun protected its readership from this confusing information for 24 hours and then caved to the temptation to report news. Too bad.


aucontraire2 13 Jul 2015 08:36

Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing.
False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical and only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a say.

SomersetApples 13 Jul 2015 08:25

The country is bankrupt; the Kiev putschists are selling off the country's assets to their New York allies, the oligarchs and Nazis are at war against each other and the illegal putschist government and now toilet mouth Nuland is back on the scene. Looks like a scene form Dante's Inferno.

todaywefight Polvilho 13 Jul 2015 07:54

Which Russian invasion will this be the of he approximately 987 mentioned by Poroshenko and our man Yatz...or are you referring to the people of the AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA's (yes that was what was called after the 1994 referendum) massive wishes to (like Donbass) go against a government who illegally dismissed an elected president a wish that was reflected on a referendum which was allowed by their constitution 18(7)

Bosula Scepticbladderballs 13 Jul 2015 07:38

Yes. Most of the protesters are good people who just want a better deal in life.


monteverdi1610 13 Jul 2015 06:54

Remember all those CIF threads when those of us who pointed to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine were immediately called ' Putinbots ' ?
PS/ Apologies would be the order of the day , perhaps ?

Sturney 13 Jul 2015 06:49

Apparently this conflict is over. Temporarily over. Anyway in ever-contracting economy, in a Mariana trench between Russia and EU, in the most totalitarian country in history, such conflicts will continue. Since Nuland tossed yeast in the outhouse nobody can stop fermentation of sh*t. Help yourself with some beer and shrimps. I am looking forward when these masses splash out to EU, preferably to Poland. Must be fun to watch. (Lipspalm)

Justin Obisesan 13 Jul 2015 06:33

In the run-up to the Euro 2012 football tournament, jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine, I remember how the media in this country worked themselves into a frenzy harping on about the presence of violent neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. After the removal of Mr Yanukovych from office, the same media organisations changed their tune by describing any talk of neo- Nazis in Ukraine as "Russian propaganda". The Western media coverage of the Ukrainian crises has been so blatantly pro-Kiev and anti-Donbass that their claims of impartiality and objectivity cannot be taken seriously anymore.


Jeremn jgbg 13 Jul 2015 06:16

It is fine when they are shooting at Donetsk, but not so good when they use the same tactics in western Ukraine.

Azov are the same, violent neo-Nazi thugs given authority, and this article notes that PrivatBank is the bank that services requests for donations to the Azov funds, using J P Morgan as intermidiary.

Neither Azov nor Right Sector want peace. On 3 July 4,000 men from these units protested in Kiev, calling for resumption of the war against the eastern provinces.

They favour ethnic cleansing.


Jeremn William Fraser 13 Jul 2015 06:10

The people who support Bandera are in western Ukraine. They are the ones who say Stalin starved the Ukrainian people.

Trouble is, in the 1930s, western Ukraine belonged to Poland.

It was the Russians, eastern Ukrainians and other Soviet people who starved, not the western Ukrainians.


Kefirfan 13 Jul 2015 06:02

Good, good. Let the democracy flow through you...

Pwedropackman SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:53

It will be interesting to see which side the US and Canada will support. Probably Poroshenko and the Oligarchs because the Right Sector is not so happy about the ongoing sales of Ukraine infrastructure to US corporates.


SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:14

Harpers' babies are out manifesting, supporting the good guys:

"Supporters of Ukraine's Right Sector extremist group rallied in Ottawa Sunday amid the radicals' ongoing standoff with police in western Ukraine."

The rally outside the Ukrainian embassy was organized by the Right Sector's representative office in the Canadian capital, 112 Ukraine TV channel reported, citing the Facebook account of the so-called Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.


careforukraine 13 Jul 2015 05:09

I wonder how long it will be before the us denounces nazi's in ukraine?
Kind of seems like we have seen this all before.
Almost like how ISIS were just freedom fighters that needed our support until ?.....
Well we all know what happened there.

Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 05:04

If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.


GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 04:41

Yes, I agree, they do wreck the economy. That was my point. Russia want's strong economies to do business with, not broken economies that only ask for financial aid.

Like I said, no evidence of Russian troops in Donbass and South Ossetia asked for the presence of Russian troops to deter the Georgian government from trying another invasion.

And organisations like CIS are meant to expand economic ties. Just like the EU I suppose. They function in pretty much the same way with everyone getting a chance to lead. So I don't know why that should be a bad thing. Since the EU is not interested in admitting Russia why can't Russia go to other organisations?

VladimirM Dmitriy Grebenyuk 13 Jul 2015 04:26

It's a poisonous sarcasm, I think. But I've heard that RS accuse the Ukrainian government of being pro-Putin as the govermment accuse them of being Russian agents. Surreal a bit.


stewfen FOHP46 13 Jul 2015 04:24

The west would not have dialogue with Russia because it was not what Washington wanted. Washington wanted to push a wedge between Russia and EU at any cost even 6500 lives and unfortunately they succeeded


GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 03:54

I'll admit that frozen conflicts could be useful to Russia. But only from a security point of view. And why not, exactly? NATO is Russia's biggest threat, so it would make sense for the government to want to avoid it expanding any further. I understand your misgivings since you're speaking from the position that NATO should expand to deter Russi…I mean 'Iran', but surely you understand that Russia wanting to prevent that makes logical sense? Sure, it's at someone else's expense but let's not pretend that big countries doing something at someone else's expense is a new and revolutionary concept reserved only to Russia. And the Georgian conflict dates back to the very early 90's.

From an economic point of view though, no sense at all. Frozen conflicts usually bring economic barriers. Believe it or not Russia's priority isn't expansion, but the economy. And trade with it's neighbours is an important element of the Russian economy. It's very hard to trade with areas that are in the middle of a frozen conflict. So in that sense the last thing Russia would want are profitable areas in a frozen conflict around it's borders hampering it's economic growth.

And none of this has anything to do with Marioupol.


Debreceni 13 Jul 2015 03:38

The Right Sector does not exist, or if it does, it has been created by Moscow. The crisis in Greece is also the work of Russian agents. The ISIS is financed and trained by Putin. Ebola was cooked up in a laboratory in Saint Petersburg. Look for the Russian!


Kaiama PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 02:50

We don't know if PS were also doing it as well or just poking their noses into someone else's business. Who started it? I doubt the correct answer will ever be known. Two unsavoury groups arguing about an illegal business. The problem is that the MP is an MP whereas PS is a national organisation.


DrMacTomjim 13 Jul 2015 02:04

"Note to Ukraine: Time to Reconsider Your Historic Role Models" Someone wrote this a bit late.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/note-to-ukraine-time-to-r_b_7453506.html


DrMacTomjim hisimperialmajesty 13 Jul 2015 02:01

"neo-Chekists" That's new to me.... Are you sure they are not "Just doing their jobs" ?
Did you read the Nafeez Ahmed piece someone linked ? Here (if you didn't)

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092

And this from Foreign Affairs

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2015-02-16/obamas-libya-debacle

It's never the US....it's never the West.....
(you know, to balance things) : )


todaywefight 13 Jul 2015 01:53

If any one on the other side, the dark side, ever thought that these lot will hold hands with any one, lay down their arms and sing Kumbaya, uou are either utterly naive or willfully ignorant. Apparently, these lot have 23 battalions, armed to their teeth, the added bonus for the Privy Sektor is that , due to expedience and cowardice , they have just made legal and incorporated into the Ukrainian army, Kyiv is in a highway to nowhere.

Incidentally, unlike the maidan demonstrations which essentially were only in Kyiv there are demonstrations in more than a dozen cities, and have established dozen of check points already and Yarosh a member of the VT. have clearly instructed them to fight if necessary.


GameOverManGameOver Omniscience 13 Jul 2015 01:35

So? Yes there are nationalists in Russia, just like everywhere else. You get a gold star for googling. Shall I get some articles with European and American nationalists to parade around to make a vague point? If you want I can get you an article of Lithuanians dressed up as the Waffen SS parading around Vilnius. That's Lithuania the EU and Nato member. Funny how EU principles disappear when it's one of their own violating them.

You seem to be missing the point entirely. While all countries have their nationalists, those nationalists are a very small minority, have no power, have no popular support, have no seats in government, usually derided by the majority of the population and they certainly aren't armed to the teeth roaming around the country killing, torturing and kidnapping people with the blessing of their government


HollyOldDog Joe way 13 Jul 2015 00:09

The Right Sector were / are Ukrains Storm Troopers who have had more advanced training by the Americans. If the Right Sector turn on the Kiev Government they will be difficult to defeat, and who knows if the civilian population of Ukraine may join in the 'fun' by ousting the current unpopular Ukrainian government.


sorrentina 12 Jul 2015 23:35

this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor Ukrainian people. This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists were used as a proxy force to oust Gaddafi.

annamarinja jgbg 12 Jul 2015 23:31

The threshold has been guessed impatiently by the US neocons (while the provocateur Higgins/ Bellingcat fed the gullible the fairy tales about Russian army in Ukraine). The US needs desperately a real civil war in Ukraine, the Ukrainians be damned. Just look what the US-sponsored "democracy on the march" has produced in the Middle East. Expect the same bloody results in eastern Europe.


annamarinja obscurant 12 Jul 2015 23:25

perhaps you do not realize that your insults are more appropriate towards the poor Ukrainians that have been left destitute by the cooky-carrying foreigners and their puppets in Kiev. The Ukrainian gold reserve has disappeared... meanwhile, the US Congress has shamed the US State Dept for collaborating with Ukrainian neo-nazis. Stay tuned. But do not expect to hear real news from your beloved Faux News.

annamarinja quorkquork 12 Jul 2015 23:14

the jihadists in Ukraine are the integral part of Iraqization of Ukraine. The lovers of Nuland's cookies are still in denial that Ukraine was destined by the US plutocrats to become a sacrificial lamb in a fight to preserve the US dollar hegemony.


Bud Peart 12 Jul 2015 22:59

Well we always knew it would end this way. With a stalemate in the war with the East the Right wing paramilitaries and private oligarch militias (whom the west funded and trained) have gone completely feral and are now in fighting directly with whats left of the Ukrainian National Army. This is pretty much the rode to another breakaway in Galacia which would effectively end the Ukraine as a functional state.

The government should move as fast as possible to get a decent federal structure (copy switzerland) in place before the whole of the West goes into revolt as well.


DelOrtoyVerga LostJohnny 12 Jul 2015 22:38

That is what you get when you put fascists in your government.

I rather reword it to

That is what you get when you enable and rely on thugish pseudo-fascist radical para-military groups to impose order by force and violence against dissident segments of your own population (which is armed to the teeth probably by Russia)


Bosula Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 22:37

What do you think it is?

There were several people identified directly or indirectly in this BBC story whose stories should have been formally pursued by legal authorities in Kiev.

If you lived in the West you would understand that we call these references as possible 'leads' - you follow these 'leads' and see where they take you. That is what Western police do.

The story says that Kiev didn't want to follow up any of these points. Why? What harm could this do?

You state that you do not understand the point that this BBC journalist was making. But I have in a fair way tried to to explain the point that the BBC was making.

This story caused quite a stir went it came out - and the BBC chose to stick with it and support their British reporter. In an edited and shorter form the story is still on the BBC - the editing is also acknowledged by the BBC.

Do you think the BBC should have blocked or not published this investigative piece?

If so - why?

And why hasn't Kiev followed up these issues?

Have I addressed your point yet?


HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 21:34

I am just watching a program recorded earlier. Hiroshima: The Aftermath. I have got past the part when the Japanese 'survivors' had to drink from the pools of Black Rain ( highly radioactive) and watched the part when American Army Tourists visited the city to take a few photos ( no medical help though) while gawking at the gooks. In fact the Japanese civilians recieved no medical assistance at all from the Americans. The commentator just said that they were just there to study the effects of nuclear radiation on a civilian population. These nuclear bombs were just dropped on Japan to save One Day of the surrender of the Japanese forces.

The next documtary I will watch another day is the sinking of the Tirpitz by the RAF using Tallboy bombs. At least this had a useful pupose in helping to stop the destruction of the North Atlantic convoys, sending aid to Russia. That aid along with the rebuilding of the Soviet Armies helped the Soviet Union to destroy the invading Nazi forces and provided a Second Front to the Western Allies to invade Normandy. A lot of good can be achieved when the East and West work together - maybe avoiding the worst effects of Global Warming but the Americans only seem to want to spend Trillions $ building more powerful nuclear weapons. Is this all that America has now, an Arms Industry - I can see it now, cooling the planet with a Nuclear Winter.


HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 20:33

The USA caused the chaos in Ukraine so they must pay the billions of $ to fix it then leave Ukraine alone.


6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:29

One of the amusing features of the Soviet media was the long silences it maintained on possibly embarrassing breaking news until it became clear what the Party Line was.

Eventually, a memo would go out from Mikhail Suslov's office to various media outlets and the silence would be broken.

At least everyone knew exactly how that system worked. What is happening with the British media is much more murky.

The beeb/graun seem to be the Pravda/Izvestia, whilst the torygraph is a sort of Trybuna Ludu - ie real news very occasionally appears in it.

6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:08

So, after a mere 24 hours the Graun ran a story on Mukachevo. The Torygraph actually had the nerve to run the AFP wire report more or less straight away.

The BBC are still keeping shtum.

The Beeb/Graun complex have well and truly had the frighteners put on them.

PrinceEdward Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 20:07

There's no doubt. I agree that the MP was probably running cigarettes, but also Right Sektor was going to muscle in.

If you asked somebody 3 years ago if Ukraine would be rocked by armed bands with RPGs and Light Machine Guns fighting in towns, they would have thought you were crazy.

This isn't Russia, this is the Ultranats/Neo-Nazis.


PrinceEdward obscurant 12 Jul 2015 20:05

Right, it's the people in Donbass who bury 14th SS Division veterans with full honors, push for full pensions to surviving Hiwi and SS Collaborators... not those in Lvov. Uh huh.


BMWAlbert 12 Jul 2015 20:04

11 months of investigations by the newKiev regime, attempting to implicate the the prior one for the murder of about 100 people in Kiev early last year was unsuccessful. There may be better candidates here.


fragglerokk ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 19:55

It always amazes me that the far right never learn from history. The politicians and oligarchs always use them as muscle to ensure coup success then murder/assasinate the leaders to make sure they dont get any ideas about power themselves. Surprised its taken so long in ukraine but then the govt is barely hanging onto power and the IMF loans have turned to a trickle so trouble will always be brewing, perhaps theyve left it too long this time. Nobody will be shedding any tears for the Nazis and Banderistas.


hisimperialmajesty Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 19:54

Why, don't you know? They infiltrated Ukraine, the CIA (and NATO and the EU somehow) created Maidan, their agents killed the protesters, then they overthrew a legitimate government and installed a neo-nazi one, proceeded to instigate a brutal oppression against Russian speakers, then started a war against the peaceful Eastern Ukrainians and their innocent friends in the Kremlin, etc etc. Ignorant question that, by now you should know the narrative!


Kaiama gimmeshoes 12 Jul 2015 19:53

If you think Pryvi Sektor want to "clean up" then yes, but not in the way you imagine - they just want the business for themselves.


Geordiemartin 12 Jul 2015 19:51

I am reminded of AJP Taylor premise that Eastern Europe has historically had either German domination or Russian protection.

The way that the Ukrainian government had treated their own Eastern compatriots leaves little reason to believe they would be welcome back into the fold and gives people of Donbass no reason to want to rejoin the rest of the country.

If government is making an effort to reign in the likes of Right sector it is a move in the right direction but much much more will be needed to establish any trust.


Some Guy yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:45

just because they are nazis doesnt mean they are happy about doing any of this... now. look at greece and the debacle that has unfolded over the past week has been . the west ukraine wanted to be part of the euro zone and wanted some of that ecb bail out money. now they are not even sure if they could skip out on the bill and know they are fighting for nothing . russia gave them 14 bil dollars . the west after the coup only gave the 1 bil


Andor2001 Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 19:44

According to the eyewitnesses the RS shot a guard when he refused to summon the commanding officer. It was the beginning of the fight.


Andor2001 yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:41

Remember Shakespeare "Othello"? Moor has done his job, Moor has to go..
The neo-Nazis have outlived their usefulness.


Bosula caaps02 12 Jul 2015 19:39

The BBC investigative reported earlier this year that a section of Maidan protesters deliberately started shooting the police. This story was also reported in the Guardian. Google and you will easily find it.

The BBC also reported that the Prosecutors Office in Kiev was forbidden by Rada officials from investigating Maiden shooters.

Maybe the BBC is telling us a lie? The BBC investigation is worth a read - then you can make up your own mind.


Bosula William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 19:29

Kazakhstan had the highest percentage of deaths from Stalin's policies in this period when he prevented the nomad herders moving from the mountains to the planes to take advantage of the benefits of seasons and weather.

Stalin forced the nomads to stay in one area and they perished in the cold of the mountains or the heat of the summer plains (whichever zone they were foced to stay in).

Some of my family is Ukrainian and some recognise that Stalin's policies weren't specifically aimed at Ukrainians - the people of Kazakhstan suffered the most (as a percentage of population). Either way, there is no genetic difference between Slavs or Russian or Ukrainian origin in Ukraine or Russia - they are all genetically the same people.

This information should be better taught in Ukraine.

The problem is that it would undermine the holy grail story of right wing nationalism in Ukraine.


quorkquork annamarinja 12 Jul 2015 19:27

There are already jihadist groups fighting in Ukraine!

IN MIDST OF WAR, UKRAINE BECOMES GATEWAY FOR JIHAD
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/midst-war-ukraine-becomes-gateway-europe-jihad/


Havingalavrov obscurant 12 Jul 2015 18:33

It's been one of the biggest mistakes ( although Ukraine's military started in a desperately poor condition ) , to allow militia groups to get so powerful. Right sector should not have arms and guns... The national Ukraine military should, If members of Right sector want to fight , they should leave Right sector and join the army.

This was and will happen if they don't disband such armed groups.


annamarinja silvaback 12 Jul 2015 18:18

have you ever studied geography? If yes, you should remember the proximity of Ukraine to Russia (next door) and the proximity of Ukraine to the US (thousands miles away). Also, have you heard about the CIA Director Brennan and his covert visit to Kiev on the eve of the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine? This could give you an informed hint about the causes of the war. Plus you may be interested to learn about Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (Ms. Nudelman), her cookies, and her foul language. She is, by the way, a student of Dick Cheney. If you were born before 2000, you might know his name and his role in the Iraq catastrophe. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (and the family of Kagans she belongs to) finds particular pleasure in creating military conflicts around the globe. It is not for nothing that the current situation in Ukraine is called Iraqization of Eastern Europe.


Bev Linington JJRichardson 12 Jul 2015 18:10

Ukrainians shot down the plane. East, West does not matter as they were all Ukrainians before the government overthrow. Leaders of the new government could not look past some Ukrainian citizens ethnicity, instead of standing together united, they decided to oppress which lead to the referendum in Crimea and the rise of separatists in the East.


jgbg Chirographer 12 Jul 2015 17:53

And for the Pro-Russian posters the newsflash is that could also describe the situation inside the Donbass.

It certainly describes the situation in Donbass where Right Sector or the volunteer battalions are in charge. In Dnepropetrovsk, Right Sector would simply turn up at some factory or other business and order the owner to sign document transferring the enterprise to them. In other cases, they have kidnapped businessmen for ransom. Some people have simply disappeared under such circumstances.

The Ukrainian National Guard simply break into homes left empty by people fleeing the war and steal the contents. Such was the scale of looting, the Ukrainian postal service have now refused to ship electrical goods out of the ATO area unless the senders have the original boxes and receipts.


jgbg AlfredHerring 12 Jul 2015 17:45

Maybe Kiev just needs to bomb them some more.

Putin promised to protect the Russian speaking people in Ukraine - but he hasn't really done that. His government has indicated that they would not allow Kiev to simply overrun or obliterate the people of Donbass. Quite where their threshold of actual intervention lies is anyone's guess.

jgbg caaps02, 12 Jul 2015 17:34

The "pro-Russian" government that you refer to was only elected because it promised to sign the EU trade agreement. It then reneged on that promise...

Yanukovych's government was elected the previous one was useless and corrupt.

Yanukovych wanted to postpone the decision to sign for six months, while he attempted to extract more from both the EU and Russia. Under Poroshenko, the implementation of the EU Association Agreement has been delayed for 15 months, as the governments of Ukraine, the EU and Russia all recognised that Russian trade (with the favourable terms which Ukraine enjoys) are vitail to Ukraine's economic recovery. Expect that postponement to be extended.

.... severely and brutally curtailing freedom of speech and concentrating all power in the hands of Yanukovich's little clan...

As opposed to sending the military to shell the crap out of those who objected to an elected government being removed by a few thousand nationalists in Kiev.

There was no "coup".

An agreement had been signed at the end of February 2014, which would see elections in September 2014. The far right immediately moved to remove the government (as Right Sector had promised on camera in December 2013). None of the few mechanisms for replacing the president listed in the Ukrainian constitution have been followed - that makes it a coup.

The maidan protesters were not armed

This newspaper and other western media documented the armed members of far right groups on Maidan. One BBC journalist was actually shot at by a Svoboda sniper, operating from Hotel Ukraina - the video is still on the BBC website.

....the interim government that was put in place by the parliament in late February and the government that was elected in May and Oct. of 2014 were and are not fascist.

The interim government included several ministers from Svoboda, formerly the Socialist Nationalist Party of Ukraine. These were the first Nazi ministers in a European government since Franco's Spanish government that ended in the 1970's. In a 2013 resolution, the EU parliament had indicated that no Ukrainian government should include members of Svoboda or other far right parties.


pushkinsideburn vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 16:45

There has been a marked change in rhetoric over the last few weeks. Even CiF on Ukraine articles seems to attract less trolls (with a few notable exceptions on this article - though they feel more like squad trolls than the first team). Hopefully a sign of deescalation or perhaps just a temporary lull before the MH17 anniversary this week?


pushkinsideburn calum1 12 Jul 2015 16:38

His other comments should have been the clue that arithmetic, like independent critical thinking, is beyond him.


normankirk 12 Jul 2015 16:19

Right sector were the first to declare they wouldn't abide by the Minsk 2 peace agreement.Nevertheless, Dmitry Yarosh, their leader is adviser to Ukraine's Chief of staff. Given that he only received about 130,000 votes in the last election, he has a disproportionate amount of power.


pushkinsideburn sashasmirnoff 12 Jul 2015 16:13

That quote is a myth

https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-the-cia-owns-everyone-of-any-significance-in-the-major-media.t158/

Though doesn't mean it's not true of course


greatwhitehunter 12 Jul 2015 15:47

As predicted the real civil war in ukraine is still to happen. The split between the east and the ordinary ukrainian was largely manufactored . In the long term no body would be able to live with the right sector or more preciselly the right sector cant share a bed with anyone else.


sashasmirnoff RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 15:44

"When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?"

This may be why:
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - former CIA Director William Colby


Alexander_the_Great 12 Jul 2015 15:43

This was so, so predictable. The Right Sector were the main violent group during the coup in 2014 - in fact they were the ones to bring the first guns to the square following their storming of a military warehouse in west Ukraine a few days before the coup. It was this factor that forced the Police to arm themselves in preparation.

Being the vanguard of the illegal coup, they then provided a useful tool of manipulation for the illegal Kiev government to oppress any opposition, intimidate journalists who spoke the truth and lead the war against the legally-elected ELECTED governments of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Having failed in the war against the east, western leaders have signalled the right sector has now outlived its usefulness and has become an embarrassment to Kiev and their western backers.

The Right Sector meanwhile, feel betrayed by the establishment in Kiev. They have 19 battalions of fighters and they wont go away thats for sure. I think one can expect this getting more violent in the coming months.


SHappens jezzam 12 Jul 2015 15:40

Putin is a Fascist dictator.

Putin is not a dictator. He is a statist, authoritarian-inclined hybrid regime ruler that possesses some democratic elements and space for opposition groups.
He has moderate nationalist tendencies in foreign affairs; his goal is a secure a strong Russia. He is a patriot and has a charismatic authority. Russians stay behind him.


ploughmanlunch samuel glover 12 Jul 2015 15:31

'this notion that absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master script drawn up in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome'

Agreed.
As is everything is Russia's fault.


ConradLodziak 12 Jul 2015 15:26

This is just the latest in a string of conflicts involving the right sector, as reported by RT, Russian media and until recently many Ukrainian outlets. The problem, of course, is that Porostinko has given 'official' status to the right sector. Blow back time for him.


CIAbot007 William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:06

Yes, Russia (USSR) from the USSR foundation had been forcing people of the then territory of Ukraine to identify themselves as ukrainians under the process of rootisation - ukrainisation, then gave to Ukraine Donbass and left side Dniepr and Odessa, Herson and Nikolaev, and then decided to ethnically cleane them..It doesn't make sense, does it? Oh, wait, sense is not your domain.


annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:05

let me help you with arithmetics: 72 years ago Europe was inflamed with the WWII.
There was a considerable number of Ukrainians that collaborated with Hitler' nazis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)
Now moving to the present. The US-installed oligarchs in Kiev have been cooperating closely with Ruropean neo-nazis (the followers of the WWII scum): http://rt.com/news/155364-ukraine-nazi-division-march/
In short, your government finds it is OK to glorify the perpetrators of genocide in Europe during the WWII.


Nik2 12 Jul 2015 15:04

These tragic events, when YESTERDAY, on Saturday afternoon, several civilians were unintentionally wounded in gun battles in previously peaceful town near the Hungary and Slovakia borders, vividly exposes Western propaganda. Though mass media in Ukraine and Russia are full of reports about this from the start, The Guardian managed to give first information exactly 1 day later, and BBC was still keeping silence a few minutes ago. Since both sides are allies of the West (the Right Sector fighters were the core of the Maidan protesters at the later stages, and Poroshenko regime is presumably "democratic"), the Western media preferred to ignore the events that are so politically uncomfortable. Who are "good guys" to be praised? In fact, this may be the start of nationalists' revolt against Ukrainian authorities, and politically it is very important moment that can fundamentally change Ukrainian politics. But the West decides to be silent ...


annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 14:59

Do your history book tell you that the Holodomor was a multiethnic endeavor? That the Ukrainians were among the victims and perpetrators and that the whole huge country had suffered the insanely cruel policies of multiethnic bolsheviks? The Holodomor was almost a century ago, whereas the Odessa massacre and the bombardments of civilian population in east Ukraine by the neo-nazi thugs (sent by Kiev), has been going during last year and half. Perhaps you have followed Mr. Brennan and Mrs. Nuland-Kagan too obediently.


foolisholdman zonzonel 12 Jul 2015 14:58

zonzonel

Oops, the presumably fascist govt. is fighting a fascist group.
What is a poor troll to do these days??
Antiukrainian copywriting just got more difficult, perhaps a raise is needed? Just sayin.

What's your problem? Never heard of Fascist groups fighting each other? Never heard of the "Night of the Long Knives"? Fascists have no principles to unite them. They believe in Uebermenschen and of course they all think that either they themselves or their leader is The Ueberuebermensch. Anyone who disagrees is an enemy no matter how Fascist he may be.


samuel glover ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 14:55

Y'know, I'm no fan of the Russophobic hysteria that dominates English-language media. I've been to Ukraine several times over the last 15 years or so, and I'm sorry to say that I think that in time Ukrainians will regard Maidan's aftermath as most of them view the Orange Revolution -- with regret and cynicism.

That said, this notion that everything, absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master script drawn up in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome. Most post-revolution regimes purge one end or the other of the current ideological wings. Kiev has already tangled with the oligarch and militia patron Igor Kolomoisky. So perhaps this is another predictable factional struggle. Or maybe, as another comment speculates, this is a feud over cigarette tax revenue.

In any case, Ukraine is a complex place going through an **extremely** complex time. it's too soon to tell what the Lviv skirmish means, and **far** too soon to lay it all on nefarious puppetmasters.

TheTruthAnytime ADTaylor 12 Jul 2015 14:49

The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country,...

Is the CIA their country? So far they've only seemed to serve the interests of American businesspeople, not Ukrainian interests. Also, murdering eastern Ukrainians cannot really be considered such a great service to Ukraine, can it?


annamarinja ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:44

Maidan was indeed a popular apprising, but it was utilized by the US strategists for their geopolitical games. The Ukrainians are going to learn hard way that the US have never had any interest in well-being of the "locals" and that the ongoing civil war was designed in order to create a festering wound on a border with the Russia. The Iraqization of Ukraine was envisioned by the neocons as a tool to break both Russia and Ukraine. The sooner Ukrainians come to a peaceful solution uniting the whole Ukraine (for example, to federalization), the better for the general population (but not for the thieving oligarchs).


vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 14:38

"Couple of hundred Right Sector supporters demonstrated in Kiev?" Come on! Over the last week, there have been enough of videos of thousands of people in fatigues trying to block access to government buildings and shouting rather aggressive demands. The entire battalions of "National Guard." This is much bigger than just 100 people on a peaceful rally. Ukraine might be heading towards Maidan 3.0.

ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:26

The situation in Ukraine has been unravelling for months and this news broke on Friday evening.

The Minsk II cease fire has not been honoured by Poroshenko, who has not managed to effect any of the pledges he signed up to. The right sector who rejected the cease-fire from the start are now refusing the rule of their post coup president in Kiev.

Time for Victoria Nuland to break out the cookies? Or maybe it's too late for that now. The country formerly know as Ukraine is turning out to be another outstanding success of American post -imperial foreign policy.

Meanwhile in UFA the BRIC's economic forum is drawing to a close, with representatives from the developing world and no reporting of the aspirations being discussed there of over 60% of the world's population. It's been a major success, but if you want to learn about it, you will have to turn to other media sources - those usually reported as Russian propaganda channels or Putin's apologists.

The same people who have been reporting on the deteriorating situation in Kiev since the February coup. Or as Washington likes to call it a popular up rising.


Dennis Levin 12 Jul 2015 13:29

Canadian interviewed, fighting for 'Right Sector'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j65dBEWd7go
The Right Sector of Euromaidan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yFqUasBOUY
Lets reflect for a moment on the Editorial directives, that would have 'MORE GUNS' distributed to NAZIS..
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/putin-stopped-ukraine-military-support-russian-propaganda
The Guarn publishes, 'Britain should arm Ukraine, says Tory donor' - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/11/britain-should-arm-ukraine
Al Jazeera says,'t's time to arm Ukraine' - http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/02/arms-ukraine-russia-separatists-150210075309643.html
Zbigniew Brzezinski: The West should arm Ukraine - http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/zbigniew-brzezinski-the-west-should-arm-ukraine-354770.html


ploughmanlunch ADTaylor 12 Jul 2015 13:06

'The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country'

Don't get me wrong. I detest the fascist militias and their evil deeds.

However, despite their callousness, brutality and stupidity, they have been the most effective fighting force for Kiev ( more sensible Ukrainians have been rather more reluctant to kill their fellow countrymen ).

Deluded ? Yes. Cowardly ? No.

Even more reprehensible, in my opinion are the calculating and unprincipled Kiev Government that have attempted to bully a region of the Ukraine that had expressed legitimate reservations, using those far right battalions, but accepting no responsibility for the carnage that they carried out.

mario n 12 Jul 2015 12:52

I think it's time Europe spoke up about dangers of Ukrainian nationalism. 72 years ago Ukrainian fascists committed one of the most hideous and brutal acts of genocide in the human history. Details are so horrifying it is beyond imagination. Sadly not many people remembers that, because it is not politically correct to say bad things about Ukraine. Today mass murderers are hailed as national heroes and private battalions and ultranationalist groups armed to the teeth terrorise not only Donbas but now different parts of the country like Zakarpattia where there is strong Hungarian, Russian and Romanian minority.

How many massacres and acts of genocide Europe needs before it learns to act firmly?

SHappens 12 Jul 2015 12:49

Kiev has allowed nationalist groups including Right Sector to operate despite allegations by groups like Amnesty International, that Right Sector has tortured civilian prisoners.

You know what, you dont play with fire or you will get burnt. It was written on the wall that these Bandera apologists would eventually turn to the hand that fed them. I wonder how Kiev will manage to blame the russians now.


RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 12:33

Of course the Guardian doesn't like to explain that 'Right Sector' are genuine fascists - by their own admission!

These fascists, who wear Nazi insignia, were the people who overthrew the elected government of Ukraine in the US / EU-supported coup - which the Guardianistas and other PC-brainwashed duly cheered on as a supposed triumph of democracy.

Since that glorious US-financed and EU-backed coup, wholly illegal under international law, Ukraine's economy has collapsed, as has Ukrainians' living standards.

The US neocons are losing interest in their attempted land grab of Ukraine - and the EU cretins who backed the coup, thinking it would be a nice juicy further territorial acquisition for the EU, are desperately looking the other way, now that both the US and EU realize that Ukraine is a financial black hole.

When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?


jgbg 12 Jul 2015 12:15

The move came after a gunfight broke out on Saturday, when about 20 Right Sector gunmen arrived at a sports complex controlled by MP Mikhail Lano. They had been trying to stop the traffic of cigarettes and other contraband, a spokesman for the group said.

Put another way, one group of gangsters tried to muscle in on the cigarette smuggling operation of another group of gangsters. Smuggling cigarettes into nearby EU countries is extremely lucrative.

Here's some video of some of the events:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hexRskhproc&feature=youtu.be

Note the registration plates driven by both Right Sector and the other gangsters i.e. not Ukrainian. In all likelihood, these cars are all stolen.

Right Sector and fighters from "volunteer battalions" have become accustomed to muscling in on other people's activities (legal or not) in Donbass. This sort of thuggery is routine when these folk come to town. It is only when since they have continued such activities on their home turf in west and central Ukraine that the authorities have taken any notice.

[Jul 14, 2015] Ukry starting to get worried about Trans-Carpthian separatism

yalensis, July 13, 2015 at 3:54 am

Ukry starting to get worried about Trans-Carpthian separatism:

Rada Deputy Boris Filatov, who belongs to Igor Kolomoisky's party, was outraged when he read some blogposts written by Trans-Carpathians. Who claimed that Trans-Carpathia was unjustly taken away from Slovaks and Hungarians in the 1950's.
Some of the Rusyns there say they are not Ukrainians, and never have been.

Filatov was outraged at some of this loose talk on blogs. He retorted on his own blog with the following proposed remedy to these separatist inclinations:

"Можете почитать, что публично пишут в своих бложиках некоторые местные деятели. Врачи! Жечь падаль каленым железом. Сажать и лишать имущества", - написал Филатов на своей странице в соцсети.

"You cannot even imagine what some of these local activists are scribbling in their blogs. I would brand these scum with a heated up iron. I would throw them in jail and confiscate their property."

yalensis:
Recall that Filatov made similar threats against Crimeans.
Which just scared them even further into escaping from the tender embraces of Ukrainian nazis.
I am betting most Rusyns also wish they could opt out of this Ukrainian "prison of nations" and become part of Slovakia or Hungary. Unfortunately, they don't have that option, so they are stuck in this abusive relationship.

Link:
http://www.politnavigator.net/deputat-verkhovnojj-rady-o-rusinakh-zakarpatya-zhech-padal-kalenym-zhelezom.html

[Jul 13, 2015] The Ukrainian state is disintegrating and Washington smiles beatifically, having created another Libya, this time on Russia's doorstep

Jul 12, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

marknesop, July 12, 2015 at 10:59 am

They just love fighting with guns and the thrill of shooting to kill. The front is boring right now, shooting artillery into cities does not have the same gratification. The only way for Ukraine to purge itself of Right Sector is to kill them all. So long as any are left alive they will cling to their guns – which nobody seems to be able to make them give up – and foment armed insurrection.

The Ukrainian state is disintegrating and Washington smiles beatifically, having created another Libya, this time on Russia's doorstep.

karl1haushofer , July 12, 2015 at 5:27 am
"Yarosh hates Avakov even more than he hates the Russians."

Aren't they both Russians themselves? Yarosh does not even speak Ukrainian and Avakov is a Russian name.

Pavlo Svolochenko, July 12, 2015 at 5:37 am
Yarosh, yes. Avakov (Avakian?) is an Armenian from Baku.
et Al, July 12, 2015 at 4:29 am
Via Antiwar.com

Neuters: Kerry doesn't view Russia as existential threat: State Department
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/10/us-usa-defense-dunford-state-idUSKCN0PK27120150710

…"If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I'd have to point to Russia," Dunford said. "And if you look at their behavior, it's nothing short of alarming."

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Kerry did not share the assessment, even though Russia's actions in Ukraine posed regional security challenges.

"The secretary doesn't agree with the assessment that Russia is an existential threat to the United States, nor China, quite frankly," Toner told a regular news briefing when asked about Dunford's remarks.

"You know, these are major powers with whom we engage and cooperate on a number of issues, despite any disagreements we may have with them," he said. "Certainly we have disagreements with Russia and its activities within the region, but we don't view it as an existential threat."…
####

The problem with ignorant blowhards like Dunford is that if their words are to be taken seriously, then seriously needs to be funded with cold, hard dollars. Resources daarlings. The USA has pinned its flag to the Asia Swivel (aka fk China!) as its fundamental future military posture.

That is an expensive proposition.

To then start bivolating (sp?) about Russia means some cash going to contain China would have to go instead to containing Russia, which so far, the USA has been doing on the very cheap by using Ukrainians as willing (or not so) canonfodder and the Europeans paying the economic consequences. To mix a metaphor or three, the US Gorilla shits in an European chinashop and still expects fawning applause for the performance*. Instead, by amping up the rhetoric via NATO and bigging up the Russia threat, the USA is trying to get Europe to pay (new UK budget promises 2% GDP on weapons) for the US' own mess and aggressive anti-Russia policy, squaring the military budget circle if you will. Except, it is not working. Europe as a whole will still not pick up the military tab US wants it to. This is the de facto recognition by Europe that the Russia threat is total bullshit, in total contradiction of all the mass propaganda to the opposite by the pork pie news networks.

* "It's like a jungle some times it makes me wonder how I keep from going under" – Rapper's Delight

Warren, July 12, 2015 at 7:50 am

The Europeans need to free themselves from American yoke, the Americans must have serious leverage on European leaders to explain their servility to the US.

* "It's like a jungle some times it makes me wonder how I keep from going under"

That line comes from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – The Message

marknesop, July 12, 2015 at 11:06 am

All that notwithstanding, Kerry is out of favour and the State Department has the bit in its teeth. It likes the cut of Dunford's jib and his willingness to help imprint brand "Russian Aggression". Kerry's demurrals are not going to mean anything in the great scheme of things, and it is much too late for him to assuage his conscience now for all the lies he told and partisan bullshit he spread. He deserves to ride his doomed state down nearly as much as the rest of his government.

Jeremn, July 12, 2015 at 5:06 am
Just looking at who funds the ECFR.
http://www.ecfr.eu/about/donors
George Soros is the primary funder, and the European Commission also supplies money. Then there's a whole slew of banks, oil firms and foundations. Interesting reading.
marknesop, July 12, 2015 at 11:20 am
It would of course be a generalization, but just about everywhere you find a western agency fomenting revolution and stirring up unrest in the names of freedom and democracy, you will find George Soros's money. It's a wonder Obama has not awarded him the Presidential Gong of Freedom.
yalensis, July 13, 2015 at 4:01 am
Do they, or don't they?
Some people say, that Right Sektor is withdrawing all their battalions from Donbass and moving them West, back towards Kiev.
Right Sektor denies this, and says, no, all their guys are still in place at the ATO, valiantly fighting the Colorados.

The Donetsk News Agency says that Right Sektor is withdrawing from the front lines. Quoting DPR Deputy Minister of Defense Eduard Basurin.

Basurin reports that the Right Sektor guys truly are leaving, thus providing some blessed relief to the people of Donetsk. Resulting in fewer incidents of shelling, etc.

yalensis, July 13, 2015 at 3:54 am

Ukry starting to get worried about Trans-Carpthian separatism:

Rada Deputy Boris Filatov, who belongs to Igor Kolomoisky's party, was outraged when he read some blogposts written by Trans-Carpathians. Who claimed that Trans-Carpathia was unjustly taken away from Slovaks and Hungarians in the 1950's.
Some of the Rusyns there say they are not Ukrainians, and never have been.

Filatov was outraged at some of this loose talk on blogs. He retorted on his own blog with the following proposed remedy to these separatist inclinations:

http://www.politnavigator.net/deputat-verkhovnojj-rady-o-rusinakh-zakarpatya-zhech-padal-kalenym-zhelezom.html

"Можете почитать, что публично пишут в своих бложиках некоторые местные деятели. Врачи! Жечь падаль каленым железом. Сажать и лишать имущества", - написал Филатов на своей странице в соцсети.

"You cannot even imagine what some of these local activists are scribbling in their blogs. I would brand these scum with a heated up iron. I would throw them in jail and confiscate their property."

yalensis:

Recall that Filatov made similar threats against Crimeans.

Which just scared them even further into escaping from the tender embraces of Ukrainian nazis.

I am betting most Rusyns also wish they could opt out of this Ukrainian "prison of nations" and become part of Slovakia or Hungary. Unfortunately, they don't have that option, so they are stuck in this abusive relationship.

yalensis, July 13, 2015 at 4:13 am

And what's the plan, once the Right Sektor battalions reach Kiev?

According to this piece, Right Sektor is organizing a massive meeting on the Maidan this coming Sunday, July 19.

Right Sektor spokesperson Dmitry Pavlichenko announced the following:

-He urges everybody to swarm to Kiev on Sunday. The meeting ("veche") will start promptly at noon.

-The purpose is to form "organs of power" to replace the current government.

-A priority will be also to form a "people's court".

Right Sektor has issued ultimatum to Ukrainian government: They want Avakov's head on a platter.

There is constant picket of around 100 persons around President Poroshenko's office building. The picketers wear insigna for parties such as "OUN", "Freedom or Death", and "Right Sektor". The building is protected by around 30 National Guards troops, and there has been a stand-off up until this point.

[Jul 12, 2015] Maidan One Year Later What Happened to the Social Component Nikolas Kozloff

Indeed, political elites seem intent on pursuing radical deregulation, including cuts in energy subsidies and public expenditure. Meanwhile, the government is pushing privatization and "liberalization" of the labor market. Fiscal Times writes that "since we detest euphemisms here, this means hire 'em-fire 'em will be the new rule." Finally, "a health-insurance system of unspecified structure will be introduced and public spending on education will be determined on the basis of merit." For the technocrats, this all sounds great, but "if you are a housewife, a student, or a steamfitter, this might just as rationally sound like somebody's idea of hell."

Can Ukraine's independent left present a viable challenge to the technocratic elites and their "neo-liberal" agenda? Anton Shekhovstov, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna and an expert on Ukrainian politics, is somewhat skeptical. "Politically," he says, "such forces are not very viable or competitive in elections. There are some left-wing/liberal forces which I would call progressive, but we're not talking about political parties but rather clubs, milieus or circles around particular magazines." The expert adds, "I don't think the left can oppose right-wing nationalism. Their share of the vote [if you subtract the old Communist Party of Ukraine, which isn't even that communist but more pro-Russian] is smaller than the political right's. I think the only force which can counter right-wing extremism is the mainstream political center."

[Jul 12, 2015] Disillsionment of former Serbian OTPOR and OWS movement members

"...So, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a Soros project? I am shocked! I thought this was a spontaneous eruption of alienated American youth."
"...I can't say that it is a Soros project, or if he is just trying to hijack it. US conservative media are sure about the former option, i.e. that OWS is not grassroots but "limousine liberal" astroturfing, see this as an example. Just like the progressive media are sure that the Tea Parties are conservative astroturfing."
"...It looks like that the OWS movement is made by middle class left-leaning people that feel they're sliding into poverty. Just like the Tea Parties, with the difference that these are made by right-leaning people. I think that, like the Tea Parties were absorbed by the Republican party, making it more extreme, the OWS will be absorbed by the Democratic party, with similar results."
"...Their call for taxing of millionaires is silly, and just mimics Obama's proposed "Warren Buffett" law. Sure, millionaries should be taxed to within an inch of their lives, no argument there. But it won't raise that much money, in the scheme of things, and is a lame substitute for real structural changes. Like I said, demand to "nationalize the banks", and then I will start to take you seriously, damn hippies!"
"...Sorry, but that is simply ideological crap (Spiked is run by a bunch of right-wing libertarians.). See, e.g. this post by Glenn Greenwald for a generic rebuttal. If you want to know what OWS stands for, better to read this op/ed by David Graeber (he's part of the movement, afaik) in the Guardian (UK), or "OWS is a church of dissent, not a protest" and "Welcome to the Police State: NYC Cops Mace Peaceful Protestors Against Wall Street"."
"...It is part (maybe all) of the Republican strategy to make the electorate disgusted with Washington, in the hope of once again seizing power on a wave of "throw the bums out". This is achieved through lockstep obstruction of every single initiative brought to the floor, even if a win would not be tactically significant or if allowing the bill to pass would be of immediate benefit to ordinary Americans including – especially – the enraged middle class. "

yalensis, October 9, 2011 at 11:12 pm

Here is something truly interesting: Here is Ivan Marovic, leader of Serbian OTPOR movement (color-coded "revolutionary") addressing the well-meaning hippie crowd occuping Wall Street. These naive anti-capitalist American youths obviously have no clue who this guy is and the fact that he is a paid agent of that very same Wall Street. Fortunately, many angry Serbs hopped onto the comment page of this you-tube video to unmask this imperialist double-agent. My Serbian is a little rusty now, but good enough to comprehend such comments as:

IVANE IVANE,SISO SMRDLJIVA,I TU SU TE POSTAVILI DA LAZES I VARAS!!JEBEM TI MAMU IZDAJNICKU SLUGO MASONSKA!!ZNAMO BAGRO ZA KOGA RADIS!!!

"Jebem ti mamu izdajnicku" - hey, Serbian is a lot like Russian!

Here is another comment, this one in English:

I am se SERBIAN and i was in OTPOR in 1990is, OTPOR is an CIA organisation! We were fighting for freedom for SERBIA but OTPOR brought us CORPORATION NEW WORLD ORDER MAFIA and CHEMTRAILS!

DONT TRUST THEM, they now have best jobs in SERBIA and are propagating NATAO and EU!!They are HIJACKING every movement for REVOLUTION!They were in UKRAINE, GEORGIA, SERBIA, TUNESIA­, EGIPT , SYRIA,NOW IN US!

ITS AN JESUIT ZIONIST MASONIC ORGANISATION!

The FIST in the CIRCEL means that you will be FUCKED IN THE ASS!!

Hmm… well, I doubt if OTPOR is either Jesuit, Zionist, or Masonic. But aside from that, everything else is true, including the bit about the fist in the circle…

Giuseppe Flavio, October 10, 2011 at 1:06 am

Soros expressed his sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street protesters. It'll be a very big fist.

yalensis, October 10, 2011 at 10:37 am

So, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a Soros project? I am shocked! I thought this was a spontaneous eruption of alienated American youth. But then I am a gullible type – when Tunisia revolution first started, I also thought that was spontaneous, but then turns out it was OTPOR all along. Same deal with Egypt. Same deal with Libya. And when I watched "Sixth Sense", I was really surprised by the twist at the end when I learned that Bruce Willis was a ghost.
What is Soros' angle in OWS, I wonder? I am trying to figure this out, and it kind of doesn't make sense. But I have 2 theories:

  1. to help Obama re-election? [Not sure about this theory; American voters not usually influenced by hippie street mobs, but maybe Soros doesn't realize that, he is a European, and they are more tolerant towards rebellious youth.]
  2. some kind of power play against a Soros banking rival? [Not sure about this one either...]

Either way, there must be some devious plot going on, because where there is OTPOR, there is Soros, and where there is Soros, trouble is sure to follow…

Giuseppe Flavio,October 10, 2011 at 12:58 pm

I can't say that it is a Soros project, or if he is just trying to hijack it. US conservative media are sure about the former option, i.e. that OWS is not grassroots but "limousine liberal" astroturfing, see this as an example. Just like the progressive media are sure that the Tea Parties are conservative astroturfing.
Either way, the fact that US elites are resorting to grassroots movements/astroturfing for their infighting is an ominous sign that things aren't going well.

hoct, October 10, 2011 at 9:15 pm

Two original and well laid out views of the demonstrations:

Giuseppe Flavio,October 10, 2011 at 11:51 pm

Thanks, interesting readings. It looks like that the OWS movement is made by middle class left-leaning people that feel they're sliding into poverty. Just like the Tea Parties, with the difference that these are made by right-leaning people. I think that, like the Tea Parties were absorbed by the Republican party, making it more extreme, the OWS will be absorbed by the Democratic party, with similar results.

What strikes me the most about the Tea Parties/OWS people, is their refusal to talk to each other. "Brainwashed idiot" and "Socialist scrounger" is what they think about each other.

Reply

yalensis,October 11, 2011 at 12:26 am

Thanks for the info and links. I'm starting to get a clearer picture of this curious OWS phenomenon. The right-wing Tea-baggers are idiots, of course, but their intuition that this whole thing is a puppet show orchestrated by Obama is probably correct. It fits in with his fake populism and acts as safety valve to let off steam and prevent explosion by the forces whom the oligarchs truly fear: labor, poor people, unemployed African Americans.

If these narcissistic middle-class youth down on Wall Street really want to change the world and build themselves a society in which they have guaranteed jobs and a debt-free college education, then: They need to break away from Democratic Party, become true steely-eyed communists and, for starters, demand nationalization of the banks. I have a feeling they won't do that, especially if Soros/OTPOR are financing them.

Their call for taxing of millionaires is silly, and just mimics Obama's proposed "Warren Buffett" law. Sure, millionaries should be taxed to within an inch of their lives, no argument there. But it won't raise that much money, in the scheme of things, and is a lame substitute for real structural changes.

Like I said, demand to "nationalize the banks", and then I will start to take you seriously, damn hippies!

Reply

Foppe,October 11, 2011 at 1:03 am

Sorry, but that is simply ideological crap (Spiked is run by a bunch of right-wing libertarians.). See, e.g. this post by Glenn Greenwald for a generic rebuttal. If you want to know what OWS stands for, better to read this op/ed by David Graeber (he's part of the movement, afaik) in the Guardian (UK), or "OWS is a church of dissent, not a protest" and "Welcome to the Police State: NYC Cops Mace Peaceful Protestors Against Wall Street".

This has some background on the anti-hierarchical consensual deliberative processes they're using, this is a decent column by Krugman which has some more info, and this is a nice speech by Naomi Klein that should give you a further hint as to what's going on.
One of the more interesting things about OWS is that they have so far refused to put out a list of "demands", and this has flummoxed most of the media types. As a result, the media keeps calling for the "maturation" of the movement, as though this must happen before it can be taken seriously.. Never mind that they're getting huge amounts of attention already, and never mind that it is quite obvious what at least some of the issues might be. But once they would do make a list, then the bargaining would have to start, whereas now, everyone is trying to appease them, which gives them a far stronger position that they would have if they behaved in "the proper way".

Reply

Foppe,October 11, 2011 at 1:18 am

Or "Why #OccupyWallStreet Doesn't Support Obama: His "Nothing to See Here" Stance on Bank Looting"

Despite the efforts of some liberal pundits and organizers (and by extension, the Democratic party hackocracy) to lay claim to OccupyWallStreet, the nascent movement is having none of it. Participants are critical of the President's bank-coddling ways and Obama gave a remarkably bald-face confirmation of their dim views.
As Dave Dayen recounts, Obama was cornered into explaining why his Administration has been soft of bank malfeasance. His defense amounted to "They're savvy businessmen": "Banks are in the business of making money, and they find loopholes."
Is breaking IRS rules a "loophole"? How about making repeated false certifications in SEC filings? Or as Dayen points out, fabricating documents? Or making wrongful foreclosures, aka stealing houses?

Their chief target is Wall Street, but many of the demonstrators in New York and across the U.S. also are thoroughly disgusted with Washington, blaming politicians of both major parties for policies they say protect corporate America at the expense of the middle class.

"At this point I don't see any difference between George Bush and Obama. The middle class is a lot worse than when Obama was elected," said John Penley, an unemployed legal worker from Brooklyn.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last month with a small number of young people pitching a tent in front of the New York Stock Exchange, has expanded nationally and drawn a wide variety of activists, including union members and laid-off workers.

Demonstrators marched Thursday in Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and Anchorage, Alaska, carrying signs with slogans such as "Get money out of politics" and "I can't afford a lobbyist."

Reply

marknesop,October 11, 2011 at 3:51 am

It is part (maybe all) of the Republican strategy to make the electorate disgusted with Washington, in the hope of once again seizing power on a wave of "throw the bums out". This is achieved through lockstep obstruction of every single initiative brought to the floor, even if a win would not be tactically significant or if allowing the bill to pass would be of immediate benefit to ordinary Americans including – especially – the enraged middle class. It is a simple and verifiable fact that the slide in lost jobs stopped as soon as Obama took over, and slowly began to reverse. It is now back in positive territory, although a country with a population the size of America's needs a hundred thousand new jobs every month just to stay even. But the suggestion the middle class is worse off is just plain wrong, although such quotes probably make the Republicans rub their hands together with glee.

If Americans fall for the old bait and switch again and elect a Republican government, they will be sorry. For one thing, the Republicans have no jobs plan. At all. For another,. even a tax on millionaires will not happen, because they are part of the Republican sugar tit that keeps them fat and sassy and able to say "We know how you feel" without laughing when they talk to the middle class even though none of them are actually part of it.

A study reported in the New York Times, conducted by a reputable researcher, compared Republican administrations and Democratic administrations from 1948 to 2007, over 26 years of Democratic rule against 34 Republican. It concluded that growth averaged out at almost double under Democrats what it was under Republicans, and that the difference over 8 years would equate to a 9.3% difference in average income. Nobody except the very, very rich saw anything close to that from Bush's tax cuts.

Although Obama supported the bank bailout, the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was actually signed into law by Bush.

Obama gets little to no credit for anything he achieves because of the barrage from the noise machine. History will reveal him as a pretty good and relatively progressive president whose agenda was shamelessly sandbagged by the Republicans. It's hard to say what state America will be in by the time it realizes this, because I doubt it'll survive another Republican administration. Their plans are for more of the same – more tax cuts, more alienation of the rest of the world and more throwing their weight around. And there's only so much money, so there's only so long they could keep it up. And sticking a thumb in Russia's eye will only make oil prices go up.

hoct,October 11, 2011 at 9:15 am

Foppe, I know who Spiked is run by, I read it every day. The fact it is ran by a "bunch of libertarians" is hardly going to make me turn on my heels and run away in disgust, I am a libertarian myself.

Spiked is a magnificent outlet that regularly produces absolute classics like The rise of the laptop bombardier or Face it, the FSB is just not that into you . Especially important for me is their informed and courageous coverage of issues relating to former Yugoslavia. In fact its precursor magazine was shut down by British courts for exposing the fake Bosnia death camp photo.

I'll be sure to check out the Glenn Greenwald piece as I value his opinion, just as sure as I I'm going to skip the Guardian op/ed, I have very little interest in reading an outlet that was in the absolute forefront of the campaign to satanize and bomb Yugoslavia.

Foppe, October 11, 2011 at 9:57 am

That is up to you, of course. It may well be that they can report decently on issues that happened in Yugoslavia; I am, however, unimpressed with their coverage of stuff happening closer to home.

Let me qualify my earlier statement, though, as I did not make it clear before that my suggestion that these articles are "ideological crap" does not come simply from the fact that they were published in Spiked. I did read the articles first; it is just that I then became interested in answering the question why they are so utterly misleading when it comes to describing the mind-set of the protestors.

Having said that, even if you ignore the piece published in the Guardian (which strikes me as rather silly, as Graeber is about as far from an 'establishment liberal' as they get), this still leaves a number of other links that are all quite worth reading. I would encourage you to read them, before dismissing OccupyWallStreet as being organized by petulant or spoiled children.

hoct, October 11, 2011 at 9:10 pm

What is silly is how you were trying to scare me and others away from the Spiked pieces in a veritable 'aaarg-there-be-right-wingers' panic mode, but then suggested something from an outlet that was instrumental in bombing my people. Classic!

I'd qualify my statement, but I need to keep this civil.

Foppe,October 12, 2011 at 8:23 am

Yes, I should've simply focused on the fact that the articles you linked to offered incorrect information; however, I had encountered a spiked article once before (about British politics), and it too was crap, hence my assumption it has something to do with the ideological leanings of the authors/editors. It may well be that they are more accurate when writing about government abuse in foreign countries (since they presumably dislike their own governments), but it seems that they are quite dishonest when writing about stuff happening closer to home.

yalensis, October 12, 2011 at 10:46 am

I have noticed a curious phenomenon that some right-wing sources (that I wouldn't agree with otherwise on any other issue) have been consistently CORRECT and PRINCIPLED about Yugoslavia. In fact, they opposed the Clinton-Kosovo thing from the very beginning. They made a movie called "Wag the Dog" which satirized the Clinton-liberal war in Kosovo. Anybody have any theories why they can so wrong about other stuff, but so right about Serbia?
P.S. (hoct + Foppe) please be friends, I like both of you, you both have very good comments.

hoct, October 13, 2011 at 9:42 pm

Yalensis, that is hard for me to say without you providing a specific example from among these sources. It is for example conceivable they are right about other things as well, and it is you who is in the wrong.

Secondly, what made you think of this now? I hope it is understood that just because I am not arguing with Foppe on it does not mean I concede the point that Spiked is crap on issues other than Yugoslavia. On the contrary, I find it excellent on most things.

Also, it doesn't come close to being right-wing. I let that characterization stand because it did not matter to the subject at hand, but in reality it is run by former members of the now defunct Revolutionary Communist Party (UK), traces its lineage to Living Marxism Magazine and specifically opposes Capitalism. Normally good libertarians are neither left, nor right wing, but that's certainly not true for the devoted leftists editing Spiked.

yalensis, October 11, 2011 at 10:39 am

Continuing hoct/Foppe thread on OWS movement with some thoughts of my own:

Many of the OWS protesters are obviously great people, some even with great ideas. And I regard Naomi Klein as one of the good guys, no doubt about that. I wonder if she knows who OTPOR is, and with whom she is sharing the stage?

In my reading of American history, the only time a mass student movement did NOT become coopted into Democratic Party was toward end of 1960's. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), started off in early 60's as a liberal-left (mostly) white student movement. One of their major issues was Vietnam War and draft. Later, they also formed alliances with African-American civil rights movements. Towards end of 1960's, under leadership of Mike Klonsky, there was a moment when a reporter approached Klonsky and asked him, very timidly, if he was aware that "communists" had infiltrated SDS. Klonsky replied: "What you talkin' about, dude, we're ALL communists here. So quit your shuckin' and jivin'…" Indeed, SDS had split into 3 major factions, all self-identified communist (with a small "c"). Mostly Maoist, actually, with several smaller factions self-identified as Trotskyist or even Stalinist Classic. When they marched against Vietnam war, they waved red flags with hammer and sickle and openly called for victory of North Vietnam over American army, chanting: "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win!"

Openly communistic leanings of movement, plus SDS alliance with black-panther party, saved them from becoming a wing of the Democratic Party. Dems did not want to have anything to do with them, and viciously suppressed them at 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, with all possible police brutality.

Based on this history, OWS can go in one of two directions: (1) they can become community organizers for Obama's re-election campaign, or (2) they could get truly radical and start to demand, e.g., nationalization of banks and government buying up their personal debt. They then could start reading Marx and chanting communist slogans. Would be fun to watch look of horror on Soros' face.

Either way, I am betting money that there will be factional split in this movement very shortly. History shows that ALL movements based on "consensus" and "lack of hierarchy" inevitably split into factions. Also inevitably the most "libertarian" and "consensus"-based faction always ends up coming under the control of a charismatic leader.

Foppe, October 11, 2011 at 11:48 am

Given that they've (OWS anyway) already indicated they think Obama is a snake oil salesman, I doubt (1) will come to pass, unless the movement indeed is hijacked. But basically, time is their friend, in that the slower they grow, the bigger the chance that a coherent core set of ideas will start to circulate, which is not dependent for its input on the news being peddled by the MSM.

kievite,October 13, 2011 at 1:40 am

Actually Former Trotskyites played important role in the revitalization of Republican Party.

Particularly James Burnham, brought a strong tendency towards viewing all political national questions purely in ideological terms and rejected the idea of fair play. The idea of 'export of democracy' is a modification of Trotsky original idea of "exporting revolution" using bayonets. Michael Lind in the New Statesman from April 2004 wrote that, "…neoconservative defense intellectuals…call their revolutionary ideology 'Wilsonianism' (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism".

They also introdued the new level of understanding of political struggle and first of all the preeminent importance of total control of media and courts.

James Burnham in his book, The Machiavellians, argued and developed his theory that the emerging new élite would better serve its own interests if it retained some democratic trappings - some weakened opposition, illusion of "free press" and a controlled "circulation of the elites."

From National Review:

"…..This path had been pioneered much earlier by two Trotskyists: James Burnham, who became a founder of National Review, and Irving Kristol, who worked on Encounter magazine. Burnham was joined at NR by Suzanne LaFollette, who, piquantly enough, retained some copyrights to Trotskyist material until her death. But they were not the only people on the right who remained, in some degree, sentimental about their left-wing past. Willmoore Kendall, for example, was, as I recall, a lifelong contributor to relief for Spanish radical leftist refugees living in France. Above all, Burnham and Kristol, in a certain sense, did not renounce their pasts. They acknowledged that they had evolved quite dramatically away from their earlier enthusiasms. But they did not apologize, did not grovel, did not crawl and beg forgiveness for having, at one time, been stirred by the figure of Trotsky……"

sinotibetan,October 10, 2011 at 10:58 am

Dear kovane,

"Although I'm still kind of mad at you – because I haven't forgotten how you ignored my address to you in almost perfect Chinese earlier. "

I am truly sorry for that. It's totally unintended. As I've said in Anatoly's blog, I am not a Chinese from China but from Malaysia and I don't really READ Chinese well, although I speak Mandarin. BTW, did you address me in Chinese here or in Sublime Oblivion? I think you and Anatoly's written Mandarin has probably far surpassed mine.
[language is never my forte]

Regarding Putin and investment in treasuries…..well, I think it's very difficult for any leader – be they occasionally antagonistic towards Washington – to shun the West entirely(nor should this be made into a policy!) and especially when the whole global economic system is Western-dominated and construct. I do agree with you that Putin is not without defects. As I've said some time in the past, Russia needs more political leaders who are CREDIBLE challengers to current ones(i.e. Putin predominantly) – certainly not the Nemtsov-type! I think that is one real challenge indeed(and it's not specifically a Russian problem, I think it's a problem in almost every nation).

(something addressed to grafomanka as well)

As to WHETHER Russia is a democracy or not – well, my opinion is Russia is indeed a democracy. Just like my country is one also. 'Imperfect' ones, though. But there are NO perfect democracies anywhere in the world and certainly not even the US can claim 'democratic perfection' or even the 'best democratic model' as she often does. One difference between Western democracies and so-called 'undemocratic' non-Western democracies , in my opinion, is the 'subtlety' in 'managing the democracy'- to even think that Western politicians are lovable, innocent, dove-like pristine democrats while other non-Western politicians are dirty, corrupted pseudo-democrats would be plain naivete. I'd think that Western politicians do their lying(when some of them do so, that is) and politicking with greater finesse and subtlety, having grown accustomed with the 'democratic process'. Authoritarian China would certainly appear crude and their obstruction to certain personal and political freedoms of Chinese citizens would appear (and are)repressive. 'New democracies' like Russia would have a Putin diving for a too-clean looking 'artefact' - in the West, they'd probably made sure those antiques really look 'antiquated' with some quip from a prominent academic or more likely such a 'crude' publicity would not be thought of at all!For example, I'd see my personal freedoms in Malaysia as not too bad compared to an average American(except with regards to racism being a Malaysian government policy and the lack of freedom of religion/beliefs – i.e. I cannot preach Christianity to Muslims but the reverse is encouraged, for example) and even in terms of 'political freedoms', I'd think an average American would always think that they actually have more political freedom than we poor Malaysians living in a 'pseudo-democracy'. However, the latter is an 'illusion', in my opinion. Most of the opposing parties in Western nations are like two sides of the same coin. Eg. Democrats and Republicans – I agree they differ in some areas but in practical matters – whether foreign or domestic, they are pretty close. I'm not American nor have I ever been to the USA – but this is my observation as an outsider. Thus, Americans are luckier than the Chinese in China in having political choices(and thus remind them they live in a democratic nation) but I think those two choices aren't great choices.

Sorry for this rambling but what I'm trying to get at is that "American democracy" may not be so different from non-Western 'pseudo-democracies' and that electoral choices in Western nations may not be 'greater' than that of struggling nascent democracies like most Western media want many to believe. My opinion.

sinotibetan

sinotibetan,October 8, 2011 at 6:36 am

Anyway, any comments on Putin's recent proposal of a 'Eurasian Union' – perhaps an EU-like organization?

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64282

Sorry for my lack of comments nowadays. Very busy. Take care.

sinotibetan

Reply

kievite, October 11, 2011 at 4:07 am

I am not a specialist but I think that creation of this economic union is very difficult as nobody wants to play fair and due to this it can be costly for Russia and personally to Putin.

This stage of development of the xUSSR space is dominated by rabid nationalist forces that are by definition strongly anti-Russian. This is often disguised as "search for national identity" and "anti-colonial sentiments" but the essence is the same: "Russians go home".

So I think there need to be a higher level of separation before some form of economic cooperation became politically possible. Now the specter of the "new USSR" dooms the efforts.

Deepening of the current economic crisis might speed up the process. But most countries now realized that there is a possibility to balance pro-Kremlin moves with pro-Washington and pro-China moves to get some concessions from each player (although in case of Washington it proved to be pretty difficult; the USA played those republics like a master chess player) and you get the picture.

Some former republics might be more cooperative that others. Kazakhstan might be one although anti-Russian feelings are widespread too and there is an islamist party that wants to exclude Russians from the republic. Some are close to lost case. For example Georgia under Saakashvili is one.

Azerbaijan might be close to the lost case too as it fought with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh region, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh_War ), Armenia ia a Russian ally and althouth Russia was neutral in the conflict bad feelings exists.

Turkmenistan also has distinct anti-Russian position and discriminates Russian ethnic minority access to education.

The number of ethnic Russians who are forced to leave those republics annually due to nationalism is estimated to be around 10K. Might be much higher.

Ukraine for all practical purposes is a Western colony with crushing debt so it does not have an independent foreign policy. Also significant percentage of Western Ukrainians wants Russians to be deported from the country (5-7% I think). In this respect Western Ukraine is closer to Baltic countries. As the same time large number of Ukrainians, including Western Ukrainians work in Russia and Ukraine strongly depends on money they bring to the country.

One positive in this respect development is growing realistic assessment of the West and the USA and growing understanding that cut of economic ties with Russia dooms many of the remaining industrial facilities. But how effective this line of thinking can be for economic integration remains to be seen.

sinotibetan,October 13, 2011 at 8:07 pm

@kievite

Thanks for your comments. Just some thoughts:

1. With the current difficulties engulfing the EU, why is Putin keen on an organization similar to it? I think EU is unworkable unless it devolves into a loose association of European nations OR European nations within EU cease to be sovereign states.

2. I think Putin ,on the near term, is more interested in Ukraine joining the Customs Union and ultimately the Eurasian Union for mostly strategic reasons. Does the imprisonment of Tymoshenko present Russia with this opportunity?

3. I think Kazakhstan has less anti-Russian sentiments compared to most Central Asian states and I think most Kazakhs are not in favor of Islamism. That said, why do you think Kazakhstan joined the Customs Union? Kazakh opposition leaders are against that union.

4. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are said to be keen to join the Customs Union.
http://en.trend.az/regions/casia/kyrgyzstan/1944379.html

[Jul 10, 2015] US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 collusion

"...Fascism is well understood, its not just a perjorative buzzword. I think its definition is a bit out of date -- instead of a nationalist, militaristic political ideology mobilizing corporations and the population as an expression of national will it looks more like corporatism enlisting the trappings of extreme nationalism and militarism to further its agenda."
Jul 10, 2015 | The Guardian

Littlemissv -> norecovery 10 Jul 2015 18:51

Here is a comment from JCDavis with some important information:

Russ Tice revealed that the NSA was spying on Obama as early as 2004 at the behest of Dick Cheney, who had already convinced the NSA's director Hayden to break the law and spy on everyone with power.

It can't be any coincidence that President Obama went (or was sent) to Bill "Cheney is the best Republican" Kristol to get his foreign policy validated, and Kristol congratulated him on it, calling him a "born-again neocon."

And it is no coincidence that Obama has the Cheney protegee Victoria Nuland in his administration, right in the center of his new cold war with Russia. And no coincidence that she is the wife of neocon Robert Kagan, who with Bill Kristol founded PNAC. PNAC counts neocon Paul Wolfowitz as a member, who saw Russia as our main obstacle to world empire.

It's a nest of neocons running Obama as a puppet and pushing us into a confrontation with Russia while smashing all the Russian allies according to the Wolfowitz doctrine.

norecovery 10 Jul 2015 17:34

Many of the Neocon criminals that promoted and started that awful war are still in power behind the scenes in the Obama administration, and they are still doing their dirty deeds throughout the MENA and in Ukraine.


martinusher TickleMyFancy 10 Jul 2015 17:20

Fascism is well understood, its not just a perjorative buzzword. I think its definition is a bit out of date -- instead of a nationalist, militaristic political ideology mobilizing corporations and the population as an expression of national will it looks more like corporatism enlisting the trappings of extreme nationalism and militarism to further its agenda.

(The distinction is a bit subtle, come to think of it. Maybe its easier to just stick to slinging names about....)


reptile0000 Cornelis Davids 10 Jul 2015 16:50

Yeh thats what i said American war is Global. Their leaders repeatedly say it over and over again. Nothings surprising about their doctors torturing people kidnapped from all over the world. Brutal empire that's what it is for many around the world


[Jul 09, 2015] 200PM Water Cooler 7-9-15

the article Political Violence at a Glance is probably a sign that the color revolutions became more costly to organize. The whole US neoliberal project looks now much less attractive then in early 90th when it took Eastern Europe and the USSR by storm. At this time this was a relatively new line of attack that took government by surprise and unprepared. Now they are prepared and ready. Governments also started to understand the mechanisms behind color revolutions better and take measures to "cut oxigen" before hand. For example many countries showed the door suspicious NGOs. If we assume that pay for "street protester extra" is around $25-$30 per night and the food and amenities cost the same amount, then one day of protest with just 1-2K of participates (some percentage of protesters are volunteers who do not get any money) can run $100K or more. With at least half in cash. So a month of protest is around $3 million of dollars. Bribing media personalities is also becoming more costly as risks now are real and those people understand that in case of failure they might be sucked and forced to emigrate. Also the core group of several hundred "professional protester" ( the rank-and-file protesters organizers around which the protest will coalesce ) need to be kept on full support for years.
Several failed attempts recently suggest that cost are increasing dramatically. For example in Hong Cong despite huge money infusions the results were minimal and goverment managed to sqash the protests. Also Ukrainian EuroMaydan can't be counted as full success, unless bringing to power far right forces was the goal (and now money need to be spend to control them). Unless Nuland's famous remark "F*ck the EU!" was the policy goal. In this case the operation was accomplished successfully. As this is all about maintaining the US hegemony, Reading Professor Andrew J. Bacevich's book Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (American Empire Project) might a good prerequisite for the article.
Jul 09, 2015 | naked capitalism

"̌How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?" [Political Violence at a Glance].

According to our research, the average nonviolent campaign takes 3 years to run its course. Most activists do not plan for three year's worth of tactical sequencing, communicating a viable alternative, broadening and deepening the levels of participation, prompting loyalty shifts in the regime's key pillars, etc. I think this problem is exacerbated by over-reliance on social media, which is facilitating rapid connections and communication-all great-but oftentimes thrusting activists and their movements into primetime before they are sufficiently prepared and organized.

Furthermore, regimes often have huge amounts of resources to dedicate to cyber-suppression, to usurping complete control of the media, co-opting real or potential dissent, preventing fraternization by security forces, and frightening people into supporting the status quo. With the exception of a few brutal leaders in Syria, North Korea, and Uzbekistan, most authoritarians can rely on a "velvet fist" to control populations and suppress dissent. They don't need mass violence.

Activists are forced to operate in fluid, quickly changing environments. They often lack access to key pieces of information while their movement is ongoing, making it difficult to evaluate what's working and what's not and adapting their strategies and tactics accordingly. Their heavily resourced, patient, regime opponents are simply out-performing and out-maneuvering them in many cases.

Lisa, July 9, 2015 at 4:53 pm

"How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?" [Political Violence at a Glance]."

I have posted on this elsewhere (Ian Walsh for example). Activist groups need to learn from LGBTI ones. How have we managed to get success in many areas, while every other one has failed, despite having far worse opposition and far less public support?

3 Years? Not even enough time to start setting up infrastructure, if you are not thinking 20 years at least then you are not in the game.

Thing long term, focus on what you want and don't deviate and be endlessly persistent.

Never, ever compromise from your core aims.

All politicans are corrupt and will turn on you. Just because 'your party' gets in doesn't mean they will not turn on you as soon as they can (hint: they always will if allowed). Endlessly hammer them to keep them in line. Day 1 after an election is just another day of fighting.

I'd also add internally police yourselves rigorously, there will always be those sell outs and traitors, you have to shut them down and kick them out real fast.

On the ground community activists are your real core and heart. Build them up before thinking of anything else, then always support and maintain them.

If you can't put many, many thousands of people on the street that are prepared to be beaten up…again you are not in the game.

Handle the media properly…duh…and create your own seperate media.

And so on.

hunkerdown, July 9, 2015 at 5:37 pm

LGBTIs (thank you for being honest and leaving out the Q), who simply want to "buy in" to the bourgeois capitalist mainstream, assimilate its values, and consume its harvest, are playing on a rather different field than, say, economic justice activists who seek to challenge the privileges of said bourgeois capitalist mainstream or environmental activists challenging the foundations of consumerism.

Playing "the game" doesn't seem to do much good for those not seeking pro-consumerism outcomes. Why is it that any outcomes that cannot be reached through "the game" are deemed illegitimate?

likbez July 9, 2015 at 6:46 pm

=== quote ===

"̌How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?" [Political Violence at a Glance].

According to our research, the average nonviolent campaign takes 3 years to run its course. Most activists do not plan for three year's worth of tactical sequencing, communicating a viable alternative, broadening and deepening the levels of participation, prompting loyalty shifts in the regime's key pillars, etc. I think this problem is exacerbated by over-reliance on social media, which is facilitating rapid connections and communication-all great-but oftentimes thrusting activists and their movements into primetime before they are sufficiently prepared and organized.

=== end of quote ===

The article might be a sign that architects of color revolutions recently start to experience some unanticipated difficulties and cost overruns ;-). The whole American neoliberal project looks much less attractive then in early 90th, when it took the Eastern Europe and the USSR by storm. So the authors are setting ground for multi-year cash financing from McCain's NDI and other "sponsors".

You need to pay at least $25-$30 per night, per extra during street protests in such cases. So the bill for one night of protest is at least $70K. Double this figure as you need to provide food and amenities too.

Plus there should be a several hundred of "core professional activists" who need to be trained and supported like salaried professionals for all those years.

also it looks like local compradors and media personalities now want more money to compensate for the risks they are taking too. As risks look higher then before. So all those "liberal professors" at universities, now understand that they can lose the position and forced into immigration. For such risks research grants and some trips to Western conferences is not enough. You need some guarantees in case of worst case scenario materialize.

If we look at the recent set back in Hong Cong student protests (I think they are not over yet, and the next stage in on the drawing boards) governments now probably start to understand the key mechanisms of color revolutions, Which will dramatically rise the costs of staging such an event.

Also sometimes events goes the way the architects did not fully anticipated. Unless bringing far right nationalists to power was the goal, I am not sure that Ukrainian Euromaidan can be counted as their success. If we are not taking literally the famous Nuland's remark "F*ck the EU" as a policy goal, a proposal which now definitely looks like being successfully accomplished ;-)

I think that reading Professor Bacevich's book "Washington Rules:
America's Path to Permanent War" might be a good prerequisite to this article.

[Jul 09, 2015] Russia warns against 'color revolution' in Armenia

Jul 02, 2015 | THE DAILY STAR (Lebanon)

MOSCOW/YEREVAN: In a veiled warning to the West, Russia cautioned Thursday against any attempt to spark a new "color revolution" in Armenia by exploiting protests against electricity prices for political ends.

Large crowds of mostly young people have been protesting in the Armenian capital Yerevan for more than 10 days, demanding the government scrap plans to raise the price of electricity for households.

Russia has been wary of unrest on its borders since governments fell in Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution, Ukraine's 2003-04 Orange Revolution and Kiev's 2014 Maidan protests - events in which it says the West backed the protesters.

"You know how the 'color revolutions', and the Maidan in Ukraine, started," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a BRICS Youth Summit gathering of young people from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) in Moscow.

"The current developments in Armenia - there is also a temptation among many to use them to whip up anti-government sentiment although the root of these events is purely economic," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

"It seems useful for someone to go further and develop these processes in a political way."

Lavrov said that the West in particular was paying increasing attention to the role of young people in shaping national agendas, including through "peaceful protest."

His comments were the closest any senior Russian official has come to suggesting the West may have or be seeking a role in the protest in Armenia, which hosts a Russian military base, to pull it further out of Moscow's orbit.

Thousands of protesters have been gathering every evening in Yerevan though their numbers dwindle during the day. Police tried to disperse them with water cannon early last week but the protest continued and has been peaceful since then.

The protesters have ignored concessions offered by President Serzh Sargsyan, saying they want the price rise of up to 22 percent planned by the distribution company, a subsidiary of Russian firm Inter RAO, to be scrapped entirely.

The protesters have avoided chanting anti-government slogans, saying their demands are limited to the electricity price dispute, though many also complain about alleged corruption in Armenia.

"I think the process of these protests is largely over - or if not over, heading that way," Armenian political analyst Alexander Iskandaryan told Reuters in Yerevan.

But Russian leaders fear unrest in neighboring states could encourage protests in Russia and President Vladimir Putin said last year that Moscow "should do everything necessary" to prevent such a "color revolution" in Russia.

Armenia, in the southern Caucasus, was once part of the Soviet Union and its 3.2 million people have been hit hard by an economic downturn in Russia, its main ally and trading partner.

It is also part of the Eurasian Economic Union, a political and economic bloc set up by Moscow to try to match the economic strength of the European Union, China and the United States.

The Kremlin has said it is up to Armenia's government and the protesters to resolve the dispute themselves

[Jul 08, 2015]Are we the fascists now?

Jul 03, 2015 | OffGuardian
thanks-4-kit-mum

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

To initiate a war of aggression…," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Libya

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.

In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten".

The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a "rebel" bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: "We came, we saw, he died." His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew… that if we waited one more day," said President Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato's inferno, described by David Cameron as a "humanitarian intervention".

Secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS, many of the "rebels" would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by Nato bombers.

For Obama, David Cameron and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi's true crime was Libya's economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa's greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships".

Following Nato's attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu…

confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency".

The Balkans

The "humanitarian war" against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent Nato to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing "genocide" against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59″ might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War". The West's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the Nato bombing over, and much of Serbia's infrastructure in ruins, along with schools, hospitals, monasteries and the national TV station, international forensic teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume evidence of the "holocaust". The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". A year later, a United Nations tribunal on Yugoslavia announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA.

There was no genocide. The "holocaust" was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.

Behind the lie, there was serious purpose. Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent, multi-ethnic federation that had stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. Most of its utilities and major manufacturing was publicly owned. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to capture its "natural market" in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991 to lay their plans for the disastrous eurozone, a secret deal had been struck; Germany would recognise Croatia. Yugoslavia was doomed.

In Washington, the US saw that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans. Nato, then an almost defunct Cold War relic, was reinvented as imperial enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in Rambouillet, in France, the Serbs were subjected to the enforcer's duplicitous tactics. The Rambouillet accord included a secret Annex B, which the US delegation inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia – a country with bitter memories of the Nazi occupation – and the implementation of a "free-market economy" and the privatisation of all government assets. No sovereign state could sign this. Punishment followed swiftly; Nato bombs fell on a defenceless country. It was the precursor to the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria and Libya, and Ukraine.

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America's modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as "sanctions". The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.

Afghanistan

Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over."

These were opening words of Obama's 2015 State of the Union address. In fact, some 10,000 troops and 20,000 military contractors (mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan on indefinite assignment. "The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion," said Obama. In fact, more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2014 than in any year since the UN took records.

The majority have been killed – civilians and soldiers – during Obama's time as president.

The tragedy of Afghanistan rivals the epic crime in Indochina. In his lauded and much quoted book 'The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives', Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of US policies from Afghanistan to the present day, writes that if America is to control Eurasia and dominate the world, it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion… Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilisation." He is right. As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then President Carter's National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by dealing a death blow to Afghanistan's first and only democracy. Who knows this vital history?

In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, eventually overthrowing the vestiges of the aristocratic regime in 1978. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) formed a government and declared a reform programme that included the abolition of feudalism, freedom for all religions, equal rights for women and social justice for the ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

The new government introduced free medical care for the poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan's doctors, a third of civil servants and the majority of teachers. "Every girl," recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon, "could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest music. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the people the West supported."

The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet Union, even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later admitted, "there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution]". Alarmed by the growing confidence of liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan was to succeed under the PDPA, its independence and progress would offer the "threat of a promising example".

On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorised support for tribal "fundamentalist" groups known as the mujaheddin, a program that grew to over $500 million a year in U.S. arms and other assistance. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan's first secular, reformist government. In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that "the United States' larger interests… would be served by the demise of [the PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan." The italics are mine.

The mujaheddin were the forebears of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received tens of millions of dollars in cash from the CIA Hekmatyar's specialty was trafficking in opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Invited to London, he was lauded by Prime Minister Thatcher as a "freedom fighter".

Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and so undermine secular political liberation and "destabilise" the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, "a few stirred up Muslims". His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of the Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region. In 1986, the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, began to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. The Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden was one of them. Operatives who would eventually join the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were recruited at an Islamic college in Brooklyn, New York, and given paramilitary training at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called "Operation Cyclone". Its success was celebrated in 1996 when the last PDPA president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah – who had gone before the UN General Assembly to plead for help – was hanged from a streetlight by the Taliban.

The "blowback" of Operation Cyclone and its "few stirred up Muslims" was September 11, 2001. Operation Cyclone became the "war on terror", in which countless men, women and children would lose their lives across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. The enforcer's message was and remains: "You are with us or against us."

The common thread is mass murder

The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its "free fire zones", "body counts" and "collateral damage". In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians ("gooks") were murdered by the US; yet only one massacre, at My Lai, is remembered. In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot.

Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each "hit" is registered on a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat".

"For goose-steppers," wrote the historian Norman Pollack, "substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manque, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while."

Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being," said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, "The sovereign is he who decides the exception." This sums up Americanism, the world's dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture. I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, US losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this.

The difference now is that cinema audiences are invited to wring their hands at the "tragedy" of American psychopaths having to kill people in distant places – just as the President himself kills them. The embodiment of Hollywood's violence, the actor and director Clint Eastwood, was nominated for an Oscar this year for his movie, 'American Sniper', which is about a licensed murderer and nutcase. The New York Times described it as a "patriotic, pro-family picture which broke all attendance records in its opening days".

There are no heroic movies about America's embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens – as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America. Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the US; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the "father" of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the US space programme.

Ukraine

In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of Nato, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its "new wave" hailed by the enforcer as "nationalists".

This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government. The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. On February 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington get "the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry". If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia.

No western leader has spoken up about the revival of fascism in the heart of Europe – with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, ranted abuse about European leaders for opposing the US arming of the Kiev regime. She referred to the German Defence Minister as "the minister for defeatism". It was Nuland who masterminded the coup in Kiev. The wife of Robert D. Kagan, a leading "neo-con" luminary and co-founder of the extreme right wing Project for a New American Century, she was foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney.

Nuland's coup did not go to plan. Nato was prevented from seizing Russia's historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea. The mostly Russian population of Crimea – illegally annexed to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 – voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, as they had done in the 1990s. The referendum was voluntary, popular and internationally observed. There was no invasion.

At the same time, the Kiev regime turned on the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic cleansing. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social security and pensions. More than a million refugees fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople escaping "the violence" caused by the "Russian invasion". The Nato commander, General Breedlove – whose name and actions might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove – announced that 40,000 Russian troops were "massing". In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none.

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine – a third of the population – have long sought a federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are not "separatists" but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev. Their revolt and establishment of autonomous "states" are a reaction to Kiev's attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western audiences.

On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as "another bright day in our national history". In the American and British media, this was reported as a "murky tragedy" resulting from "clashes" between "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) and "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims – "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Obama congratulated the junta for its "restraint".

If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine. On January 29, Ukraine's top military commander, General Viktor Muzhemko, almost inadvertently dismissed the very basis for US and EU sanctions on Russia when he told a news conference emphatically: "The Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian Army". There were "individual citizens" who were members of "illegal armed groups", but there was no Russian invasion. This was not news. Vadym Prystaiko, Kiev's Deputy Foreign Minister, has called for "full scale war" with nuclear-armed Russia.

On February 21, US Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, introduced a bill that would authorise American arms for the Kiev regime. In his Senate presentation, Inhofe used photographs he claimed were of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, which have long been exposed as fakes. It was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's fake pictures of a Soviet installation in Nicaragua, and Colin Powell's fake evidence to the UN of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The intensity of the smear campaign against Russia and the portrayal of its president as a pantomime villain is unlike anything I have known as a reporter. Robert Parry, one of America's most distinguished investigative journalists, who revealed the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote recently, "No European government, since Adolf Hitler's Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet across the West's media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established… If you wonder how the world could stumble into world war three – much as it did into world war one a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness over Ukraine that has proved impervious to facts or reason."

In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack… In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons." In the Guardian on February 2, Timothy Garton-Ash called, in effect, for a world war. "Putin must be stopped," said the headline. "And sometimes only guns can stop guns." He conceded that the threat of war might "nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement"; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that "America has the best kit".

In 2003, Garton-Ash, an Oxford professor, repeated the propaganda that led to the slaughter in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, he wrote, "has, as [Colin] Powell documented, stockpiled large quantities of horrifying chemical and biological weapons, and is hiding what remains of them. He is still trying to get nuclear ones." He lauded Blair as a "Gladstonian, Christian liberal interventionist". In 2006, he wrote, "Now we face the next big test of the West after Iraq: Iran."

The outbursts – or as Garton-Ash prefers, his "tortured liberal ambivalence" – are not untypical of those in the transatlantic liberal elite who have struck a Faustian deal. The war criminal Blair is their lost leader. The Guardian, in which Garton-Ash's piece appeared, published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the Lockheed Martin monster were the words: "The F-35. GREAT For Britain". This American "kit" will cost British taxpayers Ł1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered across the world. In tune with its advertiser, a Guardian editorial has demanded an increase in military spending.

Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev's new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas "investment". She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship. They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden's son is on the board of Ukraine's biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine's rich farming soil.

Above all, they want Ukraine's mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia's long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country's economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.

The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilisation to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.

[Jul 03, 2015] Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners

"...So, to recap: corrupt German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy German weapons. And then a German chancellor presses for austerity on the Greek people to pay back the loans they took out (with Germans banks) at massive interest, for the weapons they bought off them in the first place. "
"...Debt and war are constant partners."
"...And the reason the USA dominated the world after WW2 was they had stayed out of both wars for the first 2 years and made fortunes lending and selling arms to Britain (and some to the Axis). It was the Jewish moneylenders of the Middle Ages who financed the various internal European wars, created the first banks, and along with a Scot formed the Bank of England."
Jul 03, 2015 | The Guardian

omewhere in a Greek jail, the former defence minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, watches the financial crisis unfold. I wonder how partly responsible he feels? In 2013, Akis (as he is popularly known) went down for 20 years, finally succumbing to the waves of financial scandal to which his name had long been associated. For alongside the lavish spending, the houses and the dodgy tax returns, there was bribery, and it was the €8m appreciation he received from the German arms dealer, Ferrostaal, for the Greek government's purchase of Type 214 submarines, that sent him to prison.

There is this idea that the Greeks got themselves into this current mess because they paid themselves too much for doing too little. Well, maybe. But it's not the complete picture. For the Greeks also got themselves into debt for the oldest reason in the book – one might even argue, for the very reason that public debt itself was first invented – to raise and support an army. The state's need for quick money to raise an army is how industrial-scale money lending comes into business (in the face of the church's historic opposition to usury). Indeed, in the west, one might even stretch to say that large-scale public debt began as a way to finance military intervention in the Middle East – ie the crusades. And just as rescuing Jerusalem from the Turks was the justification for massive military spending in the middle ages, so the fear of Turkey has been the reason given for recent Greek spending. Along with German subs, the Greeks have bought French frigates, US F16s and German Leopard 2 tanks. In the 1980s, for example, the Greeks spent an average of 6.2% of their GDP on defence compared with a European average of 2.9%. In the years following their EU entry, the Greeks were the world's fourth-highest spenders on conventional weaponry.

So, to recap: corrupt German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy German weapons. And then a German chancellor presses for austerity on the Greek people to pay back the loans they took out (with Germans banks) at massive interest, for the weapons they bought off them in the first place. Is this an unfair characterisation? A bit. It wasn't just Germany. And there were many other factors at play in the escalation of Greek debt. But the postwar difference between the Germans and the Greeks is not the tired stereotype that the former are hardworking and the latter are lazy, but rather that, among other things, the Germans have, for obvious reasons, been restricted in their military spending. And they have benefited massively from that.

Debt and war are constant partners. "The global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the war," wrote Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, calculating the cost of the US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, pre-financial crash, to have been $3tn. Indeed, it was only this year, back in March, that the UK taxpayer finally paid off the money we borrowed to fight the first world war. "This is a moment for Britain to be proud of," said George Osborne, as he paid the final instalment of Ł1.9bn. Really?

The phrase "military-industrial complex" is one of those cliches of 70s leftwing radicalism, but it was Dwight D Eisenhower, a five-star general no less, who warned against its creeping power in his final speech as president. "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government … we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society." Ike was right.

This week, Church House, C of E HQ, hosted a conference sponsored by the arms dealers Lockheed Martin and MBDA Missile Systems. We preach about turning swords into ploughs yet help normalise an industry that turns them back again. The archbishop of Canterbury has been pretty solid on Wonga and trying to put legal loan sharks out of business. Now the church needs to take this up a level. For the debts that cripple entire countries come mostly from spending on war, not on pensions. And we don't say this nearly enough.
@giles_fraser

marsCubed, 3 Jul 2015 12:21

Syriza's position has been stated in this Huffington Post article.

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Tuesday, Yiannis Bournous, the head of international affairs for Greece's ruling Syriza party, heartily endorsed defense cuts as a way to meet the fiscal targets of Greece's international creditors.

"We already proposed a 200 million euro cut in the defense budget," Bournous said at an event hosted by the Center for Economic Policy and Research and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, referring to cuts in Syriza's most recent proposal to its creditors. "We are willing to make it even bigger -- it is a pleasure for us."

Europe Offered Greece A Deal To Meet Its Obligations By Cutting Military Spending. The IMF Said No Way.

If the report is correct, ideology is playing just as much of a role as arithmetic in preventing a resolution. The IMF's refusal to consider a plan that would lessen pension cuts is consistent with itshistorically neoliberal political philosophy.


Giftedbutlazee 3 Jul 2015 11:52

we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.

Still as relevant now, 54 years after Eisenhower said it.


BritCol 3 Jul 2015 11:39

And the reason the USA dominated the world after WW2 was they had stayed out of both wars for the first 2 years and made fortunes lending and selling arms to Britain (and some to the Axis). It was the Jewish moneylenders of the Middle Ages who financed the various internal European wars, created the first banks, and along with a Scot formed the Bank of England.

The moral? War makes money for profiteers, and puts those of us not killed or displaced in debt for generations. Yet we morons keep waving flags every time a prime minister wants to send us into another conflict.


barry1947brewster 3 Jul 2015 11:39

28 May 2014 The Royal United Services Institute estimated that since the Berlin Wall fell the UK has spent Ł35 billion on wars. Now it is suggested that we bomb IS in Syria. Instead of printing "Paid for by the Taxpayer" on medicines provided by the NHS we should have a daily costing of our expenditure on bombs etc used in anger.


real tic 3 Jul 2015 11:23

Finally someone at Graun looks at this obvious contradiction present in the Greek governments opposition to cut in defense spending (when they apparently accept cuts to pensions, healthcare and other social services)! Well done Giles, but what's wrong with your colleagues in CIF, or even in the glass bubbled editorial offices? Why has it taken so long to examine this aspect of Greek debt?

Defense expenditure is also one reason some actors in creditor nations are content to keep Greece in debt, even as far as to see its debts deepen, as long as it keeps on buying. while within Greece, nationalism within the military has long been a way of containing far right tendencies.

It is notable but unsurprising that the current Minister of Defense in Greece is a far right politician, allied to Tsipiras in the Syriza coalition.


Pollik 3 Jul 2015 11:03

"Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners"

...and someone always makes a profit.

[Jul 01, 2015] A Short History: The Neocon Clean Break Grand Design The Regime Change Disasters It Has Fostered

zerohedge.com

Submitted by Dan Sanchez via AntiWar.com,

To understand today's crises in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere, one must grasp their shared Lebanese connection. This assertion may seem odd. After all, what is the big deal about Lebanon? That little country hasn't had top headlines since Israel deigned to bomb and invade it in 2006. Yet, to a large extent, the roots of the bloody tangle now enmeshing the Middle East lie in Lebanon: or to be more precise, in the Lebanon policy of Israel.

Rewind to the era before the War on Terror. In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's "dovish" Prime Minister, was assassinated by a right-wing zealot. This precipitated an early election in which Rabin's Labor Party was defeated by the ultra-hawkish Likud, lifting hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu to his first Premiership in 1996.

That year, an elite study group produced a policy document for the incipient administration titled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." The membership of the Clean Break study group is highly significant, as it included American neoconservatives who would later hold high offices in the Bush Administration and play driving roles in its Middle East policy.

"A Clean Break" advised that the new Likud administration adopt a "shake it off" attitude toward the policy of the old Labor administration which, as the authors claimed, assumed national "exhaustion" and allowed national "retreat." This was the "clean break" from the past that "A Clean Break" envisioned. Regarding Israel's international policy, this meant:

"…a clean break from the slogan, 'comprehensive peace' to a traditional concept of strategy based on balance of power."

Pursuit of comprehensive peace with all of Israel's neighbors was to be abandoned for selective peace with some neighbors (namely Jordan and Turkey) and implacable antagonism toward others (namely Iraq, Syria, and Iran). The weight of its strategic allies would tip the balance of power in favor of Israel, which could then use that leverage to topple the regimes of its strategic adversaries by using covertly managed "proxy forces" and "the principle of preemption." Through such a "redrawing of the map of the Middle East," Israel will "shape the regional environment," and thus, "Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them."

"A Clean Break" was to Israel (and ultimately to the US) what Otto von Bismarck's "Blood and Iron" speech was to Germany. As he set the German Empire on a warpath that would ultimately set Europe ablaze, Bismarck said:

"Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided?-?that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849?-?but by iron and blood."

Before setting Israel and the US on a warpath that would ultimately set the Middle East ablaze, the Clean Break authors were basically saying: Not through peace accords will the great questions of the day be decided?-?that was the great mistake of 1978 (at Camp David) and 1993 (at Oslo)?-?but by "divide and conquer" and regime change. By wars both aggressive ("preemptive") and "dirty" (covert and proxy).


"A Clean Break" slated Saddam Hussein's Iraq as first up for regime change. This is highly significant, especially since several members of the Clean Break study group played decisive roles in steering and deceiving the United States into invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam seven years later.

Perle-Richard-AEI

The Clean Break study group's leader, Richard Perle, led the call for Iraqi regime change beginning in the 90s from his perch at the Project for a New American Century and other neocon think tanks. And while serving as chairman of a high level Pentagon advisory committee, Perle helped coordinate the neoconservative takeover of foreign policy in the Bush administration and the final push for war in Iraq.

douglas_feith

Another Clean Breaker, Douglas Feith, was a Perle protege and a key player in that neocon coup. After 9/11, as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Feith created two secret Pentagon offices tasked with cherry-picking, distorting, and repackaging CIA and Pentagon intelligence to help make the case for war.

Feith's "Office of Special Plans" manipulated intelligence to promote the falsehood that Saddam had a secret weapons of mass destruction program that posed an imminent chemical, biological, and even nuclear threat. This lie was the main justification used by the Bush administration for the Iraq War.

Feith's "Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group" trawled through the CIA's intelligence trash to stitch together far-fetched conspiracy theories linking Saddam Hussein's Iraq with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, among other bizarre pairings. Perle put the Group into contact with Ahmed Chalabi, a dodgy anti-Saddam Iraqi exile who would spin even more yarn of this sort.

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Much of the Group's grunt work was performed by David Wurmser, another Perle protege and the primary author of "A Clean Break." Wurmser would go on to serve as an advisor to two key Iraq War proponents in the Bush administration: John Bolton at the State Department and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The foregone conclusions generated by these Clean Breaker-led projects faced angry but ineffectual resistance from the Intelligence Community, and are now widely considered scandalously discredited. But they succeeded in helping, perhaps decisively, to overcome both bureaucratic and public resistance to the march to war.

On the second night of war against Iraq, bombs fall on government buildings located in the heart of Baghdad along the Tigris River.  Multiple bombs left several buildings in flames and others completely destroyed.

The Iraq War that followed put the Clean Break into action by grafting it onto America. The War accomplished the Clean Break objective of regime change in Iraq, thus beginning the "redrawing of the map of the Middle East." And the attendant "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive war accomplished the Clean Break objective of "reestablishing the principle of preemption"


But why did the Netanyahu/Bush Clean Breakers want to regime change Iraq in the first place? While reference is often made to "A Clean Break" as a prologue to the Iraq War, it is often forgotten that the document proposed regime change in Iraq primarily as a "means" of "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." Overthrowing Saddam in Iraq was merely a stepping stone to "foiling" and ultimately overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria. As Pat Buchanan put it:

"In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel's enemy remains Syria, but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad."

Exactly how this was to work is baffling. As the document admitted, although both were Baathist regimes, Assad and Saddam were far more enemies than allies. "A Clean Break" floated a convoluted pipe dream involving a restored Hashemite monarchy in Iraq (the same US-backed, pro-Israel dynasty that rules Jordan) using its sway over an Iraqi cleric to turn his co-religionists in Syria against Assad. Instead, the neocons ended up settling for a different pipe(line) dream, sold to them by that con-man Chalabi, involving a pro-Israel, Chalabi-dominated Iraq building a pipeline from Mosul to Haifa. One only wonders why he didn't sweeten the deal by including the Brooklyn Bridge in the sale.

As incoherent as it may have been, getting at Syria through Iraq is what the neocons wanted. And this is also highly significant for us today, because the US has now fully embraced the objective of regime change in Syria, even with Barack Obama inhabiting the White House instead of George W. Bush.

Washington is pursuing that objective by partnering with Turkey, Jordan, and the Gulf States in supporting the anti-Assad insurgency in Syria's bloody civil war, and thereby majorly abetting the bin Ladenites (Syrian Al Qaeda and ISIS) leading that insurgency. Obama has virtually become an honorary Clean Breaker by pursuing a Clean Break objective ("rolling back Syria") using Clean Break strategy ("balance of power" alliances with select Muslim states) and Clean Break tactics (a covert and proxy "dirty war"). Of course the neocons are the loudest voices calling for the continuance and escalation of this policy. And Israel is even directly involving itself by providing medical assistance to Syrian insurgents, including Al Qaeda fighters.


Another target identified by "A Clean Break" was Iran. This is highly significant, since while the neocons were still riding high in the Bush administration's saddle, they came within an inch of launching a US war on Iran over yet another manufactured and phony WMD crisis. While the Obama administration seems on the verge of finalizing a nuclear/peace deal with the Iranian government in Tehran, the neocons and Netanyahu himself (now Prime Minister once again) have pulled out all the stops to scupper it and put the US and Iran back on a collision course.

The neocons are also championing ongoing American support for Saudi Arabia's brutal war in Yemen to restore that country's US-backed former dictator. Simply because the "Houthi" rebels that overthrew him and took the capital city of Sanaa are Shiites, they are assumed to be a proxy of the Shiite Iranians, and so this is seen by neocons and Saudi theocons alike as a war against Iranian expansion.

Baghdad is a pit stop on the road to Damascus, and Sanaa is a pit stop on the road to Tehran. But, according to the Clean Breakers, Damascus and Tehran are themselves merely pit stops on the road to Beirut.

According to "A Clean Break," Israel's main beef with Assad is that:

"Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil."

And its great grief with the Ayatollah is that Iran, like Syria, is one of the:

"…principal agents of aggression in Lebanon…"


All regime change roads lead to Lebanon, it would seem. So this brings us back to our original question. What is the big deal about Lebanon?

The answer to this question goes back to Israel's very beginnings. Its Zionist founding fathers established the bulk of Israel's territory by dispossessing and ethnically cleansing three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs in 1948. Hundreds of thousands of these were driven (sometimes literally in trucks, sometimes force marched with gunshots fired over their heads) into Lebanon, where they were gathered in miserable refugee camps.

In Lebanon the Palestinians who had fled suffered an apartheid state almost as rigid as the one Israel imposed on those who stayed behind, because the dominant Maronite Christians there were so protective of their political and economic privileges in Lebanon's confessional system.

In a 1967 war of aggression, Israel conquered the rest of formerly-British Palestine, annexing the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and placing the Palestinians there (many of whom fled there seeking refuge after their homes were taken by the Israelis in 1948) under a brutal, permanent military occupation characterized by continuing dispossession and punctuated by paroxysms of mass murder.

This compounding of their tragedy drove the Palestinians to despair and radicalization, and they subsequently lifted Yasser Arafat and his fedayeen (guerrilla) movement to the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then headquartered in Jordan.

When the king of Jordan massacred and drove out the PLO, Arafat and the remaining members relocated to Lebanon. There they waged cross-border guerrilla warfare to try to drive Israel out of the occupied territories. The PLO drew heavily from the refugee camps in Lebanon for recruits.

This drew Israel deeply into Lebanese affairs. In 1976, Israel started militarily supporting the Maronite Christians, helping to fuel a sectarian civil war that had recently begun and would rage until 1990. That same year, Syrian forces entered Lebanon, partook in the war, and began a military occupation of the country.

In 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon to drive the PLO back and to recruit a proxy army called the "South Lebanon Army" (SLA).

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In 1982 Israel launched a full scale war in Lebanon, fighting both Syria and the PLO. Osama bin Laden later claimed that it was seeing the wreckage of tall buildings in Beirut toppled by Israel's "total war" tactics that inspired him to destroy American buildings like the Twin Towers.

In this war, Israel tried to install a group of Christian Fascists called the Phalange in power over Lebanon. This failed when the new Phalangist ruler was assassinated. As a reprisal, the Phalange perpetrated, with Israeli connivance, the massacre of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese Shiites. (See Murray Rothbard's moving contemporary coverage of the atrocity.)

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Israel's 1982 war succeeded in driving the PLO out of Lebanon, although not in destroying it. And of course hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees still linger in Lebanon's camps, yearning for their right of return: a fact that cannot have escaped Israel's notice.

The Lebanese Shiites were either ambivalent or welcoming toward being rid of the PLO. But Israel rapidly squandered whatever patience the Shiites had for it by brutally occupying southern Lebanon for years. This led to the creation of Hezbollah, a Shiite militia not particularly concerned with the plight of the Sunni Palestinian refugees, but staunchly dedicated to driving Israel and its proxies (the SLA) completely out of Lebanon.

Aided by Syria and Iran, though not nearly to the extent Israel would have us believe, Hezbollah became the chief defensive force directly frustrating Israel's efforts to dominate and exploit its northern neighbor. In 1993 and again in 1996 (the year of "A Clean Break"), Israel launched still more major military operations in Lebanon, chiefly against Hezbollah, but also bombing Lebanon's general population and infrastructure, trying to use terrorism to motivate the people and the central government to crack down on Hezbollah.

This is the context of "A Clean Break": Israel's obsession with crushing Hezbollah and dominating Lebanon, even if it means turning most of the Middle East upside down (regime changing Syria, Iran, and Iraq) to do it.


9/11 paved the way for realizing the Clean Break, using the United States as a gigantic proxy, thanks to the Israel Lobby's massive influence in Congress and the neocons' newly won dominance in the Bush Administration.

Much to their chagrin, however, its first phase (the Iraq War) did not turn out so well for the Clean Breakers. The blundering American grunts ended up installing the most vehemently pro-Iran Shiite faction in power in Baghdad, and now Iranian troops are even stationed and fighting inside Iraq. Oops. And as it turns out, Chalabi may have been an Iranian agent all along. (But don't worry, Mr. Perle, I'm sure he'll eventually come through with that pipeline.)

This disastrous outcome has given both Israel and Saudi Arabia nightmares about an emerging "Shia Crescent" arcing from Iran through Iraq into Syria. And now the new Shiite "star" in Yemen completes this menacing "Star and Crescent" picture. The fears of the Sunni Saudis are partially based on sectarianism. But what Israel sees in this picture is a huge potential regional support network for its nemesis Hezbollah.

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Israel would have none of it. In 2006, it launched its second full scale war in Lebanon, only to be driven back once again by that damned Hezbollah. It was time to start thinking big and regional again. As mentioned above, the Bush war on Iran didn't pan out. (This was largely because the CIA got its revenge on the neocons by releasing a report stating plainly that Iran was not anything close to a nuclear threat.) So instead the neocons and the Saudis drew the US into what Seymour Hersh called "the Redirection" in 2007, which involved clandestine "dirty war" support for Sunni jihadists to counter Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.

When the 2011 Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings spread to Syria, the Redirection was put into overdrive. The subsequent US-led dirty war discussed above had the added bonus of drawing Hezbollah into the bloody quagmire to try to save Assad, whose regime now finally seems on the verge of collapse.

The Clean Break is back, baby! Assad is going, Saddam is gone, and who knows: the Ayatollah may never get his nuclear deal anyway. But most importantly for "securing the realm," Hezbollah is on the ropes.

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And so what if the Clean Break was rather messy and broke so many bodies and buildings along the way? Maybe it's like what Lenin said about omelets and eggs: you just can't make a Clean Break without breaking a few million Arabs and a few thousand Americans. And what about all those fanatics now running rampant throughout large swaths of the world thanks to the Clean Break wars, mass-executing Muslim "apostates" and Christian "infidels" and carrying out terrorist attacks on westerners? Again, the Clean Breakers must remind themselves, keep your eye on the omelet and forget the eggs.

Well, dear reader, you and I are the eggs. And if we don't want to see our world broken any further by the imperial clique of murderers in Washington for the sake of the petty regional ambitions of a tiny clique of murderers in Tel Aviv, we must insist on American politics making a clean break from the neocons, and US foreign policy making a clean break from Israel.

[Jun 29, 2015]Could Armenia Be The Next Ukraine

Jun 29, 2015 | finance.yahoo.com

...As in other former Soviet countries, the energy behemoth ENA remains a heavily mismanaged enterprise. This was confirmed by a recent probe, in which the energy regulator has found that suppliers and traders often use shady intermediaries to push energy managers to inflate procurement costs or steal electricity. This has led to more than EUR 70 million in losses for the company in just the last three years, according to the energy ministry.

The company's overall debt has reached $250 million. Initially, ENA has suggested a 40 percent increase in electricity tariffs in order to cover its obligations. The government of the pro-Russian president Serge Sargsyan and the quasi-independent energy regulator initially refused but ultimately had to accept a 16.7 percent rise after a series of high-level visits from Moscow. Although the government has confirmed the results of the regulator's investigation, it has decided to look the other way.

Even after the hike, power tariffs would still be just EUR 0.11 cents/kWh, or about half of what average EU households pay. At purchasing power parity, though, their impact on household budgets is much greater. According to a World Bank study, Armenians spend around 8% of their income on energy use, while consuming three times less energy per capita than people in Central and Eastern Europe, also a region where energy poverty is a widespread phenomenon.

In addition, if accepted, this would be the third consecutive power price hike in two years at a time when the economy is facing slow growth and high unemployment rate. The Armenian economy, which is heavily dependent on Russia, has faced a major downturn since the start of economic troubles for its powerful neighbor to the north. Russia is the key destination for labor migrants, who contributed more than 20% of the national income in the form of remittances in 2013 and 11 percent in 2014. In the first five months of 2015, cash transfers have halved.

The economic link with Russia is most profound in the energy sector. Apart from ENA, the Russian state, through Gazprom, owns 100 percent of the country's wholesale gas supplying company. The bulk of FDI inflows also have Russian origin, and 40 percent of them are targeting the energy sector.

In addition, Armenia imports almost all of its gas from Russia and natural gas imports comprise around 80 percent of all energy imports. Furthermore, 60 percent of the country's total primary energy supply is derived from natural gas, which is responsible for the majority of residential energy use, especially in big cities.

However, the increase in gas import prices in 2010 and the subsequent 40 percent hike in household gas tariffs pushed some urban residents to switch from natural gas to electricity for heating, which became comparatively cheaper (about one-fifth of Armenia's electricity is generated from natural gas, with the rest supplied by a number of hydro power plants and a nuclear power plant, which is currently being modernized). Hence, when power prices began to increase, the outrage in the capital, Yerevan, was easy to understand.

According to the protest leaders, the rallies are not anti-Russian in nature and the main demand of the people is a reversal to the government's power price decision. President Sargsyan seemed have backed down after he told senior officials on 26 June that the government will cover the difference between the old and the new price with budget subsidies until the end of a comprehensive audit of the ENA's activities.

Protesters, however, seem determined to stay on the streets. Deep-seated mistrust in the government's ability to implement reforms could trigger an impulse for a regime change. This is the biggest fear in Moscow, which sees the current Armenian government as an important ally in its natural backyard. Russia has been able to preserve its influence in the small Caucasian state by expanding its control over key economic sectors. This was done by recruiting senior government officials, who used Russia's influence to limit outside competition and preserve the dominant position of Russian companies in the energy sector.

If there is a change of guard in Yerevan, the established connections that have served Moscow so well, could crumble. Not surprisingly, similar to the aftermath of Ukraine's Maidan rally in early 2014, Moscow's propaganda has presented the street protests in Yerevan as a Western plot to contain Russia's influence.

In a sign of full support, Moscow provided the government with $200 million in military aid on 26 June. Armenia relies for its security on the 3,000 Russian troops stationed in the country, which have so far deterred efforts by Azerbaijan to try to reclaim the separatist republic of Nagorno Karabakh, occupied by Armenia during a bloody five-year war in the early 1990s.

Paradoxically, Russia's attempts to secure its influence and, more importantly, its energy interests in the neighborhood could backfire. While Armenian demonstrators have largely limited, domestic aims, the Russian insistence on turning the protests into an East-West clash could incite protesters to demand that the Armenian government take a sharp turn away from Moscow.

Faced with such a choice, president Sargsyan might have to abandon his close ties with Kremlin in an attempt to stay in power. This is likely to lead to economic retaliation from Russia such as gas supply cuts. The alternative, though, may be to follow the path of Ukraine's former president, Victor Yanukovych.

By Martin Vladimirov for Oilprice.com

[Jun 28, 2015] US Department of Imperial Expansion

Deeper down the rabbit hole of US-backed color revolutions.
by Tony Cartalucci

Believe it or not, the US State Department's mission statement actually says the following:

"Advance freedom for the benefit of the American people and the international community by helping to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world composed of well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people, reduce widespread poverty, and act responsibly within the international system."

A far and treasonous cry from the original purpose of the State Department - which was to maintain communications and formal relations with foreign countries - and a radical departure from historical norms that have defined foreign ministries throughout the world, it could just as well now be called the "Department of Imperial Expansion." Because indeed, that is its primary purpose now, the expansion of Anglo-American corporate hegemony worldwide under the guise of "democracy" and "human rights."

That a US government department should state its goal as to build a world of "well-governed states" within the "international system" betrays not only America's sovereignty but the sovereignty of all nations entangled by this offensive mission statement and its execution.

Image: While the US State Department's mission statement sounds benign or even progressive, when the term "international system" or "world order" is used, it is referring to a concept commonly referred to by the actual policy makers that hand politicians their talking points, that involves modern day empire. Kagan's quote came from a 1997 policy paper describing a policy to contain China with.

....


The illegitimacy of the current US State Department fits in well with the overall Constitution-circumventing empire that the American Republic has degenerated into. The current Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, gives a daily affirmation of this illegitimacy every time she bellies up to the podium to make a statement.

Recently she issued a dangerously irresponsible "warning" to Venezuela and Bolivia regarding their stately relations with Iran. While America has the right to mediate its own associations with foreign nations, one is confounded trying to understand what gives America the right to dictate such associations to other sovereign nations. Of course, the self-declared imperial mandate the US State Department bestowed upon itself brings such "warnings" into perspective with the realization that the globalists view no nation as sovereign and all nations beholden to their unipolar "international system."

It's hard to deny the US State Department is not behind the
"color revolutions" sweeping the world when the Secretary of
State herself phones in during the youth movement confabs
her department sponsors on a yearly basis.

If only the US State Department's meddling was confined to hubris-filled statements given behind podiums attempting to fulfill outlandish mission statements, we could all rest easier. However, the US State Department actively bolsters its meddling rhetoric with very real measures. The centerpiece of this meddling is the vast and ever-expanding network being built to recruit, train, and support various "color revolutions" worldwide. While the corporate owned media attempts to portray the various revolutions consuming Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and now Northern Africa and the Middle East as indigenous, spontaneous, and organic, the reality is that these protesters represent what may be considered a "fifth-branch" of US power projection.

CANVAS: Freedom House, IRI, Soros funded Serbian color revolution
college behind the Orange, Rose, Tunisian, Burmese, and Egyptian protests
and has trained protesters from 50 other countries.


As with the army and CIA that fulfilled this role before, the US State Department's "fifth-branch" runs a recruiting and coordinating center known as the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM). Hardly a secretive operation, its website, Movements.org proudly lists the details of its annual summits which began in 2008 and featured astro-turf cannon fodder from Venezuela to Iran, and even the April 6 Youth Movement from Egypt. The summits, activities, and coordination AYM provides is but a nexus. Other training arms include the US created and funded CANVAS of Serbia, which in turn trained color-coup leaders from the Ukraine and Georgia, to Tunisia and Egypt, including the previously mentioned April 6 Movement. There is also the Albert Einstein Institute which produced the very curriculum and techniques employed by CANVAS.

2008 New York City Summit (included Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement)
2009 Mexico City Summit
2010 London Summit

As previously noted, these organizations are now retroactively trying to obfuscate their connections to the State Department and the Fortune 500 corporations that use them to achieve their goals of expansion overseas. CANVAS has renamed and moved their list of supporters and partners while AYM has oafishly changed their "partnerships" to "past partnerships."

Before & After: Oafish attempts to downplay US State Department's extra-legal
meddling and subterfuge in foreign affairs. Other attempts are covered here.

Funding all of this is the tax payers' money funneled through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House. George Soros' Open Society foundation also promotes various NGOs which in turn support the revolutionary rabble on the ground. In Egypt, after the State Department's youth brigades played their role, Soros and NED funded NGOs began work on drafting Egypt's new constitution.

It should be noted that while George Soros is portrayed as being "left," and the overall function of these pro-democracy, pro-human rights organizations appears to be "left-leaning," a vast number of notorious "Neo-Cons" also constitute the commanding ranks and determine the overall agenda of this color revolution army.

Then there are legislative acts of Congress that overtly fund the subversive objectives of the US State Department. In support of regime change in Iran, the Iran Freedom and Support Act was passed in 2006. More recently in 2011, to see the US-staged color revolution in Egypt through to the end, money was appropriated to "support" favored Egyptian opposition groups ahead of national elections.

Then of course there is the State Department's propaganda machines. While organizations like NED and Freedom House produce volumes of talking points in support for their various on-going operations, the specific outlets currently used by the State Department fall under the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). They include Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Alhurra, and Radio Sawa. Interestingly enough, the current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sits on the board of governors herself, along side a shameful collection of representatives from the Fortune 500, the corporate owned media, and various agencies within the US government.

Hillary Clinton: color revolutionary field marshal & propagandist,
two current roles that defy her duties as Secretary of State in any
rational sense or interpretation.


Judging from Radio Free Europe's latest headlines, such as "Lieberman: The West's Policy Toward Belarus Has 'Failed Miserably' " and "Azerbaijani Youth Activist 'Jailed For One Month,'" it appears that hope is still pinned on inciting color revolutions in Belarus and Azerbaijan to continue on with NATO's creep and the encirclement of Russia. Belarus in particular was recently one of the subjects covered at the Globsec 2011 conference, where it was considered a threat to both the EU and NATO, having turned down NATO in favor of closer ties with Moscow.

Getting back to Hillary Clinton's illegitimate threat regarding Venezuela's associations with Iran, no one should be surprised to find out an extensive effort to foment a color revolution to oust Hugo Chavez has been long underway by AYM, Freedom House, NED, and the rest of this "fifth-branch" of globalist power projection. In fact, Hugo Chavez had already weathered an attempted military coup overtly orchestrated by the United States under Bush in 2002.

Upon digging into the characters behind Chavez' ousting in 2002, it
appears that this documentary sorely understates US involvement.

The same forces of corporatism, privatization, and free-trade that led the 2002 coup against Chavez are trying to gain ground once again. Under the leadership of Harvard trained globalist minion Leopoldo Lopez, witless youth are taking the place of 2002's generals and tank columns in an attempt to match globalist minion Mohamed ElBaradei's success in Egypt.

Unsurprisingly, the US State Department's AYM is pro-Venezuelan opposition, and describes in great detail their campaign to "educate" the youth and get them politically active. Dismayed by Chavez' moves to consolidate his power and strangely repulsed by his "rule by decree," -something that Washington itself has set the standard for- AYM laments over the difficulties their meddling "civil society" faces.

Chavez' government recognized the US State Department's meddling recently in regards to a student hunger strike and the US's insistence that the Inter-American Human Rights Commission be allowed to "inspect" alleged violations under the Chavez government. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro even went as far as saying, "It looks like they (U.S.) want to start a virtual Egypt."

The "Fifth-Branch" Invasion: Click for larger image.


Understanding this "fifth-branch" invasion of astro-turf cannon fodder and the role it is playing in overturning foreign governments and despoiling nation sovereignty on a global scale is an essential step in ceasing the Anglo-American imperial machine. And of course, as always, boycotting and replacing the corporations behind the creation and expansion of these color-revolutions hinders not only the spread of their empire overseas, but releases the stranglehold of dominion they possess at home in the United States. Perhaps then the US State Department can once again go back to representing the American Republic and its people to the rest of the world as a responsible nation that respects real human rights and sovereignty both at home and abroad.

Editor's Note: This article has been edited and updated October 26, 2012.

[Jun 28, 2015] John McCain The Russia-Ukraine cease-fire is a fiction

Looks like there was no US war or color revolution Senator McCain did not like. Doe he tries to position himself to the right of Dick Cheney ;-), I like his statement that "might does not make right":
"...We face the reality of a challenge that many assumed was resigned to the history books: a strong, militarily capable state that is hostile to our interests and our values and seeks to overturn the rules-based international order that American leaders of both parties have sought to maintain since World War II. Among the core principles of that order is the conviction that might does not make right, that the strong should not be allowed to dominate the weak and that wars of aggression should be relegated to the bloody past. "
What a bloody hypocrite he is... He probably forgot Vietnam, Chili, Nicaragua, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria military adventures due to old age senility. And it was actually State Department and personally Victoria Nuland of "nulnadgate (aka F*ck EU") fame, who was the key instigator of civil war in Ukraine. So this is a classic "The pot calling the kettle black" situation.
Jun 28, 2015 | The Washington Post

Last weekend, I traveled with Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to eastern Ukraine to meet with the courageous men and women fighting there for their country's freedom and future. I arrived on a solemn day as Ukrainian volunteers grieved the loss of two young comrades killed by Russian artillery the day before. They had lost another comrade a few days before that, and four more the previous week. Their message to me was clear: The cease-fire with Russia is fiction, and U.S. assistance is vital to deterring further Russian aggression.

Along the front lines, separatist forces backed by Russia violate the cease-fire every day with heavy artillery barrages and tank attacks. Gunbattles are a daily routine, and communities at the front bear the brunt of constant sniper fire and nightly skirmishes.

Yet while these low-level cease-fire violations have occurred regularly since the Minsk agreement was signed in February, Ukrainian battalion commanders said the number of Grad rocket strikes and incidents of intense artillery shelling are increasing. Their reports suggest that the separatists have moved their heavy weapons and equipment back to the front lines hoping to escalate the situation. So far, Ukrainian armed forces supported by volunteer battalions have been able to hold their ground, and they have done so largely without the support of Ukrainian artillery and tanks that have been pulled back from the front as stipulated by the Minsk agreement. How long can we expect these brave Ukrainians to abide by an agreement that Russia has clearly ignored?

It is time that the United States and our European allies recognize the failure of the Minsk agreement and respond with more than empty rhetoric. Ukraine's leaders describe Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy as a game of "Pac-Man" - taking bite after bite out of Ukraine in small enough portions that it does not trigger a large-scale international response. But at this point it should be clear to all that Putin does not want a diplomatic solution to the conflict. He wants to dominate Ukraine, along with Russia's other neighbors.

No one in the West wants a return to the Cold War. But we must recognize that we are confronting a Russian ruler who seeks exactly that. It is time for U.S. strategy to adjust to the reality of a revanchist Russia with a modernized military that is willing to use force not as a last resort, but as a primary tool to achieve its neo-imperial objectives. We must do more to deter Russia by increasing the military costs of its aggression, starting with the immediate provision of the defensive weapons and other assistance the Ukrainians desperately need.

President Obama has wrongly argued that providing Ukraine with the assistance and equipment it needs to defend itself would only provoke Russia. Putin needed no provocation to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea. Rather, it is the weakness of the collective U.S. and European response that provokes the very aggression we seek to avoid. Of course, there is no military solution in Ukraine, but there is a clear military dimension to achieving a political solution. If Ukrainians are given the assistance they need and the military cost is raised for the Russian forces that have invaded their country, Putin will be forced to determine how long he can sustain a war he tells his people is not happening.

I urge anyone who sees Ukraine's fight against a more advanced Russian military as hopeless to travel to meet those fighting and dying to protect their homeland. These men and women have not backed down, and they will continue to fight for their country with or without the U.S. support they need and deserve.

During my trip, the Ukrainians never asked for the United States to send troops to do their fighting. Ukrainians only hope that the United States will once again open the arsenal of democracy that has allowed free people to defend themselves so many times before.

How we respond to Putin's brazen aggression will have repercussions far beyond Ukraine. We face the reality of a challenge that many assumed was resigned to the history books: a strong, militarily capable state that is hostile to our interests and our values and seeks to overturn the rules-based international order that American leaders of both parties have sought to maintain since World War II. Among the core principles of that order is the conviction that might does not make right, that the strong should not be allowed to dominate the weak and that wars of aggression should be relegated to the bloody past.

Around the world, friend and foe alike are watching to see whether the United States will once again summon its power and influence to defend the international system that has kept the peace for decades. We must not fail this test.

[Jun 28, 2015] Keynes, The Great Depression And The Coming Great Default

Jun 28, 2015 | Zero Hedge
falak pema

you guys have it ALL wrong.

Keynes was there to check OLIGARCHY neo-feudalism. This crisis is about Oligarchy neofeudalism.

We need a balance between state and private enterprise. Right now we have "inverted totalitarianism" :an alliance between state and private Oligarchs where, unlike Mussolini model; its private enterprise that RUNS THE WORLD; the 1%.

The state is their slave; even FED belongs to its paymasters : the TBTF aka JP Morgan and now GS. Since Glass Steagall revoke; engineered by the GS squid cabal allowing Investment banks to rule the roost to MAXIMISE shareholder returns, the whole shooting match of supply side deregulated Reaganomics; all based on asset hiking based on short term quarterly reports; has morphed capitalism beyond recognition.

The world of capital changed in 1981...the day all that mattered was shareholder value based on short term steroid pumping that the 1971 "our money your problem" had initiated based on petrodollar hegemony fueled on perpetual DEBT.

The cumulative effect of 1971/1981/1991 outsourcing NWO mantra post Iraq 1 and SU default was what we have spawned today: a three step process where petrodollar debt + FIRE economy oligarchy enrichment+ NWO outsourcing based on cheap oil and cheap labour have built this casino capitalism model now compounded by derivative financialisation toxic shenanigans.

Now tell me WHAT has KEYNES got to do with this monetarist construct based on Friedman's 1971 mantra?

You guys deny the time line of facts and its irrefutable logic all based on petrodollar hegemony, and arms bazar supremacy.

[Jun 28, 2015] Fuck the US Imperialism -- Top German Politician Blasts Nuland Carter

Jun 28, 2015 | Zero Hedge

With intra-Europe relations hitting a new all-time low; and, having already been busted spying on Merkel, Obama got caught with his hand in Hollande's cookie jar this week, the following exultation from one of Germany's top politicians will hardly help Washington-Brussells relations. As Russia Insider notes, Oskar Lafontaine is a major force in German politics so it caught people's attention when he excoriated Ash Carter and Victoria Nuland on his Facebook page yesterday... "Nuland says 'F*ck the EU'. We need need an EU foreign policy that stops warmongering US imperialism... F*ck US imperialism!"

Here is the Facebook post (in German):

Lafontaine has been an outsized figure in German politics since the mid-70s. He was chairman of the SPD (one of Germany's two main parties) for four years, the SPD's candidate for chancellor in 1990, minister of finance for two years, and then chairman of the Left party in the 2000s. He is married to Sarah Wagenknecht, political heavyweight, who is currently co-chairman of Left party.

Lafontaine's outburst came a day after his wife, Sarah Wagenknecht, blasted Merkel's Russia policy in an interview on RT.

Here is the full translation of the post:

"The US 'Defense' secretary, i.e., war minister is in Berlin. He called on Europe to counter Russian 'aggression'. But in fact, it is US aggression which Europeans should be opposing.

"The Grandmaster of US diplomacy, George Kennan described the eastward expansion of NATO as the biggest US foreign policy mistake since WW2, because it will lead to a new cold war.

"The US diplomat Victoria Nuland said we have spent $5 billion to destabilize the Ukraine. They stoke the flames ever higher, and Europe pays for it with lower trade and lost jobs.

"Nuland says 'F*ck the EU'. We need need an EU foreign policy that stops warmongering US imperialism.

"F*ck US imperialism!"

* * *

When he comes out swinging this way, you know something is changing.

* * *

America - making friends and influencing people for 238 years...

remain calm

I see the CIA creating a little muslim terrorism in Europe to teach them the meaning of respect.

BlowsAgainstthe...

"But in fact, it is US aggression which Europeans should be opposing."

So good, it should be required reading . . .

"Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault

The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin"

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukrain...

Latina Lover

To date, the USSA adventurism in the Ukraine has hurt Germany financially and politically, with more losses to follow.

Instead of integrating more closely with Russia, and becoming a key part of the New Silk Road, Germany is blocked by the USSA, against her better interests. The USSA is creating a new berlin style wall of lies and propaganda between Russia and Germany claiming that Russia plans to invade the baltics, poland, moldova, blah, blah, blah.

Fortunately, most Germans are not anti intellectuals, and see through the lies, unlike the average american shlub (30% of whom cannot name the current VP but know all of the names of the Kardashians). Eventually, Merkel will get the boot, and be replaced by a more businesslike leader.

Not Too Important

30% is pretty generous, don't you think? More like 3%.

Even an aborigine in the middle of Africa with a cell phone knows more about the world than 97% of Americans.

Tall Tom

Fuck American Imperialism?

Actually it is GERMAN Imperialism over the nation states of Europe, using the European Union as a subterfuge, is that which needs be quashed.

Fuck GERMAN Imperialism and the European Union as it serves as a tool for the advancement of Germany's Imperialistic ambitions..

saveandsound

Oscar Lafontaine is member of the party "The Left". He used to be member of the "Social Democratic Party of Germany".

Both parties are of rather marginal significance, since Merkel's CDU rules them all. ;-)

Anyway, "the Left" has been opposing US Imperialism ever since, so there is not much new to see here.

datura

that won't help and no more false flags will help either. The latest poll showed that only 19% of Germans would fight Russians in case Russia attacked any NATO country. I repeat: if Russia attacked first. You can wonder, what would be the percentage of them willing to fight Russia just for the sake of Ukraine. Close to zero, I think. The USA overstepped all boundaries, when it began pushing EU countries into a military conflict with Russia. Continental Europeans are not Anglo-Saxons, they think differently. They will bow down to any USA pressure, except for a military conflict with Russia! Thats a big no no. Many of them still remember (especially Germans), what it was like to fight wild-spirited Russians, who never surrender no matter what. These constant talks about "Russian agression" by the USA politicians make Germans feel like a cornered animal with nothing to loose. Such animal cannot be subdued anymore, when your existence and life is so directly threatened, you bite. Or another example: try to force your slave to step on a rattlesnake. He may be forced to do many things, but this time he will turn against you. I already said it before: no war against Russia and Europe is possible, because even if the USA somehow forces us to any such war, huge amounts of people will be so angry that they will flee to the side of Russia. We are already discussing this openly. This is already happening in Ukraine. Already 10 000 Ukranian soldiers defected to the other side (to fight Kiev), plus one Ukrainian general, some members of the Ukranian intelligence service and about one and half million Ukrainians fled to Russia to avoid draft. I saw a video where three entire units of soldiers sent from Kiev to Donetsk (with tanks) changed side, threw out Ukrainian flags and put on Russian flags on their tanks under loud cheers from the brave people of Donbass. There are certain very natural limits to what you can force people to do, which bankers do not seem to understand. Yes, you can send many people to war, but they simply will not fight, unless you give them something to fight for. For example Hitler gave people something to fight for. But all bankers give us is chaos, no strong leader, no ideology strong enough....I think they hoped that Putin would invade Ukraine and that would be the reason for war (they provoked Hitler in a similar way). However, Putin is no Hitler, he is way too intelligent to play these silly games. And it is impossible to repeat exactly what was once so successful, because times change, people are different....you cant win with using old outdated strategies over and over. That is why all empires fall in the end. They get stuck in using the same tricks over and over, until they stop working. Even the old color revolutions are not as efficient now as they were in the past and the same goes for those silly false flags.

cherry picker

He is absolutely correct. US is surrounded by two oceans and the North and South neighbor have no intentions of invading the USA, so can anyone explain this war time nuclear, wmd, too many carriers and so forth military and paranoia.

Can't uncle Sam keep his huge nose out of everyone's business?

Can't America just enjoy what is theirs and leave others alone?

Who needs a CIA except for Nazi types.

Fuck Nuland is a good start.

Albertarocks

And the neighbors to the north and south are non-too-pleased with the USA either. We know WTF the USA is doing, although more and more are waking up to the fact that the USA is only being used as the war branch of the banking mafia. Because of this we hold nothing against American people.

In fact, up north we now probably feel more kinship with "the people" of the USA more than ever before. Because we are learning how all this works. It is the global banking monsters and the fascist corporations, the military industrial complex that is in bed with the fucking bankers. It is those assholes who are causing every damned war in the world... not "the USA" as such. Putin is a saint by comparison... not to mention the only sane leader of a superpower left on earth. He is admirable, even from this side of the pond.

Mexicans might present a problem, I don't know. Mexicans never bother Canadians so we just don't seem to have an opinion. Canadians are pretty calm, but fuck when we get mad there can be one hell of a bar fight. I don't know how all this works out but it isn't going in the right direction. I think 98% of Canadians would agree with Mr. Lafontaine. US Imperialism has got to come to an end. Or the world will. And by "US", I mean "banker".

BI2

If only our politicians could understand what that man is really saying. It is for our own good.

https://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/warmongering-vs-econ...

Dodgy Geezer

We need need an EU foreign policy that stops warmongering US imperialism... F*ck US imperialism!"

You know what the problem is?

It's not particularly the US, though they are the biggest players at the moment. It's the result of the end of the Cold War.

Ever since WW2 the power blocs both had a big military and supporting intelligence service. When the Berlin Wall came down, the Russians collapsed theirs. The West did not. And ever since then it has been looking for a job. That's the reason we have had so much disruption. When your major arm of government is a multi-trillion dollar armed forces, every problem looks like an excuse for a war.

The Delicate Genius

It is not US imperialism

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/09/anglozionist-short-primer-for-...

It is the imperialism of the Anglo-Zionist cabal which has hijacked the American treasury and military.

Neocons, Interventionist "realists" and other assorted militarist scum.

Their control of the MSM is sound {they even acquired VICE News as that got too popular, and Orwellized it, beginning with the Zionist sent to fake stories out of Ukraine}...

but not the internet. As younger people grow up, post comments and articles, this cleft between the pre-internet and internet informed grows more and more obvious.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that expects aggressive moves against intent content.

We've seen some attacks on free speech already in the Fast Track bill - but it will take time to really see how bad the TPP itself is in practice.

But it does seem clear that .gov is hoping to make an end run around various Constitutional niceties by "treaty."

and no - treaties do not and can not over-ride the Constitution. Only amendment, not treaty, can change the constitution.

PrayingMantis

... US imperialism plus US exceptionalism is analogous to this >>> http://rt.com/usa/270268-falcon-launch-space-fail/

... and while the US forces the other NATO members to apply more sanctions to Russia, US hypocrisy rears its ugly head by 'allowing' products from sanctioned Russia that would benefit them ... check this out

>>> http://rt.com/usa/270220-us-space-russian-engine/

pupdog1

Gotta love a guy who knows how to define a problem.

Fuck Noodleberg.

HTZMR

As someone who actually lives in Germany i can tell you that Lafontaine is an absolute has-been and he plays no role in German politics, nor has he for years. His influence came to an end when Schroeder kicked him out of his government over 15 years ago. To claim he is a heavyweight is simply dead wrong.

Wagenknecht does play a certain role, but the Left is a pure protest party full of fundamentalist hardline social democrats and former East German communists. The Left has no say on federal government matters such as foreign policy. This post is pure alarmism.

Wild E Coyote

Actually US and Soviet Union both went bankrupt by Cold War.
Soviet Union accepted their fate.
USA still refuse to accept theirs.

Renfield

Upvoted, but I think technically it was Vietnam that bankrupted the US.

Then again, you could argue that it was the First World War, or the 1929 market crash -- although its bankruptcy wasn't admitted until 1933.

[Jun 28, 2015] Thousands in Armenia protest steep hikes in electricity rates

WaPo reported initial events using standard "color revolution" template used in Ukraine.
.
"..."The society is very polarized. The power is very weak, in terms of its legitimacy. And a significant number of people are not satisfied with the political system," said Alexander Iskandaryan, a political expert and director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan. "They are expressing their dissatisfaction, making statements against the president, against the police, against the ruling Republican Party. But in general, this entire complex reveals the total lack of trust in the political system.""
.
"...Some Armenian opposition politicians supported the protesters Tuesday. Activists in Russia and Ukraine also cheered the rallies via social media, lauding them as the next generation of demonstrators against Russian President Vladimir Putin's post­-Soviet order. Some Russian media reports seemed to support that view, citing experts warning that the "hands of the USA" were behind the Armenian protests, which had the makings of a "color revolution." "
June 23, 2015 | The Washington Post

Thousands of protesters returned to a main thoroughfare of downtown Yerevan, Armenia, on Tuesday evening, facing down riot police to protest steep electricity price increases planned in the economically strapped country.

Protesters in the capital city marched toward the presidential palace on Marshal Baghramyan Avenue just hours after police had unleashed water cannons to disperse a peaceful overnight sit-in that had taken place in the same spot earlier in the day, detaining more than 230 demonstrators and journalists in the process. The protests, which have been growing over several days, are the most widespread public demonstrations in the Armenian capital since opposition activists rallied thousands against President Serzh Sargsyan's reelection in 2013.

The demonstrations against electricity prices are less structured than the post-election protests, but they still could resonate widely in the current political climate.

Armenia's unrest comes as the country is reeling from the protracted effects of the economic crisis that has gripped Russia's economy over the past year - and, in turn, affected the economies of former Soviet states that depend on Russian markets and the value of the ruble. Russia's economic troubles were complicated by pressure from Western sanctions imposed in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and involvement in eastern Ukraine, punitive measures that the European Union voted Monday to extend for six months.

Armenia receives more than 20 percent of its national income from Russian remittances and joined the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union earlier this year. It is especially dependent on the ebbs and flows of the Russian economy, and its currency, the dram, has suffered for it.

The Russia connection is even more acute in the energy sector.

Armenia's power grid is controlled by the Armenian Electricity Network, a subsidiary of the Russian company Inter RAO UES, whose major shareholders include Russian state-controlled entities. Last month, the Armenian subsidiary announced plans to raise the price of electricity by more than 16 percent beginning in August. The move was described as necessary because of the depreciation of the national currency, but protesters say the increase would be too much for regular people to afford.

"Spread the word, fill the streets and don't pay your electric bill," one organizer told the crowd gathered in Yerevan's Liberty Square on Tuesday. "If we all don't pay our electric bills, they can't do anything about it."

But the protests may not have gathered strength absent general dissatisfaction with the economic and political situation in the country.

"The society is very polarized. The power is very weak, in terms of its legitimacy. And a significant number of people are not satisfied with the political system," said Alexander Iskandaryan, a political expert and director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan. "They are expressing their dissatisfaction, making statements against the president, against the police, against the ruling Republican Party. But in general, this entire complex reveals the total lack of trust in the political system."

Tuesday's protesters were mostly young adults, and word of the demonstrations spread through social media instead of through the political opposition parties. The main group behind the past several days of protests is a civic group called No to Plunder.

Iskandaryan said it is difficult to predict how the protests will develop, given how relatively decentralized and underfunded they are. The demonstrations could continue, they could fizzle or the government could meet the demonstrators' demands.

"But whatever scenario will come to be, it will not solve the main problem. The main problems will remain," Iskandaryan said. "And then it will be possible to find another excuse for another rally."

How the Yerevan protests proceed depends in part on the state's response. Foreign diplomats expressed concern over how police detained journalists Tuesday morning, while angry protesters were likely galvanized by the use of violence and water cannons to quell and disperse the crowd.

Yerevan police seemed to be restraining themselves Tuesday night. Deputy police chief Valery Osipyan frequently warned protesters to control potential "provocateurs" who might start a confrontation, but he never called out the water cannons.

What happens next will depend on whether interest groups seize the moment created by the demonstrations.

Some Armenian opposition politicians supported the protesters Tuesday. Activists in Russia and Ukraine also cheered the rallies via social media, lauding them as the next generation of demonstrators against Russian President Vladimir Putin's post­-Soviet order.

Some Russian media reports seemed to support that view, citing experts warning that the "hands of the USA" were behind the Armenian protests, which had the makings of a "color revolution."

But the demonstrations largely avoided any overt political message about aligning with the East vs. the West, and most anti-Russian vitriol was reserved for Yevgeny Bibin, the chief executive of the electricity company instituting the price increases

Johnny Canuck, 6/25/2015 4:27 PM EDT

Take at look inside the real Russia outside the Kremlin region. This is what you will find.

The Kremlin needs money so they, like the USSR they will use whatever means are available to get funds into the Kremlin's Treasury.

According to data gathered by Bloomberg, the Kremlin has sufficient funds to keep the government budget and financial system relatively stable through 2015. However disagreements over future government spending will continue to divide Russia's elite.

This year Moscow will have to pay $52.9 billion to the Pension Fund of Russia to cover the shortfall.

Evidence shows that the government has taken $12.5 billion from the fund, using it for projects such as the construction of the Yamal liquefied natural gas facility and for economic development of Crimea.

Rosneft, has proposed that the government use the fund to extend credit to replace the company's Western financing, most of which has been cut off because of sanctions.

Throughout 2015 the Russian Government had numerous discussions, as Russia needs to resolve strong disagreements within its political elite over issues affecting important areas, such as pensions, raising the retirement age from 55 to 65, the defense sector, large firms and regional government spending on medical care, education and infrastructure.

Russia can draw from the total $508 billion in Reserves, that according to the IMF it stockpiled since 2000. So far this year it had drawn down $100 billion from its Reserve Fund.

Johnny Canuck, 6/25/2015 4:25 PM EDT

In the opinion many insiders, the current Kremlin debates have intensified over specific government spending on issues such as taxes, pension, retirement age, defense spending and medical and education expenses. Like most political disagreements between insiders over the divisions of budgets on spending – Putin and his loyal buddies, financial experts and the Federal Security Service – can switch their loyalties in response to both political and economic circumstances.

Russia's total spending on its military budgets, which includes not only Interior Military Forces but also all military spending, which is more that 45% of its GDP. The Kremlin must now face cuts in spending for the new T-14 Armata tank, defense spending on military exercises along its borders and naval shipbuilding and its space program.

Russia's regional governments are demanding that more regional revenues stay in the regions. Only 37 percent of the income generated in any given region is required to stay in each region, with the rest going to the federal budget. However the central government never returns more than 20 percent. Over the past 25 years these shortfalls have accumulated into 100 trillion rubbles, which negatively impacted regional health care, education and infrastructure needs. Low wages have forced households into more barter trading for survival.

The Kremlin knows that regional stability is crucial to the stability of the federal government and the Russian Federation as a whole. The last thing that the Federal Government needs is regional insurrections. This has many Putin supporters worried.

Axel Rea, 6/25/2015 9:30 AM EDT

hey washington post why you start the article with the word "Moscow", this is about the Armenia. If you do not have the sufficient knowledge please do not write the article. Armenia is a sovereign country, it dose not even have any border with russia.

LeonVav, 6/24/2015 6:03 AM EDT

A group of people on capital's street and THE WHOLE COUNTRY IS UNSTABLE NOW. That's silly. Maybe they're unsatisfied with what their politicians do, but why to tack Russia on this? It's Putin who refuses to give them free electricity? He is guilty again?

nanari123, 6/23/2015 9:39 PM EDT

I just don't like it when western media looks at everything wearing this black and white glasses. This is really not about Russia vs US or EU, Armenia's foreign policy has always been the most balanced in the entire post soviet region. Officially it is against the electricity price hike, but in reality, people are trying to show their dissatisfaction with politicians and especially the ruling republican party which has failed to fix the economy as a result of mismanagement and corruption. People there really don't give a hoot about Putin or Obama.

ANTIPINDOS, 6/23/2015 8:58 PM EDT

Armenians what are you doing?
Doesn't allow to manipulate itself
You want to repeat a mistake of Ukraine?
The USA prepare orange revolution against you

[Jun 28, 2015]Signs of color revolution observed in Armenia's unrest

Jun 28, 2015 | en.trend.az

Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the international committee of the Federation Council of Russia, considers the unrest in Armenia as the signs of "color revolution", RIA Novosti reported.

"At present, the external situation resembles as a conflict of people dissatisfied with their socio-economic well-being," Kosachev said June 24.

"But there is no need to delude ourselves," he said. "All "color revolutions" developed according to the same scenario. And Armenia is not insured against this."

The rally began in the Liberty Square in Yerevan June 19. It turned into a procession to the presidential residence June 22 evening. The police dispersed the demonstrators with rubber truncheons and water cannons June 23 morning.

Almost 240 people, including journalists, were taken to the police stations. The medical assistance was rendered to 25 people.

The deputy head of Yerevan's police said that all detained protesters have been already released.

On June 23, the Armenian police broke up a rally in the center of the country's capital. The rally was held in protest against increased electricity tariffs. The protests in the streets resulted in use of water cannons against people. Over 230 people were arrested as a result of violent crackdown, including journalists of Gala TV, the Radio Liberty's Armenian office, the Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper, the Hetq, News.am, Panarmenian.net news agencies.

On June 17, Armenia's Public Services Regulatory Commission, considering a request from the distribution company, Electric Networks of Armenia, which is a subsidiary of the Inter RAO UES, raised the electricity tariffs by 6.93 Armenian drams (about $0.015). This caused discontent among the population that believes the rise in the cost of electricity will lead to higher prices for essential goods and many services.

[Jun 28, 2015] Is a "color revolution" underway in Armenia

"Electric Yerevan" is Sliding Out of Control

by Andrew Korybko for Sputink

Armenians have taken to the streets to protest a planned 17-22% increase in their utility bills, initiated by the Armenian Electricity Network due to the Armenian dram's dramatic depreciation over the past year (about equal in percentage to the price hike itself). While it's understandable that some in the economically struggling country would be upset by the $85 or so cumulative increase in payments each year, many find it troubling that some individuals have resorted to arming themselves and aggressively attacking the police, and it's confusing that the participants would reject government appeals to negotiate if all they were really after was to repeal the electricity rate increase. After hundreds of arrests over the past few days for hooligan activity, groups of individuals are now blockading the capital's main avenue and have threatened to march on the Presidential Palace, eerily following in the footsteps of their EuroMaidan predecessors. More and more, what may have begun as a legitimate protest movement appears to have been hijacked into a Color Revolution attempt.

The Situation So Far

Opposition to the electricity rate increase had been brewing since May, but it was only on Monday that the "No to Plunder" initiative was able to bring thousands to the streets in protest. They gathered on Freedom Square, in the city's center, and demanded that the hike be reversed. President Serzh Sargsyan suggested that they choose five representatives to speak to him about it, but the mob refused. Later that night, internal provocateurs pushed the crowd into marching on the Presidential Palace, and when they refused law enforcement's repeated pleas to disperse their illegal manifestation, the riot police were forced to resort to water cannons and mass arrests to restore public order. The resulting tumult injured 11 police officers and 7 protesters, and some of the 237 who were arrested were reported to have been equipped with knives, knuckle dusters, batons, and metal rods.

The protests swelled the next day to 15,000 people, and the mob once more rejected President Sargsyan second request to negotiate. They may have felt emboldened by the US' official statement on the matter, which in a style reminiscent of its early response to EuroMaidan, stated that:

"…we are concerned about reports of excessive police use of force to disperse the crowd on the morning of June 23, as well as several reports of abuse while in police custody. In addition, we are troubled by reports that journalists and their equipment were specifically targeted during the operation. It is imperative that the Government conduct a full and transparent investigation of reports of the excessive use of force by the police to the full extent of Armenian law."

Just like in Ukraine, when the US supports an anti-government movement (which is what has essentially formed in Armenia), it completely opposes any attempt by the authorities to assert law and order in responding to their proxies' illegal provocations. The implicit statement of support for the disorderly activity was a signal to the Yerevan organizers to stage an occupation movement on Baghramyan Avenue, the central street leading to the Presidential Palace, and block it with a combination of garbage cans and a "living wall" on Wednesday. The Minister of Education and a few opposition MPs physically partook in this activity, indicating an emerging split within the government. The individuals behind the destabilization have since branded their movement 'Electric Yerevan', and this was a sign for their affiliated anti-government cells all across the country to simultaneously 'come out' and transform the capital's protests into a nationwide rebellion……

……Like all Color Revolutions, the backers of 'Electric Yerevan' are motivated by concrete geopolitical interests. They want to install an anti-Russian government that would withdraw Armenia from the Eurasian Economic Union and break the historical friendship between both states, following the model spearheaded by EuroMaidan's post-coup authorities. Pashinyan is highly critical of all aspects of Armenia's special relationship with Russia and has experience with anti-government organizing, hence his present designation as de-facto leader of the Color Revolution. The US also wants to drag Russia into a renewed military conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, using post-coup newly installed nationalists like Pashinyan to aggravate the situation with Azerbaijan to the point of open warfare, which Russia, with its Collective Security Treaty Organization obligations to Armenia and its 102nd military base in Gyumri, would inevitably be sucked into. The US failed to coax a disastrous Afghan-esque military intervention out of Russia in Ukraine after the EuroMaidan events, but it doesn't mean that it won't try to do the same thing in the Caucasus after a potentially successful 'Electric Yerevan'.

http://rt.com/politics/269392-russian-senator-armenia-unrest/

"So far the situation appears to be developing as a conflict among people who are unhappy with their socio-economic well-being. But we should not deceive ourselves, all color revolutions developed in similar scenarios. Armenia is not guaranteed from such outcome," Kosachev said in comments with RIA Novosti.

The senior Russian senator also drew the reporters attention to the fact that about a hundred of various non-government groups were working with Armenian public opinion trying to incline it towards the pro-Western way of development. He noted that the very suggestion of a choice between East and West was an imposed move that could only lead to conflict.

"This is an absolutely artificial choice, a dishonest and unappealing political gamble," he noted.

Russia currently lists color revolution as a major threat to the national stability and international peace. In March this year the chairman of the Security Council and a former head of the Federal Security Service, Nikolai Patrushev, said that this body would develop a detailed plan aimed at preventing color revolutions or any other attempts of forceful change of lawfully elected authorities through mass street protest.

[Jun 28, 2015] The USA tries to stage a color revolution in Armenia

Jun 28, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Fern, June 27, 2015 at 8:22 pm

A very interesting article on the situation in Armenia. I don't agree with everything the writer says but much of it is spot-on:

Novices to political science and political activism may be lured by the spectre and spectacle of the Color Revolution method that has characterized ostensible movements for radical social change in the last generation. The symbols have become iconic and clichéd: the tent city, the die-in, the girl placing flowers in the gendarme's gun barrels, water cannons and tear-gas, the fist flag.

What is missing of course from this view is an understanding of the real social forces in a society, class and economic forces. For forty years, genuine activism, labor union militancy, has been marginalized. In place of direct action against the ruling class at the very places that make their wealth, is a strange simulation of late 1960's student activism; shown to us on a never-ending film reel loop.

http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/electric-yerevan-and-lessons-on-color.html

Many of the analysts I've read on Armenia – including those quoted above – seem to think it unlikely that this new Maidan will succeed. I'm not so sure. Once it has its hooks into a country, the US is loathe to let go.

marknesop, June 27, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Like sanctions, the colour revolutions depend on momentum – getting it, and maintaining it by incremental pressure until the government folds up like a lawn chair. Governments have learned from the Orange Revolution not to let a revolutionary camp get established, and as soon as they see tents they get torn down; if people do not have shelter in which to sleep so they can stay on location, they quickly fragment and drift away.

But no colour revolution ever again reached the intensity of the Orange Revolution. It was up to the western media to create the appearance of momentum by injecting fake news about the government meeting with rebel leaders and filming the crowds from angles and frames which suggest they were much bigger than they actually are.

Yanukovych at Maidan is probably the worst possible example, and it gave the west unfounded confidence, because he capitulated in whole in less time than it takes to say it, folding like a steamed tortilla and giving the self-appointed leaders everything they asked for without even putting up a fight.

In retrospect, they probably could have sent Tetyana Chornovol in alone to beat him up until he wept for mercy and saved a great deal of effort and expense. But other leaders are tougher and smarter than Yanukovych, and are expecting to be colour-revolutioned. The secret is not to lose your head and start bargaining, because that's what the model is calculated to make you do.

ucgsblog. June 27, 2015 at 11:22 pm
There's also Russia releasing all of the tactics used in the Orange Revolution for every country's government to study. I doubt that they're will be a repeat, especially in Armenia.
yalensis , June 28, 2015 at 3:43 am
The Flores piece that Fern posted makes a really good point, about the difference between REAL activism (e.g., trade union strikes) and fake activism (e.g., student protests, hippie flower children, etc.)

When a trade union wins a bitter strike and gets a measly raise of, say, $.50 per hour, it is still a significant victory, because the money comes directly out (and in place of) of the capitalist's profits. As Flores notes, this is "direct action" at the very fountain of where wealth is created. As opposed to student protests, which do nothing to change anything at the base of the economic system.

But it IS notable that the current bunch of goons in charge of the U.S. government – people like Clinton, Nuland, etc., spent some of their student years in the 1960's doing various hippie-dippie protests, and the like. So, they are familiar with this method of protest, and use it as a cover for the actual big-power subversion, which they are doing behind the scenes. Subconsciously, they might even believe that "it's all good", because they have such fond memories of their own student years spent supporting various "good causes".

Oh, and another reason these "hippie-dippie" type protests are popular with a certain type of gilded youth, is because it allows them to indulge in their own physical narcisissm:
They get to paint their faces, wear funny costumes, show of their "creativity", preen in front of cameras, etc.
The sort of thing that many teenagers enjoy doing, but especially the more narcissistic types.

Fern, June 28, 2015 at 4:56 am
yalensis, yes, I think that's a really key point – the difference between activism that fundamentally changes or challenges economic relationships in a society and these so-called 'revolutions' which is nearly every state have led to the embrace of neo-liberal policies and worsening of the economic situation of many of its citizens. And, of course, it's a point that's completely missing from any western MSM analysis of what's taken place in Ukraine, Georgia and all the other places with colour or flower 'revolutions'. No questioning at all of why, exactly, the leaders of western countries such as the US or UK are so enthusiastic in supporting these movements abroad when they have done everything possible to destroy or marginalise agents for real change at home.
yalensis , June 28, 2015 at 3:31 am
It makes sense that U.S. is targeting Armenian government with color revolution.
Probably to punish Armenia for joining Eurasian Economic Union.
Jen, June 28, 2015 at 5:20 am
There could be many reasons and Armenia's entry into the Eurasian Union could be one of them. The US wouldn't initiate a colour revolution unless it presents an opportunity to kill several birds with one stone. A colour revolution leading to instability or an extremely nationalist government that reignites the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute with Azerbaijan would (supposedly) draw in Russia, to supply Armenia with aid or weapons, and that would open the door to greater US military investment in Azerbaijan on the pretext that Azerbaijan is being threatened. This gives the US an opportunity to go to the next step which would be to plan an invasion of or another Green revolution in Iran next door, or start colour revolutions in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Also 2016 is the start of a new election cycle in the US and Washington probably needs to get some action going against Russia and/or Iran to defect public attention away from an uninspiring field of presidential candidates and their lack of meaningful policies.

yalensis, June 28, 2015 at 4:34 am
As per the Gene Sharp handbook, Armenian demonstrators are starting to hint at violence, in the next phase or protests. Armenian media caughts shots of some demonstrators starting to wave wooden clubs.

Yerevan police chief Valery Osipian communicated, that the police have pictures of the people with the wooden clubs, and intend to find them, as this is illegal.

Osipian also communicated, that the protesters attempts to set up tents and food service have been thwarted. Setting up food and cooking, in particular, requires permits.

Is perfectly clear that Armenian authorities know exactly what is happening, and what is going to happen next. Probably the next phase is violence. There were some reports of Ukrainian neo-Nazis being flown in, but possibly there are also violent groups within Armenia who could be used as the shock troops.

But police seem to be savvy, and know what to do. Ukrainian police (=Berkut) were defeated only, because Yanukovych lost his nerve and would not allow them to win.

Jen , June 28, 2015 at 5:49 am
Perhaps if the Armenian government declared that anyone attending the demonstrations would not receive any results from end-of-term or end-of-year exams at school or college, and threaten to order educational authorities to withhold school or university graduation certificates and ceremonies as well, the protests might shrink to just the ringleaders and their more fanatical followers.

The reason that the Umbrella Revolution faltered in Hong Kong last year was that universities had just reopened after term break and exams were about to start, and the Hong Kong authorities only had to wait out the protests.

likbez , June 28, 2015 at 7:30 am
Don't be naďve. As Euromaidan had shown University professors, deans, etc themselves are an important part of fifth column supporting the protests. Departments of Economics and similar "social" departments are especially easy and cheap to seduce by grants, foreign trips, etc. and they have natural neoliberal leanings. In case of Euromaidan it was they who, if not asked students to go to the street, at least granted them "amnesty" from missing the classes. And they operated within the larger framework of staging color revolution, being just one element of complex infrastructure. The same was true in Hong Cong: certain professors actively encouraged the events and served as catalyst for students.

The start of color revolution means just a switch to active stage of of multifaceted, well prepared ongoing intelligence operation using the accumulated in embassies cash and well organized assets in the country such as NGO, journalists, fifth column within the government, etc. Operation which was prepared for long time..

Those extras that show up on the streets are mostly a stage for public consumption. Real events of infiltration that make color revolution possible happen on higher level and are hidden from the view. The goal is always to paralyze and neutralize both government and law enforcement by finding people who can be bought, coerced into supporting the coup d'état or at least profess neutrality. And without "breakthrough" in this direction the active stage on which protesters suddenly and en mass appear of the streets is never started.

Nuland and company probably made serious progress in creating the "color revolution infrastructure" and fifth column within the county elite. They probably are now keeping of short leash some corrupt officials both in law enforcement and government. Cash is now dispensed continuously to grease the wheels. "Militant protestor" in Kiev got around $30- $35 a night. Of course some radical nationalist elements participated "for free" but a lot of extras were paid.

So start of active phase first of all means the level of maturity and readiness of already formed fifth column within the government to topple the current government. In case of Ukraine it was Lyovochkin and elements within SBU and police (remnants from Yushchenko government), Also Nuland kept Yanukovich by the balls be threating to confiscate his assets in the West. I suspect that in some form this is also true the case in Armenia.

In other words the key feature of color revolution is the "elite betrayal" component. That's why often the actions of the government in "self-defense" are contradictory and inefficient..

[Jun 25, 2015] Russia experience in 1991 and Armenian color revolution

Russian neoliberal revolution of 1991 was possible because the current system "of developed socialism" was rotten to the core and elite of the country decided switched sides to find an exist from the dismal economic situation. Moreover communism as an ideology became dead after the WWII and existed in zombie state since then: even "poor" Western countries manage to provide higher standard of living for thier people then Central European countries which were at approximately the same starting level of economic development. Completion in technology was irrevocable lost. Science in the USSR fossilized with real scientists displaced by 'scientific bureaucrats" and ruthless careerists, despite some bright sport (mainly connected with military industrial complex). Backwardness in computer technology was noticeable to everybody. The same with software. Power of the West played the role (drop of oil priced was engineered by Reagan administration; also the USSR got into Afghanistan trap with gentle encouragement of Kissinger and friends) Without that all those attempts by CIA and other Western three letter agencies to distribute money and form fifth column would end with "dissidents" exited and money confiscated. So it was conscious decision of KGB brass that the current system has no chances and the country need to adopt neoliberal model instead. That advantages of socialism over capitalism as an economic system are a myth.

Many complaining about Yerevan color revolution do not understand that we ourselves live in the country of victorious neoliberal color revolution on 1991?

Which day in the media and blogs - the perplexity and dissatisfaction of the Maidan in Armenia. People are annoyed: Why the Armenians do not see that they are manipulated? Then dubious persond like in Kiev are handing out cookies/lovasik. They just sweep the area. Read the Sharp's book( p. 33): "In places of demonstrations you should behave complementary to local residents to be careful and smiling". And the same attempt to play thr dystnfsr color revolution card : "children beaten by police" (as in the photo of the girl from Yerevan).

Still. Some Armenians became blind. Even the local scientist told me that in Yerevan there are hundreds of American NGOs, now blinkered: "That's the people's protest." No American influence, no?.

And were we not eaully blong in 1991? Aren't we now spitting at our own mirror? How many people understand that we live in a country of victorious neoliberal color revolution of 1991?

Then also everything was staged exactly like prescribed in Sharp textbook. Five-year plan the preparation of public consciousness (1985-1991), the decomposition and bribering with hard currency of the ruling class rod (In the USSR "everything is rotten" memo became popular), then a reason. In Armenia the reason could be the increase of tariffs and poverty; in Ukraine - cancel signing something with the EU and instillation of hatred for Russia (instillation of hatred for Russia was their key method of preparation of the public consciousness, the decomposition of will to resist to color revolution)... And in Moscow the was infamous putsch.

Pitiful attempt of the old regime to stop already speeding the train of the collapse of the USSR.

Vasya, you need to strike first

Instantly out of nowhere, "peaceful" barricades near the White house, and grandmothers wore tea, Yes, and machines with pies, and the drugs, and the flowers on the tanks (love bombing, sectarian trick: make friends with the men of law, then they couldn't batons you , plus work on the photo, the frame of Western agencies, textbook Sharpe, p. 56).

And sacred lamps: three boys who perished under the tank tracks....

And gynatic tricolor flags with the length in Manezhnaya square, which were carried at their funeral? Well, nobody asked the question where it came from. Of course, this symbolism was not prepared in advance for us by our forends from the USa State Department.

We chanted: "RA-si-ya! RA-si-ya!", - and let's monument to Dzerzhinsky fell. And Ukrainians are such fools. Those fools tried to push Lenin statues from the postaments. We were smarter then them ;-).

And then American advisers sat on the sixth floor of the Ministry of Finance, and the budget was approved at the IMF. And then agreements on division of production for multinations, when our natural resources were simply given as a present to forein multinatins. And lice started crawling in the grandmother of Yeltsin home, in the village Booth, and all of grandmother's family eat on one grandma's pension, and Yeltsin was shaking hands with the incarnation of Christ Myung moon in the Kremlin, and of the sects became proligic in the the country without any control: "Jesus-us! Appeared to me-e!" (said in a singsong voice, twitching on the stage, the microphone and with an American accent).

Oh... And books with Nazi crosses was freely displayed on the stalls in the center of Moscow, and strormtroopers of RNE were wandering along the streets. Yes exactly like in Ukraine. Please give me pop-corn. Ukraine is just re-incarnation of our ghosts of 90th...

As it is obvious that all color revolution are done with huge support from the foreign powers. Let's remember Lenin in the sealed train... Looks like marriages are made in heaven, but color revolutions are made from the outside. Amen.

...Then, of course, the USA burned with Napalm most of Russian industry in 90s. And only then started forming new anti-Us vertical of power, and the rebuilding of order and the country started in full force, and even later started the defense of our interests in the international arena. which in understanding of puppeteers of color revolutions was counterrevolution. anti-Maydan.

But, frankly, we manage to correct and eliminated not everything that foreign power brought into the country in and stuck us in 1991. "Liberators" managed to burn our territory with the democracy to the extent that it will take for us a half a century or more to recover. Such is the power of one successful color revolution. after one such fire, nothing grows on the ground for a long, long time.

MEANWHILE

Rebels in Yerevan to the correspondent of "KP": "Please say to the Russians that we are not against them"

Yeah they us got! Just got! Raised again the price of electricity - that why people rebelled! 'says the taxi driver who takes me from the airport to the street of Marshal Baghramyan Avenue in Yerevan, where already the fourth day of rioting crowd of about five thousand people. Officially - against rising electricity tariffs. "There's the street blocked off, there you should go (details)

SEE ALSO

When the "electroMaydan" wins, Yerevan will host Makarevich

Our columnist tries to understand the causes of the riots in Armenia (details)

AND HERE WAS A CASE

Paul Craig Roberts: "If Victoria Nuland visited Armenia, then Armenia will have a coup!"

This is how this winter warned the Armenian American journalist, economist, one of the principal architects of the "Reagan economic miracle" (details)

Guest No. 5057, 26.06.2015, 7:01

Well, I remember that articles about how good is that fact that the Soros Foundation reached out and provides the aid to Russia. And how that ended with promotion of prostitution among young girls and lads for boys. In Russian Newspapers by Russian journalists! It is interesting to me still, is they have any moral consciences and is not what they did bothering any of the those Newspapers presstitutes fed by Soros money for feeding people with all this sh**t on the silver spoon?

[Jun 25, 2015]Europe's Enlightened Order

"...The central insight that animated the Congress of Vienna is that order, like liberty, is fragile. It is contingent on political institutions and social norms and cultural prejudices and a hundred other variables that, if undermined, lead to chaos. Order is easy to break, yet hard to build. But if peace depends on it, then a politics grounded in prudence, caution, and realism is necessary. To live through the traumatic experience of state failure-as all of the Congress's authors did, and as many in the Middle East and North Africa do today-is to recognize that, in comparison to the anarchy and chaos of a civil war, order is an enlightened principle too."
Jun 25, 2015 | The American Conservative

...The Congress of Vienna reminds us that not one but two traditions of cosmopolitan thought trace their roots back to the 18th-century Enlightenment. One is a moralizing, militant worldview that seeks peace by toppling despotic regimes in the name of liberty. It supposes that a new world order, underwritten by an enlightened hegemon, can be crafted in the wake of these conquests. This was the dream of the French revolutionaries, of Napoleon, of Woodrow Wilson. And to a large extent, it remains the dream of today's foreign-policy establishment in Washington. In the past few decades America has "liberated," in Napoleon's sense of the term, countries across the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. Whether through the hard power of military force (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) or the soft power of moral cajoling and economic pressure (Egypt, Syria, Ukraine), our hope has been that regime change will produce stable liberal democracies and lead to peace. But as the litany of failed states in our wake suggests, this approach tends to undermine the very order it seeks to moralize.

The second legacy of Enlightenment, the one witnessed in 1815, is more promising. It recognizes that if peace depends on order and order on stability, then the moralizing power of a hegemon will not of itself lead to a peaceful world. The central insight that animated the Congress of Vienna is that order, like liberty, is fragile. It is contingent on political institutions and social norms and cultural prejudices and a hundred other variables that, if undermined, lead to chaos. Order is easy to break, yet hard to build. But if peace depends on it, then a politics grounded in prudence, caution, and realism is necessary. To live through the traumatic experience of state failure-as all of the Congress's authors did, and as many in the Middle East and North Africa do today-is to recognize that, in comparison to the anarchy and chaos of a civil war, order is an enlightened principle too.

Jonathan Green is a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge.

[Jun 20, 2015]Jeb Bush - Profile

"...No Republican will enjoy credibility as a deficit hawk unless he or she acknowledges that George W. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited. "
.
"...The National Review piece went on: "Adelson sent word to Bush's camp in Miami: Bush, he said, should tell Baker to cancel the speech. When Bush refused, a source describes Adelson as "rips***"; another says Adelson sent word that the move cost the Florida governor 'a lot of money.'" (At around the same time the rupture with Adelson was reported, Bush publicly disavowed Baker, saying that he would not be a part of his foreign policy team.)"
.
"...In March 2014, Bush and several other potential candidates were also received by Adelson at a Republican Jewish Coalition gathering at a Las Vegas hangar owned by Adelson's Sands Corporation, which papers dubbed the "Adelson primary." According to attendees, Bush gave a speech largely focused on domestic issues but also criticized the Obama administration's foreign policy-a key issue for Adelson, who is fiercely "pro-Israel." In his foreign policy remarks, Bush warned about the dangers of "American passivity" and, according to Time, "cautioned the Republican party against 'neo-isolationism' … a line universally understood as a shot at [libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand] Paul. Bush also pushed back on Democratic attacks that whenever a Republican calls for a more activist foreign policy that they are 'warmongering.'"
Jun 20, 2015 | Right Web - Institute for Policy Studies
Foreign Policy Views and Clues

Although he rarely comments on foreign policy, Bush has appeared to embrace neoconservatives who supported his brother's administration, inviting them to serve as his advisers, parroting their complaints about the Obama administration, promoting their current policy objectives, and defending many of their past debacles, like the Iraq War.

He has said that he does not think that "the military option should ever be taken off the table" with respect to Iran and that Obama administration policies on Iran had "empower[ed] bad behavior in Tehran."[8]

Bush has repeatedly defended the decision to invade Iraq. He told CNN in March 2013: "A lot of things in history change over time. I think people will respect the resolve that my brother showed, both in defending the country and the war in Iraq."[9]

More recently, in May 2015, when asked by Fox News pundit Megyn Kelly if he would have authorized the Iraq War "knowing what we know now," Bush replied: "I would have [authorized the invasion], and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."[10] This statement spurred widespread criticism, including among conservatives. Radio host Laura Ingram, arguing that Bush's weakness on this issue could be exploited by an election opponent, quipped: "We can't stay in this re-litigating the Bush years again. You have to have someone who says look I'm a Republican, but I'm not stupid." She added: "You can't still think that going into Iraq, now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to do. If you do, there has to be something wrong with you," she added.[11]

Many writers have argued that Bush's national ambitions will inevitably suffer from his association with his brother, whom Jeb has pointedly refused to criticize. Saying he didn't believe "there's any Bush baggage at all," Jeb Bush predicted in March 2013 that "history will be kind to George W. Bush." This led The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart to quip, "Unfortunately for Jeb, history is written by historians," who have generally given the Bush administration poor reviews. "That's why Jeb Bush will never seriously challenge for the presidency," Beinart concluded, "because to seriously challenge for the presidency, a Republican will have to pointedly distance himself from Jeb's older brother. No Republican will enjoy credibility as a deficit hawk unless he or she acknowledges that George W. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited. No Republican will be able to promise foreign-policy competence unless he or she acknowledges the Bush administration's disastrous mismanagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. … Jeb Bush would find that excruciatingly hard even if he wanted to."[12]

Bush has made several explicit gestures indicating his commitment to continue his brother's track record, particularly on foreign policy. In February 2015, his campaign announced 21 foreign policy experts who will guide him on foreign policy issues. The vast majority were veterans of the George W. Bush administration, like Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Michael Chertoff, John Negroponte, Otto Reich, and [13] George W. Bush Deputy National Security Adviser Meghan O'Sullivan has been mentioned as a possible "top foreign-policy aide."[14]

"Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush … is seeking to distinguish his views on foreign policy from those of his father and brother, two former presidents," reported the Washington Post, "but he's getting most of his ideas from nearly two dozen people, most of whom previously worked for George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush."[15]

Many observers have surmised that Bush's emphatic support for his brother is the result of him attempting to win the support of Sheldon Adelson. Bush is believed to have received the ire of Adelson after he included in his list of foreign policy advisers former Secretary of State James Baker, a realist who has been critical of Israel on several occasions.

"The bad blood between Bush and Adelson is relatively recent," wrote the conservative National Review in May 2015, "and it deepened with the news that former secretary of state James Baker, a member of Bush's foreign-policy advisory team, was set to address J Street, a left-wing pro-Israel organization founded to serve as the antithesis to the hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)."[16]

The National Review piece went on: "Adelson sent word to Bush's camp in Miami: Bush, he said, should tell Baker to cancel the speech. When Bush refused, a source describes Adelson as "rips***"; another says Adelson sent word that the move cost the Florida governor 'a lot of money.'"[17] (At around the same time the rupture with Adelson was reported, Bush publicly disavowed Baker, saying that he would not be a part of his foreign policy team.[18])

During the April 2015 Republican Jewish Coalition-hosted "Adelson primary" in Las Vegas, Salon reported, Adelson "devoted a night to honoring Bush's brother George W. for all he'd done for Israel and the Middle East." Salon added: "The Las Vegas mogul and Israel hawk thus took Bush's biggest political problem-his brother-and made him an asset."[19]

In May 2015, at a meeting with wealthy investors hosted by "pro-Israel" billionaire Paul Singer, Bush unequivocally expressed his attention to follow his brother's advice on issues related to Israel and the Middle East. "If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it's him," Bush said at the event.[20]

In March 2014, Bush and several other potential candidates were also received by Adelson at a Republican Jewish Coalition gathering at a Las Vegas hangar owned by Adelson's Sands Corporation, which papers dubbed the "Adelson primary." According to attendees, Bush gave a speech largely focused on domestic issues but also criticized the Obama administration's foreign policy-a key issue for Adelson, who is fiercely "pro-Israel." In his foreign policy remarks, Bush warned about the dangers of "American passivity" and, according to Time, "cautioned the Republican party against 'neo-isolationism' … a line universally understood as a shot at [libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand] Paul. Bush also pushed back on Democratic attacks that whenever a Republican calls for a more activist foreign policy that they are 'warmongering.'"[21]

The remarks-which the Washington Post described as "muscular if generic"[22]-appeared to be well received by the attendees and seemed to demonstrate that Bush identified more with the party's interventionist wing than with its rising libertarian faction on foreign policy.[23]

At one point in the late 1990s, Bush seemed to have been considered a potentially more influential political ally than his brother by the neoconservatives who founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Commenting on the signatories to PNAC's 1997 founding statement of principles, Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn wrote: "Ironically, virtually the only signatory who has not played a leading role since the letter was released has been Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who in 1997 apparently looked to [William] Kristol and [Robert] Kagan more presidential than his brother George."[24]

[Jun 19, 2015] The Undiplomatic Diplomat

Since the fall of the Soviet Union liberated Americans from our fear of nuclear Armageddon, the foreign policy of the United States has come to rely almost exclusively on economic sanctions, military deterrence, and the use of force. Coercion replaced diplomacy and for some reason several female psychopaths was selected to implement this policy. all of them were single trick ponies: "my way or highway" was the only method they have in their arsenal. For a while it produced results because dominance of the USA after 1991, but since 2008 with crisis of neoliberalism, it started to produce the level hate which became a became factor limiting possibilities of the USA to conduct foreign policy. As the result, as Chas Freena noted in The American Conservative, "The United States has forfeited its capacity to pursue American interests through negotiated solutions." Andrew Bacevich promoted the same thesis even earlier in his book The Limits of Power The End of American Exceptionalism
"...This significant level of autonomy has led her interlocutors to fixate on her as a driving force of hawkishness within the Obama administration, whether fairly or not."
"..."Many Europeans, and certainly Moscow, hate Nuland, which is just one more reason why her political base on Capitol Hill adores her," said a congressional aide familiar with the issue."
"...While policy differences like this one account for some of the bad blood between Nuland and her European counterparts, her tough style clearly plays a role as well."
Jun 19, 2015 | Foreign Policy

...In interviews with Foreign Policy, her European colleagues have described her as "brash," "direct," "forceful," "blunt," "crude," and occasionally, "undiplomatic." But they also stressed that genuine policy differences account for their frustrations with her - in particular, her support for sending arms to Ukraine as the country fends off a Russian-backed rebellion, a policy not supported by the White House.

"She doesn't engage like most diplomats," said a European official. "She comes off as rather ideological."

While European complaints about Nuland's diplomatic style are genuine and fairly ubiquitous, she has also been dealt an incredibly difficult hand.

Nuland frequently meets with senior European leaders who outrank her and delivers messages they often don't want to hear.

In a crisis of this magnitude, many of these delicate tasks would traditionally get kicked up to Nuland's boss, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman. But Sherman has been saddled with the momentous job of leading the U.S. negotiating team in the Iran nuclear talks, giving Nuland an unusual degree of latitude and influence for an assistant secretary.

This significant level of autonomy has led her interlocutors to fixate on her as a driving force of hawkishness within the Obama administration, whether fairly or not.

"Many Europeans, and certainly Moscow, hate Nuland, which is just one more reason why her political base on Capitol Hill adores her," said a congressional aide familiar with the issue.

In Europe, Nuland is widely presumed to be the leading advocate for shipping weapons to Kiev - a proposal bitterly opposed by the Germans, Hungarians, Italians, and Greeks who fear setting off a wider conflict with Moscow.

The White House has also argued against providing lethal assistance to Kiev because Moscow enjoys what's known as "escalation dominance," or the ability to outmatch and overwhelm Ukrainian forces regardless of the type of assistance the United States would provide.

Nuland is not the only Obama administration official who has supported arming Ukraine, but in Europe, she has become the face of this policy, thanks to a pivotal event that occurred in February during the annual Munich Security Conference.

At the outset of the forum, Nuland and Gen. Philip Breedlove delivered an off-the-record briefing to the visiting U.S. delegation, which included about a dozen U.S. lawmakers in the House and Senate. Unbeknownst to Nuland and Breedlove, a reporter from the German newspaper Bild snuck into the briefing room and published a report that reverberated across Germany but gained little to no traction in English-language media.

The report said Nuland and Breedlove were pressing U.S. lawmakers to support the shipment of defensive weapons to Ukraine and belittling the diplomatic efforts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande were making in Russia.

"We would not be in the position to supply so many weapons that Ukraine could defeat Russia. That is not our goal," Breedlove was quoted as saying. "But we must try to raise the price for Putin on the battlefield."

Nuland reportedly added, "I would like to urge you to use the word 'defensive system' to describe what we would be delivering against Putin's offensive systems," according to a translation.

... ... ...

In December, Democrats and Republicans in Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation authorizing the president to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, including ammunition, troop-operated surveillance drones, and antitank weapons. The president agreed to sign the legislation only because it did not require him to provide the aid, which he has yet to do. Trying a new tactic this week, the Senate included a provision in its military policy bill that would withhold half of the $300 million for Ukrainian security assistance until 20 percent of the funds is spent on lethal weaponry for Kiev. The provision is opposed by the White House for fear that lethal assistance would only serve to escalate the bloodshed in Ukraine and hand Putin an excuse for further violent transgressions.

While policy differences like this one account for some of the bad blood between Nuland and her European counterparts, her tough style clearly plays a role as well.

"Some tend to perceive Nuland's assertiveness as a bit too over the edge, at least for the muffled European diplomatic environment," said Federiga Bindi, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

... ... ...

Despite the fact that Nuland is not outside the mainstream of many State Department views on the Ukraine crisis, her reputation as the most pugnacious of hawks isn't likely to subside in the minds of Europeans anytime soon. In many ways, that's because she'll never live down the moment that made her famous: the leaking of a private phone call of her disparaging the European Union in 2014 as the political standoff between the Ukrainian opposition and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych unfurled.

[Jun 17, 2015] Washington Prepares to Fight for Donetsk

"...There are valid arguments on both sides but you don't get to walk this back. Once we have done this we become a belligerent party in a proxy war with Russia, the only country on earth that can destroy the United States. That's why this is a big deal." "
Jun 17, 2015 | The American Conservative
Washington Prepares to Fight for Donetsk (and Ignore Baltimore) The American Conservative

Jacob Heilbrunn has an extremely suggestive article in the latest National Interest which reminds readers that neoconservatives essentially began as critics of Great Society liberalism and elite reluctance to defend bourgeois standards and law and order in the 1960s. Heilbrunn has written one of the finest books about neoconservatism, and is generally a nuanced critic of the group. But one need not go full bore with Norman Podhoretz-type linkages between homosexuality, cultural decay, and Munich to recognize that the neocons were right about many things, and law and order in American cities was one of them. In any case, Heilbrunn reminds us that Bill Kristol (son of Irving, founder of The Public Interest, a magazine devoted to domestic policy) tweeted out in the aftermath of the Ferguson riots (the second set, not the first) that it felt like 1968 all over again and some politician would do well to speak, a la Richard Nixon, for the silent American majority which was not anti-cop. In this case, Kristol was probably right.

It is also is apparent that no major politician right, center, or left has yet risen to take the bait. Of course they all want to be "tough"-but always somewhere else in the world. Neoconservatism has prevailed, but only in foreign policy. Today the target is Vladimir Putin and Russia, and everyone in Washington agrees he needs to be taught a lesson. Congress voted last week voted to compel the administration to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, including offensive weapons-against the administration's judgment. The Times story noted that the arms shipments would open a rift between the Washington and France and Germany, which are hesitant about any measure which would escalate the fighting. It would seem that Congress has bought whole hog into the Wolfowitz doctrine, widely derided as extremist when it was leaked in 1992, according to which the United States should maintain dominance in every region of the world, and that no other nation should aspire to a greater role, even in its own geographic area.

Major European governments are now doing their best to circumvent anti-Russian sanctions which they themselves instituted. European publics make it clear that they are not willing to fight Russia over the disposition of the territories of the former Soviet Union. The cease-fire between Ukraine and its rebellious Russian-backed eastern provinces that was negotiated last February has been violated repeatedly, and Putin has called openly for the West to persuade Ukraine's central government to follow its provisions. It's not clear how many American congressmen voting for giving Ukraine offensive weapons understand the implications of their weapons policy, which were spelled out by the Kennan Institute's Matthew Rojansky:

There are valid arguments on both sides but you don't get to walk this back. Once we have done this we become a belligerent party in a proxy war with Russia, the only country on earth that can destroy the United States. That's why this is a big deal.

A proxy war with Russia, over Russian borderlands not one American in a hundred could locate on a map-it's really the full triumph of Wolfowitz. Not to be outdone by Congress, the Obama administration is now floating plans to deliver tanks and other heavy weapons, along with token numbers of American troops, to several of our new NATO "allies," the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Those governments will inevitably conclude that Washington has their back in any conflict with Russia and act accordingly. See Georgia, 2008, for an example of how this might play out.

There is something about Ukraine and the other Russian border regions which Europeans seem to understand and Americans don't. Much of the "Maidan Revolution" was driven by ethnic Ukrainian nationalists with deep hatred for Russia; while it's not a universal sentiment, many Ukrainians despise all things Russian, including their own compatriots who identify with Russia. They want nothing more than to draw the West into a war against their ancestral enemy. The newly minted anti-Russian regime in Kiev is the fruit of American "pro-democracy" meddling involving billions of dollars of payouts to private groups and individuals, the kind of thing the CIA used to do during the Cold War. Of course because of its proximity to an unsettled region, the new Ukrainian government can find endless ways to keep the pot boiling–shelling their own civilians in Donetsk, or instituting a blockade against Transnistria , a pro-Russian breakaway province of Moldova. The average American may not know much about Transnistria-or indeed likely has never heard of it at all-but you can be assured that Putin does care about keeping the small Russian garrison stationed there supplied.

This is neoconservatism's triumph: the creation of an entire Beltway industry, honeycombed through Congress and largely bipartisan, which finds political life not worth living without the prospect of confrontation with a distant enemy. The notion of treating Russia as a great power, acknowledging that Russia has serious security interests on its borders and treating those interests respectfully, does not occur to its members. Detente for them is a dirty word, akin to appeasement.

[Jun 14, 2015]Czech media about G7: why does Putin need this farce

http://inosmi.ru/overview/20150614/228573906.html#ixzz3d5Y4ajCh

Discussion G7 summit one of the famous Czech supporters of Russian politics Jiří Vivagel (Jiří Vyvadil)wrote in Parlamentní listy that Vladimir Putin has nothing to do at this meeting

In his opinion, today the G7 is not longer a group bringing together the most economically powerful countries of the world. Today, the G7 is the neoliberal ideology club of the Western world in its struggle against Russia and its allies which are forming "A Political East".

Threats, allegations and support for the regime "dangerous lunatics" is all that west currently does. Russia should not participate in this farce, convinced Jiří Vivagel. The fact that Vladimir Putin does not allow himself to drag into the bellicose rhetoric of the West, gives hope that a local conflict will not grow into a global. In conclusion, the article Jiří Vivagel expresses hope that the jingoistic Western politicians from G7 soon runs out of power.

A diametrically opposite view on the value and message of the G7 expressed on the portal Neviditelný pes (9.6) author under the pseudonym of Aston. In his view, the main purpose of the last meeting of leaders of the G7 countries - again to threaten Russia, including sanctions. Yes, possibly, Western sanctions are not too dangerous to RF, but that's no reason to mitigate or even cancel them.

[Jun 14, 2015] Snowden files read by Russia and China: five questions for UK government

The Guardian

The government has an obligation to respond to the Sunday Times report that MI6 has been forced to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries

The Sunday Times produced what at first sight looked like a startling news story: Russia and China had gained access to the cache of top-secret documents leaked by former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Not only that, but as a result, Britain's overseas intelligence agency, the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, had been forced "to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries".

These are serious allegations and, as such, the government has an obligation to respond openly.

The story is based on sources including "senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services". The BBC said it had also also been briefed anonymously by a senior government official.

Anonymous sources are an unavoidable part of reporting, but neither Downing Street nor the Home Office should be allowed to hide behind anonymity in this case.

1. Is it true that Russia and China have gained access to Snowden's top-secret documents? If so, where is the evidence?

Which cache of documents is the UK government talking about? Snowden has said he handed tens of thousands of leaked documents over to journalists he met in Hong Kong, and that he has not had them in his possession since. Have Russia and China managed to access documents held by one of the journalists or their companies?

In addition, if agents had to be moved, why? Which Snowden documents allegedly compromised them to the extent they had to be forcibly removed from post?

2. Why have the White House and the US intelligence agencies not raised this?

Snowden is wanted by the US on charges under the Espionage Act. The White House, the US intelligence agencies and especially some members of Congress have been desperate to blacken Snowden's reputation. They have gone through his personal life and failed to come up with a single damaging detail.

If the UK were to have evidence that Russia and China had managed to penetrate his document cache or that agents had been forced to move, London would have shared this with Washington. The White House would have happily briefed this openly, as would any number of Republican – and even Democratic – members of Congress close to the security services. They would not have stinted. It would have been a full-blown press conference.

Related: UK under pressure to respond to latest Edward Snowden claims

The debate in the US has become more grownup in recent months, with fewer scare stories and more interest in introducing reforms that will redress the balance between security and privacy, but there are still many in Congress and the intelligence agencies seeking vengeance.

3. Why have these claims emerged now?

Most the allegations have been made before in some form, only to fall apart when scrutinised. These include that Snowden was a Chinese spy and, when he ended up in Moscow, that he was a Russian spy or was at least cooperating with them. The US claimed 56 plots had been disrupted as a result of surveillance, but under pressure acknowledged this was untrue.

The claim about agents being moved was first made in the UK 18 months ago, along with allegations that Snowden had helped terrorists evade surveillance and, as a result, had blood on his hands. Both the US and UK have since acknowledged no one has been harmed.

So why now? One explanation is that it is partly in response to Thursday's publication of David Anderson's 373-page report on surveillance. David Cameron asked the QC to conduct an independent review and there is much in it for the government and intelligence services to like, primarily about retaining bulk data.

Anderson is scathing, however, about the existing legal framework for surveillance, describing it as intolerable and undemocratic, and he has proposed that the authority to approve surveillance warrants be transferred from the foreign and home secretaries to the judiciary.

His proposal, along with another surveillance report out next month from the Royal United Services Institute, mean that there will be continued debate in the UK. There are also European court rulings pending. Web users' increasing use of encryption is another live issue. Above all else though, there is the backlash by internet giants such as Google, which appear to be less prepared to cooperate with the intelligence agencies, at least not those in the UK.

The issue is not going away and the Sunday Times story may reflect a cack-handed attempt by some within the British security apparatus to try to take control of the narrative.

4. Why is the Foreign Office not mentioned as a source?

It seems like a pedantic point, but one that could offer an insight into the manoeuvring inside the higher reaches of government. The Foreign Office is repsonsible for MI6, but the Home Office is quoted in the story. Is it that the Home Office and individuals within the department rather than the Foreign Office are most exercised about the potential transfer of surveillance warrant approval from the home secretary, the proposed scrapping of existing legislation covering surveillance and other potential reforms?

5. What about the debatable assertions and at least one totally inaccurate point in the Sunday Times piece?

The Sunday Times says Snowden "fled to seek protection from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after mounting one of the largest leaks in US history". In fact he fled Hong Kong bound for Latin America, via Moscow and Cuba. The US revoked his passport, providing Russia with an excuse to hold him in transit.

The Sunday Times says it is not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden's data or "whether he voluntarily handed over his secret documents in order to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow". The latter is not possible if, as Snowden says, he gave all the documents to journalists in Hong Kong in June 2013.

The Sunday Times also reports that "David Miranda, the boyfriend of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 'highly-classified' intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow".

This is inaccurate. Miranda had in fact been in Berlin seeing the film-maker Laura Poitras, not in Moscow visiting Snowden. It is not a small point.

The claim about Miranda having been in Moscow first appeared in the Daily Mail in September under the headline "An intelligence expert's devastating verdict: Leaks by Edward Snowden and the Guardian have put British hostages in even greater peril". It was written by Professor Anthony Glees, the director of the centre for security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, and has never been corrected. Maybe the Sunday Times can do better.

[Jun 14, 2015] UK Said To Withdraw Spies After Russia, China Hack Snowden Encryption, Sunday Times Reports

Jun 14, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Following what are now daily reports of evil Russian hackers penetrating AES-encrypted firewalls at the IRS, and just as evil Chinese hackers penetrating "Einstein 3" in the biggest US hack in history which has allegedly exposed every single federal worker's social security number to shadowy forces in Beijing, the message to Americans is clear: be very afraid, because the "evil hackers" are coming, and your friendly, gargantuan, neighborhood US government (which is clearly here to help you) will get even bigger to respond appropriately.

But don't let any (cyber) crisis go to waste: the porous US security firewall is so bad, Goldman is now pitching cybersecurity stocks in the latest weekly David Kostin sermon. To wit:

The meteoric rise in cybersecurity incidents involving hacking and data breaches has shined a spotlight on this rapidly growing industry within the Tech sector. Cyberwar and cybercrime are two of the defining geopolitical and business challenges of our time. New revelations occur daily about compromised financial, personal, and national security records. Perpetrators range from global superpowers to rogue nation-states, from foreign crime syndicates to petty local criminals, and from social disrupters to teenage hackers. No government, firm, or person is immune from the risk.

Because if you can't profit from conventional war, cyberwar will do just as nicely, and as a result Goldman says "investors seeking to benefit from increased security spending should focus on the ISE Cyber Security Index (HXR)."

The HXR index has outperformed S&P 500 by 19pp YTD (22% vs. 3%). Since 2011, the total return of the index is 123pp higher than the S&P 500 (207% vs. 84%). The relative outperformance of cybersecurity stocks versus S&P 500 matches the surge in the number of exposed records (see Exhibit 2).

Goldman further notes that "the frequency and seriousness of cyberattacks skyrocketed during 2014. Last year 3,014 data breach incidents occurred worldwide exposing 1.1 billion records, with 97% related to either hacking (83%) or fraud (14%). Both incidents and exposed records jumped by 25% during the last year. The US accounted for 50% of total global incidents and exposed records. Businesses accounted for 53% of all reported incidents followed by government entities at 16%. Exhibit 1 contains a list of selected recent high-profile cyberattacks."

It is almost as if the US is doing everything in its power to make life for hackers that much easier, or alternatively to make Goldman's long HXR hit its target in the shortest possible time.

Or perhaps the US is merely giving the impression of a massive onslaught of cyberattacks, one which may well be staged by the biggest cybersecurity infringer, and false flag organizer of them all, the National Security Administration in conjunction with the CIA

We won't know, however just to make sure that the fear level spread by the Department of "Developed Market" Fear hits panic level promptly, overnight the UK's Sunday Times reported via Reuters, "citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services" that Britain has pulled out agents from live operations in "hostile countries" after Russia and China cracked top-secret information contained in files leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

MI6 building in London.

It is unclear how the unknown source at MI6 learned that Russia has hacked the Snowden files, but what is clear is that after the US admitted Snowden's whistleblowing in fact was warranted and even led to the halt of NSA spying on US citizens (replaced since with spying by private telecom corporations not subject to FOIA requests courtesy of the US Freedom Act), it was long overdue to turn up the PR heat on Snowden, who is seen increasingly as a hero on both sides of the Atlantic.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Snowden had done a huge amount of damage to the West's ability to protect its citizens. "As to the specific allegations this morning, we never comment on operational intelligence matters so I'm not going to talk about what we have or haven't done in order to mitigate the effect of the Snowden revelations, but nobody should be in any doubt that Edward Snowden has caused immense damage," he told Sky News.

Reading a little further reveals that in the modern world having your spies exposed merely lead to invitations for coffee and chocolates.

An official at Cameron's office was quoted, however, as saying that there was "no evidence of anyone being harmed." A spokeswoman at Cameron's office declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

So Russia and China knew the identities and locations of UK spies but they neither arrested them, nor harmed them in any way. How cultured.

Meanwhile, the soundbite propganda keeps building:

A British intelligence source said Snowden had done "incalculable damage". "In some cases the agencies have been forced to intervene and lift their agents from operations to stop them being identified and killed," the source was quoted as saying.

Needless to say, the timing of this latest "report" is no coincidence. Just like in the US where the NSA seemingly just lost a big battle to the Fourth Amendment, so the UK is poised for a big debate on the manufactured "liberty vs security" debate.

The revelations about the impact of Snowden on intelligence operations comes days after Britain's terrorism law watchdog said the rules governing the security services' abilities to spy on the public needed to be overhauled. Conservative lawmaker and former minister Andrew Mitchell said the timing of the report was "no accident".

"There is a big debate going on," he told BBC radio. "We are going to have legislation bought back to parliament (...) about the way in which individual liberty and privacy is invaded in the interest of collective national security.

"That's a debate we certainly need to have."

Cameron has promised a swathe of new security measures, including more powers to monitor Briton's communications and online activity in what critics have dubbed a "snoopers' charter".

And because Britain's terrorism laws reviewer David Anderson said on Thursday the current system was "undemocratic, unnecessary and - in the long run - intolerable" and called for new safeguards, including judges not ministers approving warrants for intrusive surveillance, saying there needed to be a compelling case for any extensions of powers, this is precisely why now was the right time for some more "anonymously-sourced" anti-liberty propaganda.

So between the IRS and the OPM hacks, not to mention the countless other US hacks and data breaches shown on the top chart, allegedly almost exclusively by Russia and China, which have revealed not only how much US citizens make, spend and save, but the SSN, work and mental history of every Federal worker, the two "isolated" nations now know as much if not more about the US than the US itself.

If this was even remotely true, then the US would long ago have been in a state of war with both nations.

casey13

http://notes.rjgallagher.co.uk/2015/06/sunday-times-snowden-china-russia...

All in all, for me the Sunday Times story raises more questions than it answers, and more importantly it contains some pretty dubious claims, contradictions, and inaccuracies. The most astonishing thing about it is the total lack of scepticism it shows for these grand government assertions, made behind a veil of anonymity. This sort of credulous regurgitation of government statements is antithetical to good journalism.

James_Cole

The sunday times has already deleted one of the claims in the article (without an editors note) because it was so easily proved wrong. Whenever governments are dropping anonymous rumours without any evidence into the media you know they're up to some serious bullshit elsewhere as well, good coverage by zh.

MonetaryApostate

Fact A: The government robbed Social Security... (There's nothing left!)

Supposed Fact B: Hackers compromised Social Security Numbers of Officials...

suteibu

Just to be clear, Snowden is not a traitor to the people of the US (or EU).

However, it is perfectly appropriate for the governments and shadow governments of those nations to consider him a traitor to their interests.

One man's traitor is another man's freedom fighter.

Renfield

<<The New Axis of Evul.>>

Which is drastically stepping up its propaganda effort to justify aggressively attacking the rest of the world, in an effort to start WW3 and see who makes it out of the bunkers.

Fuck this evil New World Order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNHOUrYFj70

It took a long time to build and set in place, and it sure as hell isn't going to be easy taking it down. They couldn't be any clearer that they have their hand poised over the nuke button, just looking for any excuse to use it. I think they know they've lost, so they've resorted to intimidate the rest of the world into supporting the status quo, by showing just how desperate they are and how far they are willing to go. The USUK government, and its puppet governments in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan -- are completely insane. Ukraine is acting out just who these people are. They would rather destroy the whole world than not dominate everyone else. The 'West' is run by sociopaths.

<<It is unclear how the unknown source at MI6 learned that Russia has hacked the Snowden files, but what is clear is that after the US admitted Snowden's whistleblowing in fact was warranted and even led to the halt of NSA spying on US citizens (replaced since with spying by private telecom corporations not subject to FOIA requests courtesy of the US Freedom Act), it was long overdue to turn up the PR heat on Snowden, who is seen increasingly as a hero on both sides of the Atlantic... So Russia and China knew the identities and locations of UK spies but they neither arrested them, nor harmed them in any way. How cultured. Meanwhile, the soundbite propganda keeps building... Needless to say, the timing of this latest "report" is no coincidence. Just like in the US where the NSA seemingly just lost a big battle to the Fourth Amendment, so the UK is poised for a big debate on the manufactured "liberty vs security" debate... So between the IRS and the OPM hacks, not to mention the countless other US hacks and data breaches shown on the top chart, allegedly almost exclusively by Russia and China, which have revealed not only how much US citizens make, spend and save, but the SSN, work and mental history of every Federal worker, the two "isolated" nations now know as much if not more about the US than the US itself. If this was even remotely true, then the US would long ago have been in a state of war with both nations.>

Bighorn_100b

USA always looks for a patsy.

Bravo, Tyler. This is truth very clearly written. It is incredible how the onslaught of propaganda is turning into deluge. I'm glad you have the integrity to call it what it is. Propaganda is also an assault on journalism.

chunga

That's true but gov lies so much moar and moar people don't believe any of it.
The Sunday Times' Snowden Story is Journalism at its Worst - and Filled with Falsehoods
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowde...


This is the very opposite of journalism. Ponder how dumb someone has to be at this point to read an anonymous government accusation, made with zero evidence, and accept it as true.

(greenwald rants mostly about media sock puppets with this)

HowdyDoody
And the US SFM86 files contained details of British spies? Consider this bullshitish.

foghorn leghorn

Goldman is looking to make a fast buck off the stupid uninformed public trying to cash in on totalitarianism. If Goldman is running this pump and dump I suggest waiting till the price looks like a hockey stick. As soon as it starts to cave in short the hell out of it but only for one day. Government Sacks is the most crooked bank in the history of the whole entire world from the past up till now. In case you are wondering about the Fed well Gioldman Sachs runs the joint.

talisman

"Snowden encryption"???
Just more US Snowden-bashing propaganda.

You mean US has not tightened up its encryption since Snowden's whistleblowing two years ago??
Shame -- ! !....
Snowden information likely had nothing to do with the latest hacks, but the blame goes on--
Blaming Snowden a lot simpler than figuring out how to solve the basic problem
of overwhelming US Homeland Security incompetence

The other day, Eugene Kaspersky noted:

"We discovered an advanced attack on our own internal networks. It was complex, stealthy, it exploded several zero-day vulnerabilities, and we're quite confident that there's a nation state behind it."

The firm dubbed this attack Duqu 2.0, named after a specific series of malware called Duqu, considered to be related to the Stuxnet attack that targeted Iran in 2011.

It is, of course, now well-known that Stuxnet originated as a Israel/US venture; however this time it would appear that CIA/Mossad may have got a bit overconfident and shot themselves in the foot when they inserted very advanced spyware into Kaspersky's system…

Kaspersky is not just some simple-minded backward nation state; rather they are the unquestioned world leader in advanced cybersecurity systems, so when they found this malware in their own system, of course they figured it out, and of course got a bit pissed-so, since they are in the business of providing advanced cybersecurity to various nations---they very legitimately passed on the critical encryption information to their clients, and it is not at all inconceivable that some of the clients decided to take the system for a spin and see what it could do….

And, of course, a bit later at the opportune moment after they let the cat out of the bag, to rub a bit of salt in the wound Kaspersky mentioned: "And the attackers are now back to the drawing board since we exposed their platform to the whole IT security industry. "They've now lost a very expensive technologically-advanced framework they'd been developing for years,"

an interesting background article:

https://eugene.kaspersky.com/2011/11/02/the-man-who-found-stuxnet-sergey-ulasen-in-the-spotlight/

kchrisc

Am I still the only one that sees this whole Snowden thing as a CIA ruse?

My favorite is the strategic "leaking" out of information as needed by a Jewish reporter working for a noiZ-media outlet. I have even read Greenwald's book, No Place to Hide, and I'm still not buying it.

I'm not buying any of it, but then I'd prefer to not ask for a "refund."

My personal opinion is that the CIA, in their ongoing battle with the Pentagon, penetrated the NSA, then tapped a photogenic young man in their mitts to serve as the "poster boy" for the ensuing "leaks." Once they have the attention of the sheeple, they can then claim anything, as any NSA defense will not be believed.

Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..

"They lie about everything. Why would they lie about this?"

Christ Lucifer

Either Snowden read the play for some decade to come and took the key pieces of info with him that he keeps secret but those pieces of intel currently allow him to access and control all covert govt surveillance including that adapted due to being compromised, there maybe some grains of truth in this in a cyber dependant organization created in an incorrectly perceived superiority complex. Or maybe his name is synonymous with modern spying, the geek who made good for the people, and his credibility is used to market a large amount of information releases for public digestion. A figurehead if you will. Not to say that some years on, the shockwaves from his actions reverberating around the planet coincide in specific places as various imperatives are displaced by the dissolution of the foundation he cracked, while the public are still only really concerned about their dick pics, which apparently women do not enjoy so much anyway.

Promoted as a storm in a teacup by those who suffer to the transparency he gave, but it is the woodchips the show the direction of the wind, not the great lumps of timber, and when the standing trees fall it is the woodchips that have shown the truth, such is the way that key figures move the static behemoths of overstated self importance ignorant to the world they create. The hemorrhage has been contained but for some reason it continues to bleed out at a steady rate, slowly washing the veil from the eyes who suffer the belief of attaining prosperity or power through subjecting themselves to the will of others.

He's good, but was he that good? What else is playing in his favour, or the favour of his identity?

[Jun 12, 2015] The "Nation Interest" erupted with this article several days ago -- Russia and America: Toward a New Détente

Many within the Russian elite just eat up every morsel of the idea that someone, somewhere in the West wants to treat Russia as an equal. The old convergence meme, along with plenty of time for Italian villas and French wine, women, and song. So it behooves Western operatives to create some stories like that. Sure, it was the EU's fault. Yep. To me, this is more like factions within the Nazis debating what kind of post-war scenario would work for the USSR. How many should be deported to Brazil, how many should be sterilized, that kind of thing. Russia should spend more time on getting rid of the huge and powerful fifth column and improving industrial production, and less time on partnership discussions.
.
"...Like you say, for a few glass beads, Putin is supposed to pretend that all is okey-dokey and go back to the era when Russia and America were pretending to fight "terrorism" together. Overlooking the fact that the "terrorists" are all paid for and trained by America."
Jun 12, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Lyttenburgh, June 11, 2015 at 5:22 pm
The "Nation Interest" erupted with this article several days ago:

Russia and America: Toward a New Détente

The "meat" of this long article boils down to the following:

For this new diplomatic partnership to be effective, both parties must enter into it with a realistic mind-set. That is the first step. The United States has to accept the fact that Russia is a great power and treat it that way. Washington has to be sensitive to Moscow's perspectives and interests, particularly on its borders. The Kremlin has to realize that to receive great-power treatment, it's got to behave far more responsibly and accept responsibility for joint solutions. Putin can't go on trying to dominate and intimidate his neighbors, just as the U.S. president can't be seen as seeking to pull these neighbors out of the Russian orbit.

Second, both sides have to recognize their very real complementary interests. That's perfectly obvious now when it comes to regional issues, fighting terrorism and nuclear proliferation. There's no denying that there are serious conflicts on Russia's western border or that Russia has clear military superiority there. Russia can cause real turmoil for Europe, which is why both parties have got to understand that the solution lies in diplomatic sensitivity and compromise, rather than fighting. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that the present mutual hostility imperils the interests of both sides.

How would Détente Plus work in practice?

First, both sides have to commit to diplomacy at the highest levels. Particularly in the initial years, there would have to be annual presidential summits and semiannual meetings of foreign and defense ministers. Only top-level political leaders can make the decisions required of Détente Plus.

Second, these joint ventures must be given high visibility. Optics are critical both to reestablish Russia's status as a great power, and for the United States to gain more restrained and cooperative Russian behavior in return. Kremlin leaders are surely realistic enough to see this trade-off and curb themselves. Until this mountaintop diplomacy begins to produce, Western nations are fully justified in sustaining sanctions and continuing to build a more credible military presence eastward.

Third, Détente Plus has to progress on two fronts: maintaining the basic integrity and independence of countries on Russia's borders while being attentive to Russian interests there; and fashioning joint action on broader issues such as Middle East instability and terrorism.

Well, what did you expect? Of course, in our time any "meaty" part will turn out to be just "vegetarian" one!

Our good and knowledgeble Leslie H. Gelb – a "president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former columnist for the New York Times, and a former senior State and Defense Department official" – basically suggests, that some shiny glass beads and a great priviledge to be treated like a White Man US of A's equal is sufficient to placate Kremlin's ego, and afterwards Putin (whom our good author blames for all crisises and setbacks that ever happened in the region – hell, he even claims that Putin artificially keeps Azeri-Armenian conflict burning!) will gladly become reasonle and abandon all Russia's foreign interests. Huzzah!

What this shizofrenic article doesn't answer, however, is some very nasty and down to earth questions:

1) New "detente+" (ugh!) strategy suggested here presumes that the US must "be sensetive to Moscow's perspectives and interests, particularly on its borders" and "maintaining the basic integrity and independence of countries on Russia's borders".

2) Then what are good mister Gelb's thought on Crimea? Did he really, honestly presumes that Russia will just hand over a peninsula with 3 mlns of Russian citizens "back" to the Ukraine in the name of "maintaining the basic integrity… of countries on Russia's borders"?

3) Or maybe mister Gelb suggests that despite the fact that both UkrArmy and the NatzGuard suffered humiliating defeats in the past Russia should allow "just for lulz" the Ukrainian border guards to resume their work in eastern parts of the People Republics?

4) Did he really think that a couple of glass beads will make Putin look the other way, when NATO pimped-up NatzGuard and whoever they managed to grab during the "5th wave of Mobilization" descends upon People Republics?

And the icing on the top – well, you gonna laugh! Our good mr. Gelb blames the EU going full Nuland!

Alas, the European Union has demonstrated the wrong way to proceed in the last two years. It essentially proposed to incorporate the Ukrainian economy into Europe's and leave Russia behind. It pursued a Europe-win/Russia-lose approach rather than the win-win policy argued for here. Obviously Moscow couldn't accept this and turned the competition to its strength - stirring up Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and sending in Russian arms and men.

Did I mention the self-delusion of "Murica did no wrong here" exposed on every single page of this article? Well, pardon me – I thought it was self evident!

P.S. Are there still people interested in hearing some of my accounts about being a soldier in Russian Army? Pavlo?

marknesop, June 11, 2015 at 9:48 pm
Yes, that is a thing of beauty – I liked your analogy of the shiny glass beads, like the trade with the Indians in which they gave away furs worth a fortune for cheap baubles. Everything old is new again, because this sort of soul-searching (Russia has been wronged, we must stop treating it like a child) has been done before, and far better, by former U.S. Defense secretary Robert McNamara in "Out of the Cold – New Thinking for American Foreign and Defense Policy in the 21st Century". I've added it to the library – just the picture, I'll add the text tomorrow if I have time – but from memory, Mr. McNamara blamed much of the cold war on America and its intransigence, and lamented the many, many misunderstandings that caused both sides to misinterpret the other's motives. He was quite candid (so far, I just started it) that the USSR behaved exactly as any nation in its position would have done given the same circumstances, that it was only safeguarding its regional interests and was not remotely interested in a war with Europe or with America when it had just lost millions of its people to war and seen its industrial production reduced by something like two-thirds. But even then the west treated the USSR as if it was a naive tribesman who could be bought off with a shiny tin hatchet because he does not recognize what has true value.

The USA had plenty of opportunity to act on his advice (it was published in 1989) and lead the effort to find common ground. But it was having too much fun making an enemy of the Soviet Union and undercutting every effort it made to develop itself.

Lyttenburgh, June 11, 2015 at 10:03 pm

Correct me if I'm dead wrong, Mark, but wasn't one of the reasons for McNamara's dismissal (whatever fanciful term they used doesn't matter) some fears by the glorious administration of LBJ that "Goddamit, we have another Forrestal in the making here! Quick, remove him before he goes nuts completely!" which might somehow have influenced the consequent perception of everything said and written by the former Sec. of Defense McNamara?
marknesop, June 11, 2015 at 10:21 pm
That's very possible – I'm afraid my knowledge of his career is woefully incomplete and I mostly remember him as a tricky dissembler in the famous Gulf of Tonkin Incident which lit off America's military participation in the Vietnam War. It was fairly evident from declassified records that McNamara wanted America actively involved in the war rather than just in an advisory capacity, and those records show he withheld advice of military commanders from the President because those commanders argued against overt action until more facts were known. He would later argue that he supported the Vietnam War out of loyalty to administration policy rather than being drunk with power, although his initial management of it suggested he wanted to run it personally. As president of the World Bank, he stated that countries permitting access to birth control would get preferential treatment. Although I agree that countries have to permit that choice, thorny an issue as it is – because plenty of history shows that making a woman bear an unwanted child is not going to force a positive change in her attitude and a subsequent responsible raising of the child – it is not the kind of thing you announce publicly. He was a little erratic, to put it mildly, but he also served as Defense Secretary for 7 years, which I believe is a record.

It will make more sense when I post a couple of excerpts; his advice on treatment of Russia (which was still the Soviet Union then) was eminently sensible because it argued the Russians only wanted to be treated as equals and for genuine dialogue to take place rather than a quick meeting of the Old Boys Club followed by a group gang-bang of Russia with everyone pointing accusing fingers. But it's easy to say something makes sense when you agree with it, so I'll let readers decide for themselves. There's no arguing that he knew a great deal and that his experience of current events far exceeds ours, by the simple virtue of his having been present at so many high-level planning sessions and gatherings. But his matter-of-fact recounting of historic events such as Churchill's bargaining with Stalin on spheres of influence suggests he had an inquiring mind and a good memory for history, since the famous deal written on a scrap of paper, offering division of influence in various eastern-European countries by percentages (and which Stalin approved with a simple check mark) is not well-known. That was a huge betrayal as well since – for example – the Soviet Union was offered "90% influence" in Romania, and the west set to meddling in it with no delay and now it is a NATO member.

yalensis, June 12, 2015 at 3:14 am
From what I have read about McNamara and the Vietnam war:
McNamara screwed up badly, and knew it. His hubris and hunger for power caused untold destruction of lives and a geo-strategic defeat for America.

The thing is, that McNamara was that rare type (in his position) who actually had a conscience. He was not a psychopath. He had a logical mind, was eventually able to analyze his own mistakes, and in later life sought redemption by telling the truth.

An interesting if highly flawed individual. Shakespeare could have written a play about him.

Paul II, June 11, 2015 at 11:25 pm
Many within the Russian elite just eat up every morsel of the idea that someone, somewhere in the West wants to treat Russia as an equal. The old convergence meme, along with plenty of time for Italian villas and French wine, women, and song. So it behooves Western operatives to create some stories like that. Sure, it was the EU's fault. Yep. To me, this is more like factions within the Nazis debating what kind of post-war scenario would work for the USSR. How many should be deported to Brazil, how many should be sterilized, that kind of thing. Russia should spend more time on getting rid of the huge and powerful fifth column and improving industrial production, and less time on partnership discussions.
yalensis, June 12, 2015 at 3:16 am
Hear hear!
yalensis, June 12, 2015 at 3:04 am
Frankly, I would rather see bitter conflict than the kind of "detente" that Gelb is proposing.

LIke you say, for a few glass beads, Putin is supposed to pretend that all is okey-dokey and go back to the era when Russia and America were pretending to fight "terrorism" together. Overlooking the fact that the "terrorists" are all paid for and trained by America.

In any case, realistically speaking, Russia and America do not have any interests in common. Not one single one that I can think of. The divorce should be finalized.

[Jun 08, 2015] Washington's Great Game and Why It's Failing

et al, June 8, 2015 at 4:50 am
Antiwar.com – Alfred McCoy and Tom Engelhardt: Washington's Great Game and Why It's Failing
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2015/06/07/washingtons-great-game-and-why-its-failing/

…Yet even America's stunning victory in the Cold War with the implosion of the Soviet Union would not transform the geopolitical fundamentals of the world island. As a result, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Washington's first foreign foray in the new era would involve an attempt to reestablish its dominant position in the Persian Gulf, using Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait as a pretext.

In 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, imperial historian Paul Kennedy returned to Mackinder's century-old treatise to explain this seemingly inexplicable misadventure. "Right now, with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in the Eurasian rimlands," Kennedy wrote in the Guardian, "it looks as if Washington is taking seriously Mackinder's injunction to ensure control of 'the geographical pivot of history.'" If we interpret these remarks expansively, the sudden proliferation of U.S. bases across Afghanistan and Iraq should be seen as yet another imperial bid for a pivotal position at the edge of the Eurasian heartland, akin to those old British colonial forts along India's Northwest Frontier…

…Instead of focusing purely on building a blue-water navy like the British or a global aerospace armada akin to America's, China is reaching deep within the world island in an attempt to thoroughly reshape the geopolitical fundamentals of global power. It is using a subtle strategy that has so far eluded Washington's power elites.

After decades of quiet preparation, Beijing has recently begun revealing its grand strategy for global power, move by careful move. Its two-step plan is designed to build a transcontinental infrastructure for the economic integration of the world island from within, while mobilizing military forces to surgically slice through Washington's encircling containment…
####

It can't be much clearer than that. Re-balancing to land based infrastructure reduces China's exposure to the USA's control of the seas. All they need to to is push back the USA little by little, regularly to change the risk equation. Russia, the shortest route for goods from Asia to Europe is also fundamental to this. Instead of sending massive cargo ships to Europe, go by rail & Russia is putting the Trans-siberian railway through a deep upgrade. The US is then just left with drones & air power, one single arm of the pincer and also quite vulnerable.

jeremn, June 8, 2015 at 6:38 am
US supplies defensive sniper arms to Ukraine. But uses Bulgaria as an intermediate destination to hide what it is doing?

I can't decide whether these were weapons used to train the National Guard, which just happened to pass through Bulgaria, or if the US has been gun running arms into Ukraine (using Bulgaria) as the article suggests.

http://fortruss.blogspot.ch/2015/06/leaked-documents-expose-american-scheme.html?m=1

[Jun 07, 2015] We are the propagandists The real story about how The New York Times and the White House has turned truth in the Ukraine on it

"...The Ukraine crisis reminds us that the pathology is not limited to the peculiar dreamers who made policy during the Bush II administration, whose idea of reality was idealist beyond all logic. It is a late-imperial phenomenon that extends across the board. "Unprecedented" is considered a dangerous word in journalism, but it may describe the Obama administration's furious efforts to manufacture a Ukraine narrative and our media's incessant reproduction of all its fallacies."
Jun 03, 2015 | salon.com

A sophisticated game of manipulation is afoot over Russia: power, influence and money. U.S. hands are not clean

A couple of weeks ago, this column guardedly suggested that John Kerry's day-long talks in Sochi with Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, looked like a break in the clouds on numerous questions, primarily the Ukraine crisis. I saw no evidence that President Obama's secretary of state had suddenly developed a sensible, post-imperium foreign strategy consonant with a new era. It was force of circumstance. It was the 21st century doing its work.

This work will get done, cleanly and peaceably or otherwise.

Sochi, an unexpected development, suggested the prospect of cleanliness and peace. But events since suggest that otherwise is more likely to prove the case. It is hard to say because it is hard to see, but our policy cliques may be gradually wading into very deep water in Ukraine.

Ever since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, reality itself has come to seem up for grabs. Karl Rove, a diabolically competent political infighter but of no discernible intellectual weight, may have been prescient when he told us to forget our pedestrian notions of reality-real live reality. Empires create their own, he said, and we're an empire now.

The Ukraine crisis reminds us that the pathology is not limited to the peculiar dreamers who made policy during the Bush II administration, whose idea of reality was idealist beyond all logic. It is a late-imperial phenomenon that extends across the board. "Unprecedented" is considered a dangerous word in journalism, but it may describe the Obama administration's furious efforts to manufacture a Ukraine narrative and our media's incessant reproduction of all its fallacies.

At this point it is only sensible to turn everything that is said or shown in our media upside down and consider it a second time. Who could want to live in a world this much like Orwell's or Huxley's-the one obliterating reality by destroying language, the other by making historical reference a transgression?

Language and history: As argued several times in this space, these are the weapons we are not supposed to have.

Ukraine now gives us two fearsome examples of what I mean by inverted reason.

One, it has been raining reports of Russia's renewed military presence in eastern Ukraine lately. One puts them down and asks, What does Washington have on the story board now, an escalation of American military involvement? A covert op? Let us watch.

Two, we hear ever-shriller charges that Moscow has mounted a dangerous, security-threatening propaganda campaign to destroy the truth-our truth, we can say. It is nothing short of "the weaponization of information," we are provocatively warned. Let us be on notice: Our truth and our air are now as polluted with propaganda as during the Cold War decades, and the only apparent plan is to make it worse.

O.K., let us do what sorting can be done.

Charges that Russia is variously amassing troops and materiel on its border with Ukraine or sending same across said border are nothing new. They are what General Breedlove, the strange-as-Strangelove NATO commander, gets paid to put out. These can be ignored, as most Europeans do.

But in April a new round of the escalation charges began. Michael Gordon, the New York Times' reliably obliging State Department correspondent, reported in a story with a single named source that Russia was adding soldiers and air defense systems along its border.

The sources for this were Marie Harf, one of State's spokespeople, and the standard variety of unnamed officials and analysts. Here is how it begins:

In a sign that the tense crisis in Ukraine could soon escalate, Russia has continued to deploy air defense systems in eastern Ukraine and has built up its forces near the border, American officials said on Wednesday.

Western officials are not sure if the military moves are preparations for a new Russian-backed offensive that would be intended to help the separatists seize additional territory.

"Could," "has continued," "not sure," "would be." And this was the lead, where the strongest stuff goes.

Scrape away the innuendo, and what you are reading in this piece is a whole lot of nothing. The second paragraph, stating what officials are not sure of, was a necessary contortion to get in the phrase "new Russian-backed offensive," which was the point of the piece. As journalism, this is so bad it belongs in a specimen jar.

Context, the stuff this kind of reporting does its best to keep from readers:

By mid-April, Washington was still at work trying to subvert the Minsk II ceasefire, an anti-Russian assassination campaign was under way in Kiev and the Poroshenko government, whether or not it approved of the campaign, was proving unable, unwilling or both to implement any of the constitutional revisions to which Minsk II committed it.

A week before the April 22 report, 300 troops from the 173rd Airborne had arrived to begin training the Ukrainian national guard. The Times piece acknowledged this for the simple reason it was the elephant in the living room, but by heavy-handed implication it dismissed any thought of causality.

Given the context, I would not be at all surprised to learn that Moscow may have put air defense systems in place. And I am not at all sure what is so worrisome about them. Maybe it is the same reasoning Benjamin Netanyahu applied when Russia recently agreed to supply Iran with air defense technology: It will make it harder for us to attack them, the dangerous Israeli complained.

Neither am I sure what is so worrisome about Russians training eastern Ukrainian partisans-another charge Harf leveled-if it is supposed to be a mystery why American trainers at the other end of the country prompt alarm in Moscow.

Onward from April 22 the new theme flowed. On May 17 Kiev claimed that it had captured two uniformed Russian soldiers operating inside Ukraine. On May 21 came reports that European monitors had interviewed the two under unstated conditions and had ascertained they were indeed active-duty infantry. This gave "some credence" to Kiev's claim, the Times noted, although at this point some is far short of enough when Kiev makes these kinds of assertions.

On May 30-drum roll, please-came the absolute coup de grâce. The Atlantic Council, one of the Washington think tanks-its shtick seems to be some stripe of housebroken neoliberalism-published a report purporting to show that, in the Times' language, "Russia is continuing to defy the West by conducting protracted military operations inside Ukraine."

Read the report here. It's first sentence: "Russia is at war with Ukraine."

"Continuing to defy?" "At war with Ukraine?" If you refuse to accept the long, documented record of Moscow's efforts to work toward a negotiated settlement with Europe-and around defiant Americans-and if you call the Ukraine conflict other than a civil war, well, someone is creating your reality for you.

Details. The Times described "Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin's War in Ukraine" as "an independent report." I imagine Gordon-he seems to do all the blurry stuff these days-had a straight face when he wrote three paragraphs later that John Herbst, one of the Atlantic Council's authors, is a former ambassador to Ukraine.

I do not know what kind of a face Gordon wore when he reported later on that the Atlantic Council paper rests on research done by Bellingcat.com, "an investigative website." Or when he let Herbst get away with calling Bellingcat, which appears to operate from a third-floor office in Leicester, a city in the English Midlands, "independent researchers."

I wonder, honestly, if correspondents look sad when they write such things-sad their work has come to this.

One, Bellingcat did its work using Google, YouTube and other readily available social media technologies, and this we are supposed to think is the cleverest thing under the sun. Are you kidding?

Manipulating social media "evidence" has been a parlor game in Kiev; Washington; Langley, Virginia, and at NATO since the Ukraine crisis broke open. Look at the graphics included in the presentation. I do not think technical expertise is required to see that these images prove what all others offered as evidence since last year prove: nothing. It looks like the usual hocus-pocus.

Two, examine the Bellingcat web site and try to figure out who runs it. I tried the about page and it was blank. The site consists of badly supported anti-Russian "reports"-no "investigation" aimed in any other direction.

I look at this stuff now and think, Well, there may be activity on Russia's borders or inside Ukraine, but maybe not. Those two soldiers may be Russian and may be on active duty, but I cannot draw any conclusion.

I do not appreciate having to think this way-not as a reader and not as a former newsman. I do not like reading Times editorials, such as Tuesday's, which institutionalizes "Putin's war" and other such tropes, and having to say, Our most powerful newspaper is into the created reality game.

A few things can be made clear in all this. Straight off the top it is almost certain, despite a logical wariness of presented evidence, that Russia has personnel and weapons deployed along its border and in Ukraine.

I greatly hope so, and whether they are on duty or otherwise interests me not at all.

First of all, it is a highly restrained approach to a geopolitical circumstance that Moscow recognizes as dangerous, Washington does not seem to and Kiev emphatically does not. In reversed circumstances, a troubled nation would have long back turned into an open conflict between two nuclear powers. Fig leafs have their place.

I have written before on the question of spheres of influence: They are to be observed if not honored. Stephen Cohen, the Russianist scholar, prefers "spheres of security," and the phrase makes the point plainly. Russia cannot be expected to abandon its interests as Cohen defines them, and considering what is at issue for Moscow, the response is intelligently measured.

Equally, Moscow appears to recognize that without any equilibrium between the Russian-tilted east and the Western-tilted west, Ukraine will be a bloodbath. Irresponsible as it has proven, and with little or no control over armed extreme rightist factions, Kiev cannot be allowed even an attempt to resolve this crisis militarily.

One has to consider how these things are conventionally done. I had a cousin who piloted helicopters in Vietnam long ago. When we spread the conflict to Laos and Cambodia he flew in blue jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers and without dog tags. "If you go down, we don't know you," was the O.D.

A directly germane case is Angola in the mid-1970s. When the Portuguese were forced to flee the old colony, the CIA began supplying right-wing opportunists in the north and south with weapons, money, and agency personnel. Only in response did Cuba send troops that quickly proved decisive. I remember well all the howls of "aggression"-all of them hypocritical rubbish: American efforts to subvert the movement that still governs Angola peaceably continued for a dozen more years.

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The Times editorial just noted is headlined, "Vladimir Putin Hides the Truth." This is upside-down-ism at its very worst.

It is not easy to put accounts of the Ukraine crisis side by side to compare them. Think of two bottles of unlabeled wine in a blind taste test. Now read on.

I do not see how there can be any question that Moscow's take on Ukraine and the larger East-West confrontation is the more coherent. Read or listen to Putin's speeches, notably that delivered at the Valdai Discussion Club, a Davos variant, in Sochi last October. It is historically informed, with a grasp of interests (common and opposing), the nature of the 21st century environment and how best outcomes are to be achieved in it.

Altogether, Moscow offers a vastly more sophisticated, coherent accounting of the Ukraine crisis than any American official has or ever will. This is for one simple reason: Neither Putin nor Lavrov bears the burden American officials do of having to sell people mythical renderings of how the world works or their place in it.

Russia's interests are clear and can be stated clearly, to put the point another way. America's-the expansion of opportunity for capital and the projection of power-must always remain shrouded.

The question of plausibility is a serious imbalance, critical in its implications. In my view it accounts for that probably unprecedented propaganda effort noted earlier. It has ensued apace since Andrew Lack, named in January as America's first chief propaganda officer (CEO of the new Broadcasting Board of Governors), instantly declared information a field of battle. A war of the worldviews, we may call it.

This war grows feverish as we speak. In the current edition of The Nation, a journalist named James Carden publishes a remarkable piece detailing the extremes now approached. I rank it a must read, and you can find it here.

Carden's piece is called "The New McCarthyism," and any reader having a look will know well enough why our drift back toward the paranoid style of the 1950s is something we all ought to guard against. A great deal of this column would be banned as "disinformation." Whatever your stripe, I urge you to recognize this as serious.

The focus here is on a report called "The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money." It is written by Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss. It is published by an Internet magazine called The Intepreter, as a special report sponsored by the Institute for Modern Russia.

Credential problems galore. Weiss is an "expert" on flavors of the month, a main-chancer who sat at the late Christopher Hitchens' feet and inhabited a think tank in London before taking the editor's chair at The Interpreter. Pomersantsev was a TV producer in the most decadent corners of the Russian media circus, wheeling against it all only when he lost out. Now he is a darling of our media, naturally.

Both, most important, seem to carry water for Michail Khodorkovsky, the oligarchic crook whom Western media, from the Times on down, now lionize as a democrat because he and Putin are enemies. Khodorkovsky funds the Institute for Modern Russia, based in New York. The IMR, in turn, funds The Interpreter.

Got the fix? Ready to take this report seriously, are we?

Astonishingly enough, a lot of people are. As Carden reports, Weiss and Pomerantsev cut considerable mustard among the many members of Congress nursing the new Russophobia. Anne Applebaum, the prominent paranoid on all questions Russian; and Geoffrey Pyatt, Obama's coup-cultivating ambassador in Kiev: Many weighty figures stand with these guys.

Carden lays out his thesis expertly. Putin's weaponization of news makes him more dangerous than any communist ever was, "The Menace of Unreality" asserts, and he must be countered. How? With "an internationally recognized ratings system for disinformation."

"Media organizations that practice conscious deception should be excluded from the community," Weiss and Pomerantsev write-the community being those of approved thought.

No, Carden is not kidding.

It may seem odd, but I credit Weiss and Pomerantsev with one insight. The infection of ideology now debilitates us. Blindness spreads and has to be treated. But there agreement ends, as I consider their report to be among the more extreme cases of the disease so far to show itself.

You can follow the internal logic, but I would not spend too much time on it because there is none once you exit their bubble. There is only one truth, the argument runs, and it just so happens it is exactly what we think. There is no other way to see things. All is TINA, "there is no alternative."

It would be easy to dismiss Weiss and Pomerantsev as supercilious hacks, and I do. But not the stance. They say too clumsily and bluntly what is actually the prevalent intellectual frame, a key aspect of the neoliberal stance. TINA, the argument Thatcher made famous, applies to all things.

To say "The Menace of Unreality" advocates a kind of intellectual protectionism is not strong enough. Their idea comes to the control of information, which is to say the control of the truth. And if you can think of a more efficient way to define the production of propaganda, use the comment box.

Fighting alleged propaganda with propaganda: This is upside down for you. It is what we get when people make up reality for us.


Patrick Smith is the author of "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century." He was the International Herald Tribune's bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote "Letter from Tokyo" for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @thefloutist.


More Patrick L. Smith.

[Jun 05, 2015] The nature of the war in Donbass seems to have changed lately, and not in a good way for Novorossiya

"...The nature of the war in Donbass seems to have changed lately, and not in a good way for Novorossiya."
.
"...The latest battle in Marinka was a good demonstration. The Kiev junta used Marinka as a base for shelling other parts of Donetsk. The junta also fortified Marinka well with the help of their US advisers. As the civilian casualties started to mount the NAF had no other options than to start an offensive against Marinka. The NAF suffered heavy losses (hundreds of KIA according to pro-Novorossiyan sources) and managed to capture only a small part of Marinka. The Kiev junta considered the outcome as a victory since they managed to inflict heavy losses for the NAF and keep most of Marinka."
.
"...Yes, I think you're right, and the days of cheap victories – relatively speaking, I don't mean to trivialize NAF losses and civilian casualties, but I'm talking about victories like Ilovaisk and Debaltseve – are over for Novorossiya. The new strategy does appear to be to draw the NAF in and make them commit to an offensive which will give Kiev's forces a chance, an excuse, to strike.
Jun 5, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com
karl1haushofer, June 5, 2015 at 8:26 am
The nature of the war in Donbass seems to have changed lately, and not in a good way for Novorossiya.

Instead of suicidal offensives and going into cauldrons the Ukrainian military is staying put and shelling both the military and civilian targets in Donbass. In this week hundreds of civilians in different parts of Donbass have been killed by the shelling of Kiev. I'm sure the American advisers have played their part in this change of strategy.

What does this mean? The NAF (Novorossiyan Armed Forces) have to go for an offensives against well fortified junta positions. This will

  1. cause great losses in manpower and arms for the NAF
  2. give Kiev and the West a good pretext to blame the NAF for escalation and breach of Minsk agreement (as they ignore the previous shelling of Kiev and only take notice when the NAF goes for an offensive) and extend the sanctions on Russia.

The latest battle in Marinka was a good demonstration. The Kiev junta used Marinka as a base for shelling other parts of Donetsk. The junta also fortified Marinka well with the help of their US advisers. As the civilian casualties started to mount the NAF had no other options than to start an offensive against Marinka. The NAF suffered heavy losses (hundreds of KIA according to pro-Novorossiyan sources) and managed to capture only a small part of Marinka. The Kiev junta considered the outcome as a victory since they managed to inflict heavy losses for the NAF and keep most of Marinka.

I'm afraid that outcomes like happened in Ilovaysk and Debaltsevo are not going to happen anymore. The Ukrainian military is simply better than it was then. They have become wiser. They "bait" the NAF to attack by killing scores of civilians and then repel these attacks while inflicting heavy losses for the NAF.

The current standings in the war are in favor of Kiev, since Novorossiya is in a constant survival mode. The war has been going on for a year and the enemy has not even been driven out of Donetsk yet. In order to do so Donbass needs increased Russian help which may not be coming. Expect this war to continue for at least two or three more years with thousands of more civilians dying.

marknesop, June 5, 2015 at 9:47 am
Yes, I think you're right, and the days of cheap victories – relatively speaking, I don't mean to trivialize NAF losses and civilian casualties, but I'm talking about victories like Ilovaisk and Debaltseve – are over for Novorossiya. The new strategy does appear to be to draw the NAF in and make them commit to an offensive which will give Kiev's forces a chance, an excuse, to strike.

But what then? Have the UAF grown mighty and skilled in their idleness, with battalions of crack troops and tactics up the wazoo? Hardly. A major lunge at Novorossiya will likely end the way the other attempts have, and Ukraine cannot really afford to lose another major battle. So if the NAF will not be drawn, it's a grinding war of attrition that holds no promise of a blinding victory for Kiev, which must keep its troops deployed in the field while the NAF is at home. The recent curtailment of water and food supplies suggest Kiev is getting impatient, but those measures only make the state look heavy-handed and oppressive as well as a violator of international law – and while there will be no punishment, naturally, make no mistake; people notice – and are most unlikely to break Novorossiya's will as Ukraine does not control the border.

The constant shelling is just Porky's way of being seen to do something, but it is unlikely to produce any tactical successes unless the NAF lunges for the bait and the two sides commit to a major battle. And in that case, unless Kiev can get heavy weapons to the front in a hurry, it is likely to lose again and perhaps the demarcation of Novorossiya will expand again.

ThatJ, June 5, 2015 at 10:30 am

In this week hundreds of civilians in different parts of Donbass have been killed by the shelling of Kiev.

Aren't you exaggerating? That's awful if true.

kat kan, June 5, 2015 at 3:01 pm
The NAF suffered heavy losses (hundreds of KIA according to pro-Novorossiyan sources)

I think he exaggerates in both cases. The only figure into 100s I've seen was something about 200 KIA from Kiev-1 which is a Right Sector force. And something about 2 Ural trucks of bodies. Now that would not be truckloads of bodies picked up (UAF is not good about taking their dead especially in mid-battle) but sounds more like 2 truckloads of arriving soldiers killed before getting out, ie the trucks were blown up. The "200 KIA" is a translation error, ie 200(KIA) meaning they "became 200s (dead)" explaining what the 200 code means.

Civilian deaths for the whole past week I think are around 20 but a lot of wounded, many not directly shot but by collapsing walls etc. About 100 were evacuated from a Donetsk hospital, including sick people, not freshly wounded. For Maryinka NAF admitted to about 30 KIA and 90 wounded, only a few seriously; I've seen video showing some with single bandages on what seem to be single shrapnel wounds.

Oh for the good old days of Minsk1, when many areas were just holding the line, no advance possible, so they didn't try very hard. "Hey! we're trying to cook breakfast here" "Oh sorry, we'll give you half an hour" before desultory shelling starts.

[Jun 03, 2015]Ex-Ukrainian President Yanukovych Tried to Bargain with Puppet Master and Lost

Jun 3. 2015 | russia-insider.com

Viktor Yanukovych tried to play both EU and Russia but the US had already decided his fate. Rostislav Ishchenko argues that:

  • Yanukovych attempted to use Russia's resources to pay for the integration with the EU
  • He was naďve enough to believe that just because he is presenting the West with the whole of Ukraine he will be allowed to stay president
  • US and EU wanted free trade agreement with Ukraine to act as the "wormhole" from the US directly into the CIS and make Eurasian Customs Union worthless, thus negating all integration plans of Russia in Eurasia

The text below is an excerpt from a longer essay from Rostislav Ishchenko, a prominent Russian commentator.

This article originally appeared at the Russian website Odnako. It was translated by Eugenia at The Vineyard of the Saker.


At that time [end of 2010], the oligarchic-nationalistic block believed that Russia should be treated as a source of all possible economic preferences, whereas the policy should be geared towards the West. By 2010, the "orange" Maidan team was completely discredited and lacked significant public support. Furthermore, the team had demonstrated total inability to create an acute conflict with Russia (like the one with Georgia) that would have tied up the Russian resources at the Ukrainian direction preventing Russia from interfering with the global affaires.

For that reason, the US did not object against the election of Yanukovich as President in 2010. Washington knew that Yanukovich would try to return to the Kuchma-style policy of multi-vector that presupposed the use of Russia's resources to pay for the integration with the EU.

At the beginning of 2000s, such policy no longer suited the US, and that was what prompted the coup of 2004. Then Washington no longer needed allies (no matter how loyal and dependent); it needed executors of already made decisions. But in 2010 the situation has changed: the US was pushed to support the Ukrainian multi-vector stance by the general weakening of its global geopolitical position as well as by the growing problems in the American economy. The US no longer had money to support its allies. Now the voiceless vassals were expected to pay for the American policy out of their own pocket.

In the situation of 2010, Yanukovych was the only Presidential candidate suitable for the US. The Yushchenko team (including the present day "heroes" Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko) was completely discredited, and it would require time to restore its image. Timoshenko earned the reputation of been unpredictable and prone to constantly cheat her partners. The only dirt the US had on her (her cooperation with Lazarenko) has already been presented in the Ukrainian media and produced minimal effect. On the contrary, Yanukovych was not only under control of the American agents (the group of Levotchkin-Firtash) but sincerely wanted to "integrate into the EU" by signing the association agreement. Apparently Victor Feodorovitch decided to prove to all who deposed him in 2004 that he was the only one who could "unite Ukraine" reconciling the East and the West. In reality it meant the refusal to honor his election promises and the beginning of the pro-Western policies.

Yanukovych was expected to sign the association agreement that would destroy the Ukrainian industry, completely discredit himself, concentrate everything negative on his own persona and then lose the 2015 elections to the American protégée. To make sure this scenario is followed (in case Yanukovich refuses to go peacefully), another Maidan was being prepared for 2015.

Yanukovych was naďve enough to believe that just because he is presenting the West with the whole of Ukraine, he would be allowed to get reelected in 2015. To that end, he and his surrounding actively financed and supported Nazi organizations (not only "Freedom" but also "Ukraine Patriot", UIA-OUN and others). "Dander of fascism" was supposed to unite around Yanukovych the anti-fascist voters from the South-East.

For moderate nationalists and "eurointegrators", the signed association with the EU was expected to serve as the incentive. Finally, to preserve the loyalty of the majority of the population, particularly those concerned exclusively with their economic wellbeing, it was planned under the pretext of the association to obtain a 15-20 billion credit from the EU, which would be enough, according to Azarov's calculations, to keep up or even improve the living standards until the 2015 elections.

The plan of Yanukovych was logically perfect. The EU getting its hands on Ukraine – an assest worth trillions – was expected to open up its wallet for a mere twenty billions. Yanukovych and Azarov thought that if Greece received 200 billions, then Brussels could find 20 billions for Ukraine.

The problem was that the US did not plan on keeping in power Yanukovych, who represented the interests of the national industry, and those interests would sooner or later collide with the abstract but unprofitable "European values". He was supposed to be replaced by completely tame comprador, and the national Ukrainian business was supposed to die out replaced by the European companies.

Maidan instead of the golden key

As result of that 5-year operation, the US would have established in Ukraine by early 2015 perfectly tame and legitimate Russophobic regime. The EU would have the free trade zone with Ukraine, which, first, after the demise of the Ukrainian industry, provided Europe with the 45 million-strong Ukrainian market (albeit with the decreasing buying power but still able to last a while longer), but, most importantly, via the free trade zone within the CIS the EU should obtain the access to the market of all CIS countries, particularly that of Russia. That would have minimized the European losses from the planned free trade agreement between the EU and US that was disadvantageous for the EU. Europe hoped to cover the losses form the free trade zone with the US at the expense of Russia and CIS.

Obviously, the US cared not about the compensation of the European financial and economic losses but about its own geopolitical interests. Most importantly, that free trade agreement acting as the "wormhole" from the US directly into the CIS made the Custom Union [Eurasian Customs Union] worthless and negated all integration plans of Russia in Eurasia. In one hit, the US would restore its political and economic dominance in the world, and the most dangerous American rival – Russia – was expected to pay for it.

That was a very elegant plan, and I can imagine how mad the Washington politicians were when that lummox Yanukovych finally realized that he would never see the European billions to support the social stability and suddenly only three months before the signing of the association agreement postponed the event. Yanulovych thought that he would bargain, get the money, and then sign. To make the EU more amenable, he went to Moscow, in accordance with the old Ukrainian tradition, where the coveted billions were promised to him on much easier terms. Putin tried at the last moment to play the Ukrainian cards he was dealt, that was why the decisions were made quickly and big money was given freely.

In contrast to Yanukovych, people in Washington know full well what the window of opportunities is. All interconnected elements – from the signing of the association Ukraine-EU agreement to Maidan-2015, including the free trade agreement the US-EU – were built into a rigid scheme and coordinated in time. Taking out one block made the whole building come down. As a result, Yanukovych got himself Maidan as early as the end of 2013.

[Jun 02, 2015]The Delusional World Of Imperial Washington

Notable quotes:
.
"... What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance? This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, "We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower Lives Here,' no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe." "
.
"...The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed "imperial overstretch." As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which "the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country's power to defend all of them simultaneously.""
.
dir="ltr">"...But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower -- and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it's already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality."
Zero Hedge
Submitted by Michael Klare via TomDispatch.com,

Think of this as a little imperial folly update -- and here's the backstory.

In the years after invading Iraq and disbanding Saddam Hussein's military, the U.S. sunk about $25 billion into "standing up" a new Iraqi army. By June 2014, however, that army, filled with at least 50,000 "ghost soldiers," was only standing in the imaginations of its generals and perhaps Washington. When relatively small numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants swept into northern Iraq, it collapsed, abandoning four cities -- including Mosul, the country's second largest -- and leaving behind enormous stores of U.S. weaponry, ranging from tanks and Humvees to artillery and rifles. In essence, the U.S. was now standing up its future enemy in a style to which it was unaccustomed and, unlike the imploded Iraqi military, the forces of the Islamic State proved quite capable of using that weaponry without a foreign trainer or adviser in sight.

In response, the Obama administration dispatched thousands of new advisers and trainers and began shipping in piles of new weaponry to re-equip the Iraqi army. It also filled Iraqi skies with U.S. planes armed with their own munitions to destroy, among other things, some of that captured U.S. weaponry. Then it set to work standing up a smaller version of the Iraqi army. Now, skip nearly a year ahead and on a somewhat lesser scale the whole process has just happened again. Less than two weeks ago, Islamic State militants took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. Iraqi army units, including the elite American-trained Golden Division, broke and fled, leaving behind -- you'll undoubtedly be shocked to hear -- yet another huge cache of weaponry and equipment, including tanks, more than 100 Humvees and other vehicles, artillery, and so on.

The Obama administration reacted in a thoroughly novel way: it immediately began shipping in new stocks of weaponry, starting with 1,000 antitank weapons, so that the reconstituted Iraqi military could take out future "massive suicide vehicle bombs" (some of which, assumedly, will be those captured vehicles from Ramadi). Meanwhile, American planes began roaming the skies over that city, trying to destroy some of the equipment IS militants had captured.

Notice anything repetitive in all this -- other than another a bonanza for U.S. weapons makers? Logically, it would prove less expensive for the Obama administration to simply arm the Islamic State directly before sending in the air strikes. In any case, what a microcosm of U.S. imperial hubris and folly in the twenty-first century all this training and equipping of the Iraqi military has proved to be. Start with the post-invasion decision of the Bush administration to totally disband Saddam's army and instantly eject hundreds of thousands of unemployed Sunni military men and a full officer corps into the chaos of the "new" Iraq and you have an instant formula for creating a Sunni resistance movement. Then, add in a little extra "training" at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison in Iraq, for key unemployed officers, and -- Voilŕ! -- you've helped set up the petri dish in which the leadership of the Islamic State movement will grow. Multiply such stunning tactical finesse many times over globally and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, you have what might be called the folly of the "sole superpower" writ large.

Delusionary Thinking in Washington

The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower

Take a look around the world and it's hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington's dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance?

This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, "We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower Lives Here,' no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe."

Imperial Overstretch Hits Washington

Strategically, in the Cold War years, Washington's power brokers assumed that there would always be two superpowers perpetually battling for world dominance. In the wake of the utterly unexpected Soviet collapse, American strategists began to envision a world of just one, of a "sole superpower" (aka Rome on the Potomac). In line with this new outlook, the administration of George H.W. Bush soon adopted a long-range plan intended to preserve that status indefinitely. Known as the Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 1994-99, it declared: "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union."

H.W.'s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999. If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top goal would be "to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity -- given few nations in history -- to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America's peaceful influence not just across the world, but across the years."

For Bush, of course, "extending the peace" would turn out to mean invading Iraq and igniting a devastating regional conflagration that only continues to grow and spread to this day. Even after it began, he did not doubt -- nor (despite the reputed wisdom offered by hindsight) does he today -- that this was the price that had to be paid for the U.S. to retain its vaunted status as the world's sole superpower.

The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed "imperial overstretch." As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which "the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country's power to defend all of them simultaneously."

Indeed, Washington finds itself in exactly that dilemma today. What's curious, however, is just how quickly such overstretch engulfed a country that, barely a decade ago, was being hailed as the planet's first "hyperpower," a status even more exalted than superpower. But that was before George W.'s miscalculation in Iraq and other missteps left the U.S. to face a war-ravaged Middle East with an exhausted military and a depleted treasury. At the same time, major and regional powers like China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been building up their economic and military capabilities and, recognizing the weakness that accompanies imperial overstretch, are beginning to challenge U.S. dominance in many areas of the globe. The Obama administration has been trying, in one fashion or another, to respond in all of those areas -- among them Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the South China Sea -- but without, it turns out, the capacity to prevail in any of them.

Nonetheless, despite a range of setbacks, no one in Washington's power elite -- Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders being the exceptions that prove the rule -- seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way. President Obama, who is clearly all too aware of the country's strategic limitations, has been typical in his unwillingness to retreat from such a supremacist vision. "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation," he told graduating cadets at West Point in May 2014. "That has been true for the century past and it will be true for the century to come."

How, then, to reconcile the reality of superpower overreach and decline with an unbending commitment to global supremacy?

The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act. It involves the constant juggling of America's capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration. Call it the Obama Doctrine.

After concluding, for instance, that China had taken advantage of U.S. entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan to advance its own strategic interests in Southeast Asia, Obama and his top advisers decided to downgrade the U.S. presence in the Middle East and free up resources for a more robust one in the western Pacific. Announcing this shift in 2011 -- it would first be called a "pivot to Asia" and then a "rebalancing" there -- the president made no secret of the juggling act involved.

"After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region," he told members of the Australian Parliament that November. "As we end today's wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority. As a result, reductions in U.S. defense spending will not -- I repeat, will not -- come at the expense of the Asia Pacific."

Then, of course, the new Islamic State launched its offensive in Iraq in June 2014 and the American-trained army there collapsed with the loss of four northern cities. Videoed beheadings of American hostages followed, along with a looming threat to the U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad. Once again, President Obama found himself pivoting -- this time sending thousands of U.S. military advisers back to that country, putting American air power into its skies, and laying the groundwork for another major conflict there.

Meanwhile, Republican critics of the president, who claim he's doing too little in a losing effort in Iraq (and Syria), have also taken him to task for not doing enough to implement the pivot to Asia. In reality, as his juggling act that satisfies no one continues in Iraq and the Pacific, he's had a hard time finding the wherewithal to effectively confront Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the various militias fighting for power in fragmenting Libya, and so on.

The Party of Utter Denialism

Clearly, in the face of multiplying threats, juggling has not proven to be a viable strategy. Sooner or later, the "balls" will simply go flying and the whole system will threaten to fall apart. But however risky juggling may prove, it is not nearly as dangerous as the other strategic response to superpower decline in Washington: utter denial.

For those who adhere to this outlook, it's not America's global stature that's eroding, but its will -- that is, its willingness to talk and act tough. If Washington were simply to speak more loudly, so this argument goes, and brandish bigger sticks, all these challenges would simply melt away. Of course, such an approach can only work if you're prepared to back up your threats with actual force, or "hard power," as some like to call it.

Among the most vocal of those touting this line is Senator John McCain, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a persistent critic of President Obama. "For five years, Americans have been told that 'the tide of war is receding,' that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values," he typically wrote in March 2014 in a New York Times op-ed. "This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative." The only way to prevent aggressive behavior by Russia and other adversaries, he stated, is "to restore the credibility of the United States as a world leader." This means, among other things, arming the Ukrainians and anti-Assad Syrians, bolstering the NATO presence in Eastern Europe, combating "the larger strategic challenge that Iran poses," and playing a "more robust" role (think: more "boots" on more ground) in the war against ISIS.

Above all, of course, it means a willingness to employ military force. "When aggressive rulers or violent fanatics threaten our ideals, our interests, our allies, and us," he declared last November, "what ultimately makes the difference… is the capability, credibility, and global reach of American hard power."

A similar approach -- in some cases even more bellicose -- is being articulated by the bevy of Republican candidates now in the race for president, Rand Paul again excepted. At a recent "Freedom Summit" in the early primary state of South Carolina, the various contenders sought to out-hard-power each other. Florida Senator Marco Rubio was loudly cheered for promising to make the U.S. "the strongest military power in the world." Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker received a standing ovation for pledging to further escalate the war on international terrorists: "I want a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us."

In this overheated environment, the 2016 presidential campaign is certain to be dominated by calls for increased military spending, a tougher stance toward Moscow and Beijing, and an expanded military presence in the Middle East. Whatever her personal views, Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic candidate, will be forced to demonstrate her backbone by embracing similar positions. In other words, whoever enters the Oval Office in January 2017 will be expected to wield a far bigger stick on a significantly less stable planet. As a result, despite the last decade and a half of interventionary disasters, we're likely to see an even more interventionist foreign policy with an even greater impulse to use military force.

However initially gratifying such a stance is likely to prove for John McCain and the growing body of war hawks in Congress, it will undoubtedly prove disastrous in practice. Anyone who believes that the clock can now be turned back to 2002, when U.S. strength was at its zenith and the Iraq invasion had not yet depleted American wealth and vigor, is undoubtedly suffering from delusional thinking. China is far more powerful than it was 13 years ago, Russia has largely recovered from its post-Cold War slump, Iran has replaced the U.S. as the dominant foreign actor in Iraq, and other powers have acquired significantly greater freedom of action in an unsettled world. Under these circumstances, aggressive muscle-flexing in Washington is likely to result only in calamity or humiliation.

Time to Stop Pretending

Back, then, to our original question: What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of this predicament?

Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop pretending to be what it's not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.

If strategic juggling and massive denial were not so embedded in the political life of this country's "war capital," this would not be an impossibly difficult strategy to pursue, as others have suggested. In 2010, for example, Christopher Layne of the George H.W. Bush School at Texas A&M argued in the American Conservative that the U.S. could no longer sustain its global superpower status and, "rather than having this adjustment forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis… should get ahead of the curve by shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion." Layne and others have spelled out what this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.

But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower -- and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it's already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.

[Jun 02, 2015] Tumbleweed Town: Kiev Post-Gas Transit

In Western MSM the 17.6% year on year GDP drop in Ukraine is mentioned as a just a number without any context. But during the Great Depression the US GDP contracted "only" 25%. In any given year of that depression it did not drop 17%. Also, in the case of Ukraine, it has already underwent its first Great Depression, which was worse than the US depression during the 1990s. So we are looking at The Second Great Depression in Ukraine. This is the meaning of this 17.6 drop. Ukrainian pensioners are brought by brave Western neocons with the help of local fifth column to the real starvation level. This is an important story and yet Western MSM ignore it much like they ignore now flight MH17. Instead we have overoptimistic "confidence enhancing" forecasts from Moody's, the World Bank, the IMF, and other western agencies. Which are pure political fluff. when in reality we need to state that USA neocons (see Nulandgate) destroyed the Ukraine economics and plunge the country into another Great Depression.
Ukraine earns around $3 Billion a year from gas transit fees. How is the loss of this income going to impact Ukraine, in view of its medium-term economic forecast?
"...The first quarter of 2015 dropped almost 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. I expect there to be quarter to quarter drops in Ukraine's GDP during all of 2015. This translates into a GDP drop in 2015 of between 20% and 30% depending on how rapidly the collapse slows later this year."

Jun 01, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Anyone who has not sleepwalked through the gas-price squabble between Russia and Ukraine since the Great Freedom Jubilee known as EuroMaidan is aware that Russia has grown fed up with Ukraine's posturing and loose grip on reality – neither being a quality that is endearing or inspirational of confidence in its reliability as a gas-transit country for Europe. Russia has had projects underway for some time to gradually reduce its reliance on Ukraine as a gas-transit corridor for Russian gas since the stand-off in 2009, in which Ukraine was siphoning off gas intended for Europe for its own use free of charge, while Russia was expected to just make up the difference – Ukraine was confident Russia was without alternatives, since it would not dare shut off Europe's gas. Which it did, of course, initiating a panic and a lasting reputation for Russia as an unreliable energy partner. Nothing much was ever said about Ukraine stealing gas; Europe made a few comments to the effect that there was wrong on both sides, and left it at that, and ever afterward the narrative was that they knew Russia accused Ukraine of stealing gas, but where was the evidence?

Russia constructed the Nord Stream pipeline, and partially completed South Stream, the two of which together would handle the entirety of gas shipped to Europe, without going through Ukraine. The EU dug in its heels, and went on about how everyone needs rules and Russia would have to abide by the Third Energy Package which said the same company cannot own both the gas and the pipeline, and lots of other twaddle although it simply hands out exemptions to its own suppliers, and Russia canceled South Stream. The EU was jubilant – it had put those Russkies in their place, by God!

Which brings us, skipping over many other details which are of great import but not germane to the gas situation, to where we are now. Russia has announced it will construct Turkish Stream instead, delivering the same amount forecast for South Stream – 63 BCm – to the Turkish/Greek border. If Europe wants gas, it can build pipeline infrastructure to take it from that point. If not, fine – start busting up Granny's piano for firewood. And none – as of 2019 at the latest but probably around 2017 – will go through Ukraine.

Ukraine earns around $3 Billion a year from gas transit fees. How is the loss of this income going to impact Ukraine, in view of its medium-term economic forecast?

As a starting point, it would be hard to envision a more dramatically effective program of economic ruin than what has been done to Ukraine by its western friends. The currency has fallen off a cliff, averaging 7.29 to the U.S. dollar between 2002 and 2015, spiking to a record low value of 33.5 to the dollar in February of 2015 and currently at a ruinous 20.44. Whoever wrote the summary apparently wanted to camouflage the moment of disaster by averaging the value of the hryvnia from 2002 to 2015, because the value declined steadily throughout 2014 and can be traced almost to the minute to the Euromaidan demonstrations, accelerating to a screaming power dive after they turned violent and cratering with the collapse of the Debaltseve cauldron. The stock market has fallen to a quarter of its value in 2008. The most recent GDP Growth Rate is a contraction of 3.8% in the final quarter of 2014 – certainly worsening since then – and annually is a jaw-dropping contraction of 17.6%. Helpfully – I meant that sarcastically – the official unemployment rate has soared to 9.7% over 2013's low of 7.6%, and has been over 9% since the beginning of 2014, while inflation has bulleted its way up to 60.9%. All these are figures the state statistics service will admit to. Meanwhile, its hapless government merrily enacts a debt moratorium, authorizing itself to put a hold on payments to its creditors, even as it doubles "defense spending".

Anyway, on to the sometimes comical dynamics of the European gas business. I think my favourite is the smirking strut executed by various countries as they claim to be "weaning themselves off of Russian gas" by importing gas from some other European country that is a net importer of Russian gas. Like Poland, for example. Kiev was quite proud of itself when, in 2012, it reduced its imports of Russian gas by taking delivery of gas from RWE in Poland on a trial basis. These imports continued into 2013 – a year in which Poland (which is also "weaning itself off of Russian gas") took 60% of its gas from Russia. They've wised up now, though, and plan to import significantly more gas from Germany…which gets 38% of its gas from Russia. Oh, and they're building an LNG terminal into which they plan to import LNG from Qatar via tankers. More expensive than pipeline gas, of course, which is just good economics by European standards, but at least they can fly a Polish flag on the LNG terminal. You just can't put a price on national pride, can you? And they'll be able – in their dreams – to say goodbye to gas imports someday from that evil undemocratic Stalin dictatorship of Russia in favour of freedom gas from the smiling Qataris, ruled through a constitutional monarchy in which the Emir exercises absolute power and whose heirs come from the male branch of the al-Thani family.

Meanwhile, Ukraine itself remains the fifth-heaviest consumer of natural gas in Europe, at some 55 BCm annually. Mind you, it should realize significant savings in consumption by the almost-complete loss of its heavy industry sector, most of which is in the east – every cloud has a silver lining, what? But Ukraine's domestic production peaked at 68 BCm forty years back, has been in decline since then and now amounts to about 20 BCm – less than half its current consumption. So in order for Ukraine to wean itself off of Russian gas, it is going to have to either cut its consumption in half or buy reverse-flowed gas from other European countries – using mostly handout money, since it is going to lose $3 Billion off the top of its GDP which is currently contracting at a rate of more than 17% per year. Put that way, it doesn't sound too hopeful, does it? Mind you, the EU is doing its bit to help by insisting on reforms which have doubled the price of gas for household use, even as the currency has shrunk to about a third of its previous value.

kirill , June 1, 2015 at 7:05 pm

Good article. It is peculiar how the 17.6% year on year GDP drop in Ukraine is mentioned as a ho-hum statistic without any context. The US GDP contracted 25% during the Great Depression. In any given year of that depression it did not drop almost 18%. Also, in the case of Ukraine, it has already underwent a Great Depression worse than the original during the 1990s and has *not* fully recovered. So we are looking at an epic economic contraction since 1990. This is a big story and yet there is no spotlight on it whatsoever. Instead we have those retarded "forecasts" from Moody's, the World Bank, the IMF, and other western agencies which are pure political fluff.

On another forum a well informed poster was confused by what year on year meant. As you correctly note in your article it is basically a measure of the relative change in the GDP after one year. The only way Ukraine's GDP could hit those western "forecasts" in 2015 would be if it had a surge of growth in the second half of the year. This ain't gonna happen. In fact the decline will continue into the second quarter and the rate of decline will decline in the second half due to the fact that it is compared to the second half of 2014 which was already in full bore recession. The first quarter of 2015 dropped almost 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. I expect there to be quarter to quarter drops in Ukraine's GDP during all of 2015. This translates into a GDP drop in 2015 of between 20% and 30% depending on how rapidly the collapse slows later this year.

As for the EU and its racist, delusional hate aimed at Russia. It will reap what it has sown. For some reason some analysts think that if Iran is allowed to ship gas to the EU this will undermine Russia. They are missing the mark. Russia will be happy to have the EU supplied with its gas from the Middle East. Everyone with a clue will see the implications. Russia's own production will decline in the long run as is inevitable and Russia has now the access to the huge Chinese market at a reasonable price. The stooges in Brussels will be remembering the good old days of Russian supply.

[May 29, 2015] Michael Klare Delusional Thinking in Washington, The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower naked capitalism

May 29, 2015 | nakedcapitalism.com

By Michael T. Klare, a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What's Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mklare1. Originally published at TomDispatch

Take a look around the world and it's hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington's dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance?

This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, "We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower Lives Here,' no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe."

Imperial Overstretch Hits Washington

Strategically, in the Cold War years, Washington's power brokers assumed that there would always be two superpowers perpetually battling for world dominance. In the wake of the utterly unexpected Soviet collapse, American strategists began to envision a world of just one, of a "sole superpower" (aka Rome on the Potomac). In line with this new outlook, the administration of George H.W. Bush soon adopted a long-range plan intended to preserve that status indefinitely. Known as the Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 1994-99, it declared: "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union."

H.W.'s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999. If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top goal would be

"to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity - given few nations in history - to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America's peaceful influence not just across the world, but across the years."

For Bush, of course, "extending the peace" would turn out to mean invading Iraq and igniting a devastating regional conflagration that only continues to grow and spread to this day. Even after it began, he did not doubt - nor (despite the reputed wisdom offered by hindsight) does he today - that this was the price that had to be paid for the U.S. to retain its vaunted status as the world's sole superpower.

The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed "imperial overstretch." As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which "the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country's power to defend all of them simultaneously."

Indeed, Washington finds itself in exactly that dilemma today. What's curious, however, is just how quickly such overstretch engulfed a country that, barely a decade ago, was being hailed as the planet's first "hyperpower," a status even more exalted than superpower. But that was before George W.'s miscalculation in Iraq and other missteps left the U.S. to face a war-ravaged Middle East with an exhausted military and a depleted treasury. At the same time, major and regional powers like China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been building up their economic and military capabilities and, recognizing the weakness that accompanies imperial overstretch, are beginning to challenge U.S. dominance in many areas of the globe. The Obama administration has been trying, in one fashion or another, to respond in all of those areas - among them Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the South China Sea - but without, it turns out, the capacity to prevail in any of them.

Nonetheless, despite a range of setbacks, no one in Washington's power elite - Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders being the exceptions that prove the rule - seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way. President Obama, who is clearly all too aware of the country's strategic limitations, has been typical in his unwillingness to retreat from such a supremacist vision. "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation," he told graduating cadets at West Point in May 2014. "That has been true for the century past and it will be true for the century to come."

How, then, to reconcile the reality of superpower overreach and decline with an unbending commitment to global supremacy?

The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act. It involves the constant juggling of America's capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration. Call it the Obama Doctrine.

After concluding, for instance, that China had taken advantage of U.S. entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan to advance its own strategic interests in Southeast Asia, Obama and his top advisers decided to downgrade the U.S. presence in the Middle East and free up resources for a more robust one in the western Pacific. Announcing this shift in 2011 - it would first be called a "pivot to Asia" and then a "rebalancing" there - the president made no secret of the juggling act involved.

"After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region," he told members of the Australian Parliament that November. "As we end today's wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority. As a result, reductions in U.S. defense spending will not - I repeat, will not - come at the expense of the Asia Pacific."

Then, of course, the new Islamic State launched its offensive in Iraq in June 2014 and the American-trained army there collapsed with the loss of four northern cities. Videoed beheadings of American hostages followed, along with a looming threat to the U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad. Once again, President Obama found himself pivoting - this time sending thousands of U.S. military advisers back to that country, putting American air power into its skies, and laying the groundwork for another major conflict there.

... ... ...

But however risky juggling may prove, it is not nearly as dangerous as the other strategic response to superpower decline in Washington: utter denial.

For those who adhere to this outlook, it's not America's global stature that's eroding, but its will - that is, its willingness to talk and act tough. If Washington were simply to speak more loudly, so this argument goes, and brandish bigger sticks, all these challenges would simply melt away. Of course, such an approach can only work if you're prepared to back up your threats with actual force, or "hard power," as some like to call it.

Among the most vocal of those touting this line is Senator John McCain, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a persistent critic of President Obama. "For five years, Americans have been told that 'the tide of war is receding,' that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values," he typically wrote in March 2014 in a New York Times op-ed. "This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative." The only way to prevent aggressive behavior by Russia and other adversaries, he stated, is "to restore the credibility of the United States as a world leader." This means, among other things, arming the Ukrainians and anti-Assad Syrians, bolstering the NATO presence in Eastern Europe, combating "the larger strategic challenge that Iran poses," and playing a "more robust" role (think: more "boots" on more ground) in the war against ISIS.

Above all, of course, it means a willingness to employ military force. "When aggressive rulers or violent fanatics threaten our ideals, our interests, our allies, and us," he declared last November, "what ultimately makes the difference… is the capability, credibility, and global reach of American hard power."

A similar approach - in some cases even more bellicose - is being articulated by the bevy of Republican candidates now in the race for president, Rand Paul again excepted.

... ... ...

However initially gratifying such a stance is likely to prove for John McCain and the growing body of war hawks in Congress, it will undoubtedly prove disastrous in practice. Anyone who believes that the clock can now be turned back to 2002, when U.S. strength was at its zenith and the Iraq invasion had not yet depleted American wealth and vigor, is undoubtedly suffering from delusional thinking. China is far more powerful than it was 13 years ago, Russia has largely recovered from its post-Cold War slump, Iran has replaced the U.S. as the dominant foreign actor in Iraq, and other powers have acquired significantly greater freedom of action in an unsettled world. Under these circumstances, aggressive muscle-flexing in Washington is likely to result only in calamity or humiliation.

Time to Stop Pretending

Back, then, to our original question: What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of this predicament?

Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop pretending to be what it's not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers - none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers - Russia, China, and Iran among them - and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.

If strategic juggling and massive denial were not so embedded in the political life of this country's "war capital," this would not be an impossibly difficult strategy to pursue, as others have suggested. In 2010, for example, Christopher Layne of the George H.W. Bush School at Texas A&M argued in the American Conservative that the U.S. could no longer sustain its global superpower status and, "rather than having this adjustment forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis… should get ahead of the curve by shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion." Layne and others have spelled out what this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.

But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower - and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it's already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.


voxhumana, May 29, 2015 at 4:58 am

An interesting read. Would have been far better without the Democratic partisanship:

"Whatever her personal views, Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic candidate, will be forced to demonstrate her backbone by embracing similar positions."

forced?

"American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower - and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow."

oh, I see… only certain Republican candidates' political aspirations are premised on war and global hegemony but poor Hillary "we came, we saw, he died" Clinton will be "forced" to go along if she wants to be elected.

Klare makes many good points but suggesting that Hillary Clinton will be forced to be a war monger, forced to promote her well established neocon foreign policy bona fides, is absurd


Katniss Everdeen, May 29, 2015 at 6:36 am

My thoughts exactly.

And just as bogus as the knee-jerk, neanderthal "republicans bad, democrats good" grunting is the characterization of gwb's middle east policies as "missteps" and "miscalculations."

They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew how it would turn out. It made a few people tremendously wealthy, and justified the apparatus of population surveillance and control which is fast becoming necessary for maintaining the illusion that the us is anything more than a shadow of its former self.

weinerdog43, May 29, 2015 at 8:33 am

Seriously? Please show me exactly where 'republicans bad; democrats good' is located. The reason it looks bad if you are a republican partisan, is because most of the problem lies there. Yes, Obama has been a colossal disappointment, but he campaigned as a Liberal but has governed as a moderate/conservative republican.

To this day, over 60% of republicans think the Iraq war was a good thing. While I'll agree that the 'power elite' in Washington love them some war, to argue that democrats in the street think the same is grossly unfair.

lylo, May 29, 2015 at 10:54 am

I would object to the idea that he has governed as a Republican.
I mean, prior to the more recent Republican presidents, it wasn't that bad of a party: they didn't like to spend money on anything, represented small towns and business owners. Which went pretty well with the Democrats prior to our more recent crop: they liked to spend on the people and represented the more urban populations. See? This is a decent argument worth having. And the one that the "people on the street" represent, both sides.

Recent Republican presidents are neoconservatives–they love war and enriching the elite, preferring to represent big finance and corporations. Recent Democrat presidents are neoliberals–they love war and enriching the elite, preferring to represent big finance and corporations.

Unsurprisingly, Obama is a neoliberal. (BTW: it's all just code for fascist!)

You've roped yourself hard into the very paradigm that the guy was lamenting, and in a way, proved his point. You seem to imply that average democrats are so much less tribal and more enlightened, yet the majority of democrats polled support our actions in Libya.
You seem to think the problem is republicans, and it's not: it's fascism and blind party loyalty.


steviefinn, May 29, 2015 at 6:20 am

Not to mention that the US appears to be rotting from within in terms of debt, corruption etc, within a world where resources that supported an earlier lifestyle are becoming ever scarcer. I seem to remember that the decline of Rome was similar in some details with this, but at least you guys don't have millions of desperate Huns, Visigoths etc threatening your Northern border.

I remember at a pretty rough school I once attended how the long ruling school yard bully ended up being abandoned by his cohorts & losing his power. As was his habit he picked on a much smaller new kid who just happened to be a southpaw who also just happened to know how to deliver a single very effective liver punch.

Doug, May 29, 2015 at 6:40 am

Klare's assessment is correct that US super power delusions outstrip US resources (not to mention woefully ignorant yet arrogant office holders in both parties). However, he misses the mark in naming the counter parties with whom the US government must deal.

Finding a path forward has far more to do with reclaiming hegemony over the likes of Halliburton, JPMorganChase, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, and so on than it does with diplomacy etc respecting Russia, China, Iran and any number of other so-called nations that, in turn - like the US - are mere partners/puppets serving the corporations - the real superpowers in a world of 'free markets'.

Carla, May 29, 2015 at 6:57 am

Agreed. Wonder if you have read "National Security and Double Government" by Michael J. Glennon. Or for that matter, if Klare has.

MikeNY, May 29, 2015 at 7:03 am

It would mean accepting that "American Exceptionalism" is and always has been a fiction. We are neither humble nor wise enough to do that.

Jim Haygood, May 29, 2015 at 9:17 am

'No one in Washington's power elite seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way,' writes Klare.

Down the road, this means that the vast value-subtraction scheme of U.S. global supremacy will fold the same way the gold-backed dollar did in 1971: with an anticlimactic, out-of-the-blue weekend executive order announcing 'we're done with all that.'

To paraphrase Emperor Hirohito's surrender speech, 'the global supremacy situation has developed not necessarily to America's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interests.'

Why do bad things happen to good superpowers?

Whine Country, May 29, 2015 at 10:20 am

"good superpowers"…add that to George Carlin's list of famous oxymorons. How about right next to "military intelligence"?

TedWa, May 29, 2015 at 12:11 pm

As soon as Obomba said that I had to laugh. If you have to tell everyone you're cool – as soon as you say it, you're not. If you have to tell everyone that you're the best at something, as soon as you say it, you're not. It's that moment of claiming in public what everyone knew in secret that makes it not true, and a good joke in the making. It's taking serious respect in private and turning it into something else (pride maybe) that's deserving of open ridicule.

American exceptionalism is a joke and Obomba's playing checkers. We're no different than anyone else in this world.

Nick, May 29, 2015 at 7:41 am

In the post-globalized world we now find ourselves in, the US may not be the supreme actor it once was, rather it will lead the world's democracies in a grand coalition – this is perhaps Obama's greatest legacy. It's particularly odd India is classified as an adversary, as they are not only the largest democracy on the planet, but a newly minted key US trade partner. Similarly, Saudi Arabia has finally grown up, after decades of reliance on the US for military protection; however they are still indisputable American allies.

Things can change very quickly, Syria is on the brink of collapse and an Iran deal is within sight. China's economy is fragile, while the US economy is stabilizing. Even given DC disorganization, this is much too pessimistic I'd say, the next few decades will see many unimagined positive developments for the US (forefront of renewable energy, breadbasket of the world, 3D printing revolution, resurgence of domestic space industry, energy independence, cutting edge drones and AI, to name but a few).

Ignim Brites, May 29, 2015 at 8:33 am

Leader of a grand coalition of the world's democracies is the essence of the neo-con vision of the US "universal" and indispensable role. Obama pays lip service to this idea but his intention is to destroy it and he is succeeding. It's all over now baby blue.

OIFVet, May 29, 2015 at 12:18 pm

"it will lead the world's democracies in a grand coalition – this is perhaps Obama's greatest legacy."

Step away from the blue pill, Nick. What "democracies" are these where the governments go against popular will to impose austerity, where corruption in the form of campaign fundraising and lobbying is legalized, and where the government of lesser members of the "grand coalition" get their marching orders from Washington, often against the best interest of the nation and the will of its people? Obama helped to expose the meaningless of the term, to a greater extent than even Bush did, because he managed to bring Bush's "Old Europe" to heel too – quite a legacy indeed. The less "freedom and democracy" there is the more and louder the US and its "allies" shout it from the mountaintops. It's a sham.

As for your second paragraph: wow! Some questions: For whom is "America's economy" stabilizing? How does one survive in this stabilized economy of crappy McJobs? Have you asked the considerable FF lobby about whether it will permit a move to the "forefront of renewable energy"? How do you square the imagined lead in renewables with the very real strategy of energy independence based on fossils, particularly fracked fossils? "Will America be the "breadbasket of the world" after Monsanto grabs Ukraine's chernozem or before? In either case, is it even possible to be the breadbasket given less water in California to water the Inland Empire? I can go on, the point is, your entire comment was a rah-rah USA!USA! cheer that relies on wishful thinking. And that's pretty much America's problem: cheerleading has replaced sober thinking. We have cheerleaders for politicians, cheerleader press, and cheerleader Nicks.

It's effing scary to the rest of us that the entire strategy seems to be wishful thinking firmly rooted in exceptionalism and delusions about what is freedom and democracy, with the latter having been reduced to a competition of who amongst corporate-sponsored candidates can offer more exceptionalism and promise to drop more bombs someplace we don't like so that General Dynamics can either increase its stock dividends or do some stock buy backs.

sleepy, May 29, 2015 at 1:29 pm

@hatti552

Since the drive for US global hegemony probably had more advocates among postwar dem internationalists–many of whom were New Deal holdovers–as it did among the traditionally isolationist repubs, I'm not sure if your neat little left/right dichotomy works.

In any case, aside from labeling, do you care to give any reasons for your support of US global hegemony? Do you think it's not working because Obama hasn't tried hard enough (basically the repub position) and you favor doubling down a'la McCain?

Jesper, May 29, 2015 at 8:58 am

My take is that if there had been a long-term strategy for the US good that its government was following/implementing then it is almost impossible to detect and decipher for people outside of the power-centers in DC. And if there is no long-term strategy, be it to keep the US as the sole superpower or to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, then the explanation must be something different.

Maybe another angle might help in describing the situation?

Is the US government (and the power-brokers in DC) acting to keep the US strong or to keep themselves (personally) powerful?

NotTimothyGeithner, May 29, 2015 at 10:36 am

The U.S. government needs a powerful figurehead/central authority to control the bureaucracy and to wrestle control, the Federalist papers made note of this even before the imperial presidency, but there hasn't been a powerful democrat since LBJ. Obama, Clinton, and Carter were right wing leaders of nominally lefty parties, and the result was they spent much of their Administrations browbeating their own party to maintain control or push their legislation instead of cleaning the Pentagon or Wall Street. Obama's ideas and personality don't control members of Congress. It's Wall Street money. If a popular Obama walked into a random state and ignored an incumbent Senator in favor of a challenger, the incumbent would never r have the money to overcome one soundbite which would be carried by the news as a free spectacle. The result is an open season for everyone else's pet project because no one can stop them and two they might get lost or fired when the next strong center arrives.

The U.S. government is responding to every mouth at the trough. Gore couldn't have invaded Iraq not because he wouldn't have but because he wouldn't have the political support from his own party to shutdown other pet projects to prepare the MIC and population for it. Dubya didn't fight his party back benchers until 2005. After he moved on SS, Dubya became irrelevant because he was no longer popular enough to be feared.

It's not just Goldman Sachs. It's everyone who works in Nuland's office. They don't want to be part of a failed program or a public embarrassment. Because Obama is weak, he can't move on obvious stains such as Nuland because she represents a supporter in DC. Without many of these clowns, he would be alone because he's lost much of his popularity, did nothing for down ticket races, and threatened many members into submission.

While a person is popular, they can walk in and tell the baron class how things will be or they won't be barons. If they align themselves with the barons, they cease to be popular and rely on the barons who more autonomy and options than the 99% and have to acquiesce. Not every baron has the exact same goal. If they get too uppity, the king will act, but they can get away with a great deal if the king irritates the masses because his strength comes from above not below. It's really that simple. If the Obots had made demands of Obama, every other article in print would be why can't he have a third term. Republican Presidential candidates would be terrified of his successor instead of racing to sign up supporters.

Ignoring the GOP and long term problems with Team Blue recruitment, much of the Obama mess goes tend his own standing goes back to his decision to be President on TV and rely on experts from the previous two administration's who had just been rejected. Hillary in '08 never discussed Bill's record because it would hurt her with her more ignorant supporters who projected onto Hillary.

DJG, May 29, 2015 at 9:14 am

The symptoms have been in evidence for a long time, and it isn't clear to me that we have reached the moment when collapse will happen or when even John McCain will recognize that something has gone wrong. McCain and Obama, being all tactics and no strategy, have yet to figure out that U.S. supply lines for the military and for our decadent corporations are way overstretched. Has either proposed closing a military base? Has either advised food purveyors to stop importing garlic (garlic!) from China?

Not even the evidence of continuing U.S. defeats–in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya–elicits an appropriate response from the elites. So they venture into Ukraine, the next failure.

Unlike Rome, though, I'd venture to say that the USA has chosen some particularly pernicious "allies," such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and England (soon to be detached from Scotland). Each of these so-called allies is more than self-serving. The U.S. elites, though, rather than showing any skepticism, have been craven in dealing with the big four. Our relation to England seems to be to conduct their foreign policy and protect the illegality of the City of London in exchange for some nostalgia about Toad in a Hole.

hemeantwell, May 29, 2015 at 9:31 am

Klare, whose work over the years has been largely useful, is a lazy writer when it comes to the Cold War. To simplistically talk about it as "resisting Soviet expansionism around the world" ignores how US expansionism, aka imperialism, conditioned Soviet policy. As a professor of peace studies he must certainly be familiar with the substantial body of work by authors such as Williams, Alperovitz, Cohen and others who show that the US did nothing to allay Soviet security concerns and instead adopted an offensive posture that, to the Soviets, recommended ensuring friendly neighbors by whatever means necessary. What is disgusting about Klare now is that, by casually repeating formulaic ideological themes, he only adds to the ignorance regarding the current mess in the Ukraine, a mess that in my view basically reprises the late 1940s. Sure, he does talk about "sharing the planet with other powers," but he seems unwilling to say what that means. In that sense this professor of peace falls behind murderers like Kissinger, who has been critical of NATO efforts to turn the Ukraine into a launchpad on Russia's doorstep.

OIFVet, May 29, 2015 at 12:21 pm

+100

sufferin'succotash, May 29, 2015 at 9:40 am

HW Bush's pronouncement that "the American Way of Life is non-negotiable" around the time of the Gulf War more or less let the cat out of the bag.

Neocon delusions of grandeur aside, much of the US interventionism over the past several decades has been driven by the need to keep the Cheap Oil flowing in. That is, if one assumes that the AWL depends on cheap oil.

knowbuddhau, May 29, 2015 at 11:45 am

Thanks to the others who take Klare to task for lazy rhetorical shortcuts that only serve to further bury the truth of our times. I agree that we're in a period of imperial decline. But "missteps"?! "Miscalculations"?! The phrase you're looking for, professor, is "war crimes." Calling our wars of aggression by their true name is still a step too far, eh?

One measure of our hubris is the inability of "serious" and "respectable" critics to openly proclaim that we've been serial war criminals since the days of the Indian Wars. Our continental empire was built by making treaties at gun point, without much intent to honor them, as a means to grab the land. (ISTM General Sherman made remarks to that effect, but I can't find the quote.) Our global empire hasn't been much different.

I suppose Indian Removal and wiping out the buffalo, and the continuing efforts to undermine tribal sovereignty today, were, and are, likewise "missteps" and "miscalculations" we can somehow blame on Republicans exclusively.

NotTimothyGeithner, May 29, 2015 at 12:53 pm

I think you may be thinking of Grant not Sherman, but both would be denounced by Team Blue as pinko commies. One of Grant's SOTU's included a call for universal, public education and not one dollar for sectarian schools. The charter movement would be appalled.

Amazingly enough, Grant and Sherman are oozing intelligent sound bites which proves the modern Democrats don't have a messaging problem as much as a message problem.

OIFVet, May 29, 2015 at 12:27 pm

I suppose Indian Removal and wiping out the buffalo, and the continuing efforts to undermine tribal sovereignty today, were, and are, likewise "missteps" and "miscalculations" we can somehow blame on Republicans exclusively

Of course not! Stalin! Golodomor! Outside enemies and justifications are the norm, it's just that from time to time we have to engage in intramural squabbling just to perpetuate the myth that there is a qualitative difference between the two wings of the Corporate Party and thus we have a democracy with a real choice of parties and ideas.

Code Name D, May 29, 2015 at 1:35 pm

One who makes no mistakes is incapable of learning from them.

Steven, May 29, 2015 at 1:54 pm

(I can't seem to manage a concise response to Naked Capitalism's postings. What follows is just the last couple of paragraphs of what I hope will be a (mercifully) short posting on OpEdNews.)

Klare needs to take that last step. It isn't about 'peak oil' or 'peak everything' so much as 'peak debt' or 'peak money', i.e. a world awash in money and in mad pursuit of ever more of it. There are indeed physical limits. But with a little luck the world (of humans) may still have the resources to right-size itself to fit within them. However that won't happen until the greed of the world's plutocracy and the ambitions of their psychopathic servants in the political class are controlled.

80 years ago the Nobel Prize winning chemist explained where oil DOES come into the picture:

Though it was not understood a century ago, and though as yet the applications of the knowledge to the economics of life are not generally realised, life in its physical aspect is fundamentally a struggle for energy, …

Soddy, Frederick M.A., F.R.S.. Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt (Kindle Locations 1089-1091). Distributed Proofreaders Canada.

The 'backing' for the petrodollar now includes the monetized value of Chinese and third world labor and natural resources as well as OPEC oil. But controlling the outcome of life's "struggle for energy" is still the crumbling cornerstone of both US foreign and domestic economic policies:

• control the world's access to energy and it has no choice but submitting to the hegemon's will

• the U.S. political system is now owned lock, stock and barrel by a financial / military industrial / fossil fuels complex (am I forgetting anybody?). The powers that be are trying to preserve the existing status quo by insuring that life remains a "struggle for energy".

The denizens of Wall Street and Washington can perhaps be forgiven for believing they were the "masters of the universe" at the conclusion of WWII. What they can NOT be forgiven is their belief – then or now – is that "the end of history" had arrived (unless they cause it).

fresno dan, May 29, 2015 at 1:54 pm

I don't know if I buy the premise that the US was ever as powerful as it proclaims itself to be. I remember when guys in black pajamas, with no navy or air force defeated the "most powerful nation on earth"

Fifty years later, when the US is supposedly the "Sole superpower" on earth, a bunch of guys with no air force or navy defeated us in Afghanistan….

I will concede we did no "lose" in Iraq….although I will NOT concede that we won either…
and I will say we won unequivocally in Grenada.

Am I seeing a pattern?

sleepy, May 29, 2015 at 2:32 pm

At least in Vietnam, it was the policy that lost. As far as I recall, the military won every battle.

I think the same can be said, more or less, about Iraq and Afghanistan. It's difficult for the military to sustain and fulfill stupid policy.

They all show the limits of military force in the pursuit of idiocy. Garbage in, garbage out.

If the US wants to hang on to some sort of international influence, it needs to hone up on its diplomatic skills and downplay its sabre-rattling.

NotTimothyGeithner, May 29, 2015 at 3:12 pm

The military won every battle based on our count. Cornwallis won every battle against continentals, but he was forced to flee because he couldn't supply his army without splitting it and letting his baggage train and foraging parties come under fire. The whole we won every battle mantra is propaganda to avoid holding many of the generals and the MIC accountable for their lies and mistakes. When a platoon was massacred on patrol, it wasn't a "battle." I guess there was no honor in shooting guys in the back unlike say a drone strike. When the military was in a position to launch a massive aerial counter attack, then we won and temporarily planted a flag while the position grew weaker. But hey we won the battle. Did we have a great record without the air power which limited how the various enemies could move troops?

Air power made battles impossible in many ways. The Tet Offensive was everywhere all at once which means there were no reserves or occupation forces ready. The goal was to spur uprisings and force the Americans to redeploy which is what happened, and the costs of defending urban areas skyrocketed as the Vietcong and North Vietnamese forced the U.S. and it's puppets out of the country side. Oh sure, the enemy was forced to flee the cities they attacked, but they didn't bring the forces needed to occupy or destroy the U.S. and South Vietnam forces. Did we win that battle? No, they were completely unprepared for a multi-city assault. It was beneath the notice of the Pentagon brass, so they cooked up an excuse to call it a win.

sleepy, May 29, 2015 at 3:48 pm

So, we just need to beef up our military, retrain the troops, have smarter generals, and our empire can continue on into the indefinite future, policy be damned!

The US public ultimately saw Vietnam as a complete policy failure preserving a corrupt local government, and the US withdrew. There was no Dien Bien Phu. Domestic opposition forced the US out.

As soon-to-be-disciplined General Shinseki said to Congress prior to the invasion of Iraq, that the Iraqis would not welcome us with flowers and it would take 500,000 troops to occupy the nation for years for the policy to be successful.

susan the other, May 29, 2015 at 2:46 pm

If the TPP is just an attempt to make the ASEAN countries militaristic enough to give us some breathing room, then that's pretty interesting. They can come together under the TPP umbrella and form a quiet military coalition to relieve the world's only superpower. Think of us as a senile superpower. John Foster Dulles wanted the ASEAN countries to all have the bomb. Why should we be the only bomb droppers? The only totally absurd country. The greater question has evolved finally. Why can't we all function rationally? And with a dedication to the environment.

I've been wondering how we were going to pay Russia for helping us thru this mess. Crimea was one payment. But Russia has given us much more than we have given her, so other payments might include some of our bases around the world. A great gift to an almost superpower. And an agreement that we will only bluster about China's islands in the South China Sea but we won't really do anything. Bluster is how you wind down from being a super killer because you got too old and fat.

[May 28, 2015] Ukraine financial catastrophe of 2014 2015

Notable quotes:
"... According to UN standards a person lives below the poverty line, if one spends life and food less than 5 USD a day, or less than $150 a month . The subsistence minimum in Ukraine today is defined in 1176 UAH, i.e. about 50 dollars a month - less than two dollars a day. ..."
"... So the Ukrainians in poverty are already close to residents of African countries, which spend an average of 1.25 per day US dollars, was heard on "Radio Liberty". ..."
"... "What is subsistence? It's not just food, it and public transportation, and household services, and utilities, and clothing. Overlooked in the subsistence minimum medical services and education. If we analyze these factors, we can understand that Ukrainians are below the threshold of absolute poverty," ..."
"... Today more than 80% of Ukrainians live below the poverty line, the UN data show. In 2012, according to the world organization, only 15% of Ukrainian citizens existed on 5 dollars a day. ..."
foreignpolicy.com

According to UN standards a person lives below the poverty line, if one spends life and food less than 5 USD a day, or less than $150 a month . The subsistence minimum in Ukraine today is defined in 1176 UAH, i.e. about 50 dollars a month - less than two dollars a day.

So the Ukrainians in poverty are already close to residents of African countries, which spend an average of 1.25 per day US dollars, was heard on "Radio Liberty".

"What is subsistence? It's not just food, it and public transportation, and household services, and utilities, and clothing. Overlooked in the subsistence minimum medical services and education. If we analyze these factors, we can understand that Ukrainians are below the threshold of absolute poverty," stressed Shipko.

According to the Deputy, the minimum wage in Ukraine at the current exchange rate of the national Bank should be approximately 3750 UAH - the only way the Ukrainians will be able at least get requred $5 a day.

Today more than 80% of Ukrainians live below the poverty line, the UN data show. In 2012, according to the world organization, only 15% of Ukrainian citizens existed on 5 dollars a day.

Ukrainian women do not want to bear children through insecurity and inability to pay for the hospital and diaper.

[May 28, 2015] Yats bleat about Tatar rights in Crimea before the Maidan events

kirill, May 28, 2015 at 3:01 pm

Next time western "human rights lovers" bleat about Tatar rights in Crimea, show them what their darling Yatz was spewing before the Maidan events.

Tim Owen , May 28, 2015 at 5:10 pm
I think something was lost in translation. He certainly sounds and looks like a loon. There's the moment where he basically suggests that any other group existing in the country are thereby trampling the writes of the presumably chosen who do not belong to that group… Presumably Ukrainians, whatever tf that means…

Never mind. I think I figured it out.

[May 27, 2015] Ukraine is now problem for both Russian and West, but West managed to score several points against Russia and do it relatively cheaply

The West scored major geopolitical victory against Russia: As Paul said (see below): "My limited knowledge of the situation inside the Ukraine is that a lot of Ukrainians do blame Russia. Why not? That is what the TV says. It is very hard to get someone to admit he made a mistake."
Poor Ukrainian citizen. Poor Ukrainian pensioners existing on a $1 a day or less (with exchange rate around 26.5 hrivna per dollar, pension around 900 hrivna is around $1 per day. Some pensioners get less then that ( miserable 1500 hrivna per month considered to be "decent" pension and monthly salary 4000 hrivna is a "good" salary by Ukrainian standards).
The last thing EU wants is an additional stream of refugees from Ukraine escaping miserable salaries and lack of decently paying jobs and pressure of Ukrainian migrant workers on unqualified job market positions.... So far the main hit for this was not in Western but in Russian job market, but that may change. At the same time making the Ukraine enemy of Russia is a definitive geopolitical victory, achieved with relatively modest financial infusions (USA estimate is 5 billions, the EU is probably a half of that) and indirect support of Western Ukrainian nationalists.
One year ago there was a hope the Donetsk problem will be solved. Now in 2016 this civil war entered the third year -- Kiev government can't squash unrecognized Donetsk Republic with military force and it does not want to switch to federal state to accommodate their pretty modest demands: initially use of Russian language and reverse of "creeping cultural colonization" of this region by Western Ukraine. Initially the official language question was the one of the most important and Kiev Provisional government rejected Canadian variant of using the same language as its powerful, dominant neighbor and unleashed a civil war (with full blessing of the USA, which pursue "divide and conquer strategy in this region from the moment of dissolution of the USSR). Now after so much bloodshed the positions are hardened... Imagine that the Quebec nationalists came to power in Canada by French supported and financed coup, and instantly outlawed the English language for official usage and in schools and universities.
Notable quotes:
"... If you made a list of perhaps ten goals that powerful Western groups may have had in this Ukrainian project, how many have been achieved? ..."
"... That has surely been largely achieved. ..."
"... That has largely happened, as the TV says Russia stole the Crimea and is sending terrorists and bandits into the country. Look at all the banditry in the LPR. ..."
"... Finally, the bankruptcy and transfer of the country from Ukrainian oligarchs to Western corporations is about to begin. ..."
"... They surely screwed things up in the Ukraine over the last ten years. ..."
"... I'm afraid the West would like to start wars in multiple fronts at the same time making it very hard for Russia to respond. ..."
"... If the West could pull all this through at the same time Russia would be forced to either capitulate on most fronts or start a major war. Russia could not answer to these threats with conventional ways so the options for Russia would be to use nuclear weapons or accept a major geopolitical defeat. ..."
"... Georgia and Azerbaijan are not likely to cooperate, Ukraine's offensive capability is minimal, the Americans are not any more eager to attack Syria than they were two years ago, and the Islamist threat to Central Asia is presently contained. ..."
"... It has without doubt caused problems and will affect some Russian military effectiveness in the short term, but no. For example, though some products were actually made in the Ukraine, many of those businesses contracted out the production of components to Russia. ..."
"... True, but again a very short term achievement. ..."
"... NATO is not going to do anything apart from make as much noise and fearmaking as possible ..."
"... The American military industrial complex has screwed itself in a bid to make more money! Their space programs are not exactly brilliant either. ..."
"... [The transfer of property to Western corporations is] Almost inevitable, but there are several factors at play here. Western investors will have to deliver rather than just asset strip and run; domestic political repercussions will be huge at least in the medium to long term. ..."
"... Either way it is the West to whom the Ukrainian citizen will pay tribute, for a long long long time. ..."
"... All Russia needs to do is be fair and reasonable and step in at the right moment. ..."
"... As to Moscow screwing up the Ukraine over the last ten years, I think that may be a bit harsh. Sometimes the best option is to keep your hand out of the viper's nest and do nothing as much as possible, only intervening when critical. ..."
"... To be honest, Western foreign policy has rarely been panicked, but is always exploitative. If the opportunity arises, it will jump in having prepared the PPNN to scream that something must be done. ..."
"... No panic here. Just my opinion that the Kremlin needs to study how the ex-Soviet sphere has played out and deal with things like NGOs and educational, cultural, and media matters. ..."
"... As for my view that NATO wants to stress Russia, well, I suppose it comes down to your Weltanschauung. I think the US has to take Russia down to some degree, even if it is just smashing Syria. You aren't a superpower if someone can get away with things like grabbing the Crimea without paying a cost. Plus, Russia provides China with protection till China can develop a decent military. So the US has a limited amount of time before locking things up. Call it the Wolfowitz Doctrine if that is your preferred way of looking at it. ..."
"... If I am right that the US has to tie Russia up, the logical way is to create as many problems on the periphery as possible. ..."
"... I wouldn't take the problems with certain fighters to mean the US hasn't got great technology in its black projects. ..."
"... As for Ukrainians losing their anti-Russian religion, well, perhaps. But as long as Russia occupies the Crimea, that could take a long time. My bet is the anti-Russian sentiment will last a lot longer than the Ukraine does. ..."
"... Regardless of the think tanks, one thing the US can no longer ignore is their pocket. That's where to hit them. Even Osama Bin Laden understood this and was his primary goal to cause the US to over-extend itself politically & financially. ..."
"... The US want to do more but it can't do it the old expensive way – it has less means but it wants to achieve more. Something has to give. The US has barely started addressing the problem. That's even before we consider the move of some oil trading out of the US dollar. ..."
"... And what of the growing number of home grown jihadists that all NATO's wars have created? For all their support by western foreign policy to undermine Russia, it's a monster that will bite anyone and is increasingly looking at the West. As others have written before me, does the West want a reliable partner in Russia whilst it is under threat of jihadism or another big problem on their plate they can't quite manage? ..."
"... Western corporations will only plunder the country if they can get a return on their investment, and except in the case of what they can strip from it – like the black earth – and take away, that does not seem very likely to me. However, I would agree, and have done since some time ago, that the west's biggest success was turning Ukraine and Russia into enemies. ..."
"... NATO has not quite given up trying to turn Ukraine into a prosperous western democracy within its own orbit, but the enormity of the task and the hidden factors that make it so is beginning to dawn and enthusiasm in Europe is well on the wane, remaining strong only in Washington which does not have to do much of anything but manage. ..."
"... I think it is clear to Brussels and Washington that Moscow will see Ukraine destroyed and a failed state before it will allow it to be a NATO satellite snuggled up against its southwestern borders. ..."
"... NATO is running a steady propaganda campaign about Russian aggression, but I don't know how well that is actually selling outside Galicia, while it must be clear to a lot of Ukrainians what a failure the promise of western largesse was. ..."
"... My limited knowledge of the situation inside the Ukraine is that a lot of Ukrainians do blame Russia. Why not? That is what the TV says. It is very hard to get someone to admit he made a mistake. ..."
"... My main point in rubbing the west's nose around in it is not that they have conclusively lost, because it is indeed early days to make such a judgement, but that it has not won easily as it bragged it would do. ..."
"... The west does a poor job of managing expectations generally, and it has done abysmally this time around. It has no intention of curbing oligarchs in Ukraine and little interest beyond lip service in genuine reform in Ukraine. For their part, Europe should proceed cautiously with plans to integrate Ukraine more closely, because it is plain that the interest of Ukraine's oligarchs in such a course is to broaden their opportunities for stealing and increasing their wealth. ..."
"... There are plenty of opportunities for the west to steal Ukraine blind, but few that involve a product or entity that the west can buy, remove and sell somewhere else. ..."
"... The Trade Union Building on maidan square was found to be full of the burned remains of Berkut prisoners chained to the batteries and pipes after right sector set the building on fire. The Berkut were burned alive, left to their fate in the very two floors that right sector called their own during the maidan debacle. ..."
"... The Trade Union Building in Odessa also had people burned alive, the total death toll there was almost 300. The sub basement was a charnel house of corpses including women and children ..."
"... Over 200 citizens were killed in Mariupol the following weekend, shot down or burned to death in Militsiya HQ. In this incident at least a few of the perpetrators were destroyed in an ambush by Opolchensya as Opelchensya were leaving the city, ordered out as they were too few to defend the berg. ..."
"... To expand on the documentations a tiny bit, do you think all those artillerists who when captured to a man scream that they did not know they were bombarding and killing thousands of our civilians are believed? Not hardly. They knowingly committed crimes and they will pay for their crimes. ..."
"... Auslander is living in a denial. The perps of these crimes will never face any punishment because there is nobody to carry out such punishments. Novorossiya is a tiny portion of Ukraine and the rest is ruled by the Kiev thugs. Novorossiya can never reach the criminals there. ..."
"... Well, in their lifetime anyway. Russia will not invade and Novorossiya is currently limited to defending their land against Kiev attacks unable to even liberate Sloviasnk and Mariupol. And it would be against the nature of Russia (or NAF) to send partizans to kill the perps in Kiev or Lvov. Russians simply do not behave that way nowadays. ..."
"... I wonder if he has any substantiation for those numbers. Some sources have always said that hundreds more died in the Trade Unions building in Odessa than were ever officially acknowledged, but I don't recall hearing about anyone dying in the Trade Unions building on Maidan, and I thought the death toll in Mariupol was just a few police (not to make it sound like that's nothing) rather than hundreds. And I follow the situation in Ukraine fairly closely – this would not even register on those who get all their news from CNN. ..."
"... Actually it was my net-acquaintances from Serbia and Bulgaria who were arguing with each other who is more deserving the title of "niggers of Europe". Serbian guy was winning, using the ultimate proof that Tupak is alive in Serbia ..."
"... The election of Poland's new president spells big problems for Ukraine. The issue is "de-heroization" of OUN-UPA militants whom Ukraine just recently granted the status of the liberators of Europe from fascism. But unlike Komorowski, who forgave the Ukrainian heroes the Volhyn Massacre in which the Banderites slaughtered over 200 thousand Poles, the conservative Duda does not intend to sacrifice his principles. ..."
"... This is so. A state must have myth and Ukraine has already rejected the Soviet myth. Junk the Bandera myth as well, and what is left? 'Slava Ukraini' hasn't been brilliantly effective in motivating Ukrainians to fight, but would they have done better with a slogan like 'for the preservation of ill-gotten capital!'? ..."
May 26, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Paul, May 25, 2015 at 11:49 pm

The premise that the West must be losing is a bit simplistic. If you made a list of perhaps ten goals that powerful Western groups may have had in this Ukrainian project, how many have been achieved?
  • For example, one goal was to destroy businesses (and the military-industrial complex) that were oriented towards Russia. That has surely been largely achieved.
  • Another goal was to radicalize the Ukrainian population against Russia. That has largely happened, as the TV says Russia stole the Crimea and is sending terrorists and bandits into the country. Look at all the banditry in the LPR.
  • Another goal was to stress the Russian military with having to respond to too many problems in a short period of time, which may be relevant if and when the West hits on several fronts at once.
  • Finally, the bankruptcy and transfer of the country from Ukrainian oligarchs to Western corporations is about to begin. Doubt Russia can stop that.

Not denying that Putin and his circle have survived, and that the Russian economy is in better shape than most expected, but we should try to think long and hard about the pros and cons of the Kremlin's approaches.

They surely screwed things up in the Ukraine over the last ten years. Approximately zero soft power in a place that it should have been straightforward to create.

People have been writing novels and articles for a long time about how the West could gin up a war in the Ukraine to start an attack on Russia or otherwise break the establishment in Moscow. It was fairly obvious.

karl1haushofer, May 26, 2015 at 2:02 am
I'm afraid the West would like to start wars in multiple fronts at the same time making it very hard for Russia to respond.
  • Kiev would start a major offensive against Donetsk and Lugansk.
  • Transdnistria is currently blockaded by Moldova and Ukraine with no food supplies allowed to pass. Moldovan military operation might follow and Russia would be mostly unable to respond by other means than missile strikes against Moldova – which Russia under extremely cautious Putin would never do.
  • Azerbaijan would launch an offensive against Armenia in Nagarno-Karabakh. Russia lacks common border with Armenia so Russia's options would again be limited.
  • Albanian proxies, supported and trained by the West, would start military and terrorist attacks against Macedonian authorities.
  • NATO would start to bomb Syrian military and capital to oust and kill Assad.
  • Georgia might start another military operation against South Ossetia in parallel with others if it thinks Russia is too preoccupied to respond.
  • NATO-funded and -trained Islamic militants would attack authorities in Central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

If the West could pull all this through at the same time Russia would be forced to either capitulate on most fronts or start a major war. Russia could not answer to these threats with conventional ways so the options for Russia would be to use nuclear weapons or accept a major geopolitical defeat.

Pavlo Svolochenko, May 26, 2015 at 2:17 am
Yes, 'If'.
  • Georgia and Azerbaijan are not likely to cooperate, Ukraine's offensive capability is minimal, the Americans are not any more eager to attack Syria than they were two years ago, and the Islamist threat to Central Asia is presently contained.
  • The Moldovan army is not capable of defeating Transdnistria by itself, so victory would require NATO troops to join in the attack. And if it comes to the point where NATO is willing to directly assault Russian forces, then there's no reason to hold back anyway.
et Al , May 26, 2015 at 6:12 am
Here's my take for what it is worth:

The West plays the short game, so initially it may look like they have achieved much, much like their foreign policy successes at first, which then turn out to be disasters with the West reduced to firefighting.

1: ..destroy businesses (and the military-industrial complex) that were oriented towards Russia. This has not succeeded. It has without doubt caused problems and will affect some Russian military effectiveness in the short term, but no. For example, though some products were actually made in the Ukraine, many of those businesses contracted out the production of components to Russia.

2: ..radicalize the Ukrainian population against Russia. True, but again a very short term achievement. Food on plates and jobs don't grow on trees. What we do have is the ones in the middle who gravitated to the traditional Russophobes, aka swing voters, but things are only going to get worse in the Ukraine and the Nazi junta cannot deliver. Those swing voter will swing the other way, not a Russia love in, but a pragmatic middle ground. That is where they started.

3: Another goal was to stress the Russian military..What evidence is there of this? Apart from quite a number of massive snap military exercises that Russia has pulled off and impressed even the Russo-skeptic military crowd at RUSI and other MIX fronts, it is quite efficient to fly 50 year old Tu-95 bombers around Europe wearing out expensive western military equipment that will need to be replaced much sooner now than later. All those austerity plans that call for holding off on major defense spending in Europe are messed up. Money going in to weapons is money going away from jobs and the economy. Ukraine's rocket cooperation with Brazil is dead (now switched to Russia) and also with other partners. So far the US has not actively banned commercial satellites from being launched from Russian rockets, but the US cannot get its billion dollar spy sats in to space without Russian rocket engines. No-one has yet pulled the plug

NATO is not going to do anything apart from make as much noise and fearmaking as possible. It's one thing to scream and shout, its another to drop their trousers. It is quite the paper tiger. The USAF is set to rapidly shrink according to their own admission. The F-35 is designed to replace 5 aircraft – hubris or what? The F-15, F16, AV-8B, A-10 & the F-18. It's a pig of an aircraft that will perform those missions worse, in most cases, than those designed in the late 1960s early 1970s. The American military industrial complex has screwed itself in a bid to make more money! Their space programs are not exactly brilliant either.

4: the bankruptcy and transfer of the country from Ukrainian oligarchs to Western corporations is about to begin. [The transfer of property to Western corporations is] Almost inevitable, but there are several factors at play here. Western investors will have to deliver rather than just asset strip and run; domestic political repercussions will be huge at least in the medium to long term.

This is exactly what almost happened to Russia and then look how things turned out. Ukraine is of course a different case and the West will certainly try and manage it to their advantage, but it won't work if it is not for sustained profit. Either way it is the West to whom the Ukrainian citizen will pay tribute, for a long long long time. This is long before we throw any legal questions in to the mix. Whoever is in power now will pay the political price in future sooner or later. All Russia needs to do is be fair and reasonable and step in at the right moment.

As to Moscow screwing up the Ukraine over the last ten years, I think that may be a bit harsh. Sometimes the best option is to keep your hand out of the viper's nest and do nothing as much as possible, only intervening when critical.

Part of the problem with western politics and the Pork Pie News Networks of the last 25 years is the we must do something now mentality. Let's put it this way, you go in to hospital for a non-critical undiagnosed condition. Would you a) want to have the tests done and the best course of action chosen with your consent, or b) panic & be rushed to the operating theater so that they can just have a look around?

To be honest, Western foreign policy has rarely been panicked, but is always exploitative. If the opportunity arises, it will jump in having prepared the PPNN to scream that something must be done.

In short, as it is written on the cover of the good book, DON'T PANIC!

Paul, May 26, 2015 at 8:37 am
No panic here. Just my opinion that the Kremlin needs to study how the ex-Soviet sphere has played out and deal with things like NGOs and educational, cultural, and media matters. The science of mind manipulation has made great progress over the last century. It is a big mistake to just deal on an oligarchic level. Ukrainians have a legitimate gripe that their country is insanely corrupt and they can easily blame Moscow. That being the case, measures needed to be taken. And not creating any semblance of a pro-Russian political or intellectual class was similarly stupid.

As for my view that NATO wants to stress Russia, well, I suppose it comes down to your Weltanschauung. I think the US has to take Russia down to some degree, even if it is just smashing Syria. You aren't a superpower if someone can get away with things like grabbing the Crimea without paying a cost. Plus, Russia provides China with protection till China can develop a decent military. So the US has a limited amount of time before locking things up. Call it the Wolfowitz Doctrine if that is your preferred way of looking at it.

If I am right that the US has to tie Russia up, the logical way is to create as many problems on the periphery as possible. Could be Georgia; could be Central Asia; could be Transnistria. What would be your advice to those in US think tanks who are trying to keep domination of the world? What would be a good strategy? And, for what it is worth, I wouldn't take the problems with certain fighters to mean the US hasn't got great technology in its black projects. That is where all the money and technology have gone for the last 30 years. Do you really think the US would struggle to get to the Moon now and did it in 1969? Be serious – all technology is tremendously better today.

As for Ukrainians losing their anti-Russian religion, well, perhaps. But as long as Russia occupies the Crimea, that could take a long time. My bet is the anti-Russian sentiment will last a lot longer than the Ukraine does.

et Al, May 26, 2015 at 9:35 am
Regardless of the think tanks, one thing the US can no longer ignore is their pocket. That's where to hit them. Even Osama Bin Laden understood this and was his primary goal to cause the US to over-extend itself politically & financially.

The US want to do more but it can't do it the old expensive way – it has less means but it wants to achieve more. Something has to give. The US has barely started addressing the problem. That's even before we consider the move of some oil trading out of the US dollar.

And what of the growing number of home grown jihadists that all NATO's wars have created? For all their support by western foreign policy to undermine Russia, it's a monster that will bite anyone and is increasingly looking at the West. As others have written before me, does the West want a reliable partner in Russia whilst it is under threat of jihadism or another big problem on their plate they can't quite manage?

I have no doubt that the US has been trying to tie up Russia, but it is just more frenetic than before, the main planks of NATO enlargement (and weakening) resolved, but the rest has gone a bit wrong. The West is growing increasingly desperate and is trying all sorts of things to undermine Russia, but it could be much, much worse from a sanctions point of view. Level heads in the West understand that trying to pull the rug out completely from under Russia is a massive risk and one they are very careful in making.

As for their wonder-weapons, the US cannot afford enough of them or make them cheap enough for their allies to buy in sufficient numbers. It is much easier and cheaper to upgrade the sensors and missiles on a SAM system than to design and bring to production standard a brand new wonder-weapon. The old days of easily blinding air-defenses are almost over when you can have a lot of cheap distributed sensors providing the information, passively & actively. The countermeasure is a lot cheaper.

In al, Money Money Money – and every passing day the US has less to leverage and has to spread it far and wide:

marknesop, May 26, 2015 at 7:38 am
Western corporations will only plunder the country if they can get a return on their investment, and except in the case of what they can strip from it – like the black earth – and take away, that does not seem very likely to me. However, I would agree, and have done since some time ago, that the west's biggest success was turning Ukraine and Russia into enemies.

NATO has not quite given up trying to turn Ukraine into a prosperous western democracy within its own orbit, but the enormity of the task and the hidden factors that make it so is beginning to dawn and enthusiasm in Europe is well on the wane, remaining strong only in Washington which does not have to do much of anything but manage.

I think it is clear to Brussels and Washington that Moscow will see Ukraine destroyed and a failed state before it will allow it to be a NATO satellite snuggled up against its southwestern borders. The part that NATO is having trouble with is getting Russia to destroy it, so that it will be in the minds of Ukrainians for generations who did this to them.

NATO is running a steady propaganda campaign about Russian aggression, but I don't know how well that is actually selling outside Galicia, while it must be clear to a lot of Ukrainians what a failure the promise of western largesse was.

Paul, May 26, 2015 at 8:20 am
That's all reasonable, though it is hard to believe that there isn't a lot more than just some black earth to expropriate.

My limited knowledge of the situation inside the Ukraine is that a lot of Ukrainians do blame Russia. Why not? That is what the TV says. It is very hard to get someone to admit he made a mistake.

marknesop, May 26, 2015 at 10:17 am
That's true enough, and it appears there has always been a certain amount of hostility to Russia west of the Dneipr, so they perhaps did not need too much coaxing. My main point in rubbing the west's nose around in it is not that they have conclusively lost, because it is indeed early days to make such a judgement, but that it has not won easily as it bragged it would do.

The country it said it would confidently bat aside in its confident stroll to victory has not only weathered western attempts to crush its economy and put in place safeguards which will hurt western business opportunities in future, it has strengthened a powerful alliance with Asia and garnered considerable international sympathy, which implies increased hostility toward the west. Meanwhile, the country the west bragged it would snatch from Russia's orbit and make a model of a prosperous western democracy is miserable, poor and angry.

The west does a poor job of managing expectations generally, and it has done abysmally this time around. It has no intention of curbing oligarchs in Ukraine and little interest beyond lip service in genuine reform in Ukraine. For their part, Europe should proceed cautiously with plans to integrate Ukraine more closely, because it is plain that the interest of Ukraine's oligarchs in such a course is to broaden their opportunities for stealing and increasing their wealth.

There are plenty of opportunities for the west to steal Ukraine blind, but few that involve a product or entity that the west can buy, remove and sell somewhere else. Many such opportunities rely on western interests taking over Ukrainian businesses and asset-stripping them like crazy; however, the main buyer in many cases would be Russia, which has no interest in making western businesses rich, or other western buyers who would have to take over and run a Ukrainian business in a very uncertain environment in which its biggest market is Russia.

Pavlo Svolochenko, May 26, 2015 at 1:57 am

A copypaste from Auslander (formelry of MPnet), originally from Saker's blog:

"This is not the first time such atrocities [the mutilated rebel prisoner] have happened in this conflict and it will not be the last.

The Trade Union Building on maidan square was found to be full of the burned remains of Berkut prisoners chained to the batteries and pipes after right sector set the building on fire. The Berkut were burned alive, left to their fate in the very two floors that right sector called their own during the maidan debacle.

The Trade Union Building in Odessa also had people burned alive, the total death toll there was almost 300. The sub basement was a charnel house of corpses including women and children. I know the official death toll and I know the real death toll. We also lost a friend in that atrocity, not in the building but at the far end of the square, beaten to death because he was walking home from work at the wrong place and the wrong time. Why was he beaten to death? He had a speech impediment and when he got nervous he literally could not talk. Since he could not say 'salo yucrane' 5 right sector boys beat him to death in broad daylight.

Over 200 citizens were killed in Mariupol the following weekend, shot down or burned to death in Militsiya HQ. In this incident at least a few of the perpetrators were destroyed in an ambush by Opolchensya as Opelchensya were leaving the city, ordered out as they were too few to defend the berg.

The killings of innocents and not so innocents have been ongoing since the beginning and well before the beginning of the conflict that let to what is now Novorossiya. One can not morally justify killing all the UAF because of the acts of a relative few, but you can rest assured that documentations are being kept for all who can be identified as committing either individual or mass atrocities.

To expand on the documentations a tiny bit, do you think all those artillerists who when captured to a man scream that they did not know they were bombarding and killing thousands of our civilians are believed? Not hardly. They knowingly committed crimes and they will pay for their crimes. Do you think all those 'people' who commit atrocities and then post photos of the atrocities and openly brag about them on social media will walk away unscathed? Again, no hardly. Do you think we don't know who was and is abducting young women and even
girl children for their use and then killed and discarded them like less than animals? They are known.

I can go on for reams but you get the idea. These are crimes being committed by a relative few of UAF, and for the record anyone fighting for Ukraine against Novorossiya is a member of UAF, their military unit does not matter. In the end justice will be done, by the law and with due legal process where possible. Where not possible, justice will still be done. Justice, like revenge, is a dish best served cold.

As for those few of you who are still aghast at the total and deafening silence from USEU over these ongoing atrocities and crimes, I urge you to forget any chance of anything being said about we untermenschen being slaughtered by those civilized denizens of USEU. It is not going to happen so stop complaining about it. Never forget, never forgive, always remember, but don't complain, it's useless."

karl1haushofer, May 26, 2015 at 2:07 am
Auslander is living in a denial. The perps of these crimes will never face any punishment because there is nobody to carry out such punishments. Novorossiya is a tiny portion of Ukraine and the rest is ruled by the Kiev thugs. Novorossiya can never reach the criminals there.
Pavlo Svolochenko, May 26, 2015 at 2:11 am
Never is a strong word.
karl1haushofer , May 26, 2015 at 2:22 am
Well, in their lifetime anyway. Russia will not invade and Novorossiya is currently limited to defending their land against Kiev attacks unable to even liberate Sloviasnk and Mariupol. And it would be against the nature of Russia (or NAF) to send partizans to kill the perps in Kiev or Lvov. Russians simply do not behave that way nowadays.
kat kan, May 26, 2015 at 4:54 am
He says "In the end justice will be done, by the law and with due legal process where possible. Where not possible, justice will still be done. Justice, like revenge, is a dish best served cold."

I do believe various people involved in Odessa have disappeared – or turned up. Dead. Some have had to go to ground. Some have "died" under unbelievable circumstances, but their new name will probably still have the same face. The biggest obstacle will be all this wearing of masks, but with more recent atrocities, where they are garrisoned in the cities for months, they'd be known anyway..

The spirit of Novorossiya will be expanding (not yet). Things may slowly go back towards normal. But fully normal it can never be, while murderers and torturers walk free by the hundreds. It is going to be a very long headache for Ukraine.

marknesop , May 26, 2015 at 7:45 am
I wonder if he has any substantiation for those numbers. Some sources have always said that hundreds more died in the Trade Unions building in Odessa than were ever officially acknowledged, but I don't recall hearing about anyone dying in the Trade Unions building on Maidan, and I thought the death toll in Mariupol was just a few police (not to make it sound like that's nothing) rather than hundreds. And I follow the situation in Ukraine fairly closely – this would not even register on those who get all their news from CNN.
Moscow Exile, May 26, 2015 at 6:02 am
From the Brain-Dead Centre of the International Community:

Some comments:

  • – russians are very friendly people this story is all fake
  • – Yeah! And we'll kill anyone who disagrees!
  • – Russians ARE the blacks of europe. (no offense to russians, blacks, or eurpeans ofc)
  • – The scariest white people are Americans who make fictional Russian accents
Lyttenburgh, May 26, 2015 at 12:27 pm
Actually it was my net-acquaintances from Serbia and Bulgaria who were arguing with each other who is more deserving the title of "niggers of Europe". Serbian guy was winning, using the ultimate proof that Tupak is alive in Serbia
Tim Owen, May 26, 2015 at 2:03 pm
Yeah that's laughable. On the other hand

The election of Poland's new president spells big problems for Ukraine. The issue is "de-heroization" of OUN-UPA militants whom Ukraine just recently granted the status of the liberators of Europe from fascism. But unlike Komorowski, who forgave the Ukrainian heroes the Volhyn Massacre in which the Banderites slaughtered over 200 thousand Poles, the conservative Duda does not intend to sacrifice his principles.

http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/05/polands-new-president-demands-ukraine.html

Of course J Hawk's take is probably on the money. J.Hawk's Comment:

Not so fast. I'm not so sure that Duda wants to do any of the things described above. One of the major reasons Duda won is the defection of the rural voters, whose average income declined by 14% in 2014 in large measure due to Russian food embargo. Since Duda knows on which side his bread is buttered (no pun intended), deep down he also realizes the importance of that embargo lifting. His UPA criticism may well be only an excuse, a pretext to allow himself to maneuver out of his election campaign pro-Ukraine position while saving face. Because, ultimately, what is the likelihood that the Rada will actually pass a law that "de-heroizes" UPA to a sufficient degree? And even if it does, will Bandera monuments start disappearing from Lvov and other parts of Western Ukraine?

Pavlo Svolochenko, May 26, 2015 at 2:19 pm
This is so. A state must have myth and Ukraine has already rejected the Soviet myth. Junk the Bandera myth as well, and what is left? 'Slava Ukraini' hasn't been brilliantly effective in motivating Ukrainians to fight, but would they have done better with a slogan like 'for the preservation of ill-gotten capital!'?

[May 25, 2015] Andrzej Duda victory in Polish presidential election signals shift to right

Notable quotes:
"... The changing political mood could signal a return to power of Duda's conservative Law and Justice party in parliamentary elections this autumn. That would cement Poland's turn to the right, create a new dynamic with other European countries and possibly usher in a less welcoming climate for foreign investors. ..."
"... Duda says he wants new taxes on the foreign-owned banks and supermarkets to protect Polish interests, suggesting an approach similar to that of Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. He also wants banks returned to Polish control. ..."
"... Party supporters have been rejoicing since Duda's apparent victory was announced late on Sunday. They say the party will do much more to help the many Poles who have not benefited from the country's economic growth, those who face low wages and job insecurity despite a quarter of a century of growth. In his campaign speeches, Duda often spoke of the more than 2 million Poles who left in the past decade to seek better economic opportunities abroad. ..."
www.theguardian.com

The changing political mood could signal a return to power of Duda's conservative Law and Justice party in parliamentary elections this autumn. That would cement Poland's turn to the right, create a new dynamic with other European countries and possibly usher in a less welcoming climate for foreign investors.

Law and Justice presents itself as a protector of those who have not benefited from the capitalist transformation and as a defender of national interests abroad. It is staunchly pro-US, but has a sometimes defiant stance towards other European partners, which has created tensions in the past with the EU and neighbouring Germany.

Duda says he wants new taxes on the foreign-owned banks and supermarkets to protect Polish interests, suggesting an approach similar to that of Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. He also wants banks returned to Polish control.

Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, an independent thinktank in Warsaw, said Poland's relations with other European powers would now depend on whether Duda sticks to the relatively moderate agenda he campaigned on or embraces his party leader's more combative foreign policy stance.

"That would be a nightmare scenario for Polish foreign policy, because it would mean getting into conflicts with Germany and anti-EU stunts and aggressive rhetoric towards Russia," Kucharczyk said. "We are in for a bumpy ride. The only question is how bumpy it will be."

Party supporters have been rejoicing since Duda's apparent victory was announced late on Sunday. They say the party will do much more to help the many Poles who have not benefited from the country's economic growth, those who face low wages and job insecurity despite a quarter of a century of growth. In his campaign speeches, Duda often spoke of the more than 2 million Poles who left in the past decade to seek better economic opportunities abroad.

[May 24, 2015]Problems he face are becoming less and less managable for the Chocolate King

tasnimnews.com

...Now Poroshenko clearly understands that his country plays virtually no role, neither in the EU nor NATO. Meanwhile, it becomes clear the future of the Eurozone. So far as the state is not able to become an EU member, the prospect of accession to EU and adopting common currency is very elusive. In other words, Western countries have excommunicated Ukraine from all associations to which she had once dreamed of entering.

The fact is that the West is using Ukraine for their own geostrategic purposes, and the events taking place in this country, created great economic hardships for Ukrainian people, hardships that increase with each day. Flirting by opponents of Yanukovych with the United States, NATO and the European Union caused a protracted crisis in the country, the conflict with Russia, the growth of separatist movements in the East, armed clashes, mass death of Ukrainian citizens and the reduction of GDP. However, Ukraine failed to achieve membership in NATO and the EU. In other words, the cooperation of the Pro-Western Ukrainian politicians with the two organizations turned into a complete fiasco.

In such conditions Poroshenko should be extremely concerned about his future and the future of his government. It is quite obvious that in the event of any military conflict between Russia and Ukraine NATO command, not having taken any formal obligations in respect of Kiev, will not directly participate. They will only watch the fall of Kiev from the sidelines. By the way, exactly the same thing happened in Georgia in 2008.

Then Mikhail Saakashvili stated that in the event of a military conflict between Moscow and Tbilisi, NATO members will immediately defend Georgia. During the clashes, the representatives of the Alliance really has condemned Russia's position, however, refrained from starting a direct confrontation with her. In the end, Saakashvili raised the white flag, admitting complete defeat in the Ossetian front.

If we return to the situation in Ukraine, we can say that now Poroshenko has lost the ability even in the slightest degree to analyze the events occurring in his country. Aggravates the current situation is that the White House and NATO have exploited weak Ukrainian government. The fact that the West is using Ukraine for their own purposes, and the events taking place in this country, created the conditions for Kiev to dteriarate ecomonically and politically with weach day.

To date, the results of flirting opponents of Yanukovych with the United States, NATO and the European Union caused a protracted crisis in the country, led to the conflict with Russia, the growth of separatist movements in the East, armed clashes, mass death of Ukrainian citizens and the alarming reduction of GDP. However, Ukraine failed to achieve membership in NATO and the EU. The cooperation of the Pro-Western Ukrainian politicians with those two organizations turned into a complete fiasco.

[May 23, 2015] Ukraines Bloody Civil War No End in Sight

Notable quotes:
"... is a civil war between two groups with diametrically opposed visions for the future of their country. It is a civil war that also-given that each side has enormously powerful supporters-poses a genuinely grave risk to global security. ..."
Mar 31, 2015 | The National Interest

The OSCE reported that the main railway station in the city was shelled on March 25, and a visit to it the day after showed that to be so. Rebel tanks could be seen participating in exercises on the rural outskirts of Donetsk on the 26th. The sound of sporadic artillery fire could be heard in the city's centrally located Leninsky District well into the early hours of the 27th.


The mood among many in Donetsk-noncombatants as well as rebel fighters who comprise what is known as the Army of Novorossiya-indicates little interest in a rapprochement with Kiev. This is, given the conditions of the city after nearly a full year of war, rather understandable. Many bitterly complain of Kiev's chosen moniker for the military campaign it is waging against the separatist fighters, the "Anti-Terrorist Operation." Ordinary citizens and combatants alike view it as an attempt to dehumanize them as a whole by grouping the entire population of the region in with likes of ISIS.

Interactions with several rebel rank-and-files and a briefing from two rebel officers reveal even less of an appetite for a way back into the Ukrainian fold. As one senior officer put it: "Ukraine is dead. It was killed on May 2 in Odessa." Questions regarding Russian involvement were met with scoffs-though one did admit that "[their] Russian brothers" did provide food supplies to the area.

... ... ...

Interestingly, the rebels seem to have a similar mindset to those U.S. Congressmen who overwhelmingly voted to supply Kiev with lethal military aid last week: that the remilitarization of the conflict is simply inevitable. One rebel commander said that he expects Kiev to launch a new major offensive "within a week" and added, matter-of-factly: "We are ready." And ready, he claims, for the long haul.

... ... ...

Yet it seems that the Washington establishment's (though, interestingly, it seems not the president's) preferred policy choice is to send lethal aid to Kiev because it is believed, no doubt sincerely, that a supply of javelin anti-tank missiles will somehow increase the number of Russian fatalities to such an extent that public opinion would turn against Putin-thereby forcing him to back down.

This is nothing more than a fantasy dressed up as a strategy because it attributes little to no agency on the part of the rebel fighters or, for that matter, the area's noncombatants. The simple, undeniable fact is that even if Russia was to be persuaded-via sanctions or via a significant uptick in military casualties - to wash its hands of the region, there is almost no chance that the indigenous military forces in the region would simply melt away. What is continuing to unfold in the Donbass - despite repeated protestations from Kiev's representatives in Washington - is a civil war between two groups with diametrically opposed visions for the future of their country. It is a civil war that also-given that each side has enormously powerful supporters-poses a genuinely grave risk to global security.

James Carden is a contributing editor for The National Interest.

Igor

Wow! Who is allowed to publish this article in the Western free press? Who allowed the journalist of National Interest go to Moscow and to Donetsk!? And what about the story about invisible Russian army? :-))) James Carden is real hero! :-))) Western press need 1 year for understanding of simple things...

Imba > Igor

Psst, don't scare them with your sarcasm. I'm sure author feels like a pioneer on Wild West, while writing such articles. You can scare him away and we will have to read again dull and boring articles about invasions, annexation, tattered economy, moscovites eating hedgehogs and so on.
Please respect him ;)

Dima Lauri > Imba

I am sure authors who does not accept the version of Washington will be soon labeled by "Putin troll", "Payed KGB agent", "Drunk/Stupid" or whatever verbal distortion.

folktruther

a good article for a change. the Ukraine coup engineered by Washington was the worst event of Obama's administration, and may perhaps turn out to be worse that Bush jr's invasion of Iraq. Washington simply wants a war, cold or hot, to disconnect Europe from Russia. hopefully Europe, especially Germany and france, will rebel against Washington policy like they did the Chinese bank, averting a war among nuclear powers. but the issue is currently in doubt.

[May 23, 2015] Failure of the US coup in Macedonia by Thierry Meyssan

www.voltairenet.org

Macedonia has just neutralised an armed group whose sponsors had been under surveillance for at least eight months. By doing so, it has prevented a new attempt at a coup d'État, planned by Washington for the 17th of May.

The aim was to spread the chaos already infecting Ukraine into Macedonia in order to stall the passage of a Russian gas pipeline to the European Union.

Voltaire Network | Damascus (Syria) | 23 May 2015

The Kumanavo affair

On the 9th of May, 2015, the Macedonian police launched a dawn operation to arrest an armed group which had infiltrated the country and which was suspected of preparing a number of attacks.

The police evacuated the civilian population before launching the assault.

The suspects opened fire, which led to a bitter firefight, leaving 14 terrorists and 8 members of the police forces dead. 30 people were taken prisoner. There were a large number of wounded

Not a terrorist act, but an attempted coup d'État

The Macedonian police were clearly well-informed before they launched their operation. According to the Minister for the Interior, Ivo Kotevski, the group was preparing a very important operation for the 17th May (the date of the demonstration organised by the Albanophone opposition in Skopje).

The identification of the suspects has made it possible to determine that they were almost all ex-members of the UÇK (Kosovo Liberation Army) [1].

The headquarters of the armed group in Kumanovo, after the assault.

Among them were :
• Sami Ukshini, known as " Commandant Sokoli ", whose family played a historic rôle in the UÇK.
• Rijai Bey, ex-bodyguard of Ramush Haradinaj (himself a drug trafficker, military head of the UÇK, then Prime Minister of Kosovo. He was twice condemned for war crimes by the International Penal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia, but was acquitted because 9 crucial witnesses were murdered during the trial).
• Dem Shehu, currently bodyguard for the Albanophone leader and founder of the BDI party, Ali Ahmeti.
• Mirsad Ndrecaj, known as the " NATO Commandant ", grandson of Malic Ndrecaj, who is commander of the 132nd Brigade of the UÇK.

The principal leaders of this operation, including Fadil Fejzullahu (killed during the assault), are close to the United States ambassador in Skopje, Paul Wohlers.

Fadil Fejzullahu, one of the leaders of the armed group, killed during the assault, with his boss, the United States ambassador in Skopje, Paul Wohlers.

Paul Wohlers is the son of US diplomat Lester Wohlers, who played an important part in Atlantist propaganda, and directed the cinematographic service of the U.S. Information Agency. Paul's brother, Laurence Wohlers, is presently an ambassador in the Central African Republic. Paul Wohlers himself, an ex-Navy pilot, is a specialist in counter-espionage. He was the assistant director of the United States Department of State Operations Center (in other words, the service for the surveillance and protection of diplomats).

Although Macedonia is not a member of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg was " following " the police operation in Kumanovo.

To eliminate any doubt about the identity of the operation's sponsors, the General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, intervened even before the assault was over - not to declare his condemnation of terrorism and his support for the constitutional government of Macedonia, but to paint a picture of the terrorist group as a legitimate ethnic opposition : " I am following the events in Kumanovo with deep concern. I would like to express my sympathy to the families of those who were killed or wounded. It is important that all political and community leaders work together to restore order and begin a transparent investigation in order to find out what happened. I am calling for everyone to show reserve and avoid any new escalation of violence, in the intersts of the nation and also the whole region. "

You would have to be blind not to understand.

When he was the governor of the Stroumitsa region, Zoran Zaev was accused of having favoured the construction of a commercial centre, and arrested for corruption. His party left the Parliament as a show of support for him. Finally, he was pardoned by the President of the Republic, Branko Crvenkovski, who then took leadership of his party. He was elected President of the SDSM in June 2013.

In January 2015, Macedonia foiled an attempted coup d'état organised for the head of the opposition, the social-democrat Zoran Zaev. Four peole were arrested, and Mr. Zaev had his passport confiscated, while the Atlantist press began its denunciation of an " authoritarian drift by the régime " (sic).

Zoran Zaev is publicly supported by the embassies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Holland. But the only trace left of this attempted coup d'état indicates the repsponsibility of the US.

On the 17th May, Zoran Zaev's social-democrat party (SDSM) [2] was supposed to organise a demonstration. It intended to distribute 2,000 masks in order to prevent the police from identifying the terrorists taking part in the march. During the demonstration, the armed group, concealed behind their masks, were supposed to attack several institutions and launch a pseudo-" revolution " comparable to the events in Maidan Square, Kiev.

This coup d'État was coordinated by Mile Zechevich, an ex-employee of one of George Soros' foundations.

In order to understand Washington's urgency to overthrow the Macedonian government, we have to go back and look at the gas pipeline war. Because international politics is a huge chess-board on which every move by any piece causes consequences for all the others.

The gas war

The gas pipieline Turkish Stream was intended to pass through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia in order to supply the European Union with Russian gas. On the initiative of Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of each of the countries concerned met on the 7th April in Budapest to coordinate their position facing the United States and the European Union.

The United States have been attempting to sever communications between Russia and the European Union since 2007. They managed to sabotage the projet South Stream by obliging Bulgaria to cancel its participation, but on the 1st December 2014, to everyone's surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a new project when he succeeded in convincing his Turkish opposite number, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to sign an agreement with him, despite the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO [3]. It was agreed that Moscow would deliver gas to Ankara, and that in return, Ankara would deliver gas to the European Union, thus bypassing the anti-Russian embargo by Brussels. On the 18th of April 2015, the new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsípras, gave his agreement that the pipeline could cross his country [4] . As for Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, he had already conluded discrete negotiations last March [5]. Finally, Serbia, which had been a partner in the South Stream project, indicated to the Russian Minister for Energy Aleksandar Novak, during his reception in Belgrade in April, that Serbia was ready to switch to the Turkish Stream project [6].

To halt the Russian project, Washington has multiplied its initiatives :
in Turkey, it is supporting the CHP against President Erdoğan, hoping this will cause him to lose the elections;
in Greece, on the 8th May, it sent Amos Hochstein, Directeur of the Bureau of Energy Ressources, to demand that the Tsípras government give up its agreement with Gazprom;
it plans – just in case – to block the route of the pipeline by placing one of its puppets in power in Macedonia;
and in Serbia, it has restarted the project for the secession of the small piece of territory - Voďvodine - which allows the junction with Hungary [7].

Last comment, but not the least: Turkish Stream will also supply Hungary and Austria, thus ending the alternative project negotiated by the United States with President Hassan Rohani (against the advice of the Revolutionary Guards) for supplying them with Iranian gas [8].

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Pete Kimberley

[May 23, 2015] MICHAEL HAYDEN The chasm between the security agencies and the Obama administration -

May 20, 2015 | Washington Times

One way of looking at the federal government is that part of it is permanent and another part of it is transient. The transient government comprises those elected officials and political appointees who change when administrations change.

There are exceptions (like Bob Gates staying on at Defense), but presidents work hard to fill as many positions as the law allows with folks beholden, loyal and like-minded. After all, elections matter and these political appointees reflect that constitutional process.


SEE ALSO: Obama's Islamic State strategy 'needs to be changed,' ex-Pentagon chief Gates says


There are limits, of course, some in law because of 19th-century civil service reforms and others out of practical considerations. In early 2009 President Obama changed out Mike McConnell as director of national intelligence and me as CIA director, but he personally intervened to keep Steve Kappes on as deputy CIA director at Langley. And, as per tradition, he made no other changes in the intelligence community.

Both permanent and transient elements contribute to the policy process. The permanent government brings with it fact-based expertise and experience, both of which are virtues unless they become so dominant as to foster stagnation. The transient folks bring a political legitimacy along with a vision and energy for change that stimulates progress unless they become so obsessive that it fosters recklessness.

There is a clear tension, but the tension can be creative. With ambiguous information and split counsel, presidents can be bold without being reckless, informed without being captured by expertise, as happened in both 2011's Abbottabad raid and 2007's Iraq surge.

... ... ...

Gen. Michael Hayden is a former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency. He can be reached at [email protected].

SEE ALSO: Marine Gen. James Mattis' assessment of Obama: U.S. suffering 'strategic atrophy'


Now in its seventh year, it might be good to take a look at some key decisions of the Obama administration through the lens of this distinction. It could be especially illuminating since this president is known to keep his own counsel and his administration has earned a reputation as being insular and controlling at the expense of Cabinet officials (who more tend to represent the views of the permanent government).

Out of the gate, two days after the inauguration, the president promised to empty Guantanamo within a year. I was still in government at the time and we all supported the concept of reducing the prisoner population. We already had released hundreds. But IF WE HAD BEEN ASKED, we would have pushed back on the 12-month timeline as creating pressure to make bad decisions on releases - which the permanent government was duty-bound to oppose, as it has and as it continues to try to do.

There may have been some of that same dynamic at work five years later with the Bergdahl swap for five Taliban leaders from Guantanamo. The political imperatives to clean up the Afghan battlefield (no man left behind) before the administration's self-imposed clock ran out and to reduce the population at Guantanamo led to an incredibly awkward Rose Garden ceremony with the Bergdahl family, administration characterizations that a deserter had served with "honor and distinction," and a new precedent of negotiating with terrorists that the permanent government would have to live with.

The administration routinely has shown itself to be fond of timelines, the better (I suppose) to enforce and police the implementation of decisions. Hence, withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan were on the clock rather than being conditions-based, the approach that would have been supported by the permanent government. Playing to the shot clock led to near disaster in Iraq (and a return of U.S. forces) and threatened to do the same in Afghanistan until withdrawals of troops were pushed to the right.

In Libya the president decided to go to war (although he later overruled DOD and directed it not be called a war to avoid triggering the War Powers Act) to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi, a decision opposed by some National Security Council members. It took seven months, but Gadhafi was killed, his government destroyed, local tribes empowered and Libya descended into chaos.

Despite accurate predictions that - absent massive post-Gadhafi attention and involvement (and maybe even with it) - Libya would become a failed state, "leading from behind" ensured that not even the heroic efforts of a murdered American ambassador could forestall a terrorist arms depot and safe haven.

The ambassador was killed, by the way, despite repeated requests for increased security within the permanent government that went nowhere with an administration set on "normalizing" its diplomatic footprint in Libya and then later trying to exonerate itself with a story that "the video made them do it." I know of no one currently or previously in the permanent government who thought that Ambassador Susan E. Rice's Sunday morning talking points could stand for very long.

The permanent government has been posting alarms elsewhere. Former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn has made it clear that at least his corner of the American intelligence community did not believe that al Qaeda was on the run, that the tide of war was receding or that the Islamic State was the "JV team."

Back when the Syrian battlefield was more malleable and limited force could still achieve something, the president rejected counsel coming from his intelligence and security communities to act. Acting even then was a risky course and success was not guaranteed, but it's hard to imagine a scenario worse than the one in which we find ourselves now, with a terrorist state the size of Belgium straddling the ancient trade routes of the Middle East.

[May 23, 2015] Porky and Yats repeatedly state that Russia is an aggressor state, and with the same breath they ask Russia for a discount on further gas supplies, for which Ukraine owes billions

"...And don't forget folks: Porky and Yats and a host of other shits that are part of the Kiev "government" repeatedly state that Russia is an aggressor state, is at war with the Ukraine and has invaded its eastern territory, where the Russian army presence numbers thousands. And with the same breath they ask Russia for a discount on further gas supplies, for which previously supplied Russian natural gas the Ukraine state owes billions."
"...Bear in mind, with their continuous shameless mendacity and double talk they may simply be mimicking the behaviour of their mentors, whose blatant hypocrisy has long been evident,"
Moscow Exile, May 23, 2015 at 6:50 am
Ukraine asks to extend discount on Russian gas by end of year

And don't forget folks: Porky and Yats and a host of other shits that are part of the Kiev "government" repeatedly state that Russia is an aggressor state, is at war with the Ukraine and has invaded its eastern territory, where the Russian army presence numbers thousands.

And with the same breath they ask Russia for a discount on further gas supplies, for which previously supplied Russian natural gas the Ukraine state owes billions.

Some aggressor!

Moscow Exile, May 23, 2015 at 6:55 am

They need a decent English proofreader: "by the end of the year" means a discount extension should be agreed upon before this year ends.

What the RT headline should is, I suspect: "Ukraine asks to extend discount on Russian gas up to the end of the year", meaning they want their present discount extended up to and including 31 December 2015.

Moscow Exile, May 23, 2015 at 7:19 am

Remember the "Are Slavs Stupid" thread of a while back?

I'm seriously beginning to believe that Ukrainians are, or at least many of their public figures are, in that they consistently make contradictory statements in almost the same breath, which might indicate that they have a very short memory span (surely a sign of being slow witted) or that they are so stupid not to recognize that the clear stupidity of their contradictory statements must surely be recognized by most people who are in possession of a normal intellect.

Bear in mind, with their continuous shameless mendacity and double talk they may simply be mimicking the behaviour of their mentors, whose blatant hypocrisy has long been evident, e.g. the statement: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …" was composed by slaveowners almost to a man, in that several of the Founding Fathers of the USA were in possession of hundreds of human beings that were listed in their account books as personal property and worked for them as slaves, namely George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry were all slave-owners. And Hilary Clinton "misspoke" when saying publicly that she had been fired upon by a sniper when arriving at Belgrade airport with her daughter; not forgetting the US lies concerning Iran and Iraq, of course, and the destruction of the USS Maine at Havana; and the role of the US Marine Corps in maintaining "freedom and Democracy" for the benefit of United Fruit and Wall St. in Central and Southern America, as revealed by General Smedly Butler …

May 23, 2015 at 4:12 am

Russian Fifth Columnists working with Brown Moses and NATO .

Apparently the Fifth Columnists have taken to snooping around graveyards, looking for evidence to hand over to NATO, of Russian servicemen dying in Ukraine civil war.

[May 23, 2015] George W. Bush didnt just lie about the Iraq War. What he did was much worse.

May 20, 2015 | theweek.com

None of the conservatives running for president want to be associated with the last Republican president - not even his brother (for whom stepping away is rather complicated). After all, George W. Bush left office with an approval rating hovering in the low 30s, and his grandest project was the gigantic catastrophe of the Iraq War, which we're still dealing with and still debating. If you're a Republican right now you're no doubt wishing we could talk about something else, but failing that, you'd like the issue framed in a particular way: The war was an honest mistake, nobody lied to the public, and anything bad that's happening now is Barack Obama's fault.

For the moment I want to focus on the part about the lies. I've found over the years that conservatives who supported the war get particularly angry at the assertion that Bush lied us into war. No, they'll insist, it wasn't his fault: There was mistaken intelligence, he took that intelligence in good faith, and presented what he believed to be true at the time. It's the George Costanza defense: It's not a lie if you believe it.

Here's the problem, though. It might be possible, with some incredibly narrow definition of the word "lie," to say that Bush told only a few outright lies on Iraq. Most of what he said in order to sell the public on the war could be said to have some basis in something somebody thought or something somebody alleged (Bush was slightly more careful than Dick Cheney, who lied without hesitation or remorse). But if we reduce the question of Bush's guilt and responsibility to how many lies we can count, we miss the bigger picture.

What the Bush administration launched in 2002 and 2003 may have been the most comprehensive, sophisticated, and misleading campaign of government propaganda in American history. Spend too much time in the weeds, and you risk missing the hysterical tenor of the whole campaign.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of weeds. In 2008, the Center for Public Integrity completed a project in which they went over the public statements by eight top Bush administration officials on the topic of Iraq, and found that no fewer than 935 were false, including 260 statements by President Bush himself. But the theory on which the White House operated was that whether or not you could fool all of the people some of the time, you could certainly scare them out of their wits. That's what was truly diabolical about their campaign.

And it was a campaign. In the summer of 2002, the administration established something called the White House Iraq Group, through which Karl Rove and other communication strategists like Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin coordinated with policy officials to sell the public on the threat from Iraq in order to justify war. "The script had been finalized with great care over the summer," White House press secretary Scott McClellan later wrote, for a "campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary."

In that campaign, intelligence wasn't something to be understood and assessed by the administration in making their decisions, it was a propaganda tool to lead the public to the conclusion that the administration wanted. Again and again we saw a similar pattern: An allegation would bubble up from somewhere, some in the intelligence community would say that it could be true but others would say it was either speculation or outright baloney, but before you knew it the president or someone else was presenting it to the public as settled fact.

And each and every time the message was the same: If we didn't wage war, Iraq was going to attack the United States homeland with its enormous arsenal of ghastly weapons, and who knows how many Americans would perish. When you actually spell it out like that it sounds almost comical, but that was the Bush administration's assertion, repeated hundreds upon hundreds of time to a public still skittish in the wake of September 11. (Remember, the campaign for the war began less than a year after the September 11 attacks.)

Sometimes this message was imparted with specific false claims, sometimes with dark insinuation, and sometimes with speculation about the horrors to come ("We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Bush and others when asked about the thinness of much of their evidence). Yet the conclusion was always the same: The only alternative to invading Iraq was waiting around to be killed. I could pick out any of a thousand quotes, but here's just one, from a radio address Bush gave on September 28, 2002:

The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.

What wasn't utterly false in that statement was disingenuous at best. But if there was anything that marked the campaign, it was its certainty. There was seldom any doubt expressed or admitted, seldom any hint that the information we had was incomplete, speculative, and the matter of fevered debate amongst intelligence officials. But that's what was going on beneath the administration's sales job.

The intelligence wasn't "mistaken," as the Bush administration's defenders would have us believe today. The intelligence was a mass of contradictions and differing interpretations. The administration picked out the parts that they wanted - supported, unsupported, plausible, absurd, it didn't matter - and used them in their campaign to turn up Americans' fear.

This is one of the many sins for which Bush and those who supported him ought to spend a lifetime atoning. He looked out at the American public and decided that the way to get what he wanted was to terrify them. If he could convince them that any day now their children would die a horrible death, that they and everything they knew would be turned to radioactive ash, and that the only chance of averting this fate was to say yes to him, then he could have his war. Lies were of no less value than truth, so long as they both created enough fear.

And it worked.

[May 23, 2015] The Failures of Putin's Ukraine Strategy

Neocons are always neocons... They are becoming more reckless with time. The key problem for Washington with Russia position (which is no doubt pretty costly for Russia itself) is that it enable and encourage to say No to Washington's demands other countries making geopolitical domination for the USA a lot more costly. Something like small scale revolt against the USA post-war domination. It also catalyze economic ties of Russia and China (and by extension other BRICs members), making the situation with dollar as world reserve currency and status of IMF more fuzzy...
May 23, 2015 | The American Interest
Nevertheless, Russia failed to deliver the knockout blow last spring, allowing Kyiv to recover and establish firm control throughout most of the country, even its Russophone portions. Moscow retains the military upper hand as the two countries settle into a protracted stalemate in the Donbass, but the Kremlin's strategy must take into account a number of factors that bode ill for Russia in the longer run.

Ukraine has stumbled upon a most improbable ally-Saudi Arabia. In a stark example of the law of unintended consequences, the Russian economy has sustained heavy collateral damage from the Saudi campaign against North American shale-oil production (and secondarily, against Iran). The war of attrition in the Donbass is in large measure hostage to the economic war of attrition in the Bakken formation. This situation, unanticipated by Russia (or anyone else, to be fair) when it invaded Ukraine, appears likely to depress energy prices for years to come, sapping the strength of Russia's economy and hence the country's ability to wage war. A major cataclysm in the Middle East could turn energy prices around, of course, but it is instructive that oil prices have plummeted even in the face of Islamist depredations in Iraq and chronic chaos in Libya-and the loosening of sanctions on Iran would bring even more oil and gas onto the market.

If the Saudi factor was unforeseeable, the Western response to the invasion of Ukraine appears to represent an actual miscalculation by Moscow. The Kremlin no doubt expected something akin to the reaction over Georgia in 2008-some harsh Western rhetoric, a few pro forma sanctions, and, six months later, a proffered reset button and the resumption of business as usual. Instead, Western governments have imposed fairly extensive sanctions and have thus far stuck to them. Sanctions against individuals are largely symbolic, but restrictions on lending are a genuine hardship to Russian companies, especially in the current economic downturn.

The Kremlin has naturally responded with a variety of tactics to undermine Western unity and determination. Above all, Moscow has tried to demonize the United States and present Europe as a co-victim of sanctions imposed by Washington. The Maidan, in the Kremlin's creative retelling, was not about Ukrainian disgust with corruption or a yearning for European standards, but was just cynical American manipulation in order to strike a blow against Russia. The Russian narrative about the U.S. puppet master, of course, glosses over the enormous role played by Europeans in nurturing Ukrainian institutions and civil society over the years, and the influence on Ukrainians of the sheer example set by the transformation of Ukraine's erstwhile socialist neighbors. If Poles, Balts and Romanians can enjoy a modicum of prosperity and good governance by joining Europe, then why shouldn't Ukrainians move in the same direction?

... ... ...

Besides vilifying Washington as the bogeyman, Moscow is understandably hard at work mobilizing any and all European governments and groups that can be used to undermine sanctions. Putin has found a worthy acolyte in Hungary's Viktor Orbán, the man who would be Magyarbashi, and can count on a degree of sympathy from a variety of European leaders ranging from Slovakia's Robert Fico to the new Syriza government in Greece. However, Putin has struck out completely with the individual who matters more than any other: Angela Merkel. If there were any question about the impact of individuals on the course of history, one need only ponder how different the European reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine would be if Gerhard Schröder were sitting in the German chancellor's office rather than on the board of Gazprom.

Besides working sympathetic European leaders, Moscow has also cultivated a motley array of right- and left-wing extremists, people often of diametrically opposed political orientations united only by their hatred of Washington and Brussels. However, even where such groups attract a stable portion of their national electorates and can reasonably aspire to enter governing coalitions, they tend to have only a marginal influence on policy, particularly foreign policy. Electoral surprises can happen, of course, but Moscow is unlikely to see much return on its investment in these European groups.

... ... ...

[May 21, 2015] Lukashenko about Maydan

In essence this is an old tactics or "revolutionary struggle" developed and used by Bolsheviks, which now the USA appropriated modified and widely use.
youtube.com
MAIDAN: A tiny but well organized and well prepared (including special training camps) minority has overthrown extremly cowardish government of Yanukovich

With current level of polittechnologies it is not a problem to organize demonstrations/protests against government which will use quite legitimate concerns/problems/conflicts. And at some point to inject into participants a specially trained, well organized and well paid militants which will hijack the event and use it for achieving their own (and their Western sponsors) goals

[May 20, 2015] Russia to take legal moves if Ukraine defaults on $3bn debt - finance minister

Notable quotes:
"... "unscrupulous" ..."
"... "Suspension of debt payments not coordinated with creditors results in a technical default, and in the case of Ukraine, it threatens to undermine Kiev's ability to attract private investment through EU programs," ..."
"... "It is rather clear that the IMF is assuming that Russia's $3 billion bond is included in this year's $5.2 billion financing from a 'debt operation'," ..."
May 20, 2015 | RT Business
Russia will appeal to the International Court of Justice if Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signs a moratorium on the payment of Ukraine's external debt into law and fails to pay its debt to Russia, said Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

Siluanov said Ukraine was virtually defaulting on its debt, adding that Russia doesn't yet have grounds to lodge any claims. If Kiev fails to pay $75 million in June, Moscow will use its right to appeal to the court, the Minister said.

The Ukrainian parliament has adopted a law allowing the country not to pay foreign debt to private lenders, saying it needs to protect the ailing economy and people from "unscrupulous" creditors.

The bill says the $3 billion in Ukrainian Eurobonds purchased by Russia at the end of 2013 are on the list of liabilities subject to a possible payment moratorium.

Experts agree that Tuesday vote meant a technical default for the country and would impede Ukraine's ability to raise private investment from the EU and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), a European source told TASS on Wednesday.

"Suspension of debt payments not coordinated with creditors results in a technical default, and in the case of Ukraine, it threatens to undermine Kiev's ability to attract private investment through EU programs," the source said.

As part of the underpinning of Kiev's bailout plan, the International Monetary Fund said in March that Russia would not receive the $3 billion bond repayment from Ukraine this year.

IMF is looking for cooperation from creditors to accept a restructuring on Kiev's debt. That includes Russia.

"It is rather clear that the IMF is assuming that Russia's $3 billion bond is included in this year's $5.2 billion financing from a 'debt operation'," said Charles Blitzer of Blitzer Consulting and a former IMF staff member.

Read more Ukraine passes bill allowing moratorium on foreign debt payments

[May 20, 2015] Russia bans undesirable international organisations ahead of 2016 elections

May 20, 2015 | The Guardian

Russia's parliament has passed a law banning "undesirable" international organisations, raising fears of a further crackdown on voices critical of the Kremlin.

According to the legislation, the prosecutor general and foreign ministry can register as undesirable any "foreign or international organisation that presents a threat to the defensive capabilities or security of the state, to the public order, or to the health of the population".

Blacklisted groups will be forbidden from operating branches or distributing information in Russia and banks will have to notify the prosecutor general and justice ministry of any financial transfers involving them. Although the language of the threat posed was vague, the bill's authors suggested that international NGOs often work in the interests of foreign intelligence agencies.

[May 18, 2015] Dueck's "Conservative Realism" and The Obama Doctrine

This is a Neoconservatism, not so much realism...
May 18, 2015 | The American Conservative
Frank Hoffman reviews Colin Dueck's The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today:

The author proposes an alternative strategy called conservative American realism. It is designed to appeal to the center mass of today's conservatives by triangulating the three factions. This strategy seeks to counter the perceived retrenchment of the last six years, and explicitly embraces American primacy. Primacy, to Dueck, is "a circumstance and an interest, not a strategy." Conservative American realism emphasizes reassuring allies that the United States seeks to remain a key player in the international arena by expanding forward presence and bolstering deterrence. Dueck details U.S. fundamental interests, and defines the specific adversaries that must be countered. These include state competitors (China and Russia), rogue states like North Korea, and jihadi terrorists. To deal with the latter, the author chides Mr. Obama for half-hearted approaches, and suggests these implacable foes require solutions that are "appropriately Carthaginian." One wonders how far Dueck would really take that historical analogy - enslave Muslims or salt their lands?

Based on the description of Dueck's "conservative American realism" in the review, it is debatable whether the proposed strategy qualifies as either conservative or realist. It would appear to commit the U.S. in too many places to bear burdens that our allies and clients should be taking on for themselves, and it does so out of a misguided concern that the U.S. has not been activist enough during the Obama presidency. I don't know what Dueck means by "appropriately Carthaginian" solutions, but the implication that the U.S. should be seeking to ruin and dominate other nations in such a fashion is disturbing in itself. It is not at all clear that the U.S. should be doing more "reassure" allies and clients. Most of them are already too dependent on the U.S. for their security and should be expected to do more to provide for themselves, and their endless demands for "reassurance" are attempts to get the U.S. to give them extra support they don't need or that the U.S. has no interest in giving them. The U.S. currently has too many commitments overseas and hardly needs to expand the presence that it already has.

Dueck places great emphasis on applying coercive measures against various states, but there doesn't seem to much attention paid to the costs that applying these measures can have on the U.S. and its allies. Imposing costs and intensifying pressure on other states aren't ends in themselves, and they have proven time and again to be ineffective tools for changing the behavior of recalcitrant and hostile regimes. Coercive measures can backfire and can have effects that their advocates don't anticipate, and they can provoke the targeted state to pursue more hostile and dangerous policies than there would have been otherwise. Dueck's interest in relying on coercive measures seems to be little more than a reaction against the perceived laxity of the Obama administration, which has itself been too reliant on imposing sanctions as an all-purpose response to the undesirable behavior of other governments. If Obama failed to apply enough pressure, Dueck's thinking appears to be that more pressure must be the answer. Missing from all of this is any explanation of why the U.S. needs to be cajoling and pressuring these states in the first place. To what end?

Dueck also wants to throw more money at the military by insisting on setting the military budget at 4% of GDP. As Hoffman notes, tying the military budget to an arbitrary figure like this represents the absence of strategy:

The basis for this amount appears aspirational, and I have previously written on why such general goals are astrategic if not tied to specific requirements and threats. More importantly, details about how he would employ the additional $170 billion per year in defense spending are lacking.

If one wants huge increases in military spending and the pursuit of pointlessly confrontational policies against both major authoritarian powers, Dueck's book would appear to offer the desired guidance. What it has to do with either realism or conservatism remains a mystery.

[May 18, 2015] NYT throws Poroshenko under the bus

In Ukraine, Corruption Concerns Linger a Year After a Revolution - NYTimes.com

The country is on the cliff of bankruptcy. A spate of politically motivated killings and mysterious suicides of former government officials has sown fear in the capital. Infighting has begun to splinter the pro-European majority coalition in Parliament. And a constant threat of war lingers along the Russian border.

A year after the election of Petro O. Poroshenko as president to replace the ousted Viktor F. Yanukovych, and six months after the swearing in of a new legislature, Ukraine remains deeply mired in political and economic chaos.

"Poroshenko, whether you like him or not, he's not delivering," said Bruce P. Jackson, the president of the Project on Transitional Democracies, an American nonprofit group. "The Ukrainian government is so weak and fragile that it is too weak to do the necessary things to build a unified and independent state."

Victoria J. Nuland, a senior State Department official, in Kiev, Ukraine, on Saturday. She will be in Moscow for talks Monday.

Efforts to forge a political settlement between the government in Kiev and Russian-backed separatists who control much of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have hit a deadlock over procedural disputes, despite a cease-fire in February calling for decentralization of power and greater local autonomy as the linchpins of a long-term accord.

[May 18, 2015]Did Uncle Sam buy off the Maidan?

The question is interesting ;-). The answer of pressitutes from Zeit is pathetic... They definitely know about amount of cash shipped via diplomatic mail during Maydan event and the about the amount of cash confiscated by police from Batkivshchina office during the raid in December 2014. But they prefer do not metion it. This is what pressitution is about. When Jen Psaki is a role mode ;-)
May 17, 2015 | ZEIT ONLINE

The United States has spent millions on Ukraine over the past few decades. Where did the money go?

Read the German version of this article here.

When someone mentions Ukraine nowadays, Russia automatically springs to mind. What will happen next: Will it be war or peace?

As soon as Russian President Vladimir Putin moved to attack the eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in an attempt to build a bridge to already annexed Crimea, the West would feel obliged to react. And then it would quickly become apparent that the West is not united.

It would also bring to the fore another problem that has so far been hidden by the conflict with Russia: The problem between Europe and America. At that point, many in Washington would want to send arms to Ukraine. In Brussels, very few would. In Berlin, no one would. That would give rise to another question: What do the Americans really want in Ukraine?

A few months ago, the Ukrainians asked the United States for tanks and missile defense systems. They received instead 300 American military advisors, off-road vehicles and night-vision equipment. That was all the help for a country at war. Anyone attempting to measure the gap between the Ukrainian wishes and American response will see that there hasn't been anything more than gestures and symbolism so far. But what does that actually mean?

To understand the American relationship to Ukraine, it's necessary to go back to the beginning. Back in 1991, President George H. W. Bush traveled to Kiev. The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union still existed, but it was crumbling. The West had won. What now?

Mr. Bush had no interest in seeing the complete collapse of the Soviet Union. He feared there would no longer be an organizing power in the region. Which is why he appeared before the Ukrainian parliament to warn against the drive for independence and "suicidal nationalism."

The Ukrainians paid no heed, voting in a December 1991 nationwide referendum – including Crimea – for independence. There was no way Washington could ignore that, so cooperation with Kiev was strengthened.

The nuclear weapons in Ukraine, in cooperation with Russia, were destroyed. Ukrainian soldiers received training in the United States.

In the second half of the 1990s, Ukraine had more military cooperation with the United States than with any other country. Not even with Russia. There were dreams of joining NATO, even while Ukraine's Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych was in power. The Russians didn't seem to mind much.

But such harmony didn't last long. As Ukraine's economic and political reforms stagnated and corruption remained rampant, the Americans slowly lost interest in the country. Only after Mr. Yanukovych, suspected of vote fraud, was kept from ascending to the presidency by the 2004 Orange Revolution did U.S. attention revive.

In December 2004 Viktor Yushchenko was elected Ukrainian president, guaranteeing closer ties with America, especially since his wife grew up there and had even worked for the U.S. State Department for a time.

It's then that the theories of U.S. meddling in Ukraine started to gain traction. The British journalist Ian Traynor claimed in the U.K. newspaper The Guardian that the Yushchenko campaign was an American plot, citing as evidence American payments to train election observers and protest groups, as well as American financed polls designed to back up accusations of Mr. Yanukovych's vote fraud.

Not many believe Mr. Traynor's theory, but one person who does is the respected Professor John Mearsheimer, who teaches political science at the University of Chicago. He says that Washington continues to try to influence Ukraine even a decade after the Orange Revolution. He's convinced that the Maidan protests – eventually responsible for the ousting of Mr. Yanukovych on February 22, 2014 – were several years in the making and backed by American cash. A putsch. "America wanted a change, because it wanted to gain influence over Ukraine," Prof. Mearsheimer says.

It's at this point that a large sum of money and a telephone call become part of the story.

Victoria Nuland, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, spoke of $5 billion, or €4.5 billion, for Ukraine in a call to the American ambassador in Kiev on January 28, 2014. That was just a few weeks before Mr. Yanukovych was chased out of the country. Ms. Nuland also spoke of whom from the opposition could join the new government as if she could influence such things. That all came to light after the conversation was tapped and made public – apparently by a Ukrainian intelligence service officer still loyal to Mr. Yanukovych.

At first glance, $5 billion is a hefty sum of money – but is it hefty enough to buy an entire revolution?

The money flowed from 1991 to 2014. Most of it from the U.S. State Department, which handles foreign affairs, and its development arm USAID, which was set up by John F. Kennedy. He saw it as successor to the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Europe after the Second World War.

The agency's funds come from the U.S. federal budget. In 2016, USAID will have $22.3 billion to spend worldwide, but it has to stick to the president's foreign policy guidelines. It is therefore a political instrument that is never completely without a political goal in mind. But how will that money be used exactly?

The Kiev offices of USAID are on the edge of the Ukrainian capital, on the same compound as the U.S. Embassy. It's a gigantic building surrounded by a high fence.

Ann Marie Yastishock, the deputy regional USAID director, has frequently had to answer questions about the money. "We don't finance revolutions, we support civil society and NGOs," she said. "We financed neither the Orange Revolution nor the Maidan protests in 2014. Those were citizens out there at the Maidan, rising up against their corrupt government."

USAID became active in Ukraine in 1992 at the behest of the Ukrainian government, just as it did in Russia, Georgia and many other post-Soviet countries. "We thought at the time that we would be here at most 20 years and then everything here would blossom," Ms. Yastishock remembers.


America has supported many projects with the money since then with the intention of helping strengthen democracy: Anti-corruption groups, election monitoring, parliamentary expertise. Much more money was spent on health projects, environmental projects and economic development.


But the expenditures have decreased substantially over the years. It was still $195.6 million in 2011, but that had shrunk by 2014 to just $86.1 million. Only in 2015 did that figure rise a little.

Could such amounts have led to people risking their lives during the long weeks of struggle at Maidan?

Mr. Putin seems to think so. He sees the foreign money as interference in the domestic affairs of a country. That's why NGOs in Russia that receive money from abroad are now subject to the country's foreign agent law. American NGOs are no longer allowed to operate there. The foundation of the U.S. investor George Soros had to shut down its HIV and methadone projects, helping contribute to Russia's increasing HIV infection rate.

Mr. Putin, on the other hand, has invested heavily in a number of NGOs meant to increase Russia's influence abroad since the Orange Revolution in 2004. Starting in 2012, $130 million has flown each year into organizations operating in post-Soviet countries and the Balkans, but particularly in Ukraine.


The overall amount is growing, according to a soon-to-be-released study from the respected London-based think tank Chatham House, which is predominately funded by international corporations. The study shows a huge network in service of Russian interests using fear-mongering and manipulation to influence a country's populace and attempt to bias it against the West. The biggest difference to the American soft power concept is that Russia isn't trying to win anyone over with the attractiveness of its own model, but rather makes use of economic pressure and political intimidation.

But even someone failing to see a difference between Russian and American influence has to recognize that neither side now has the upper hand and neither is seriously in any position to steer the course of Ukrainian history. The Ukrainians, just as they did when Bush Senior spoke to them, have always decided their own future.

And it should stay that way, because it could be a highly dangerous scenario if Ukraine became a geostrategic playing field for foreign powers. For example, what would happen if a U.S. president unwilling to ignore Russian provocations, such as a U.S. Republican like John McCain, came to power?

President Barack Obama thinks differently. He avoids conflicts with Mr. Putin and would prefer to leave the problem with Europe, that is, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"Shortly after the annexation of Crimea by Putin there was the policy of not doing anything to provoke the Russians," says Karen Donfried, Mr. Obama's former Europe advisor. A high-ranking advisor in the White House connects the dots: "We can't deal with the Ukraine problem in an isolated fashion, since there are other interests as well. We want to keep open our lines of communication with the Russians on topics such as Syria, Islamic State, Assad or Afghanistan." In other words: Mr. Obama believes he still needs the Russians.

In Kiev, the co-founder of the independent broadcaster Hromadske TV, which is financed by Ukrainian citizens, as well as donations from E.U. foundations and the Dutch and American embassies, says that it's become harder to get money from the Americans. And that's despite the fact that independent media in Ukraine can only exist with outside help.


Ukrainian TV channels, all owned by the country's oligarchs, simply can't be trusted. The Americans, however, are hesitant. They want to avoid at all costs any semblance of meddling.

Back in Washington there are still memories of Russia's war with Georgia in 2008, when relations between the Bush administration and Russia had reached a low point. America had previously lavished Georgia with massive amounts of money and weapons in an attempt to build a strategic bridgehead in the southern Caucasus region. But as Russia marched into Georgia, it wasn't prepared to intervene. Washington's Russian policy lay in tatters.


A year later, Mr. Obama became president and attempted to restart ties with Russia. From the economy to disarmament, there were many common interests. Karen Donfried says: "We were honestly convinced that Russia had decided to cooperate with the West instead of risking an open military conflict. We were just as surprised by the events on the Maidan as by Putin's reaction to them. We knew, of course, that Russia had reacted sensitively to the NATO expansion. But we never thought that it would react in such a way to an E.U. association agreement."

Because Mr. Obama wants to avoid an escalation of the conflict, he's continued to speak out against arms shipments. Anyone supplying weapons would simply fuel the logic of an arms race. Mr. Putin wouldn't watch idly, he would send more weapons into eastern Ukraine. That's why Mr. Obama has up until now ignored those in Washington demanding a more hawkish course of action against Russia.


Ukraine is not an American priority, according to the government advisor, the White House is merely trying to improve the security situation there.

American interest in Ukraine has ebbed and flowed dramatically over the past quarter century. Sometimes it wanted to help build up the country's democratic society, while other times it wanted to contain its strategic rival Russia. Should the situation escalate anew in the coming months, America will likely change its policy yet again. Barack Obama will then have to again consider sending weapons. His political opponents and some of his political allies will ask him the following question: Should America tolerate such behavior from Mr. Putin?

And then there will be that problem again between America and Europe.

Translated by Marc Young

[May 17, 2015] Ukraine Recession Deepens as GDP Falls 17.6%

Poor Ukrainian citizens got back to 90th instead of EU...
Notable quotes:
"... and it is a bit too much like the assumptions made by American and EU policy makers who originally thought that sanctions would get the Russian people to blame Putin. ..."
May 15, 2015 | NASDAQ.com

The contraction in Ukraine's economy accelerated to 17.6% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the State Statistics Service said Friday, hammered by a conflict with Russia-backed separatists in its eastern industrial heartland that has slashed industrial output.

Gross domestic product for the period slid 6.5% from the final quarter of 2014, the agency said. Ukraine reached a cease-fire deal with the separatists in February that has reduced--but not ended--fighting. Talks over a longer-term political resolution to the conflict have stalled with each side blaming the other.

The contraction was "a little bit worse than we estimated," according to Olena Bilan, chief economist at Dragon Capital brokerage. She said the economy had also been damaged by shrinking domestic consumption after the country's currency collapsed and inflation shot up. Retail spending was down 31% in March compared with the same month last year, according to Dragon Capital.

Still, analysts said the contraction in the last quarter is likely to be the worst for the year, as the economy's plunge began last summer as fighting picked up. Ukraine's government has forecast a 5.5% contraction this year, but the World Bank said last month that Ukraine's economy would shrink by 7.5%.

"In certain sectors are showing that the economy is testing the bottom," said Alexander Valchyshen, head of research at ICU investment firm, citing transportation and agriculture as examples of industries experiencing a turnaround. " Going forward I think the stronger decline we are having in the first quarter, the stronger rebound in the second half of the year, because last year it was the second half of the year when we started registering the collapse."

See also

kirill, May 16, 2015 at 6:45 am
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/gdp-decline-in-ukraine-accelerates-to-176-percent-in-q1-2015-statistics-388663.html

So Ukraine's GDP drop in 2015 is likely going to be over 20%. I recall Moody's, etc forecasting a GDP drop of 2% for Ukraine and 6% for Russia. The 2% figure actually is looking more realistic for Russia this year and is total BS if applied to Ukraine.

PaulR, May 16, 2015 at 9:49 am
That's quite a fall. Inflation is now almost 61%. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/inflation-cpi
kirill, May 16, 2015 at 11:54 am
These numbers are full on depression ones. The USA's GDP went down 25% during the Great Depression. I see Ukraine going down 30% and Ukraine was not doing so well before this disaster started.
Hunter, May 16, 2015 at 7:14 am
Hey all, very interesting discussions.

Nice article Mark.

I have an observation though and a question:

First the observation – you suggest that the EU will come to blame America for the soured relationship with Russia.

I think that's a little bit too simplified to properly describe what might occur in Europe (I would imagine that only SOME EU members' populations will come to blame America, others will blame Russia for the EU's soured relationship with Russia) and it is a bit too much like the assumptions made by American and EU policy makers who originally thought that sanctions would get the Russian people to blame Putin. Just as how that assumption was faulty, the assumption that the EU will come to blame America could also probably be faulty and likely is given the deepset Russophobia in many parts of Europe.

... ... ...

[May 17, 2015] Rumor mill about coming Yats demise

yalensis, May 17, 2015 at 11:25 am

This piece is proposing a bit of a conspiracy theory; but also making a solid prediction, that can proved or disproved in the short term.

The theory is this:

One of Vickie Nuland's tasks, in her recent trip to Kiev, was to groom a man named Sergei Levochkin for the Prime Minister job. (to replace Yats).

Levochkin is a former Party of Regions type who was in Yanukovych government. Now he is head of the so-called "Opposition Bloc".

Levochkin confirmed that, yes, he met with Nuland; and, yes, they discussed regulation of the crisis in Donbass.

The theory is that Americans have not placed all their eggs in one basket; and that Opp Bloc of former Regions is being groomed to take over Ukie government, since Porky & Co have failed miserably. Nuland is said to be auditioning replacements for both Porky and Yats.

Again, this is all provable/disprovable, we just wait to see if it happens.

The more interesting aspect is: What will Russia do? Is Kremlin in on this conspiracy to throw Porky under the bus (if indeed such a conspiracy exists)?

Everybody knows that Russia wasted years of time supporting Yanukovych government, and in fact it was Russia that put all its eggs in Party of Regions basket. Will Russia now accept the return of a basically Regions government; and if so, will they throw independent Donbass under the bus? These are all questions that we await eagerly to see the answers.

[May 17, 2015]US Empire: American Exceptionalism Is No Shining City On a Hill

May 15, 2015 | informationclearinghouse.info

The concept of American exceptionalism is as old as the United States, and it implies that the country has a qualitative difference from other nations. This notion of being special gives Americans the sense that playing a lead role in world affair is part of their natural historic calling. However there is nothing historically exceptional about this: the Roman empire also viewed itself as a system superior to other nations and, more recently, so did the British and the French empires.

On the topic of American exceptionalism, which he often called "Americanism", Seymour Martin Lipset noted that "America's ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire. The revolutionary ideology, which became American creed, is liberalism in its eighteenth and nineteenth-century meaning. It departed from conservatism Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism and noblesse-oblige dominant in monarchical state-church formed cultures." Naturally identifying America's system as a unique ideology, just like calling its successful colonial war against Britain a revolution, is a fallacy. For one, America was never based on social equality, as rigid class distinctions always remained through US history.

In reality, the US has never broken from European social models. American exceptionalism implies a sense of superiority, just like in the case of the British empire, the French empire and the Roman empire. In such imperialist systems, class inequality was never challenged and, as matter of fact, served as cornerstone of the imperial structure. In American history, the only exception to this system based on social inequality was during the post World War II era of the economic "miracle". The period from 1945 to the mid 1970s was characterized by major economic growth, an absence of big economic downturns, and a much higher level of social mobility on a massive scale. This time frame saw a tremendous expansion of higher education: from 2.5 million people to 12 million going to colleges and universities, and this education explosion, naturally, fostered this upward mobility where the American dream became possible for the middle class.

Regardless of real domestic social progress made in the United States after the birth of the empire in 1945, for the proponents of American exceptionalism - this includes the entire political class - the myth of the US being defined as a "shining city on a hill" has always been a rationale to justify the pursuit of imperialism. For example, when President Barack Obama addressed the nation to justify the US military intervention in Libya, he said that "America is different", as if the US has a special role in history as a force for good. In a speech on US foreign policy, at West Point on May 28, 2014, Obama bluntly stated:

"In fact, by most measures, America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world. Those who argue otherwise - who suggest that America is in decline or has seen its global leadership slip away are misreading history. Our military has no peer…. I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being."

In his book, Democracy In America, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville was lyrical in his propaganda-like adulation of American exceptionalism, defining it almost as divine providence.

"When the earth was given to men by the Creator, the earth was inexhaustible. But men were weak and ignorant, and when they had learned to take advantage of the treasures which it contained, they already covered its surface and were soon obliged to earn by the sword an asylum for repose and freedom. Just then North America was discovered, as if it had been kept in reserve by the Deity and had risen from beneath the waters of the deluge", wrote de Tocqueville.

This notion, originated by the French author, and amplified ever since, which defined the US as the "divine gift" of a moral and virtuous land, is a cruel fairy tale. It is mainly convenient to ease up America's profound guilt. After all, the brutal birth of this nation took place under the curse of two cardinal sins: the theft of Native American lands after committing a genocide of their population; and the hideous crime of slavery, with slaves building an immense wealth for the few, in a new feudal system, with their sweat, tears and blood.

[May 17, 2015] Zuckerberg put Porky and other Ukie nationalists in their place

yalensis, May 16, 2015 at 12:39 pm

Sorry, but I cannot leave this Facebook story alone, since it is so satisfying to me that Zuckerberg put Porky and other Ukie nationalists in their place.

Zuckerberg said that he did some research and found that the Ukrainian posts taken down included elements of ethnic slurs and hate speech towards Russians. Posts with such content are not allowed on Facebook, he said.

"I think we did the right thing according to our policies, in taking down those posts and I agree that we must not support hate speech," said Zuckerberg.

I like very much that

(1) Zuckerberg defended the actions of his staff and did not throw them under the bus to service anti-Russian agenda of Washington. I really respect the guy for doing that.

(2) that Zuckerberg put Ukrainians in their place: he made it clear they are not special people, he doesn't care if their President appealed to him, he is not impressed by Porky's power; and Ukies don't have the right to post murderous hate speech if other people don't have the same right.

Having said that, Russia's version of Facebook "V Kontakte", is obviously more loosy-goosy than Zuckerberg's Facebook, since they tolerate just about anything. In fact, they sponsor the page of Vita Zaverukha, with her swastikas galore and photos of murdered Odessans; and comparing the scorched bodies to Kentucky Fried Colorado Beetles, etc etc.

Having said that, Zuckerberg's Facebook enforces a code of conduct which excludes ethnic hate speech or calls to violence; and it is commendable that they actually enforced those rules even when the targets of the hate speech were the much-despised Russian ethnos.

yalensis , May 16, 2015 at 12:48 pm
The comment section to this piece is quite telling:

"Czech Friend" who is some pro-Banderite troll calls Zuckerberg a kiss-up to totalitarian dictators, and then encourages every "freedom-loving" person to stop using Facebook.

"puttypants", who is pro-Banderite, pro-Fifth Column, agrees with this, and repeats the slander (as stated in the movie "Social Network") that Zuckerberg is a plagiarist, who stole the Facebook idea from his college friends.

"Mick Jones" then points out that he has seen examples of the kind of Ukie hate speech which call Russians "Mongols" (as if being a Mongol is a bad thing).

"Calibra" replies to a comment that was deleted – I read the comment earlier, before it was deleted, I don't remember the exact words, but the person said some mean things and then dropped the ultimate threat: To quit their Facebook account. "Calibra" replies: "O my god, i'm sure Mark [Zuckerberg] will not sleep tonight knowing you left, how could you."

Russ M. points out how Zuckerberg's nerd brigade laughed their asses off when Porky sent in a question. God, how embarrassing, I would cringe if I were Ukrainian myself…
Having such a joke for a President. Oh wait! Russians used to have Yeltsin…

Moscow Exile , May 16, 2015 at 12:58 pm
At least Yeltsin used to knock back the vodka and take a bite out of a salted gherkin like the true provincial muzhik he was, the bastard, and not sip at Frog cognac and nibble at ladies' chocolate assortments as Porky Porosyonok does.
Jen , May 16, 2015 at 2:46 pm
Porky's still head of Roshen, hasn't divested himself of his business investments, so it's his (as he sees it) duty to scoff all the chocolates his fat snout can snuffle out.

There's another reason for him to indulge in his favourite comfort foods and beverages: he's been caught constructing a new mansion on a plot of land right by a historic district in Kiev which he obtained through an arrangement involving a private company that morphed into a fake housing co-op.

yalensis, May 16, 2015 at 12:58 pm
But wait there's more!

Regarding Ukraine's epic fail on the Facebook front, get this:
Ukrainian svidomites are so upset by Zuckerberg's comments that they have decided to organize a boycott of Facebook.

And how, pray tell, have they organized this boycott?
Why, through social media, naturally.
And which social media, you might ask?
Why, on Facebook, of course!

You can't make this stuff up!

As the author of this piece notes:

Svidomites and Logic – 2 things that are completely incompatible, one with the other.

[May 17, 2015]Snowden cost US control of 'geopolitical narrative' – former NSA official

Warren, May 15, 2015 at 2:52 pm

Snowden cost US control of 'geopolitical narrative' – former NSA official

http://rt.com/usa/259101-nsa-counsel-snowden-secrets/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

marknesop, May 15, 2015 at 6:31 pm
For one thing, this sounds an awful lot like an official admission that the USA did something wrong rather than Snowden.

For another, it is important to remember that the "control of the geopolitical narrative" he speaks of was based on lying and secret snooping, and there is no reason to believe the USA would ever have stopped doing it on its own, or taken steps to admit it was doing it, so long as secret intelligence continued to keep them on top.

[May 12, 2015]The cancer that threatens Europe

Rebelion

A year after the fall of President Yanukovych, and the triumph of the coup in Kiev, Ukraine continues immersed in a civil war that Poroshenko promised that he would win in a month. It is difficult to find a scenario where Western irresponsibility is so great as in Ukraine. In a year, the heads of the European and US diplomats have gone to stimulate protests and finance groups of thugs and provocateurs, while distributing biscuits in the Maidan, as did Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of the US State Department, to contemplate unmoved a civil war that has already caused thousands of deaths in the east, and that can lead to a larger European war if diplomacy established in Minsk agreements not consolidated.

However, the absence of US negotiations and persistent temptation to stoke clashes over the procedure of arming the government of Kiev and advise its troops to the spread of a war that could involve NATO have opened a dangerous wound in Europe. Obama, the Pentagon and the State Department, discuss the extent of their involvement in the war, because, in practice, already engaged by interposed actors, and sent advisors, spies and mercenaries. Victoria Nuland, moreover, has had no qualms in meeting with Andriy Parubiy, the neo-Nazi leader who organized the Maidan in Kiev with the complicity of the American CIA and the Polish AW, and later became head of the Security Council National government emerged from the coup. Accustomed to manipulation and propaganda, Washington and the headquarters of NATO in Brussels, assisted by an army of unscrupulous journalists, have raised a giant edifice of lies reminiscent of other wars, such as Yugoslavia and Iraq, knowing that Memory of public opinion is weak and a plug lies to others. Because the fire of Ukraine has a logic that makes sense when it is repaired in wars initiated by the United States in recent years in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen.

Under Yanukovych, rampant corruption was rife, and strangled the country, but all the steps taken so far, obliging hand with Washington, government Poroshenko and Yatseniuk, have gone in the direction of the disaster. Poroshenko Ukraine is now run by a grotesque capitalist country where they send the new oligarchy created from theft, as yesterday, but the thugs and murderers, commanders of armed right-wing groups, who do not hesitate to get rid of any , thieves of the country's resources and people that seems to be unsane. It is not an exaggeration: just look at the characters who stroll through the parliament and ministries, armed, accompanied by fascist thugs who do not hesitate to bring hand grenades in thier pockets. Although divided into factions, they share solidarity to be the beneficiaries of the coup who are protected by United States. Yatsenyuk (accomplice and partner in one of the major capitalist Ukrainian, Igor Kolomoisky, organizer and financer of fascist battalions) is one of Washington's men in Kiev; Poroshenko doubt rapprochement between Berlin and submission to the United States, and as Turchinov and other rulers, both wallow in corruption and incompetence, which has plunged the economy, while casting cries for help to Washington Berlin and they try to convince the world that Russia is a danger. Tellingly, all they are benefiting from a patriotic rhetoric going back to Stepan Bandera, and have hidden the horrors of Babi Yar and Volin. They also ignore symbols and the struggle against Nazism during World War II. They do not hesitate to use the crudest lies, providing, for example, Washington pictures taken on the war in Georgia in 2008 ... as evidence of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, leaving a paper snubbed US Senator Jim Inhofe.

During the past year since the coup, corruption has not only not blocked, but it has increased, helped by the disarray of war, and it involves all the leaders of Kiev: Ukrainian press even talk that Poroshenko has achieved huge profits with their companies, and he has not hesitated to lie and take advantage of the state structures to enrich themselves even more. Thus, the Ukrainian economy, already going through a severe crisis, has been virtually destroyed: many factories have stopped working, it is common that no wages are paid in many companies, pensions are miserable and living conditions are getting tougher but the coup government knows that it may not have another opportunity like the present and its members steal handfuls. And war and fear many mouths silent.

Poroshenko acknowledged that his forces had broken the first truce of Minsk, certainly advised by the American secret services, making a bet on a quick defeat of the rebels in the Donbass, but Russian help with arms and supplies to militias foiled the offensive and forced to Poroshenko to sign agreements Minsk II.

If during the cold war the boundaries between right and left, between supporters and opponents of the United States were clear, today the situation is more confused. The Donbass have come volunteers from many countries, although in small numbers, to help the militias, from Communists and leftists to nationalists and members of the extreme right, to traditionalists Cossacks and supporters of the Pan-Slavic solidarity they see in Russia's older sister although it is clear that the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist reference is dominant between rebel forces and the fascist and Nazi symbols it is very present in the Ukrainian National Guard and the troops who fight with Kiev, also plagued by mercenaries and adventurers fascists. Thus, the Russian neo-Nazi group Restrukt (Restructura) supports the Ukrainian fascist party Pravii Serktor, a circumstance that has led members of the Ukrainian security services accused the FSB (Federal Security Service) to infiltrate Russian members of the organization (not arouse suspicions, and those who have purchased) in the Azov battalion (created by the coup government of Kiev and funded by the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky) in order to get information. It is one among many examples, similar to what they are doing Western intelligence services.

A part of Russian nationalism supports, panrrusas considerations, the rebels of the Donbass, and in that constellation, neo-Nazi groups are, like far-right groups also sympathize with fascist groups of Maidan Kiev, and some groups Chechens, with opposing motivations, fight with both sides. Similarly, groups of Serbs have come to support the rebels in Eastern Ukraine protected by the Slav identity, which they consider threatened by the West, as they themselves noted in the Yugoslav wars, and have even gone Hungarian right-wing groups who dream to "recover" Romanian and Ukrainian territories to create a Greater Hungary ... you need the prerequisite for the partition of modern Ukraine. Nevertheless, these groups are very conservative minority among militants Donbass. Also some Russian groups speak of "imperialist confrontation" between Washington and Moscow, to apply a strict neutrality. To finish making the situation more confusing, the long arm of the secret service, the CIA, the Mossad, the German BND, the AW (Agencja Wywiadu) Polish, and others, have made possible the transit of mercenaries from the Middle East Ukraine, and Islamist groups in the Russian periphery, while the Russian FSB tries to jihadists CIA drone fighters do not come to Ukraine and Russia itself.

If you have ceased fighting in Ukraine thanks to Minsk II, the propaganda war continues. Fantasy for devotees of NATO states: Putin's imperial dream, as shown annexation of Crimea, claims exclusive spheres of influence in Europe and provoked the most serious crisis since the collapse of the USSR. In devotional package also will Putin's role as an aggressor in the war, the demolition of the Malaysian aircraft, the violation of the borders of Ukraine, the deployment of Russian troops in the Donbass, and the violation of international law. No matter it has not shown any of these allegations, although no doubt that militias This would not have been able to withstand without Russian help in weapons, supplies and provisions. In the giant Western propaganda campaign efforts not lacking anyone remember the American and European encouragement and to overthrow a government, that of Yanukovich, elected by the Ukrainian people in elections that neither the United States nor the European Union considered illegitimate; and it has been hidden Western support for the violence unleashed by the fascist bands (tens of policemen were killed by gunshot wounds to the Maidan, for example) while the goodness of a supposed "peace movement" that wanted to "join Europe" was spreading , as remains in the shadow in the months before the fall of Yanukovych military training groups of mercenaries and fascists in Poland was organized to send them after the Maidan in Kiev; nor, of course, hardly any references to the gradual expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, war provocation of Georgia, missile defense, to attempt to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia into NATO do, to beat been to Kiev. Are patents the flimsy arguments Washington and its hypocritical subsequent outrage at Russian help to the militias, as if Putin had initiated the conflict, even the Ukrainian crisis be understood, because why would Moscow to create if the government Yanukovych maintained good relations with Russia? And, after the coup of pro-Western state, Moscow could leave their fate to the people revolted against Kiev and had been crushed by the coup government? But for those Americans in launching massive advertising campaigns to experts, the coup in Kiev has been turned into the "revolution of dignity" and their Ukrainian clients remember him every day in the press. A year after the fall of the government of Yanukovych, remain unclear killings by the mysterious snipers who caused carnage on the Maidan, and it was the fuse for the overthrow of the government. Neither the coup cabinet Kiev nor the United States have shown the slightest interest in that investigation, while the oligarchs loot and territory are spread: Igor Kolomoisky, one of the most corrupt millionaires Ukrainian financier Nazi groups, a character It has come to use groups of thugs to impose their wishes, buying judges and get judgments or, if necessary, the fakes, is now governor of Dnepropetrovsk. The Attorney General Viktor Shokin, neglecting the fight against corruption and crime, which disdains research snipers Maidan in the days of the coup against Yanukovych, and has no intention to clarify the horrific slaughter of building Odessa unions, working instead to outlaw the Communist Party, the only political force that attempts to limit the power of corrupt businessmen-thieves; because the Communist Party is the only party which denounces fascism in Ukraine, claiming the dissolution of the Nazi paramilitary groups and asked, in vain, protection of monuments and symbols of the struggle against the Nazis during World War II.

United States is torn between greater involvement in the war and the arms shipment. Influential private foundations and sectors of the Pentagon and government are inclined to send weapons, although they are aware that this does not become the Ukrainian army into a force capable of winning the civil war, and could create a difficult situation with Moscow. However, other sectors of the US administration, while accepting the risks of challenging Russia, a country with a huge nuclear arsenal, arming committed to Kiev confident that a war of attrition will eventually damage the Russian economy and, eventually, Putin could plunge, or at least make unviable restructuring effort in the Eurasian Union that Moscow plans.

This, in Washington, amid absurd discussions about whether to send weapons to Ukraine "offensive" or "defensive" when the truth is that an escalation in the war would have a difficult start, and the temptation to annul Russia and moor closer to the European Union through a continental war is very much on Pentagon strategists and the White House. The state of opinion generated in Washington can give an idea comments one analyst at CSIS, Center for Strategic and International Studies, the most important "think tank" in American capital as for foreign policy issues. Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia Program of CSIS, had the murdered Boris Nemtsov as a patriot and demonized Putin, saying the Russian President's speech in parliament in April 2014 might indicate the "tipping point Russia in a fascist state. " Obviously, for those who think, it would be more than justified open military intervention in Ukraine, even for intervening actors, mercenaries or soldiers of the most aggressive countries, such as Poland or the Baltic. After all, they can always argue the dangers of an "imminent Russian attack" or similar pretexts which led to the US aggression in Iraq.

The strange murder of Boris Nemtsov (who, today, was a completely irrelevant politician in Russia) may have implications related to the Ukrainian crisis, and can not rule out the long hand of Nuland and the US government Russophobe circles, especially at the evidence that the disappearance of Nemtsov precisely not benefit Putin. Russian President made a tough bogey, Washington does not want to acknowledge their own responsibility in increasing international tension, we must remember that Putin began his presidency trying to accommodate a unipolar world led by the United States, demanding respect and recognition of interest Russians. The blatant disregard to the Russian president, the evidence that the United States is encouraging speculation and hypothetical partition of Russia, as it did with the Soviet Union, raised all alarms in Moscow and led to Putin, still under President George W . Bush, in his speech of February 2007 in Munich, where he denounced American expansionism and breach of all agreements signed or tacit, between Moscow and Washington after the demise of the Soviet Union. Since then, and despite the theatrics as the button "reset" offered by Hillary Clinton (which did not result in any change in US foreign policy), the United States has continued its military closer to the Russian borders.

France and Germany have been involved in the search for a political solution to Ukraine, but thier room for maneuver is limited, because their governments have obligations as members of NATO, and Washington and the Allied headquarters in Brussels have made a speech that, in essence, has been imposed on all members and has also been adopted by Paris and Berlin, which, while still reluctantly bellicose speech, are forced to impose economic sanctions on Moscow and discuss most dangerous scenario where do not rule out sending arms and even military forces, but for the moment, that possibility is discussed in secret. Trapped in its own propaganda, the NATO countries are unable to assume that the Ukrainian crisis erupted not a "citizen protests" (otherwise, instigated and financed largely by Western countries), but by supporting a coup State and regime change which aims to incorporate Ukraine into an openly hostile military alliance with Moscow. If you show aggressive with others, you can not expect to be greeted with open arms.

Neither the European Union nor, much less the United States, want to recognize that the commitment to integrate Ukraine into NATO is a real provocation against Russia (anyone imagine the hypothesis that Mexico or Canada to be integrated into an aggressive military alliance against Washington?), which has also unnecessary, brought a civil war has destroyed the Ukrainian economy, has opened a dangerous front in Europe and has dynamited the medium-term possibility of a friendly and peaceful coexistence in the continent. Ukrainian war that has been the result of calculation or an unintended consequence of the coup, the US does not mitigate responsibility. Adventurous war that US foreign policy has ignited is now presented as the sole responsibility of Moscow and dangerous test as Russian "expansionism," but forget that after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the manifest destiny of NATO was unable to start their dismantling but an accelerated expansion towards Russia's borders has led him to settle in eight countries (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria) and try to do with Georgia and Ukraine, including its facilities in some the old Soviet republics of Central Asia. That was the real military expansionism of the last two decades. Because Washington does not want to understand that security must be a shared principle, and to bring the military presence of NATO to Russia's own borders is not only a challenge but also the rupture of unstable international balances.

Accusations and alarms, always without proof, launched by the US against Russia Philip M. Breedlove, commander of NATO forces in Europe, or the secret visit to Kiev in January 2015, General James R. Clapper, director of US National Intelligence, among others, they reflect the vision of the hawks in Washington. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and the head of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey, also support sending weapons to Kiev, and alarms launched by the hard Zbigniew Brzezinski on a hypothetical attack from Russia to the Baltic countries, will in the same direction: they want to send weapons to Ukraine, poison the situation and irreversible a European war, perhaps global, and this can be done through different ways, because the hawks in Washington have too many scruples: not long ago, General Wesley Clark declared to CNN about new Islamists slaughtered before the cameras: "We created the Islamic State funding of our allies."

The recent declaration of the Ukrainian Communist Party, the main opposition force, now persecuted and reduced, closed with a worrying proclamation to Ukrainian and European: say no to war and fascism. Because that is the risk, the tumor that threatens to Ukraine and Europe. There are other problems for Europe, of course, added to the severe economic crisis and cracks in the euro area: from the unexpected Greek rebellion, that Brussels intends to subdue; until the response of the real powers in the hypothetical emergence of an opposition movement that although confusingly, in different countries challenging the neoliberal construction of the European Union; through the strengthening of the extreme right, who cares so much about its social model and because it can push back the ruling conservatives today formations; or even the wiles of unreliable British partner, head of American bridge in Europe, along with Polish and Baltic revanchist governments; and, finally, the challenges of terrorism that Europe and the US itself helped to create, but none of these problems is as serious as the war in Ukraine and the possibility of extending the rest of the continent if not consolidates diplomatic channels. Angela Merkel's pragmatism, promoting agreements Minsk, has a double interpretation: on the one hand, knows he can not overcome Russia in a global war and, therefore, walks wire diplomacy; secondly, even if I wanted to kneel to Moscow knows that victory would not be German, but American, and that pushes to Berlin at the balance between the required submission to Washington (NATO ata), self-interest in European stability and the ever-present German misgivings about the large Slavic country that refuses to accept Western supremacy. For its part, the US wants a weak Russia, and does not renounce its fragmentation, which would enable the US control of hydrocarbon deposits, and in that scenario, it is no coincidence that the United States is not involved in the peaceful solution to the Ukrainian crisis: open warfare submit to Moscow to the test, would prevent the rebuilding of ties between the former Soviet republics and block its economic modernization. At the same time, for the European Union, the extension of the Ukrainian war would be a nail in the coffin new strategic helplessness and submission with which Washington wants to lock Brussels: a confrontation between Russia and the European Union in Ukraine, one open and bleeding on the continent, injury is the best American hypothesis to strengthen their own power through NATO, to corner Russia, and to prepare themselves for the great battle of the coming decades: China.


A little about Higinio Polo:
Degree in Geography and History and a PhD in Contemporary History from the University of Barcelona.

He has published numerous papers and essays on political and cultural issues, and regularly works in media such as the magazine El Viejo Topo, the newspaper Workers World and other conventional and digital publications.

His books include The last days of Republican Barcelona, novels At the end of the afternoon, in Singapore are counted; Pearl belly, and the case Blondstein and Iran tests: Memories of Paradise; USA: the rogue state; Terrorism (in collaboration); Portraits (indoor); Dashiell Hammett. Crime fiction and Hollywood witch hunt; The night of Calcutta; Barcelona (confidential report). His last work published in 2014, is White roses on Stalingrad.

Rebellion has posted this article with the author's permission through a license from Creative Commons, respecting their freedom to publish elsewhere.

[May 12, 2015] Kerry set to meet Putin in first visit to Russia since start of Ukraine crisis

The problem that West and first of all the USA and Germany face now is that Ukraine is another Greece. To keep it afloat financially requires tremendous and continues investment. 40 billions from IMF is only a start. Economic ties with Russia are destroyed. And without tens of billions of annual aid that means death sentence. Allowing it to fail with shake Western financial system and we do not know how many derivatives were written on Ukrainian debt and who holds them.
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Looks like MentalToo was on duty for this article with support of usual gang. There was even some backlash against "Hillary bots", specifically against alphamysh.
May 12, 2015 | The Guardian

Beckow -> StrategicVoice213 11 May 2015 22:26

By paying a price I clearly meant the very expensive support for Ukraine that EU has to provide, about 40 billion so far. The Ukraine's economy is down about 14% from just three years ago - this is going to get very, very expensive.

If you want to compare Russia's and EU's losses due to sanctions, they have been very substantial for both. EU has so far lost about 10 billion in exports and in the long run it is not clear who will end up losing more. Russia's GNP will drop by 3% after years of high growth (more than double in 10 years). EU has been largely stagnant and many countries there are still below where they were in '09 (Italy, Spain, ...).

Finally, militarily all that matters is who has local superiority. Russia has it in eastern Ukraine. You can squirm, hallucinate, cry all you want, there is no f...ing way that Nato can defeat Russia there.

They know it, thus the coming deal.

Dannycraig007 -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 21:34

You would prefer I use the corrupt and obviously biased mainstream Western media as sources I assume, rather than first person video accounts from the victims themselves? Award winning war correspondent and Guardian journalist John Pilger has a few words for you. http://www.discussionist.com/101459708 This is a must watch video about how the Western media operate from a man who was once a part of the establishment here at the Guardian.

Standupwoman -> Captain_Underpants 11 May 2015 17:08

Yep. I think my own Pollyanna moment is already beginning to seep away.

But the stakes are so high! NATO's revival of the 'hotline' has unilaterally put us back on a Cold War footing, and at a time when the Doomsday clock is already set at 3 minutes to midnight. Putin has shown incredible restraint so far, but if the provocations don't stop then I'm genuinely worried about what might happen.

Bosula -> samanthajsutton 11 May 2015 20:43

Neither side is very open about what support it provides.

Russia says openly it doesn't stop volunteers from Russia, often family, cross the border to fight with the East Ukrainians. They are also probably supplying weapons, but we don't really know. And no Russian troops have been captured despite the huge battles. To capture a Russian soldier in a fighting zone would be worth gold in terms of PR value.

The Eastern Ukrainian are having difficulties training all their volunteers (just too many) with a million refugees, many based in camps in Russia, providing a fertile source of volunteers. The West provides no humanitarian help - a short sighted strategic decision, maybe?

The US and their allies are also pretty secret about what support they provide - best estimates are around 1,500 advisers, trainers - and 'volunteers' fighting alongside privately funded far right militias and the Ukrainian army.

The US are not really in a position to take the self- righteous moral high ground in a civil war tens of thousands of kilometres from their home.

nnedjo -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 20:17

What little influence US has on events in Ukraine is irrelevant.

Because of this "little influence" the whole Ukrainian government has become irrelevant. You know, the fact that you do not see the strings that move their limbs does not mean that they are not puppets on the strings. And that guys from Washington hold the ends of the strings, that's probably clear to everyone after the cookies of Victoria Nuland. Or Toria, as poster Dipset called her.:-)))

Funny guy that Dipset, wonder why he is not here yet.

Standupwoman 11 May 2015 20:09

'Although the 300 US trainers are operating in the west of the country'

Are we really sure of this? Yes, Kiev has predictably denied Russian claims that American troops have been spotted in the Donbass, but the odd thing is that several pro-Kiev supporters have uploaded this footage of American training under the following description:

In Severodonetsk, Luhansk region instructors from Georgia, Israel and the US carried out military exercises with the soldiers of the special units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine

Luhansk is in the ATO region - and Severodonetsk is very, very near to the front line.

geedeesee -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 20:05

Irrelevant ...?

Just the CIA advisers, military trainers, $billions of dollars, political cover, a propaganda machine.

geedeesee -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:59

Not proper interviews, are they? Just clips of sentences without knowing the question that is being answered. They wrap narrative around the comment. Not one of those nine soldiers admits to fighting in Ukraine, and the claim of written evidence from NGOs is negated towards the end of the article with the caveat that 'Ukraine' wasn't actually mentioned in the NGO's documentary evidence.

You're easily duped by propaganda.

Standupwoman -> ID5868758 11 May 2015 19:50

Understood. If governments had to actually fight the wars they started, the world would be a very different place...


Dannycraig007 -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:35

If your still doubtful about what the Kiev regime do to people who post unflattering information online, I present to you them demonstrating firsthand what happens when people step out of line. Graphic warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXnNDbJ7r0k&feature=youtu.be

geedeesee -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:31

"What about the guys in military uniforms with weapons, mortars, mines, grenades, anti-tank weapons..."

What about them? They're defending themselves - the self-defence activists - after the Kiev regime sent tanks and aircraft to attack the protesters in what they called an Anti-Terror Operation as this example shows (see all four videos)..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27035196


Dannycraig007 -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:30

Your question answers itself, in that the Kiev Regime have been tracking down people who post videos on the internet and in social media that criticize the regime, hence the lack of video out of Slavyansk now.

Watch this Ukrainian parliamentarian call for the genocide of Ukrainians of ethnic Russian origin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNQ2CVz2Cyk

Of course, there's also this tidbit from last summer.

http://slavyangrad.org/2014/08/14/residents-of-slavyansk-have-disappeared-the-town-is-being-re-populated-with-migrants-from-western-ukraine/

The Residents of Slavyansk have disappeared; the town is being re-populated with migrants from Western Ukraine.
POSTED BY S. NAYLOR ⋅ AUGUST 14, 2014 ⋅ 27 COMMENTS
In Slavyansk, occupied by Ukrainian troops, the local residents have practically disappeared. The town is being inundated with migrants speaking in a foreign dialect, who take over the housing of those who left to escape the Ukrainian bombing campaign.

This is reported by one of very few residents of Slavyansk who, trusting Ukrainian official propaganda, made the decision to return to his native city. The picture that he saw is terrifying. He realized that the information about residents of Slavyansk returning home is nothing but a vile lie.

"Please, heed our plea! The people have disappeared from Slavyansk!

"I am a native of Slavyansk, residing here already for twenty-seven years. Or better to say 'I was residing', having left the town three months ago, when it was becoming dangerous to stay. During this time I found refuge with relatives in Odessa. I made a decision to return when all the Ukrainian media started saying that everything in Slavyansk was back to normal, that over sixty percent of residents have come back.

"In the three months of my absence my apartment remained untouched by shells from the junta's bombardment or by its marauding thugs. I had already started to unpack when I heard the sound of my neighbour's doors opening across the hallway. I thought it must have been my neighbour, Sergey Ivanovich, but then I saw a young man unknown to me. To my question about his identity he replied that he was Sergey Ivanovich's son.


geedeesee -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:27

Here's an example:

Slaviansk: 10 self-defense activists and some 30 unarmed civilians killed

http://rt.com/news/156584-right-sector-deaths-ukraine/

Notice in the video some places look pretty deserted.


nnedjo -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:25

... in Slavyansk since it was liberated by Ukrainian forces...
You mean, liberated like Odessa:
Occupation of Russian Hero-City Odessa 2014-2015 | Eng Subs
,or liberated like Kharkiv
Kharkiv Welcomes May: Army Patrols, BTRs, Machine guns, etc

And, speaking of Slavyansk , it is also interesting. In "liberated" Slavyansk it seems that nobody believes "liberators".

Slavyansk residents trust Putin and not Poroshenko - Ukraine Hromadske TV March 2015


Bosula -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:10

Can you tell us how many people have been killed in Slayvansk?

Dannycraig007 -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:06

Here's another video for you that proves the Kiev regime are Nazis as it shows them marching through Kiev in uniform holding the Waffen SS Wolfsangel flag and was filmed by Poroshenkos very own Chanel 5 TV outlet.

The rest of the hour and a half long video is a bloodbath showing them killing hundreds of innocent civilians. Get back to me after you've cleaned your conscience.

Ukraine Crisis: Death and destruction continues in Eastern Ukraine / [ENG SUB]
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b10_1417842060#e1hSYTkJlw3TQgXs.99


mlubiank -> ID5868758 11 May 2015 19:06

Is Reuters good enough for you or is that all lies?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/10/us-ukraine-crisis-soldiers-specialreport-idUSKBN0NV06Q20150510


Dannycraig007 11 May 2015 18:57

Investors, such as Franklin Templeton and George Soros' Foundation, who planned to make blood money and placed their bets off of the inside information right before the coup back in November 2013, have a combined $7 billion at stake in Ukraine.

The IMF is trying to convince them to take a haircut on the massive amount and get put on the back burner for the time being, but Russia put it's $3 billion loan in strict terms back in 2012 and has payback priority.

Those human flesh eating Western sharks want their money. This makes those 1%ers and their IMF vassals very upset as they didn't actually expect to lose money......they thought they were gonna double their billions with the rape of Ukraine. Now it's hard earned.


Standupwoman ID5868758 11 May 2015 18:41

I completely understand that. It's a very sensitive subject, and must be far more so for those with personal experience.

Part of the problem is the difference between what we knew then and what we know now. At the time, as you say, we all thought My-Lai was a 'one-off' by a few bad apples, but now so much material has been declassified a very different picture has emerged.

BUT there's still a world of difference between 'a lot' and 'all', and we must never allow those war crimes to taint the reputation of the good soldiers, or to belittle what they endured. It is indeed wrong to apply excessively broad brush-strokes, and I want to apologize to you personally, because I think in my post I was guilty of doing just that.


SoloLoMejor -> geedeesee 11 May 2015 18:40

Yep all good points and there's definitely some push back from Merkel and Hollande. I just don't think the US can relinquish control of our military or monetary systems as would happen if Europe developed independently and naturally became close to European Russia. This is a superpower making sure that it stays a superpower. That said, this is Europe & Russia, not the under developed middle East so they may not get it all their own way but 6000 lives so far is tolerable collateral damage for them


Beckow -> Alderbaran 11 May 2015 18:37

There are 1,000 American, British, Polish and Canadian troops in Ukraine. Officially. Plus endless civilian advisors, agents, private security companies, etc...

Maybe Russians have more people there, but it is after all on their border.

"given control of Ukraine's border back to Ukraine, in contravention of the Minsk II agreement"

No. The Minsk II specifically says that the border will be returned to Kiev control AFTER the Donbass area gets autonomy. Where is the "autonomy"? You can't cherry-pick from an agreement.

If Nato steps over the line in Ukraine, as they are about to do, the nuclear option will be on the table. It is absolutely horrible, but that's where we are heading. Try to get your head out of your behind to understand what is going on there - it is playing with a huge fire on the border of a nuclear power that said they will not allow Nato missiles 400 km from Moscow. You want to test them?


nnedjo -> Tattyana 11 May 2015 18:32

I believe there is no need in any meetings for any further escalation as well.
That's right, Tattyana, that's exactly what I said. My only criticism was related to Miss Marie Harf, who apparently recited a prepared statement, which aims only to reduce the importance of the visit of John Kerry to Russia.
By the way, a true pleasure for me is to watch the exchange of opinions between US spokeswoman Marie Harf and her favorite "reporter", Matt Lee, at the State Department press conferences.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Marie+Harf+Matt+Lee

Standupwoman -> geedeesee 11 May 2015 18:23

Yes, that all makes good sense - but I still think personal integrity can have an (admittedly tiny) role to play. Carter is a case in point.

I'm even (don't laugh!) inclined to extend that to Obama. Yes, he's technically responsible for this mess, and he must have supported Nuland and Pyatt in the original coup, but I still think things would be very much worse if either Biden or HRC had been at the helm.

Obama (like Putin) has hawks screaming at him for being weak, but the fact he's holding out suggests there's a little shred of integrity still there.

It's not much, but it's all we've got. Sometimes it feels as if the whole world is screaming for war, and in the centre is this little patch of stillness where two men are holding firm against the madness. If anything happens to either Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin then I think we really are sunk.

geedeesee -> SoloLoMejor 11 May 2015 18:22

Yes, there clearly is a strategic plan being played out, though I don't think it has gone to plan for the Americans. The release of the Nuland/Hyatt phone call obviously came from Russian intelligence, which was an embarrassment for US. I suspect this is all a prelude to the coming clash for stakes in Arctic oil. There are a number of competing nations but US probably wants to minimise Russian access.

However, there is a lot of strain within the EU at the moment, and we know the views of EU leaders were disregarded by Nuland last year ("Fvck the EU").

It's possible the whole thing has gone far enough for EU leaders (see link below to comments identifying reasons) and they're pushing back on US behind the scenes to cool it down now.

See the original post by Beckow and replies. Link direct to individual comment number:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/11/john-kerry-meet-russian-foreign-minister-talks--ukraine-syria-yemen#comment-51974992


nnedjo 11 May 2015 18:04

Although the 300 US trainers are operating in the west of the country, well away from the conflict zone, Russia has questioned their purpose.

So I do not see how it could be otherwise. Had the US sent their "trainers" in the conflict zone in the east of Ukraine, it is possible that in that case Russia would not complain at all.

In that case, Russia would also send their "trainers" who would soon be found "in the west of the country [Ukraine], well away from the conflict zone".:-)))


normankirk -> MaoChengJi 11 May 2015 18:04

and the German gold still locked up in US vaults


Popeyes 11 May 2015 17:53

Once again on Saturday Putin completely outclassed the West, and the decision by Western leaders to stay away in the end showed their total irrelevance.

Closer ties between China and Russia is Washington's worst nightmare, and a very different new World Order is emerging from the rubble of the post-Cold War period. Today Russia proposed that Greece become the 6th member of a new Development Bank set up by the BRINCS, and with some European leaders desperate to end sanctions things are not going as planned for the empire.


Dannycraig007 -> Bradtweeters 11 May 2015 17:52

Oh, I'm an 'authentic' Guardian reader alright. i'm on my 20th account after being constantly banned this past year for posting the truth about Ukraine. And when they bane me again I'll be right back. True Brits don't give up so easily.


ID5868758 -> Dannycraig007 11 May 2015 17:51

Well, it's printed in English only, given away free in places like the Metro and coffee houses, so it's not like it's the Russian equivalent of the New York Times, to begin with. My son says it's read mostly by ex-pats in Russia, tourists, that kind of audience, it's certainly not anything that Russians read on a regular basis.

ID5868758 -> salthouse 11 May 2015 17:45

Good grief, what fiction. Vladimir Putin's only problem is that he is not Boris Yeltsin, opening the door to the international banks and the multinational corporations to continue their rape of the assets and resources of the Russian people. He is slowly but surely returning Russia to Russians. Contrast that to Ukraine, going in the opposite direction, with the privatization of the assets and resources of the people just beginning, and the predators like Monsanto, Cargill, Chevron, banging at the gate.

normankirk -> salthouse 11 May 2015 17:44

Oh I know! its his nature! He can't help it! And vindictively, at home, he's raised the standard of living and life expectancy! the bastard, only a lunatic would do so.And when he walks among the people he's forcing them ... at gunpoint!.... to put on forced smiles you can tell by looking. he.s a maniac! getting Assad to give up his chemical stores! crazy!


Kaiama -> BMWAlbert 11 May 2015 17:43

There was some indication that the ships could not be sold without the explicit permission of the Russians - probably because they provided the middle part of the hull and if they were feeling bad have the right to ask for it to be cut out and given back to them.


nnedjo 11 May 2015 17:42

"This trip is part of our ongoing effort to maintain direct lines of communication with senior Russian officials and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed," state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement.

I do not see what it was unclear so far in the views of the State Department at the Ukrainian crisis. I mean, if John Kerry is going to Sochi to repeat the usual accusations against Russia, which US officials have said so far, then there's really no need for him to go to Russia only because of this, nor Putin is interested to hear it one more time.
Thus, rather it will be some other reason behind this visit, about which we can now only guess. And none of us is so naive to believe that the Ukrainian crisis can be resolved without direct negotiations between the United States and Russia. So, either to make a deal, or to enter a further escalation of the military conflict.
I am inclined to believe that the latter, less predictable solution, is not in anyone's interest.


Kaiama -> Metronome151 11 May 2015 17:41

Maybe, but if the US did cut Russia off of SWIFT for instance, the Russians have already said that they would regard it as a declaration of "war". The US might start it but the Russians will definitely finish it.


MichaPalkin -> salthouse 11 May 2015 17:40

It finally happened: A REAL nutjob.

Now why don't you put your money where you mouth is, you pos and go join the fight against Putin yourself um?.. See? Told ya.


geedeesee -> Standupwoman 11 May 2015 17:31

On the glimmer of hope, I think you maybe right, though its early days. History books on 20th century show that when there's been a stand-off for sometime an intermediary, or unofficial envoy, is often sent to explore the basis for talks. And the history books also show confidence-building measures are used, such as making an announcement via the media acknowledging part of the grievance of the other side which can use for domestic purposes.

This happened with the IRA talks, for example, both in 1970s and 1990s. Last week Jimmy Carter visited Putin in Moscow, not on its own remarkable, but what suggested this wasn't an initiative of his own volition was the interview he gave to Voice of America (official US Gov. channel) immediately after the meeting in Moscow - indicating they'd travelled with him.

The narrative is for the press and the accompanying 45 second video of Carter saying all the right things for the Russians can be used by Russian TV/media in news reports.

Narrative:
http://www.voanews.com/content/carter-pleased-with-russia-embrace-of-minsk-agreement/2743389.html

45 second Carter video:
http://www.voanews.com/media/video/2743506.html

You'll be disappointed if you look for integrity with the players at this level, because it doesn't exist. They have their plans and self-interests; integrity doesn't come into it.


Dannycraig007 -> dmitryfrommoscow 11 May 2015 17:30

The Moscow Times is actually operated out of Scandinavia and their readership has been dropping due to the obvious anti-Russian propaganda.


ID5868758 -> Standupwoman 11 May 2015 17:27

Well, My-Lai was, of course, just a horrific example of evil behavior on the part of a few of our troops, but Kerry came home and, without personal knowledge, painted the entire military with the same broad brush, made up stories, and just so disgraced himself with this nation that he would never have won a Senate seat if he had not run in Massachusetts.

I still to this day cannot listen to him speak for more than a few minutes at a time, his betrayal of the men who were fighting and dying in the hellhole that was Vietnam will stay with me forever.


dmitryfrommoscow -> Havingalavrov 11 May 2015 17:26

The Moscow Times is one of those pro-Washington mouthpieces which, according to the claims by Putin's critics, have been ruthlessly wiped out of the scene.


SoloLoMejor 11 May 2015 17:15

I saw the Merkel Putin press conference in full. Merkel fully acknowledged and apologised for the horrors inflicted on the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, and quite rightly.

When asked specifically about what she still blamed Russia for with respect to Minsk she became a lot less clear and rambling and very non specific. I couldn't make out what her beef was although I really wanted to know.

She's going to need some very clear reasons to reinstate EU sanctions on Russia and the phrase Shaun Walker regurgitates in virtually every piece he writes, "mounting evidence" of Russian involvement (but without producing any) won't be enough this time round.


MichaPalkin -> alpamysh 11 May 2015 17:15

l though I find your comments stupid, and what is absolutely amazing is that guests such as you have had zero effect on anything.

Some fascist parties did once praise you and still do, ahem, "purely for the funding you was willing to give". Some grammar problems here eh.

But this has had no effect on nothing, or the policy of the EU in general.

One does not even see you loonies demonstrating in the street, shouting "hail" to Poro & Co."

Poro's only real "western" base of support comes from RFE and probably Guardian. Even Americans begin having their reservations now.

Period

Indeed, we may well have all your clownish incompetence to thank for your highly unsuccessful trolling.

OK, klopets?


John Smith -> Alderbaran 11 May 2015 17:06

You can forget about Crimea.

Nothing will come out from this talks because the US will not let off their 'great prize'
as the NED head called it. Unfortunately for Ukrainians.

ID5868758 -> Standupwoman 11 May 2015 16:31

Standupwoman, I rarely disagree with you, but as an American who lived through Vietnam as the wife of a Marine Corps officer, and the sister of a brother in country as a cryptologist, may I just tell you that John Kerry's actions in front of Congress were not seen by most as heroic at all, not borne of courage and integrity, especially since he had spent only a very short time in country, and had awarded himself 2 or 3 purple hearts, but strangely enough, has no scars of those wounds remaining today. He lied, it was a performance that caused much of America to shun him even today, and that's the truth.

Igor1980 -> GoodOldBoy1967 11 May 2015 16:29

I am in Sochi now, a navy ship is patrolling the area of the Residence and many police cars can be seen. It is not surprising . I was surprised by the number of cars with Ukrainian license plates. The hosts say that many Ukrainian citizens moved to the area on the coast with their money.


Standupwoman -> cabaret1993 11 May 2015 16:22

I agree. If this were HRC rather than Kerry I'd think we were doomed. Do you remember her hilariously rabble-rousing claim that Putin had no soul - 'He's KGB, it's a given!' - and Putin's dry response? That woman ought never to have been allowed within a hundred miles of foreign affairs, and if she ever becomes President then it'll be time to start stocking up on the potassium iodide...


Igor1980 -> Beckow 11 May 2015 16:12

Great and sober analysis. The reality is harsh for both parties and very painful for the USA: the people in the West are not ready to die for the cause of the American dominance.

It is easy to hate Putin, it is difficult to sacrifice your lives in a war to punish Russia for a little border change in the most unpleasant part of Eastern Europe.


MaoChengJi -> DogsLivesMatter 11 May 2015 16:11

state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement

That's just standard bs. What do you expect them to say.


Standupwoman 11 May 2015 16:06

Maybe I'm having a Pollyanna moment, but I wonder if there isn't just the littlest, tiniest glimmer of hope in this. The fact the US is prepared to talk to Russia on its own ground is definitely a step in the right direction, and the fact it's John Kerry is even better.

Because Kerry was once an honest man. Back in 1971 he testified to Congress about American war crimes in Vietnam, and showed the kind of courage and integrity it's almost impossible to mention in the same sentence as 'politician'. He talked openly about the everyday reality of rapes, torture, desecration of the dead, and killing civilians for fun – the American toolbox we're all familiar with in Afghanistan and Iraq, but which in 1971 was genuinely shocking news. Nationalists hated him, but I think he showed genuine American patriotism when he explained: 'We feel that because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it - not the Reds, not redcoats, but the crimes which we're committing are what threaten it – and we have to speak out.'

OK, he's a politician now, and his words have frequently been used against him to show the hypocrisy of his support for America's current wars, but deep down he's still in some way the same man he was then. He and Lavrov certainly used to have a good relationship until he made that unbelievably stupid remark about Russians 'lying to his face'.

That kind of populist rudeness plays well with the 'Murica, F*ck yeah!' mob, but grown-up countries tend to choose a calmer, more courteous approach when it comes to negotiations which could lead to the threat of nuclear war. Kerry will need to apologize for that (even if only in private) if he hopes to get in the same room as President Putin.

But maybe he will. Maybe he'll even confound the words of that Psaki-Manqué Harf and actually listen as well as talk. If he does, and if there's any integrity left in him, then maybe, just maybe, there'll really be a chance of peace.


PlatonKuzin -> oleteo 11 May 2015 16:03

The Ukies think that the US and EU do them gifts for granted. And they were very suprised as they knew that, for example, in Poland, an organization named "Restitution of Kresy" was established that in the nearest future will expropriate, from Ukraine, the property belonging to the Poles.

And more than 100,000 such Poles are now ready to start proceedings to return their property from there.


Dannycraig007 -> PlatonKuzin 11 May 2015 15:57

Agreed on the 50,000. I am just citing the US/MSM 'official' number. I have been keeping up with the real numbers also. Petri Krohn has done a great job establishing a proper count of the dead form various events and battles. The majority of those 50,000 dead are Ukrainian conscripts and Kievs Baghdad Bob intentionally played the numbers way down in order to not have to pay dead soldiers families and hide the truth of the war, which the US and EU media simply parroted with no investigation whatsoever. Here's a link to the numbers:

http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Ukraine_war_casualties

His site is an amazing geo-political resource. Lots of really interesting MH-17 material there too. http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Special:AllPages


greatwhitehunter -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 15:55

The US could have prevented all this by keeping there nose out of Ukraine . In the words of Obama we brokered the change of government in Ukraine.

Now their are 6000 plus people dead . east of Ukraine destroyed, Crimea gone never to return.

Only the US could imagine you could get away with this.\


Beckow -> Alderbaran 11 May 2015 15:54

Hmmm...don't fool yourself, he meant the Maidan crowd in Kiev. The problem Kiev government has is that as economy gets worse, the large cities like Kharkov, Odessa, etc... will become ungovernable. Except through brute force.

How do you "join EU" if you have to be suppressing large portion of your population? I am sure EU would love to look the other way, but the cognitive dissonance might get too much, with YouTube, refugees, etc...


Captain_Underpants 11 May 2015 15:52

Kerry will offer to swap Ukraine for Assad's head + no S300 missiles to Iran + sanction relief.

Putin and Lavrov will tell Kerry to stick the offer where the sun don't shine and then it's back to square one.

Obumbler won't be involved, he's too busy on the golf course, watching the NBA playoffs, and making hollow speeches filled with platitudes about race issues and police violence.

Meanwhile back in the increasingly irrelevant Euroweenie land, the NSA-compromised Frau Merckel has a desk and a phone and will do as told by her masters

Dannycraig007 -> DIPSET 11 May 2015 15:47

I'd still like to see what those US spy satellites saw the day MH-17 was shot down. They first said they had proof Russia did it, then they went quiet, then they relied on social media BS, then they said they had a drunk Ukrainian that made a confession that the rebel put on Ukrainain uniforms, then they stayed quiet. All the while they had ships in the Black Sea monitoring that airspace and they had AWACS flying over Europe.

They obviously know what really happened but they have chosen no to show that 'evidence'....there can only be one reason.......because it implicates the Kiev regime...and thereby....themselves.


geedeesee -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 15:42

"...the army of Ukraine is not at war with "protesters"."

Yes they are, they called it an Anti-Terror Operation and not war against an army. The facts are against you. Hard luck. ;-)


Dannycraig007 -> MaoChengJi 11 May 2015 15:40

Many people have no idea that Merkels father was in the Hitler youth. Sad but true fact. Hence, maybe that partly explains her allegiance to Ukraine.

Horst Kasner
Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Kasner
Kasner was born as Horst Kaźmierczak in 1926, the son of a policeman in the Pankow suburb of Berlin, where he was brought up. His father Ludwig Kaźmierczak (born 1896 in Posen, German Empire) - died 1959 in Berlin) was born out of wedlock to Anna Kazmierczak and Ludwik Wojciechowski.[1] Ludwig was mobilised into the German army in 1915 and sent to France, where he was taken prisoner of war and joined the Polish Haller's Army fighting on the side of Entente.[2] Together with the army he returned to Poland to fight in Polish-Ukrainian war and Polish-Soviet war.[3] After Posen had become part of Poland, Ludwig moved with his wife in 1923 to Berlin, where he served as a policeman, and changed his family name to Kasner in 1930.

Little is known about Horst Kasner's wartime service, and he was held as a prisoner of war at the age of 19. During his high school years he was a member of the Hitler Youth, with the last service position of a troop leader.[citation needed] From 1948 he studied theology, first in Heidelberg then in Hamburg. He married Herlind Jentzsch, an English and Latin teacher, born on 8 July 1928 in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) as the daughter of Danzig politician Willi Jentzsch, and their daughter Angela was born in 1954.

PlatonKuzin -> Kaiama 11 May 2015 15:38

There is another side of this medal: Novorussia said that, if Ukraine violates the ceasefire one more time, the Army of Novorussia will make no stops any longer and will free Kiev.


Beckow -> MichaPalkin 11 May 2015 15:35

Threats are simply a part of making deals. When one threatens, there is an implicit understanding of what the alternatives are. It is how countries negotiate.

Look at it from Russia's point of view: they prefer to deal with useless twats. Putin has been smart to keep all his threats, options and deals to himself. He speaks very diplomatically and applies pressure on the ground. There is a Russian saying: "let the punishment tell" - that's what Russia is doing and it drives the likes of Kerry crazy.

Unless US escalates into a nuclear confrontation, Russia has the upper hand in the long run. That was obvious from the beginning. So the question is why did Peace Price Winner do this? Why did he start? Is he and people around him that stupid or that desperate? I hope, it is just stupidity.

"Poro & Co would be applying for the political asylum in the US" - that's going to happen anyway, but I think Canada will take the bulk of them...


Beckow -> Alderbaran 11 May 2015 15:24

Let's be clear: Kerry is flying in with a proposal to review with Lavrov. If Russia accepts, Kerry will meet Putin. If not, we will know that sh..t is about to escalate - on both sides.

Regarding "military involvement": both sides are heavily militarily involved with arms, training, "advisors" of all kinds, intelligence, logistics. And both sides downplay it ("lie", if you prefer). Why is that even an issue? Or "news"?

It is infantile to discuss it. In a war there is always "military involvement". And this is a war, has been for about a year, this is the way wars are fought now (see Syria, Libya, etc...).

And yes, of course Putin can change weather. Anyone with enough nukes can.


BMWAlbert 11 May 2015 15:15

Looks like India's participation in the Moscow parade is also paralleled by the cutting of 80% of the French fighter order (remembering that the govt. in New Delhi stated several months ago that its confidence in France as a supplier would be related to its vulnerability to political pressuring vis a vis the RU ships that will end-up being scrapped or bought by by a third party, and it might be that said party, if also participating in said parade, might sell in turn to RU for a 'cut'). IDK if this is related, big new orders from India for SU's:

https://www.ibcworldnews.com/2015/04/20/why-the-brahmos-armed-sukhoi-is-bad-news-for-indias-enemies/

These cannot be made in Russia, in any event, as Russia is entirely isolated.


Dannycraig007 11 May 2015 15:09

The US has really hurt itself with the WW2 remembrance ceremony snub. Russia won't be soon forgetting what the US has been doing in Ukraine and Europe either. After all the 7,000 people killed by the Kiev regime that came to power through the US backed coup were all ethnic Russian Ukrainian civilians. So many lives could have been saved if only the US would have allowed federalization of the obviously ethnically diverse regions of the country.

For those that missed it, here's link to the amazing WW2 Red Square commemoration concert. It truly was a sight to behold.

Absolutely Stunning! The Entire Russian "Road To Victory" Concert Spectacle -2015 Epic Masterpiece Rivals Olympic Ceremonies
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9c1_1431271822#esjFeSXyZqIlzoY8.99


SonnyTuckson 11 May 2015 14:15

Turn Ukraine into a federation. Of a rich pro western part that is member of the EU and a poor pro Russian part that is member of the Eurasian Union.

In ten years time the East Ukrainians will have had enough of their Russian propaganda-ridden life without a decent standard of living. We will then have another Euromaidan, but this time in Donbass.

History always discloses propaganda lies. In the end the people of Donbass will understand they have been used by Russia for its geopolitical games. And chose for a prosperous future in Europe as well.


Beckow -> geedeesee 11 May 2015 14:14

Yes, there are huge problems.

But if US accepts a de facto defeat in Ukraine, they are done in many other places too. My guess is that they will try to weasel out of it by offering a deal to Russia:

- US backs down, Kiev goes back in the box (over time), things quiet down, BUT no victory speeches or remarks by Russia. US has to be able to maintain that they "won".

It is a disease for insecure people. They fear being seen as losers more than anything else. Thus we might still see the fire-works if Russia refuses to oblige.


vr13vr 11 May 2015 14:09

"Unfairly blaming Russia for the crisis in Ukraine, which was actually in the main provoked by the US itself, Obama's administration in 2014 went down the road of ruining bilateral links, announced a policy of 'isolating' our country on the international stage, and demanded support for its confrontational steps from the countries that traditionally follow Washington."

Why does the press want us feel so amazed about this quote? What part of it isn't true?

1. US did and does blame Russia for crisis in Ukraine.
2. US did provoke the crisis.
3. US did go down the road of ruining bilateral links.
4. It did announced a policy of "isolation."
5. And it did demand support for its steps from other countries in Europe.

Putin actually appears to be a straight talker.


vr13vr -> caliento 11 May 2015 14:05

"The first question asked should be... "

Kerry doesn't get to ask questions as if he were running a deposition. He can talk politely and be nice. Outside of the US police TV show and court drama, nobody in the world allows anyone to speak like this, especially in the diplomatic talks with Russia.


vr13vr 11 May 2015 14:03

"Russia believes that the US is meddling in Ukraine..."

No, it's not just Russia believes. It is a fact. And everyone knows it, not just Russia.


geedeesee -> Beckow 11 May 2015 13:46

Add to your list:

EU unity under considerable strain. Divisive issues on it's plate include Greece and Grexit, UK referendum and possible Brexit, UK Human rights exit, unresolved Eurozone crisis, migrant quotas, all made worse by further US spying revelations and German betrayal of EU businesses to the benefit of US companies.

Putin now supporting/funding anti-EU parties in Europe.

MH17 report and voice recorder info, clearly delayed for political reasons, is due this summer.

Obama administration needs cooperation at UNSC on Iran nuclear deal.

Putin supplying arms to Iran is giving Obama more problems from Netanyahu.

If Obama has plans for a last attempt at cracking Israel/palestine then he'll need as much international support as he can muster.

Russia opening spying and military bases in Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.


BunglyPete 11 May 2015 13:46

Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I've seen since the very height of the cold war,

That suggests that it is equivalent to the RFE/RL campaigns of the Cold War.

The reports they produced in 1984 relating to showing the Ukrainian nationalists in a good light were described by Richard Pipes as "blatant anti-semitic propaganda". Not my words, the words of Richard Pipes.

These same reports are reprinted today in the Guardian and if you disagree you are a "Putin propagandist". Even though Richard Pipes agrees that it is distasteful propaganda.

Other activities involved sending millions of balloons across eastern Europe, campaigns in the US to ask for "Truth Dollars" to fund said balloon campaigns, leaflets pretending to come from a fictional resistance organisation intended to militarise citizens against their governments, and much much more. There are many books and articles on the subject.

Senator Royce said in May 2014, in an instruction to Victoria Nuland at a senate subcommitee hearing, he wants them "producing the stuff they did years ago". Indeed they granted more money than they did during the cold war to BBG campaigns.

In comparison to the rather pathetic RT, the US campaigns are far more serious in scope and effects.


madeiranlotuseater 11 May 2015 13:27

and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed," state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement

In other words, do as the USA says or we shall continue to hound you.

"Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I've seen since the very height of the cold war," Kerry said in February. "And they have been persisting in their misrepresentations, lies, whatever you want to call them, about their activities to my face, to the face of others, on many different occasions."

There speaks the nation that admits to being involved in forcing regime changes all over the world since 1947. To arm twisting and invading Iraq on the basis of a known lie. If Mr Kerry believes he has been lied to he should present his evidence. We can all relax then. But he doesn't. He says to trust him to tell the truth. Why should we. The USA is a massive war machine intent on ruling the world. China and Russia are not interested in being bullied.


Beckow -> deathbydemocracy 11 May 2015 12:53

I see that even indirect criticism of the media coverage is not allowed. Interesting, but somehow understandable.


DIPSET 11 May 2015 12:31

First when they thought they thought they were "winning" they did not want to talk and instead, instructed their media to do the talking for them.

Okay.

Then reality happened hahaha

As a consequence, we now have all sorts of chatter coming out of Washington and the urgent need to talk to Russia. So now it's......

Let's "talk" about East Ukraine
Let's "talk about Iraq
Let's "talk" about Syria
Let's "talk" about Yemen
Let's "talk about Iran
Lets "talk" about Latin America

Funny how seeing China and Russia stand next to each other has sharpened some minds across the Atlantic.

Pity they could not "talk" before Crimea was 'liberated' right in front of the American satellites circling in space lol

;-)

Fascinating times


Ilja NB 11 May 2015 12:28

Which mounting evidence ??? I haven't seen a single one provided ?

**The Russian foreign ministry said: "We continue to underline that we are ready for cooperation with the US on the basis of equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and that Russian interests are taken into account without attempting to exert pressure on us."**

Of-course USA will never agree with it, since USA wants to put it's nose in everyone's affairs.


BMWAlbert -> BunglyPete 11 May 2015 11:55

Mr. Semenchenko is clearly referring to Greater Ukraine here that extends east into the Kuban, including some buffer areas around the mount Elbrus region (intruded upon on this 2008 occasion) to the south, and north to the Middle Don and Upper Donets basins, to include Beograd and steppe lands east of Voronezh.

Beckow -> miceonparade 11 May 2015 11:40

Kerry is going to make a deal. Probably surrender after one more chest-beating threat. If Putin doesn't meet him (also possible), we will have a very hot summer in Ukraine. And maybe elsewhere.

Beckow 11 May 2015 11:34

Kerry is going for a reason, and it is not to restate US views. The reality is:

  • - Ukraine cannot win the war in its east
  • - Ukraine is going bankrupt
  • - EU has just basically said no to Ukraine in EU for foreseeable future (decades?)
  • - EU denied visa-free access for Ukrainians
  • - the whole f...ing adventure in Kiev is getting really, really expensive
  • - time is on Russia's side, they can sit and watch Kiev collapse or West spending billions to prop it up
  • - EU cannot currently survive without Russia's gas. Russia has deals with China and Turkey, in 3 years EU will be screwed or pay a lot, lot more

These realities on the ground drive US crazy. They don't like to deal with reality, it is too hard. They prefer the fantasy play world where US is god-like, others are scared and geography, resources and other realities are wished away. Infantile. Stupid. Self-defeating. Russia is actually doing US a favor by bringing them back to the real word.

I feel sorry for the Ukrainians; they will suffer for years enormously. They rebelled against a miserable life, were used by a few hustlers from Washington, Berlin and a few Polish ultra-nationalists, now they will pay for it all. Those are the wages of naivete...

emb27516 miceonparade 11 May 2015 11:32

Yes, especially if they wrestle.

BunglyPete 11 May 2015 11:32

"Mr Putin, look at these images provided to our Senator Inhofe, from Mr Semenchenko of Ukraine's official government designation to Washington.

As you can see, these images from Georgia in 2008 clearly show you invaded Ukraine last year. We feel these images prove the invasion so strongly, Senator Inhofe wrote a bill authorising arms to Ukraine, and we passed this quite easily.

What, Mr Putin, will you do about this? If you continue to send tanks to Georgia in 2008 then we will assume you have no interest in fulfilling the terms of Minsk accord and will enact necessary measures to ensure the stability of Ukraine."

alsojusticeseeker Jeremn 11 May 2015 11:27

"He may be a son of a b..., but he is our son of a b...". Just another typical example of US hypocrisy.

BMWAlbert 11 May 2015 11:25

If only his brain were as big as his hair (obviously, not the bald one).

warehouse_guy 11 May 2015 11:25

"Western leaders mainly boycotted the parade in protest at Russia's actions in Ukraine."

Aka people's will in Crimea, and Russian people's will to help Donbass, they are not exactly hiding it there are donation kiosks all over the country almost in every major city. Not on government level though. There are no on duty Russian troops in Ukraine.

RudolphS 11 May 2015 11:24

So, Barry is too chickenshit to go to Russia himself?

Jeremn 11 May 2015 11:19

Americans should be asking why their government is supporting a Ukrainian governmnet which honours veterans of an insurgency which massacred Poles, Jews and Russians across Ukraine in 1943 and 1944.

Here they are, members of the UPA-OUN. Rehabilitated by Poroshenko's governmnet. It was an organisation which formed the Nachtigall Battalion, in German service, and tasked with clearing the Lvov ghetto, and which took men from SS auxiliaries (Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201), which cleared Belarus of partisans and Jews.

Most notoriously, the UPA ran a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Poles in Ukraine, killing some 100,000 of them (mostly women and children).

So there are the veterans, in Ukraine's parliament. Here's a history of one of their massacres.

America, you should know.

Steve Ennever 11 May 2015 11:15

"The US has placed several rounds of sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine"

It has indeed. And badgered Europe into sanctioning Russia further. All of which has affected the US little but has been an immense pain economically for it's "allies."
Strangely though, in 2014, business between the US & Russia actually increased by 7%.

Honestly, you get taken for a ride as recently as Iraq & Libya & you still don't learn a thing.

StatusFoe11 May 2015 11:08

"This trip is part of our ongoing effort to maintain direct lines of communication with senior Russian officials and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed,"

i.e. "If you don't do what we say and submit to our will there'll be more costs."

warehouse_guy 11 May 2015 11:00

"While Washington has pointed to mounting evidence of Russian military involvement in the east of the country."

Yet unable to provide any concrete evidence for over a year...

[May 11, 2015] Why Ukraine Still Cant Break Ties With Russian Aggressor State by Simon Shuster

Already Ukraine is approaching that point. With most of its scarce resources focused on fighting Russia's proxies in the east, Ukraine's leaders have watched their economy fall off a cliff, surviving only by the grace of massive loans from Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which approved another $17.5 billion last month to be disbursed over the next four years. But that assistance has not stopped the national currency of Ukraine from losing two-thirds of its value since last winter. In the last three months of 2014, the size of the economy contracted almost 15%, inflation shot up to 40%, and unemployment approached double digits.
Notable quotes:
"... "Personally, I do not consider Russia to be an aggressor," he said, looking down at his lap. ..."
"... Its economy cannot survive, he says, unless trade and cooperation with the "aggressor state" continue, regardless how much Russia has done in the past year to sow conflict in Ukraine. ..."
"... Already Ukraine is approaching that point. With most of its scarce resources focused on fighting Russia's proxies in the east, Ukraine's leaders have watched their economy fall off a cliff, surviving only by the grace of massive loans from Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which approved another $17.5 billion last month to be disbursed over the next four years. But that assistance has not stopped the national currency of Ukraine from losing two-thirds of its value since last winter. In the last three months of 2014, the size of the economy contracted almost 15%, inflation shot up to 40%, and unemployment approached double digits. ..."
"... About 40% of its orders normally come from Russia, which relies on Turboatom for most of the turbines that run its nuclear power stations. ..."
"... So for all the aid coming from the state-backed institutions in the U.S. and Europe, Cherkassky says, "those markets haven't exactly met us with open arms." ..."
Apr 13, 2015 | TIME

Having survived an assassin's bullet, a revolution and a war, Gennady Kernes now faces a fight over Ukraine's constitution

One afternoon in late February, Gennady Kernes, the mayor of Kharkov, Ukraine's second largest city, pushed his wheelchair away from the podium at city hall and, with a wince of discomfort, allowed his bodyguards to help him off the stage. The day's session of the city council had lasted several hours, and the mayor's pain medication had begun to wear off. It was clear from the grimace on his face how much he still hurt from the sniper's bullet that nearly killed him last spring. But he collected himself, adjusted his tie and rolled down the aisle to the back of the hall, where the press was waiting to grill him.

"Gennady Adolfovich," one of the local journalists began, politely addressing the mayor by his name and patronymic. "Do you consider Russia to be an aggressor?" He had seen this loaded question coming. The previous month, Ukraine's parliament had unanimously voted to declare Russia an "aggressor state," moving the two nations closer to a formal state of war after nearly a year of armed conflict. Kernes, long known as a shrewd political survivor, was among the only prominent officials in Ukraine to oppose this decision, even though he knew he could be branded a traitor for it. "Personally, I do not consider Russia to be an aggressor," he said, looking down at his lap.

It was a sign of his allegiance in the new phase of Ukraine's war. Since February, when a fragile ceasefire began to take hold, the question of the country's survival has turned to a debate over its reconstitution. Under the conditions of the truce, Russia has demanded that Ukraine embrace "federalization," a sweeping set of constitutional reforms that would take power away from the capital and redistribute it to the regions. Ukraine now has to decide how to meet this demand without letting its eastern provinces fall deeper into Russia's grasp.

The state council charged with making this decision convened for the first time on April 6, and President Petro Poroshenko gave it strict instructions. Some autonomy would have to be granted to the regions, he said, but Russia's idea of federalization was a red line he wouldn't cross. "It is like an infection, a biological weapon, which is being imposed on Ukraine from abroad," the President said. "Its bacteria are trying to infect Ukraine and destroy our unity."

Kernes sees it differently. His city of 1.4 million people is a sprawling industrial powerhouse, a traditional center of trade and culture whose suburbs touch the Russian border. Its economy cannot survive, he says, unless trade and cooperation with the "aggressor state" continue, regardless how much Russia has done in the past year to sow conflict in Ukraine.

"That's how the Soviet Union built things," Kernes explains in his office at the mayoralty, which is decorated with an odd collection of gifts and trinkets, such as a stuffed lion, a robotic-looking sculpture of a scorpion, and a statuette of Kernes in the guise of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. "That's how our factories were set up back in the day," he continues. "It's a fact of life. And what will we do if Russia, our main customer, stops buying?" To answer his own question, he uses an old provincialism: "It'll be cat soup for all of us then," he said.

Already Ukraine is approaching that point. With most of its scarce resources focused on fighting Russia's proxies in the east, Ukraine's leaders have watched their economy fall off a cliff, surviving only by the grace of massive loans from Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which approved another $17.5 billion last month to be disbursed over the next four years. But that assistance has not stopped the national currency of Ukraine from losing two-thirds of its value since last winter. In the last three months of 2014, the size of the economy contracted almost 15%, inflation shot up to 40%, and unemployment approached double digits.

But that pain will be just the beginning, says Kernes, unless Ukraine allows its eastern regions to develop economic ties with Russia. As proof he points to the fate of Turboatom, his city's biggest factory, which produces turbines for both Russian and Ukrainian power stations. Its campus takes up more than five square kilometers near the center of Kharkov, like a city within a city, complete with dormitories and bathhouses for its 6,000 employees. On a recent evening, its deputy director, Alexei Cherkassky, was looking over the factory's sales list as though it were a dire medical prognosis. About 40% of its orders normally come from Russia, which relies on Turboatom for most of the turbines that run its nuclear power stations.

"Unfortunately, all of our major industries are intertwined with Russia in this way," Cherkassky says. "So we shouldn't fool ourselves in thinking we can be independent from Russia. We are totally interdependent." Over the past year, Russia has started cutting back on orders from Turboatom as part of its broader effort to starve Ukraine's economy, and the factory has been forced as a result to cut shifts, scrap overtime and push hundreds of workers into retirement.

At least in the foreseeable future, it does not have the option of shifting sales to Europe. "Turbines aren't iPhones," says Cherkassky. "You don't switch them out every few months." And the ones produced at Turboatom, like nearly all of Ukraine's heavy industry, still use Soviet means of production that don't meet the needs of most Western countries. So for all the aid coming from the state-backed institutions in the U.S. and Europe, Cherkassky says, "those markets haven't exactly met us with open arms."

Russia knows this. For decades it has used the Soviet legacy of interdependence as leverage in eastern Ukraine. The idea of its "federalization" derives in part from this reality. For two decades, one of the leading proponents of this vision has been the Russian politician Konstantin Zatulin, who heads the Kremlin-connected institute in charge of integrating the former Soviet space. Since at least 2004, he has been trying to turn southeastern Ukraine into a zone of Russian influence – an effort that got him banned from entering the country between 2006 and 2010.

His political plan for controlling Ukraine was put on hold last year, as Russia began using military means to achieve the same ends. But the current ceasefire has brought his vision back to the fore. "If Ukraine accepts federalization, we would have no need to tear Ukraine apart," Zatulin says in his office in Moscow, which is cluttered with antique weapons and other military bric-a-brac. Russia could simply build ties with the regions of eastern Ukraine that "share the Russian point of view on all the big issues," he says. "Russia would have its own soloists in the great Ukrainian choir, and they would sing for us. This would be our compromise."

It is a compromise that Kernes seems prepared to accept, despite everything he has suffered in the past year of political turmoil. Early on in the conflict with Russia, he admits that he flirted with ideas of separatism himself, and he fiercely resisted the revolution that brought Poroshenko's government to power last winter. In one of its first decisions, that government even brought charges against Kernes for allegedly abducting, threatening and torturing supporters of the revolution in Kharkov. After that, recalls Zatulin, the mayor "simply chickened out." Facing a long term in prison, Kernes accepted Ukraine's new leaders and turned his back on the separatist cause, refusing to allow his city to hold a referendum on secession from Ukraine.

"And you know what I got for that," Kernes says. "I got a bullet." On April 28, while he was exercising near a city park, an unidentified sniper shot Kernes in the back with a high-caliber rifle. The bullet pierced his lung and shredded part of his liver, but it also seemed to shore up his bona fides as a supporter of Ukrainian unity. The state dropped its charges against him soon after, and he was able to return to his post.

It wasn't the first time he made such an incredible comeback. In 2007, while he was serving as adviser to his friend and predecessor, Mikhail Dobkin, a video of them trying to film a campaign ad was leaked to the press. It contained such a hilarious mix of bumbling incompetence and backalley obscenity that both of their careers seemed sure to be over. Kernes not only survived that scandal but was elected mayor a few years later.

Now the fight over Ukraine's federalization is shaping up to be his last. In late March, as he continued demanding more autonomy for Ukraine's eastern regions, the state re-opened its case against him for alleged kidnapping and torture, which he has always denied. The charges, he says, are part of a campaign against all politicians in Ukraine who support the restoration of civil ties with Russia. "They don't want to listen to reason," he says.

But one way or another, the country will still have to let its eastern regions to do business with the enemy next door, "because that's where the money is," Kernes says. No matter how much aid Ukraine gets from the IMF and other Western backers, it will not be enough to keep the factories of Kharkov alive. "They'll just be left to rot without our steady clients in Russia." Never mind that those clients may have other plans for Ukraine in mind.

[May 10, 2015] The New York Times does its government s bidding Here s what you re not being told about US troops in Ukraine

Notable quotes:
"... American soldiers in Ukraine, American media not saying much about it. Two facts. ..."
"... Americans are being led blindfolded very near the brink of war with Russia. ..."
"... Don't need a war to get what done, Mr. President? This is our question. Then this one: Washington is going to stop at exactly what as it manipulates its latest set of puppets in disadvantaged countries, this time pretending there is absolutely nothing thoughtless or miscalculated about doing so on Russia's historically sensitive western border? ..."
"... And our policy cliques are willing to go all the way to war for this? As of mid-April, when the 173rd Airborne Brigade started arriving in Ukraine, it looks as if we are on notice in this respect. ..."
"... Take a deep breath and consider that 1,000 American folks, as Obama will surely get around to calling them, are conducting military drills with troops drawn partly from Nazi and crypto-Nazi paramilitary groups . Sorry, I cannot add anything more to this paragraph. Speechless. ..."
"... Part of me still thinks war with Russia seems a far-fetched proposition. But here's the thing: It is even more far-fetched to deny the gravity of this moment for all its horrific, playing-with-fire potential. ..."
"... Last December, John Pilger, the noted Australian journalist now in London, said in a speech that the Ukraine crisis had become the most extreme news blackout he had seen his entire career. I agree and now need no more proof as to whether it is a matter of intent or ineptitude. (Now that I think of it, it is both in many cases.) ..."
"... In the sixth paragraph we get this: "Last week, Russia charged that a modest program to train Ukraine's national guard that 300 American troops are carrying out in western Ukraine could 'destabilize the situation.'" Apoplectically speaking: Goddamn it, there is nothing modest about U.S. troops operating on Ukrainian soil, and it is self-evidently destabilizing. It is an obvious provocation, a point the policy cliques in Washington cannot have missed. ..."
"... The Poroshenko government contrives to assign Russia the blame, but one can safely ignore this. Extreme right members of parliament have been more to the point. After a prominent editor named Oles Buzyna was fatally shot outside his home several weeks ago, a lawmaker named Boris Filatov told colleagues, "One more piece of shit has been eliminated." From another named Irina Farion, this: Death will neutralize the dirt this shit has spilled. Such people go to history's sewers." ..."
"... He was a vigorous opponent of American adventurism abroad, consistent and reasoned even as resistance to both grew in his later years. By the time he was finished he was published and read far more outside America than in it. ..."
May 09, 2015 | NYTimes.com

Reprinted from May 07, 2015 article at Salon.com

As of mid-April, when a Pentagon flack announced it in Kiev, and as barely reported in American media, U.S. troops are now operating openly in Ukraine.

Now there is a lead I have long dreaded writing but suspected from the first that one day I would. Do not take a moment to think about this. Take many moments. We all need to. We find ourselves in grave circumstances this spring.

At first I thought I had written what newspaper people call a double-barreled lead: American soldiers in Ukraine, American media not saying much about it. Two facts.

Wrong. There is one fact now, and it is this: Americans are being led blindfolded very near the brink of war with Russia.

One cannot predict there will be one. And, of course, right-thinking people hope things will never come to one. In March, President Obama dismissed any such idea as if to suggest it was silly. "They're not interested in a military confrontation with us," Obama said of the Russians-wisely. Then he added, unwisely: "We don't need a war."

Don't need a war to get what done, Mr. President? This is our question. Then this one: Washington is going to stop at exactly what as it manipulates its latest set of puppets in disadvantaged countries, this time pretending there is absolutely nothing thoughtless or miscalculated about doing so on Russia's historically sensitive western border?

The pose of American innocence, tatty and tiresome in the best of times, is getting dangerous once again.

The source of worry now is that we do not have an answer to the second question. The project is plain: Advance NATO the rest of the way through Eastern Europe, probably with the intent of eventually destabilizing Moscow. The stooges now installed in Kiev are getting everything ready for the corporations eager to exploit Ukrainian resources and labor.

And our policy cliques are willing to go all the way to war for this? As of mid-April, when the 173rd Airborne Brigade started arriving in Ukraine, it looks as if we are on notice in this respect.

In the past there were a few vague mentions of an American military presence in Ukraine that was to be in place by this spring, if I recall correctly. These would have been last autumn. By then, there were also reports, unconfirmed, that some troops and a lot of spooks were already there as advisers but not acknowledged.

Then in mid-March President Poroshenko introduced a bill authorizing-as required by law-foreign troops to operate on Ukrainian soil. There was revealing detail, according to Russia Insider, a free-standing website in Moscow founded and run by Charles Bausman, an American with an uncanny ability to gather and publish pertinent information.

"According to the draft law, Ukraine plans three Ukrainian-American command post exercises, Fearless Guardian 2015, Sea Breeze 2015 and Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident 2015," the publication reported, "and two Ukrainian-Polish exercises, Secure Skies 2015, and Law and Order 2015, for this year."

This is a lot of dry-run maneuvering, if you ask me. Poroshenko's law allows for up to 1,000 American troops to participate in each of these exercises, alongside an equal number of Ukrainian "National Guardsmen," and we will insist on the quotation marks when referring to this gruesome lot, about whom more in a minute.

Take a deep breath and consider that 1,000 American folks, as Obama will surely get around to calling them, are conducting military drills with troops drawn partly from Nazi and crypto-Nazi paramilitary groups . Sorry, I cannot add anything more to this paragraph. Speechless.

It was a month to the day after Poroshenko's bill went to parliament that the Pentagon spokesman in Kiev announced-to a room empty of American correspondents, we are to assume-that troops from the 173rd Airborne were just then arriving to train none other than "National Guardsmen." This training includes "classes in war-fighting functions," as the operations officer, Maj. Jose Mendez, blandly put it at the time.

The spokesman's number was "about 300," and I never like "about" when these people are describing deployments. This is how it always begins, we will all recall. The American presence in Vietnam began with a handful of advisers who arrived in September 1950. (Remember MAAG, the Military Assistance Advisory Group?)

Part of me still thinks war with Russia seems a far-fetched proposition. But here's the thing: It is even more far-fetched to deny the gravity of this moment for all its horrific, playing-with-fire potential.

I am getting on to apoplectic as to the American media's abject irresponsibility in not covering this stuff adequately. To leave these events unreported is outright lying by omission. Nobody's news judgment can be so bad as to argue this is not a story.

Last December, John Pilger, the noted Australian journalist now in London, said in a speech that the Ukraine crisis had become the most extreme news blackout he had seen his entire career. I agree and now need no more proof as to whether it is a matter of intent or ineptitude. (Now that I think of it, it is both in many cases.)

To cross the "i"s and dot the "t"s, as I prefer to do, the Times did make two mentions of the American troops. One was the day of the announcement, a brief piece on an inside page, datelined Washington. Here we get our code word for this caper: It will be "modest" in every mention.

The second was in an April 23 story by Michael Gordon, the State Department correspondent. The head was, "Putin Bolsters His Forces Near Ukraine, U.S. Says." Read the thing here.

The story line is a doozy: Putin-not "the Russians" or "Moscow," of course-is again behaving aggressively by amassing troops-how many, exactly where and how we know is never explained-along his border with Ukraine. Inside his border, that is. This is the story. This is what we mean by aggression these days.

In the sixth paragraph we get this: "Last week, Russia charged that a modest program to train Ukraine's national guard that 300 American troops are carrying out in western Ukraine could 'destabilize the situation.'" Apoplectically speaking: Goddamn it, there is nothing modest about U.S. troops operating on Ukrainian soil, and it is self-evidently destabilizing. It is an obvious provocation, a point the policy cliques in Washington cannot have missed.

At this point, I do not see how anyone can stand against the argument-mine for some time-that Putin has shown exemplary restraint in this crisis. In a reversal of roles and hemispheres, Washington would have a lot more than air defense systems and troops of whatever number on the border in question.

The Times coverage of Ukraine, to continue briefly in this line, starts to remind me of something I.F. Stone once said about the Washington Post: The fun of reading it, the honored man observed, is that you never know where you'll find a page one story.

In the Times' case, you never know if you will find it at all.

Have you read much about the wave of political assassinations that erupted in Kiev in mid-April? Worry not. No one else has either-not in American media. Not a word in the Times.

The number my sources give me, and I cannot confirm it, is a dozen so far-12 to 13 to be precise. On the record, we have 10 who can be named and identified as political allies of Viktor Yanukovych, the president ousted last year, opponents of a drastic rupture in Ukraine's historic relations to Russia, people who favored marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of the Nazis-death-deserving idea, this-and critics of the new regime's corruptions and dependence on violent far-right extremists.

These were all highly visible politicians, parliamentarians and journalists. They have been murdered by small groups of these extremists, according to reports readily available in non-American media. In my read, the killers may have the same semi-official ties to government that the paramilitary death squads in 1970s Argentina-famously recognizable in their Ford Falcons-had with Videla and the colonels.

The Poroshenko government contrives to assign Russia the blame, but one can safely ignore this. Extreme right members of parliament have been more to the point. After a prominent editor named Oles Buzyna was fatally shot outside his home several weeks ago, a lawmaker named Boris Filatov told colleagues, "One more piece of shit has been eliminated." From another named Irina Farion, this: Death will neutralize the dirt this shit has spilled. Such people go to history's sewers."

Kindly place, Kiev's parliament under this new crowd. Washington must be proud, having backed yet another right-wing, anti-democratic, rights-trampling regime that does what it says.

And our media must be silent, of course. It can be no other way. Gutless hacks: You bet I am angry.

* * *

I end this week's column with a tribute.

A moment of observance, any kind, for William Pfaff, who died at 86 in Paris late last week. The appreciative obituary by the Times' Marlise Simons is here.

Pfaff was the most sophisticated foreign affairs commentator of the 20th century's second half and the first 15 years of this one. He was a great influence among colleagues (myself included) and put countless readers in a lot of places in the picture over many decades. He was a vigorous opponent of American adventurism abroad, consistent and reasoned even as resistance to both grew in his later years. By the time he was finished he was published and read far more outside America than in it.

Pfaff was a conservative man in some respects, which is not uncommon among America's American critics. In this I put him in the file with Henry Steele Commager, C. Vann Woodward, William Appleman Williams, and among those writing now, Andrew Bacevich. He was not a scholar, as these writers were or are, supporting a point I have long made: Not all intellectuals are scholars, and not all scholars are intellectuals.

Pfaff's books will live on and I commend them: "Barbarian Sentiments," "The Wrath of Nations," "The Bullet's Song," and his last, "The Irony of Manifest Destiny," are the ones on my shelf.

Farewell from a friend, Bill.

Patrick Smith is the author of "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century." He was the International Herald Tribune's bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote "Letter from Tokyo" for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @thefloutist. More Patrick L. Smith.

[May 10, 2015] Obama s Petulant WWII Snub of Russia by Ray McGovern

Notable quotes:
"... Though designed to isolate Russia because it had the audacity to object to the Western-engineered coup d'état in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, this snub of Russia's President Vladimir Putin – like the economic sanctions against Russia – is likely to backfire on the U.S. ..."
"... Obama's boycott is part of a crass attempt to belittle Russia and to cram history itself into an anti-Putin, anti-Russian alternative narrative. ..."
"... Even George Friedman, the president of the Washington-Establishment-friendly think-tank STRATFOR, has said publicly in late 2014: "Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d'état organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history." ..."
"... So there! Gotcha! Russian aggression! But what the Post neglected to remind readers was that the U.S.-backed coup had occurred on Feb. 22 and that Putin has consistently said that a key factor in his actions toward Crimea came from Russian fears that NATO would claim the historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, representing a strategic threat to his country. ..."
"... Last fall, John Mearsheimer, a pre-eminent political science professor at the University of Chicago, stunned those who had been misled by the anti-Russian propaganda when he placed an article in the Very-Establishment journal Foreign Affairs entitled "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault." ..."
"... Much of this American tendency to disdain other nations' concerns, fears and points of pride go back to the Washington Establishment's dogma that special rules or (perhaps more accurately) no rules govern U.S. behavior abroad – American exceptionalism. This arrogant concept, which puts the United States above all other nations like some Olympic god looking down on mere mortals, is often invoked by Obama and other leading U.S. politicians. ..."
"... Putin added, though, "I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism," adding: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." ..."
May 09, 2015 | antiwar.com
President Barack Obama's decision to join other Western leaders in snubbing Russia's weekend celebration of the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe looks more like pouting than statesmanship, especially in the context of the U.S. mainstream media's recent anti-historical effort to downplay Russia's crucial role in defeating Nazism.

Though designed to isolate Russia because it had the audacity to object to the Western-engineered coup d'état in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, this snub of Russia's President Vladimir Putin – like the economic sanctions against Russia – is likely to backfire on the U.S. and its European allies by strengthening ties between Russia and the emerging Asian giants of China and India.

Notably, the dignitaries who will show up at this important commemoration include the presidents of China and India, representing a huge chunk of humanity, who came to show respect for the time seven decades ago when the inhumanity of the Nazi regime was defeated – largely by Russia's stanching the advance of Hitler's armies, at a cost of 20 to 30 million lives.

Obama's boycott is part of a crass attempt to belittle Russia and to cram history itself into an anti-Putin, anti-Russian alternative narrative. It is difficult to see how Obama and his friends could have come up with a pettier and more gratuitous insult to the Russian people.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel – caught between Washington's demand to "isolate" Russia over the Ukraine crisis and her country's historic guilt in the slaughter of so many Russians – plans to show up a day late to place a wreath at a memorial for the war dead.

But Obama, in his childish display of temper, will look rather small to those who know the history of the Allied victory in World War II. If it were not for the Red Army's costly victories against the German invaders, particularly the tide-turning battle at Stalingrad in 1943-1944, the prospects for the later D-Day victory in Normandy in June 1944 and the subsequent defeat of Adolf Hitler would have been much more difficult if not impossible.

Yet, the current Russia-bashing in Washington and the mainstream U.S. media overrides these historical truths. For instance, a New York Times article by Neil MacFarquhar on Friday begins: "The Russian version of Hitler's defeat emphasizes the enormous, unrivaled sacrifices made by the Soviet people to end World War II " But that's not the "Russian version"; that's the history.

For its part, the Washington Post chose to run an Associated Press story out of Moscow reporting: "A state-of-the-art Russian tank on Thursday ground to a halt during the final Victory Day rehearsal. After an attempt to tow it failed, the T-14 rolled away under its own steam 15 minutes later." (Subtext: Ha, ha! Russia's newest tank gets stuck on Red Square! Ha, ha!).

This juvenile approach to pretty much everything that's important - not just U.S.-Russia relations - has now become the rule. From the U.S. government to the major U.S. media, it's as if the "cool kids" line up in matching fashions creating a gauntlet to demean and ridicule whoever the outcast of the day is. And anyone who doesn't go along becomes an additional target of abuse.

That has been the storyline for the Ukraine crisis throughout 2014 and into 2015. Everyone must agree that Putin provoked all the trouble as part of some Hitler-like ambition to conquer much of eastern Europe and rebuild a Russian empire. If you don't make the obligatory denunciations of "Russian aggression," you are called a "Putin apologist" or "Putin bootlicker."

Distorting the History

So, the evidence-based history of the Western-sponsored coup in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, must be forgotten or covered up. Indeed, about a year after the events, the New York Times published a major "investigative" article that ignored all the facts of a U.S.-backed coup in declaring there was no coup.

The Times didn't even mention the notorious, intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in early February 2014 in which Nuland was handpicking the future leaders, including her remark "Yats is the guy," a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who – after the coup – quickly became prime minister. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine."]

Even George Friedman, the president of the Washington-Establishment-friendly think-tank STRATFOR, has said publicly in late 2014: "Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d'état organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history."

Beyond simply ignoring facts, the U.S. mainstream media has juggled the time line to make Putin's reaction to the coup – and the threat it posed to the Russian naval base in Crimea – appear to be, instead, evidence of his instigation of the already unfolding conflict.

For example, in a "we-told-you-so" headline on March 9, the Washington Post declared: "Putin had early plan to annex Crimea." Then, quoting AP, the Post reported that Putin himself had just disclosed "a secret meeting with officials in February 2014 Putin said that after the meeting he told the security chiefs that they would be 'obliged to start working to return Crimea to Russia.' He said the meeting was held Feb. 23, 2014, almost a month before a referendum in Crimea that Moscow has said was the basis for annexing the region."

So there! Gotcha! Russian aggression! But what the Post neglected to remind readers was that the U.S.-backed coup had occurred on Feb. 22 and that Putin has consistently said that a key factor in his actions toward Crimea came from Russian fears that NATO would claim the historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, representing a strategic threat to his country.

Putin also knew from opinion polls that most of the people of Crimea favored reunification with Russia, a reality that was underscored by the March referendum in which some 96 percent voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia.

But there was not one scintilla of reliable evidence that Putin intended to annex Crimea before he felt his hand forced by the putsch in Kiev. The political reality was that no Russian leader could afford to take the risk that Russia's only warm-water naval base might switch to new NATO management. If top U.S. officials did not realize that when they were pushing the coup in early 2014, they know little about Russian strategic concerns – or simply didn't care.

Last fall, John Mearsheimer, a pre-eminent political science professor at the University of Chicago, stunned those who had been misled by the anti-Russian propaganda when he placed an article in the Very-Establishment journal Foreign Affairs entitled "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault."

You did not know that such an article was published? Chalk that up to the fact that the mainstream media pretty much ignored it. Mearsheimer said this was the first time he encountered such widespread media silence on an article of such importance.

The Sole Indispensable Country

Much of this American tendency to disdain other nations' concerns, fears and points of pride go back to the Washington Establishment's dogma that special rules or (perhaps more accurately) no rules govern U.S. behavior abroad – American exceptionalism. This arrogant concept, which puts the United States above all other nations like some Olympic god looking down on mere mortals, is often invoked by Obama and other leading U.S. politicians.

That off-putting point has not been missed by Putin even as he has sought to cooperate with Obama and the United States. On Sept. 11, 2013, a week after Putin bailed Obama out, enabling him to avoid a new war on Syria by persuading Syria to surrender its chemical weapons, Putin wrote in an op-ed published by the New York Times that he appreciated the fact that "My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust."

Putin added, though, "I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism," adding: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

More recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov drove home this point in the context of World War II. This week, addressing a meeting to mark the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe, Lavrov included a pointed warning: "Today as never before it is important not to forget the lessons of that catastrophe and the terrible consequences that spring from faith in one's own exceptionalism."

The irony is that as the cameras pan the various world leaders in the Red Square reviewing stand on Saturday, Obama's absence will send a message that the United States has little appreciation for the sacrifice of the Russian people in bearing the brunt – and breaking the back – of Hitler's conquering armies. It is as if Obama is saying that the "exceptional" United States didn't need anyone's help to win World War II.

President Franklin Roosevelt was much wiser, understanding that it took extraordinary teamwork to defeat Nazism in the 1940s, which is why he considered the Soviet Union a most important military ally. President Obama is sending a very different message, a haughty disdain for the kind of global cooperation which succeeded in ridding the world of Adolf Hitler.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern served for considerable periods in all four of CIA's main directorates.

[May 10, 2015] After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. tried to help Russians

More correctly Clinton administration vigorously tried to help Russia to became a vassal state...
April 15, 2015 | antiwar.com
May 07, 2015 | The Washington Post

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR Putin recently was interviewed for a fawning Russian television documentary on his decade and a half in power. Putin expressed the view that the West would like Russia to be down at the heels. He said, "I sometimes I get the impression that they love us when they need to send us humanitarian aid. . . . [T]he so-called ruling circles, elites - political and economic - of those countries, they love us when we are impoverished, poor and when we come hat in hand. As soon as we start declaring some interests of our own, they feel that there is some element of geopolitical rivalry."

Earlier, in March, speaking to leaders of the Federal Security Service, which he once led, Mr. Putin warned that "Western special services continue their attempts at using public, nongovernmental and politicized organizations to pursue their own objectives, primarily to discredit the authorities and destabilize the internal situation in Russia."

Mr. Putin's remarks reflect a deep-seated paranoia. It would be easy to dismiss this kind of rhetoric as intended for domestic consumption, an attempt to whip up support for his war adventure in Ukraine. In part, it is that. But Mr. Putin's assertion that the West has been acting out of a desire to sunder Russia's power and influence is a willful untruth.

The fact is that thousands of Americans went to Russia hoping to help its people attain a better life. The American and Western effort over the last 25 years - to which the United States and Europe devoted billions of dollars - was aimed at helping Russia overcome the horrid legacy of Soviet communism, which left the country on its knees in 1991. It was not about conquering Russia but rather about saving it, offering the proven tools of market capitalism and democracy, which were not imposed but welcomed. The United States also spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make Russia safer from loose nukes and joined a fruitful collaboration in outer space. Avid volunteers came to Russia and donated endless hours to imparting the lessons of how to hold jury trials, build a free press, design equity markets, carry out political campaigning and a host of other components of an open, prosperous society. The Americans came for the best of reasons.

Certainly, the Western effort was flawed. Markets were distorted by crony and oligarchic capitalism; democratic practice often faltered; many Russians genuinely felt a sense of defeat, humiliation and exhaustion. There's much to regret but not the central fact that a generous hand was extended to post-Soviet Russia, offering the best of Western values and know-how. The Russian people benefit from this benevolence even now, and, above Mr. Putin's self-serving hysterics, they ought to hear the truth: The United States did not come to bury you.

Vatnik, 5/7/2015 2:33 PM EDT [Edited]


I think, that everyoune in US must to know. As i wrote below

"we think that Navalny & Co paid by the west. they ususally call themselves "opposiotion", and one of them (Nemtsov) was frieinds with McCain (as i realized after reading McCain twitter, after Nemtsov was killed)."

"we think that our real opposition are these political parties: CPRF, LDPR. We believe them."

i write it, because i think, that when we talk that our(russian) opposition is bad and paid from the west, you think that we talk about our politic parties. but it is wrong, we talk about Navalny & Co.

MeriJ, 5/7/2015 3:08 PM EDT [Edited]

Thanks. That is a useful clarification. But I still find it odd that you would consider a member of your nation's opposition a traitor or "tool" simply because they have friends in the West.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the main difference between people like Navalny versus the CPRF/LDPR is that Navalny thinks the current system is corrupt. Whereas individuals and political parties currently benefiting from the current system think it's fine.

Those are not the thoughts of a traitor. To get to that conclusion you would need to define the current system and those who currently benefit as being "Russia." Oppose them and you oppose the Motherland.

But Putin and his new-generation oligarchs and his deputies at the Kremlin are not Russia. They are a bunch of guys who currently run things there.

Vatnik, 5/7/2015 3:47 PM EDT [Edited]

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but the main difference between people like Navalny versus the CPRF/LDPR is that Navalny thinks the current system is corrupt."

CPRF and LPDR know about corruption, and even they think that our non-systemic opposition (Navlny & Co) are traitors. And they (CPRF , LDPR) talk about corruption and another bad things of our gov even in Duma. for example, this is what said the leader of LDPR on one tv show

"коррупцию создала советская власть, кпсс, единая россия плавно подобрала у нее все инструменты коррупции и сегодня эта страстная болезнь поразила все органы и всю структуру"
google translated it:
"Corruption established Soviet power, the Communist Party, United Russia gently picked her all the tools of corruption and now this passionate disease struck all the organs and the whole structure"
and
"у вас фракция половина бизнесмены, воры, жулики, грабители, вся остальная половина агенты спецслужб"
google translated:
"you have a fraction of a half businessmen, thieves, swindlers, robbers, the rest of the half secret service agents"
he adressed it to our main politic party in Duma, "United Russia"

I can find more than one video where he talk about falsifications of elections, right in Duma.

but these are just examples.

P.S. oh, and here i found video, specially for you(americans) where our non-systemic opposition visited US Embassy in Moscow in July 4th.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE-54U6V-Bc

Baranovsly71, 5/7/2015 12:11 PM EDT [Edited]

BTW, this is not true that "Americans were not in charge". I red memoirs of Eltsyn's ministers (Korzhakov, Burbulis, you can read memoirs of deputy secretary of state of that time Strobe Talbott in English, the same is there), and it's clear that in 90s Russia de facto was American colony.

For example, ministers in Russian government could not be assigned without US State Department approval. Even Russian TV anchors were instructed by US representatives.

Skeviz, 5/7/2015 12:05 PM EDT

MeriJ
6:42 PM GMT+0300 [Edited]
Putin has convinced you...


USA had popularity in Russia in 1990 more than Putin now, but to 1999 when Putin became prime-minister USA had less than 20% approve. It was not Putin who destroyed USA's popularity, reverse your policy created Putin.

You very often replay this your phrase, but it is lie. Did Putin created NATO, did Putin used Russia's weakness and increased NATO, did Putin bomb Kosovo, did Putin violated agreements that was done after WWII and separated Kosovo from Serbia, did Putin destroyed Russia's democracy in 1996 and in 1993, did Putin paid Chechnya terrorists to kill Russians, did Putin pressure Chechens create Islamic State (prototype of ISIL) in Chechnya, did Putin in any article said that it will be great if terrorists will created their own state (and after that will be do permanent wars against Russia)? NO, you did it before there appeared Putin.

Skeviz, 5/7/2015 12:14 PM EDT

MeriJ
5:48 PM GMT+0300
Much of the aid they are referring to was not lending but grants to help build civil society -- independent media, health organizations and the like. No strings attached.

You did not created Russia's civil society, you destroyed it when you created did all what was possible to lure high educated Russians in West countries. You falsified Russia's election in 1996 (and all international observers under pressure of USA supported it). You in 1993 supported Yeltsin's military operation in Moscow. You paid Chechnya terrorists to kill Russians and destabilize Russia's society. Is it civil society???

"independent media"??? Not, they was created by our oligarchs, not by you, and you payed only for those media who represented USA's point of view as your propaganda did in time Cold War. It was the continuing Cold War, not help.

" health organizations" ??????????????

USSR's health organizations was significantly better than USA, and infinity better than current Russia's organizations.

There was not "and like" we ceased Cold War, we by free will dismantled all "USSR's Empire", we by free will destroyed ideology, we ceased war, but you continued it, you continued the war all last 25 years, and NATO is the best example of it.

MeriJ, 5/7/2015 12:24 PM EDT

We lured well-educated Russians to the West? Seriously?

This is the nature of free markets and open borders. Your response should be to compete to lure them back. Give them something to come home for. Most people long to go home.

Instead you talk about anyone who doesn't hate the West as if they were traitors. Why would any well-educated Russian ex-pat want to come home now?

Skeviz, 5/7/2015 12:48 PM EDT

Seriously. Your government created very comfortable ways for engineers (and for some another categories of USSR's people), to take them on West. You are economist, so I suppose you know the reception: lure good manager from another company, it will increase your power, and it decrease power of your competitor.

MeriJ, 5/7/2015 12:51 PM EDT [Edited]

By "seriously?" I didn't mean I disagreed with your facts. I disagree that this was surprising or hostile. That is the nature of open markets -- if you see excellence, you try to recruit it.

There are only two responses I know of: Close your borders and your markets; or compete more effectively.


MeriJ, 5/7/2015 12:20 PM EDT

You are truly incorrect, my friend, and it saddens me that you see it this way.

The antagonistic relationship you describe is more true at the moment, due to the events of the last year, but not true back in the decades before that. During the Cold War, we were indeed enemies, so such motivations then were a given.

Skeviz, 5/7/2015 12:24 PM EDT

Ok, then try to explain, why USA had more 80% [popularity in polls] in Russia in 1990 and less than 20% in 1999. There was not Putin, how can you explain it?

Volkovolk, 5/7/2015 12:27 PM EDT [Edited]

He is correct. One can say that Cold War never ended - it just took place for some decades on our land in form of guerilla war. After Gorbachev and Yeltsin abandoned all interests of USSR and Russia you decided to press the advantage and to take Russia of the board [permanently]. Is it so big surprise that we are angry about it?

Joseph Volgin, 5/7/2015 11:01 AM EDT

Alert! Attention, danger! Putin trolls get into American journalism:

"...Or, as a Fred Hiatt of the 1870s might have commented about Native Americans who resisted the well-intentioned Bureau of Indian Affairs and didn't appreciate the gentleness of the U.S. Army or the benevolence of life on the reservations: "Above Sitting Bull's self-serving hysterics, Indians ought to hear the truth: The white man did not come to exterminate you."

Baranovsly71, 5/7/2015 8:22 AM EDT

Thank you, but I lived in Russia in 90s and remember very well Americans who started to come at that time - arrogant money-grabbers the only thing they were interested in is how to make money - on everything, from oil to export of Russian children to US. They stole billions from Russians and continue to do so.

Please, Americans, don't help us - go away and take your democracy with you.

Bob Bobo, 5/7/2015 7:51 AM EDT

Russia help? Yes like that Khodorkovsky Yukos submitted on a silver platter Rothschild. It would Americans like it if they can plunder the Russian mineral resources. But when Putin to allow such a persona non grata.

Larysa Mahal, 5/7/2015 6:30 AM EDT

The best article for those who do not know history and events in Russia. I think a lot of people feel a tears of emotion when they read this article. Bravo!

When author quotes Putin's speech "they love us when we are impoverished, poor and when we come hat in hand." he has forgotten to say that after these words Putin thanked all those who helped to Russia in its difficult time. Author has forgotten to give example about free help "devoted billions of dollars". Nothing was free and Russia had to pay if not money then the disadvantages agreements or concessions. But oh well it. Talk about a paranoia. Author calls the leader of the biggest country "paranoid". But this man has stood up Russia from knees during 15 years only. Think about it 15 years only! Author calls "paranoid" the man who are supported by 75 % population in Russia. The man who was addressed Crimea, insisting on joining with Russia. Are all of these people paranoid like Putin?

Then you can say about President of Poland who sad that the Victory Parade in Moscow is a threaten to all Europe. What is it, paranoia in a cube? But author does not see that because for him to write articles is a work but to know truth is for domestic use only.

I want to ask everybody to see around and say how many prosperous, beautiful countries in Europe face before a threaten to be section, detached some parts like UK, Italy. But to Russia with her "paranoid" leader want and join huge territories with huge amount of people. Think about it. In last year one man standing in a long queue on the sea crossing from Crimea to Russia sad that they are willing to endure all the inconveniences because the main thing is they are with Russia. Think about it.

Lucky_Barker, 5/7/2015 5:45 AM EDT [Edited]

The United States supported the destruction and burning of the parliament in Moscow, the murder of civilians in 1993, the bombing of Grozny in 1994-1995-m, and the killing of civilians in Chechnya. All crimes Yeltsin was American influence and American advices.

It's very like the oficial America. Manu people call "Yeltsin era" as "Time of Americans" or "Time of Prostitutes".

Restoration of parliamentary democracy, Mr. Putin did not like top US.
Putin's war in Chechnya without massive bombing did not like owners of US newspapers and US parties.

The Chechens believe that the Americans supported Yeltsin genocide Chechen civilians in 1nd Chechen war and strongly resent and hate peace in Chechnya after the 2nd Chechen war.

Tsarnaev was prepared in US as a terrorist for Syria or Chechnya - but was shot too early.

We must always remember that Al Qaeda and الدّولة الإسلاميّة at an early stage was the US-Saudi projects.

Volkovolk, 5/7/2015 5:24 AM EDT [

What a hipocrisity.
Your "volunters" with their "proven tools" provoked desolation of russian economy and defolt. The results of their actions were nothing short of economical genocide. The so-called free press you build are just a puppets of yours, instruments of your influence and of your lies. Your advises in building of democracy led to anarchy and to the brink of collapse of Russia. Yes, you tried to bury us. Guess what? You failed. And we will never forgive you.

Danila Ivanov, 5/7/2015 5:19 AM EDT

But past wrongs do not matter... now Russia and the USA on the brink of war... the war is already at a distance of 600 kilometers from Moscow, the American puppets killed thousands of ethnic Russians.

Russia is a nuclear power, such action is suicide. We all have to prevent needless and stupid war... I ask you to help.

Danila Ivanov, 5/7/2015 4:56 AM EDT

4) Let the author will call the name of at least one program, which spent a billion dollars... which would have improved the lives of ordinary Russians. At least one program (I don't know, although he lived in Russia at that time). All American billion were used to purchase depreciating assets industry of the USSR ("privatization"), actually looting people.

5) "Thousands of activists and volunteers" were actually thousands of Yeltsin's advisers... it was on the advice of these advisers was launched economic programme "shock therapy" (economic Holocaust). When Federal employees and the military is not specifically paid a salary (although the money was) ... a few years (to reduce the money supply), the economy was dead, just do not have the money, the base rate of the Central Bank was 2000% (I'm not kidding)... people were hungry... you know what hunger is? I know... The country was falling apart, if not for Putin.
6) Free press this is the press... which is verbatim from CNN, BBC, Foxnews? What is its "freedom" of this media?

7) the Oligarchs, corrupt officials... and who brought them to power, who collaborated with them, who gave them money to purchase assets? American corporations...

P. S. I don't know why the author is lying, but I would never wish the Americans in the US... to experience the poverty and hopelessness... you have experienced the Russians in the 90-ies in Russia, when the US "gave us a hand"...

Danila Ivanov, 5/7/2015 4:26 AM EDT

I accuse the author of lying... and paid propaganda.
1) Russia is satisfied with the U.S. government only when it is weak. In 1993 Boris Yeltsin ordered to shoot from tanks to the Parliament (similar to the U.S. Congress) killed many people-elected deputies, and unarmed people in the square who came to support the deputies, they were killed at close range with machine guns. Hundreds of corpses.... NO ONE representative of the United States, has condemned the event. Nobody. Everything is fine, democracy!!!
The author of the article is lying. Putin is telling the truth.
2) Almost all non-governmental organizations of Russia officially get the money of US taxpayers. Their leaders defiantly go to the American Embassy. (in other 196 embassies of the countries of the world don't go)... and declare that their goal is "revolution and overthrow the President." Opposition leaders Russia (Navalny, Nemtsov, Kasparov, Chirikov, Ponomarev) was trained in the U.S. and regularly travel to the USA... (for example ... Imagine the leaders of "Occupy Wall Street" would have officially get money from the Russians, and walked to the Russian Embassy. Presented? ) The author is lying, Putin is not lying.
3) There is No "military adventure in Ukraine." Lies about "Russian aggression" hides that Ukraine is a civil war and the destruction and arrests of thousands of unarmed ethnic Russians (they inhabit the East of Ukraine)... who disagree with an armed overthrow of the President. Near the border of Russia (31 km) is a major Ukrainian city Kharkiv... it unguarded, why in Kharkov there are no "hordes of Russian troops or the rebels?... If Putin attacked the Ukraine and began a military adventure"?
The author lied again.

Owan Skirlan, 5/7/2015 3:20 AM EDT

Okay, dear Americans, thanks for fish and sort of that, but, really - Make Your Own Buisness! Somethere between US borders, not out

Brekotin, 5/7/2015 1:07 AM EDT

Very funny article. Washington PRAVDA!
to author: please check the graph of GDP in Russia and the United States 1985-2015.
Clearly shows how redistribute wealth of the USSR was reditributed.

P.S.: teach macroeconomics and history.

Andrey Belov, 5/7/2015 12:39 AM EDT

I by the way I wonder what is so wrong left Russia communism? Developed industry and agriculture, United state, connected in the common economic space, a powerful culture and the arts, advanced science, the successful solution of social problems. And against that you have spent billions to destroy all? Lord you Americans really believe that we should be grateful for assistance in the destruction of our country?

Skeviz, 5/6/2015 11:48 PM EDT

"After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. tried to help Russians"
Really???
- USA in 1990 had popularity 80%, but to 1999 (before Putin) USA had popularity 20% in Russia, is it because USA had tried help Russia? (De facto USA did all what was possible to create politician like Putin).
- USSR had dismissed Warsaw pact by free will (and USSR dismissed USSR by free will), USSR destroyed all what was linked to Cold War, did USA the same? Did USA dismissed NATO?
- USA used Russia's weakness and increased NATO (now hypocrite Americans say that it was done by will of those countries, interesting enough do they really believe in the BS? USSR could also said that E. Europe's countries became ally of USSR because they was afraid Germany).
- USA used Russia's weakness and attacked Serbia the Russia's ally (hypocrite Americans said that there was ethnic cleansing, BUT USA killed more men there than Milosevic did, moreover after war created by USA there was new ethnic cleansing and Albanians killed Serbians, why hypocrite Americans closed eyes about it?). In day when USA began war against Kosovo they loss all support that had between youth.
- USA payed Chechnya terrorists and USA do great media support to Chechnya terrorists (after 11 September 2001 it was ceased but to the time was killed many Russia's humans including children, now hypocrite Americans prefer do not remember which media support they did for creation Islamic State on Russia's south border, it was prototype of ISIL).
- USA used Russia's weakness and dismissed all agreements that interfere create anti-missile system.
- USA destroyed Russia's democracy when supported falsification of election 1996 in Russia, because USA was afraid communists in Russia, and preferred support Yeltsin. USA violated election and supported Yeltsin, who had destroying Russia.
- USA paid for many color revolutions on Russia's borders.

Skeviz, 5/6/2015 11:59 PM EDT

  • - USA instead to help Russia create new economy preferred create more easy way to emigration high educated Russians in USA and another Europe's countries.
  • - USA separated Kosovo (and destroyed all system of agreements that existed after WWII, now hypocrite Americans try show that it was did in Crimea, but really Russia did nothing that USA had not make in Serbia).
  • - When Putin began pressure Russia's oligarchs to pay salaries and taxes, USA began media war against Putin.

I could continue the list very long, but I have not time now.
So all USA's sayings about "trying to help Russia" is hypocrite lie from alpha to omega. All what wanted USA destroy country that they had afraid half century. USA didn't use Russians free will and trying end Cold War, USA continued it and I can suppose it will be great problem for USA in future. Certainly Russia is weak country now, but Russia can give very significant help to China, especially in military question (if China will be need use power, but do not show that they use power).

Irene Guy, 5/6/2015 9:34 PM EDT

"For fifty years, our policy was to fence in the Soviet Union while its own internal contradictions undermined it. For thirty years, our policy has been to draw out the People's Republic of China. As a result, the China of today is simply not the Soviet Union of the late 1940s"
Robert B. Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State
Remarks to National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
New York City
September 21, 2005"
Enough said...

[May 08, 2015] The Cold War Against Cuba Changed Us by Jacob G. Hornberger

May 07, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

During the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA made multiple attempts to assassinate Cuba's ruler, Fidel Castro. Let's assume that the CIA had succeeded and that Castro had been shot dead on the streets of Havana.

It's not difficult to imagine what US national-security state officials would be saying today: "If we hadn't assassinated Castro, the United States would have fallen to the communists and, today, Fidel and his brother would be running the IRS, Social Security, Medicare, public schooling, and other socialist programs owned and operated by the US government."

Soon after Castro took power on January 1, 1959, when President Eisenhower was still in office, and continually through the Kennedy administration, the CIA steadfastly maintained that a communist-ruled Cuba was a grave threat to US "national security" - a communist dagger situated 90 miles away from American shores and pointed directly at the United States.

It was all a Cold War farce, one that served as one of the biggest protection rackets in history - one by which the national-security establishment was able to keep the American people in a constant, never-ending state of anxiety, fear, and depression, which assured ever-increasing budgets and power for what Ike called the "military-industrial complex" and what has ultimately become known as the "national-security establishment."

How do we know it was all a farce? Because they didn't succeed in assassinating Castro and yet the United States is still standing! Sure, we've got the same types of socialist and interventionist programs that Castro has in Cuba - income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, economic regulations, a Federal Reserve, etc. - but that's not because Castro conquered the United States but rather because Americans love socialism and interventionism as much as Castro does.

What difference did it make to the American people that Cuba was ruled by a self-avowed communist? It didn't make any difference at all. The plain truth is that under Castro, Cuba never initiated any acts of aggression toward the United States. Castro's own national-security establishment never invaded the United States. It never tried to assassinate US officials. It never initiated acts of terrorism inside the United States.

The only reason that US officials ultimately decided to list Cuba as an official "sponsor of terrorism" was because of Castro's support of insurgencies in other Latin American countries in which people were trying to oust US-supported right-wing dictatorships, much like the brutal US-supported Fulgencio Batista dictatorship that Castro succeeded in ousting from power in Cuba.

Throughout the Cold War and beyond, the CIA issued severe warnings about the danger that other Latin American countries would end up with communist regimes. It was all a farce too. It wouldn't have made any difference to the United States if every other Latin American country went communist. That's because there was never any possibility that Latin American countries were ever going to mount up their military forces and invade, conquer, and occupy the United States.

Consider all the Latin American countries that have gone leftist - including many of the ones that the CIA was so concerned with during the Cold War. Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, and more. Do you see them mobilizing their armies to invade the United States? It's a ridiculous notion. And it was a ridiculous notion throughout the Cold War.

That's not to say, of course, that it's beneficial for people to live under a socialist or communist regime. That's where libertarians part company with leftists. Living in Cuba, Venezuela, or other socialist regime is pure misery from an economic standpoint and a civil-liberties standpoint. But the fact is that such regimes never had any interest (or financial means - they were too broke) to even think of invading, conquering, and occupying the United States.

What all too many Americans have still not confronted is what the adoption of the national-security apparatus did to our country - in the name of the anti-communist crusade.

In the post-9/11 era, Americans are now fully accustomed to assassination. Most everyone accepts the fact that the CIA assassinates people with regularity and with impunity and immunity. It's become a normal part of America's governmental structure, justified as part of the "war on terrorism," a war, we are told, is certain to last longer than the Cold War. It's just another great big protection racket, one designed to maintain the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and the entire national-security apparatus in high cotton for the indefinite future.

The CIA has been an assassination machine practically since its inception. In its 1954 regime-change operation in Guatemala, for example, the CIA had a kill list of Guatemalan officials who were to be assassinated. There were the multiple assassination attempts against Castro. There were the plans to assassinate Rafael Trujillo, the ruler in the Dominican Republic. There was Operation Phoenix in Vietnam. There was the kidnapping-assassination of Gen. Rene Schneider of Chile. There were the assassinations of Americans Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. There was the CIA's partnership in Operation Condor, one of the biggest assassination rings in history, one that assassinated former Chilean official Orlando Letelier and his young assistant Ronni Moffitt on the streets of Washington, D.C. And as the mounting circumstantial evidence has inexorably disclosed, there was the assassination of President Kennedy, on grounds of "national security," as I detail in my book Regime Change: The JFK Assassination.

At one time, CIA assassinations were kept secret or "covert." That's because most people recognized assassination for what it was - murder. Even President Lyndon Johnson, who wasn't exactly the paragon of political virtue, called the CIA's assassination program a "Murder Inc."

And that's precisely what assassination is – murder. What right, either moral or legal, did the US government have to assassinate Fidel Castro or any other leftist ruler? From where did that authority come? It certainly didn't come with the Constitution, which doesn't authorize either a CIA, assassination, or regime-change operations. Under what moral, religious, legal, or constitutional authority did the US national-security state murder people because of their political or economic philosophy?

Throughout the Cold War, Americans weren't supposed to ask those types of questions. They were expected to defer to the national-security establishment. Conscience, reason, and independent thinking were submerged to the judgment of the national-security state. The citizen's creed became: Assassination is normal and necessary. Our national-security state officials know what's best. Trust them. Don't ask questions. Secrecy must be maintained. "National security" is at stake.

The grafting of a national-security apparatus onto America's founding governmental system was the worst mistake in the history of the United States, for in the name of protecting "national security" from Fidel Castro and communism, it moved America in the direction of the socialist and totalitarian regimes it was opposing.

How ironic that we now live in a society that has adopted the same socialist and interventionist programs found in Cuba and that why we now live in a society in which the government wields the omnipotent power to torture and assassinate its own people and others. How ironic that modern-day Americans celebrate their socialism, interventionism, assassinations, torture, coups, invasions, regime-changes, and their entire welfare-warfare state as "freedom."

Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation.

[May 03, 2015] US Goes Ballistic Over Ukraine as Both Sides There Wage Peace By William Boardman,

March 10, 2015 | readersupportednews.org

US and UK deploy troops to Ukraine, but they're just "advisors"

American combat troops deployed in Ukraine will soon number in the hundreds, at least, but US officials claim they're there only as "advisors" or "trainers," not as an in-place threat to Russia. Whatever advising or training they may do, they are also an in-place threat to Russia. US officials are also lobbying to arm Ukraine with "defensive" anti-tank rockets and other lethal weapons in hopes of escalating the fighting, maybe even killing some Russians. In other words, American brinksmanship continues to escalate slowly but recklessly on all fronts.

To the dismay of the Pentagon, the White House war crowd, and the rest of the American bloviating class of chickenhawk hardliners, the warring sides in Ukraine are disengaging and the ceasefire has almost arrived (March 7 was the first day with no casualties). The government in Kievand the would-be governments of the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk have been acting as if they're not hell-bent on mutually assured destruction after all. They've exchanged prisoners. They've agreed to double the number of ceasefire monitors to 1,000. They've pulled back their heavy weapons. Both sides have stopped the random shelling that has caused "heavy civilian tolls of dead and wounded," according to theMarch 2 report from the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.

The calmer heads of Europe, in Germany and France particularly, are presently prevailing over the fear-mongered countries closer to Russia who seem bewitched by US enthusiasm to subject Europe to yet another devastating war in which those near-Russia countries would be the first to feel the pain. But for now, most of Europe seems willing to accept the notion that the Russians have a rational view of their reasonable security needs, that the cost of further Russian advances outweighs any rational gain, and that all the mad babbling of bellicose Americans is just unprocessed cold war hysteria amplified by the need to deny decades of imperial defeats.

What is it with exceptional American irrationalists' love of war?

Still the manic American willingness to risk war with Russia, including nuclear war – over what, exactly? – keeps spinning out of Washington:

  • Ashton Carter, President Obama's choice as Secretary of Defense, assured senators during his confirmation hearing in February that he would push for more aggressive military action for the rest of Obama's term, that he favors lethal arms for Ukraine, and that he would not be pressured into faster release of innocent prisoners held in Guantanamo.
  • John Kerry, Secretary of State, advocated in early February in favor of sending arms to the Ukraine government. Since April 2014, Kerry has been demonizing Russia, blaming Russia for growing violence in eastern Ukraine even as Kiev militias were attacking the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists, calling them "terrorists." Kerry, the highest ranking American diplomat, recently and publicly accused the Russians of lying to his face.
  • James Clapper, director of national intelligence, has told the Council on Foreign Relations that he wants to give "lethal- defensive weapons" to the Kiev government to "bolster their resolve" and persuade them "that we're with them." Clapper was calling Russia one of the greatest threats to the US as early as 2011.
  • Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, jumped on the arm-Ukraine bandwagon March 3, saying "I think we should absolutely consider lethal aid." (He didn't add that the big danger of non-lethal aid is that it might help people settle differences without killing each other.)
  • Victoria Nuland, formerly security advisor to Dick Cheney, now an assistant secretary of state for European affairs, has long engaged in working for regime change in Russia. Nuland is famous for her "f-k the EU" attitude during the Maidan protests in 2014. On March 4 she became the first US official to call Russian actions in eastern Ukraine "an invasion." She claimed there were hundreds of Russian Tanks in eastern Ukraine, though no credible evidence supports the claim.

"NATO now exists to manage the risks created by its existence."

– Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine

From the Russian perspective, NATO aggression has continued for the past 20 years. Secretary of State James Baker, under the first President Bush, explicitly promised the Russians that NATO would not expand eastward toward Russia. For the next two decades, at the behest of the US, NATO has expanded eastward to Russia's borders and put Ukrainian NATO membership in play. The unceasing madness of "US and NATO aggression in Ukraine" is argued forcefully by attorney Robert Roth in Counterpunch, who notes that US-sponsored sanctions on Russia are already, arguably, acts of war.

NATO continues to maintain nuclear weapons bases around Russia's periphery while adding more anti-missile missile installations. Anti-missile missiles to intercept Russian missiles are generally understood to be part of the West's nuclear first strike capability.

Then there's the months-old, expanding Operation Atlantic Resolve, an elaborate US-sponsored NATO show of force deploying thousands of troops to NATO countries that are also Russia's near-neighbors. Beginning in April 2014, Operation Atlantic Resolve started sending troops to Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland) that border Russia. Those troops remain, and Defense News reported that more US saber-rattling is coming:

The US military's plans to send troops into Romania and Bulgaria as a deterrence to Russian aggression could expand to include Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia's southern neighbor, Georgia…. by the end of the summer, you could very well see an operation that stretches from the Baltics all the way down to the Black Sea….

In the Black Sea itself, NATO forces continue to project force through "training exercises" involving the Navies of at least seven nations: US, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria. NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove complained in late February that Russia had deployed "air defense systems that reach nearly half of the Black Sea" – as if it were surprising that Russia would respond to hostile military activity close to one of its oldest and largest naval bases, Sevastopol, in Crimea. Breedlove admits that NATO naval forces have approached Crimea, provoking Russian naval responses. Breedlove's warmongering reportedly upsets German officials, but they don't object publicly to American lies.

This pattern of provocation and response is familiar to those who know the Viet-Nam War, when similar US tactics provoked the so-called "Tonkin Gulf incident." That manipulated set of events, deceitfully described by the White House and dishonestly amplified by most American media, was used to gull a credulous and lazy Congress into passing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving the president authority to wage that disastrous, pointless war. Watch for the sequel coming to a Black Sea theatre of war near you.

Congress is as eager for Ukraine War as it was for Iraq and Viet-Nam

War mongering has a large, noisy cheering section in Congress. Eleven American lawmakers including House Speaker John Boehner have signeda bi-partisan letter to President Obama demanding in the shrillest tones ("defend against further aggression") that the US ship lethal arms to the Kiev government now. The eleven Congress members (8 predictable Republicans and three veteran, dimwit Democrats) write about Ukraine what they had never had the wit or courage to say about US aggression in Iraq. They assert with grotesque oversimplification and false premises about "the crisis in Ukraine" that:

It is a grotesque violation of International law, a challenge to the west, and an assault on the international order established at such great cost in the wake of World War II.

Fatuous warmongering. At the end of World War II, Crimea was indisputably part of Russia (within the USSR) and the anti-Russian military alliance of NATO did not exist, much less had it pushed its existential security threat to the Russian border. You want an all-out, unambiguous assault on international law, look to Iraq and all the "little Iraqs" that the American hegemon executes with impunity and nearly endless destructiveness to peace, order, and culture.

The weak-kneed Democrats mindlessly signing on to this reflexive Republican rage to kill someone are: Eliot Engel of New York (Westchester County), lawyer – first elected in 1988, he's been a strong supporter of violence in Palestine, Kosovo, and Iraq (voting for the war in 2002); Adam Smith of Washington (Seattle), lawyer – first elected 1997, he's supported violence in Afghanistan and Iraq (voting for the war in 2001) and he sponsored a bill to allow the US government to lie to the people; and Adam Schiff of California (Burbank), lawyer – he's supported violence in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria (voting for the Iraq war in 2002). "Bi-partisanship" is pretty meaningless when the imperial warmaking ideology is monolithic, as in this basic lie also in the Boehner letter:

We should not wait until Russian troops and their separatist proxies take Mariupol or Kharkiv before we act to bolster the Ukrainian government's ability to deter and defend against further aggression.

The core of this lie is those "separatist proxies." That's an Orwellian phrase used to turn the roughly 5 million residents of the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk into un-persons. These 5 million people are predominantly Russian-speaking and ethnic-Russian. They have legitimate, longstanding grievances with Ukrainian-dominated governments in Kiev, especially with the current illegitimate one which is neo-Nazi-tinged and Russo-phobic.

It is important for these 5 million people seeking self-determination to disappear from the American argument for war sooner rather than later. The American war justifiers require "Russian aggression" as a crediblecasus belli, but the would-be war makers offer no credible evidence to support that propaganda claim ("Remember the Maine!").

The American news bubble distorts and excludes the world's realities

The blandly mindless media repetition of the phrase "Russian aggression" is a reliable measure of how much the news reports the government propaganda, at the expense of something like real world complexity. Dissenting voices are few in America's media world, and seldom heard, especially those who ask: "What aggression?"

Somehow, in the well-washed American collective brain, it's aggression when an oppressed minority declares its independence from its oppressors, the coup-installed Kiev government (and some of its predecessors). But that same scrubbed brain believes it's not aggression when another minority, aligned with foreign interests, carries out a violent overthrow of Ukraine's legitimately elected government.

Newsweek has demonized Russian president Vladimir Putin for months now, including on a cover with the headline "The Pariah" over a picture showing Putin in dark glasses that seem to reflect two nuclear explosions. (This imagery worked with deceitful perfection in 2002 when President Bush and Condoleezza Rice terrified audiences with the possibility that the "smoking gun would be a mushroom cloud.") Newsweek has even called for regime change in Russia. Newsweek is hardly alone in demonizing Putin without considering the realities of his situation. Others, like CNN, simply resort to calling him "completely mad," even though Russian actions have been largely measured and limited, especially when considered in the context of two decades of western provocation.

The New York Times got suckered by the Kiev government into running pictures "proving" Russian troops were in Ukraine, when they proved no such thing. This was not an anomaly among American media, according toRobert Parry in Consortium News:

At pivotal moments in the crisis, such as the Feb. 20, 2014 sniper fire that killed both police and protesters and the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 killing 298 passengers and crew, the U.S. political/media establishment has immediately pinned the blame on Yanukovych, the ethnic Russian rebels who are resisting his ouster, or Putin. Then, when evidence emerged going in the opposite direction – toward "our side" – a studied silence followed, allowing the earlier propaganda to stay in place as part of the preferred storyline.

When reality intrudes upon propaganda, reality must be discredited

In a somewhat mocking story about Russia's denunciation of US troops arriving in Ukraine as a threat to Russia security, the Los Angeles Timesgive roughly equal time to a NATO commander denouncing the Russian denunciation. The casual reader who stops halfway through the story is easily left with the impression that the Russians are behaving badly again and maybe sending lethal weapons is a good idea. Only in the last two paragraphs does the Times, quite unusually, report some real things that matter about Ukraine:

Ukraine, which proclaimed independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 as the communist-ruled federation was collapsing, had pledged to remain nonaligned, and in any case would need years to carry out reforms and assimilation of its armed forces with those of NATO before it could be inducted into the Western defense alliance.

But since the Russian-backed insurgency began ripping Ukraine apart, Kiev authorities have renounced the nonalignment pledge and set their course for eventual NATO membership.

The first of these two paragraphs is a partly reasonable explanation of why Russia would feel betrayed by the US and NATO. A nonaligned Ukraine remains an obvious possible alternative to the present conflict ignited by decades of NATO aggression.

The second paragraph serves as a warning, packaged as a justification based on a lie. The lie is that it's a Russian-backed insurgency that's ripping Ukraine apart, when Ukraine has been ripping itself apart for years, a reality that led to the coup-government in Kiev. The explanation – which is false – is that the insurgency has forced the Kiev government's hand, even though the government took power with EU and NATO links obviously in mind. The warning is that Ukraine may just join NATO as soon as it can.

Until Americans – and especially American policy makers – face fundamental realities in and about Ukraine, the risk that they will take the rest of us into an unjustified, stupid, and potentially catastrophic war will remain unacceptably high. One of the realities Americans need to face is that the Ukraine government is corrupt, as corrupt an some of the most corrupt governments in the world, and nothing the US has done is likely to change that any time soon. What any war would ultimately be about is: who gets to benefit from that corruption?

Ukrainians know this and despair as, for example, Lilia Bigeyeva, 55, a violinist and composer did when she told her family's storyfrom Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine:

I was born in Melitopol, raised in Zaporizhzhya, and have spent all of my adult life in Dnipropetrovsk. It hasn't been easy, this past year in Ukraine. The loss of Crimea is a tragedy, the war is a tragedy. And it's far from clear that our government and our people are really prepared to institute rule of law….

The war is very close to us, here in Dnipropetrovsk. Every day there's bad news. But we continue to play music, my pupils and I. Culture and art, these are the things that have always helped us through frightening times.

This was published in The Moscow Times on March 6, but it was originally recorded and distributed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In other words, there's no excuse, for anyone on any side, to say they didn't know what was happening to the Ukrainian people for the sake of geopolitical greed.

END NOTE: HOW YOU CAN HELP THE WEST'S WAR EFFORT

[Craigslist posting, edited, from Orange County, California, March 3, 2015.]

Ukrainian/Russian Men Needed $19/Hr (Oceanside, CA)

GTS (Glacier Technology Solutions LLC) – We are military contractors working directly with the US Marine Corps assisting them with their immersive simulation training program.

Currently, we are looking for role players of Ukrainian and/or Russian ethnicity and language skills. Need MEN ranging 18-65 years of age.

This is temporary, part time, on-call work based on need and availability.

At the moment, we are staffing for an upcoming training to take place on: March 29-31, 2015. The scheduled hours will vary from 8-12 hours per working day.

Compensation is $15.17/hr. plus another $4.02/hr. Health and Welfare benefit for up to 40 hours of work in a workweek. (Overtime rates will be paid if necessary). Register for work at: www.Shiftboard.com/wforce


William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

Activista 2015-03-10 13:22

rt.com/op-edge/239205-baltic-states-us-military-troops/
NATO uses 'Russia threat' as excuse to halt defense cuts ...
these are make up threats to keep profit/militari sm/NATO going ...
EU does not want to pay 2% GDP to NATO ...
and US military expenditure and debt is growing ..
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures#mediaviewer/File:Top_ten_military_expenditures_in_$_in_2013.jpg.jpeg

jdd 2015-03-10 18:52

You have it backwards. While it may be less disturbing to believe that NATO exists merely to justify military spending, you have missed the point. NATO's was originally created as a military alliance against the Soviet Union, even though the Warsaw Pact was later dissolved, NATO was maintained and expanded to threaten and encircle Russia. Nuland, Carter and other believe that they can cause "regime change" in Russia, or alternatively win a "first strike" victory in a "limited nuclear war." Now, in response to the successful cease-fire, made possible by Putin's cooperation, we have EU Commissioner Juncker calling for an EU army to confront Russia. The response from a prominent Russian parliamentarian :

"In a nuclear age, extra armies do not provide any additional security. But they surely can play a provocative role...One should presume that a European army is seen as an addendum to NATO...never, even in the darkest days of the Cold War, had anyone dared to make such a proposal." If only it were merely about military spending.

and continue to provoke the Russians

lorenbliss 2015-03-11 02:13

If I did not know better, I would assume there is someone in the State Department channeling Hitler, someone in the Defense Department channeling Goering, someone at Homeland Security channeling Himmler and someone at the head of the media monopoly channeling Goebbels.

And in their resurrected madness -- exactly as in 1941 -- they are forgetting the lessons the Scythians taught the Persians and the Scythians' Russian descendants taught the Teutonic Knights, the Mongols and Bonaparte, not to mention the lessons Hitler, Goering, Himmler and Goebbels were themselves taught by the Russian "untermenschen."

Such are the darkest times in our species' history...

REDPILLED 2015-03-10 17:13

The 11th COMMANDMENT:

No nation shall DARE defy the United States and its Puppets by attempting to be truly independent! That right is reserved only for the God-chosen United States.

wantrealdemocracy 2015-03-10 20:06

Too bad the "God chosen United States" is not independent. Our nation is under the control of Israel. Israel wants this war against Russia, and all those wars in the Middle East, so that the Christians and Muslims will kill each other leaving Israel the winner. The state of Israel and the Zionists will then control the whole world. That is the 'New World Order' you have heard about.

arquebus 2015-03-10 17:20

NATO aggression? When you see NATO tanks rolling across the border in an armed attack against Russia, then come talk to me about aggression. Has not happened and is unlikely to happen.

What we really have here is Putin and the Russians paranoia and inability to get over the German invasion of 1940...something that happened 75 years ago.

skeeter 2015-03-10 19:07

Quoting arquebus:
NATO aggression? When you see NATO tanks rolling across the border in an armed attack against Russia, then come talk to me about aggression. Has not happened and is unlikely to happen.

What we really have here is Putin and the Russians paranoia and inability to get over the German invasion of 1940...something that happened 75 years ago.

Let's get real...the Europeans are threatening to bring Ukraine into NATO, a military alliance established and maintained to challenge the Soviet Union. No Russian leader in his right mind could stand by and let this happen. Imagine if the Soviets had approached Mexico or Canada a few years ago and tried to convince them to join the Warsaw Pact. The Russians paranoid...can you blame them?

Agricanto 2015-03-10 19:23

First I read the (very excellent) piece of journalism from people like William Boardman.

Then I "scroll to the troll" and give the predictable right wing doublethink a thumbs down.

Then I go to PayPal and give RSN 10bux all the while complaining that trolls don't pay to clog up important discussions on RSN. Penny a word from the troll factory is all I ask.

Merlin 2015-03-10 21:05

Agricanto 2015-03-10 19:23

Spot on and well said!

jsluka 2015-03-11 00:15

If Russian troops began to maneuver on the US border, like US troops (NATO) are now doing on the Russian border, the US would go "ballistic." That's called "hypocrisy," by the way.

MJnevetS 2015-03-13 14:52

"Russia already did that and invaded killed people and are feeding a false insurgency that is being dubbed freedom fighters .. they even shot down a domestic airliner in the summer flying over that territory over the UKraine from Amsterdam. don't you know the news even on this subject"

There is a sad lack of facts in these statements. NY Times had to retract the allegations of a 'Russian Invasion', as the evidence proved to be fabricated. The only 'false insurgency' was the coup initiated by the US and with regard to the shooting down of the commercial liner, show me one SINGLE piece of evidence that Russian backed rebels were involved. It was a false flag operation and when people demanded evidence over propaganda, the news story magically disappeared, as the evidence would show that it was a terrorist attack by the Nazis currently in control of Ukraine.

jdd 2015-03-11 08:15

When you "see NATO tanks rolling across the border in an armed attack against Russia" it will not be the time to converse with you, but rather then you may kiss your loved ones a final goodbye as that will be the beginning of a war of human extinction, all over within an hour.

Thank goodness for Putin and s few sane voices in the West who are trying to avoid ever getting to that point while others in the West, such as the Newland gang, seem hell-bent on making it happen.

Activista 2015-03-11 20:36

... see NATO bombers in Libya, Yugoslavia .. US troops in Kosovo US Sending 3,000 Troops To Latvia, Estonia ...
www.ibtimes.com/ukraine-crisis-us-sending-...
International Business Times
2 days ago - An Abrams main battle tank, for U.S. troops deployed in the Baltics as part of NATO's Operation Atlantic Resolve, left the port in Riga, Latvia ....

Trish42 2015-03-10 18:03

When will Americans ever get their collective head out of their ass and start looking at the world from others' points of view? We have gotten sucked into the propaganda about Ukraine, never checking other sources or verifying what we "know" to see if there was any evidence that would support our intervention. Sound familiar? We've got to get the war-mongers out of DC!!

Kev C 2015-03-10 21:19

Allow me to explain why they won't. Education. The entire system is based on US centric thinking and behaviour. There is limited information available about the rest of the world and what there is is painting the US as the God Given Saviour of humanity. Hell they won the war after all. Single handed. They saved the UKs ass by coming to our rescue didn't they? Not!

Until the vast majority of Really decent but hypnotized Americans get the real info they will continue to believe what they are told because there isn't really an alternative to the Faux news/MSN bullshit and the pre programmed education system. Its not the peoples fault. The system was rigged long before they were born.

dsepeczi 2015-03-11 09:38

Quoting Trish42:
When will Americans ever get their collective head out of their ass and start looking at the world from others' points of view? We have gotten sucked into the propaganda about Ukraine, never checking other sources or verifying what we "know" to see if there was any evidence that would support our intervention. Sound familiar? We've got to get the war-mongers out of DC!!
Sadly, I'm starting to believe the answer to your question is ... "Never". If Iraq wasn't a big enough, loud enough, and obvious enough mistake to wake up ALL Americans to the fact that our government lies to us and we should take everything they say with a grain of salt and request that they provide solid proof of their allegations against another nation ... I can't think of any event that will. :(

pbbrodie 2015-03-11 09:45

"get warmongers out of Washington."
Yes, especially the complete idiots who are making insane comments about "limited nuclear war." There is no such thing as limited nuclear war. Once one is exploded, it is all over.

Johnny 2015-03-10 18:15

How soon we forget. The U.S. must punish Russia, and, more importantly, divert the attention of Russia from the Middle East, because Russia has supported Syria, which is an obstacle to open war against Iran, because Iran arms Hezbollah, and the last time the Zionists invaded Lebanon, Hezbollah chased them out. Hezbollah is an obstacle to annexation of the whole area by Israel. And now that the Zionists smell the opportunity to induce the U.S. to attack Iran, they are creating another front on which Russia must try to defend itself and its allies. The U.S. Congress is not the only part of the U.S. government that Jewish supremacist banksters have bought, lock, stock, and barrel. (Before some asshole starts to howl about anti-Semitism, let him explain why we should not criticize other proponents of racism, such as white supremacists; Zionism, after all, is merely warmed over Nazism, with a different "chosen" people and different victims.)

dquandle 2015-03-10 20:05

In fact, the neo-nazis now in control in the US/NATO supported Ukraine have been blatantly anti-semitic for decades, having supported the Nazis at that time and are even more egregious now.

"For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism in the borderland through which Hitler's invading Nazis took millions of Russian lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre of Jews and Russians they called "vermin". The UPA is the historical inspiration of the present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelli ng Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left."

Taken from

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/11/on-israel-ukraine-and-truth/

And these, fully supported and paid for supported by the ostensibly "Jewish" Nuland and Obama's heinous State Department.

See also e.g.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hughes/the-neo-nazi-question-in_b_4938747.html

Radscal 2015-03-11 00:24

In addition to Ms. Nuland and her PNAC founding husband, Robert Kagan, two of the three Democrats cited by Mr. Boardman as signees on the "arm Ukraine" letter are Jewish. In fact, Congressman Engel is of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry.

As the "protests" in Ukraine grew in late 2013/early 2014, Ukrainian Jewish groups reported skyrocketing cases of anti-Semitic rhetoric and attacks. But those reports were buried by Zionist organizations who insisted that Russia was the real threat to Ukrainian Jews, not the frigging Nazis in Ukraine!

At first, this sort of thing confused me, before I realized it wasn't a Jew against Jew thing. This is Zionist fascists supporting Nazi fascists.

Vardoz 2015-03-10 22:23

Sorry it just boils down to profits and power and any excuse to wage endless war for profits period end of story.

L.S. 2015-03-10 20:06

I do not agree with these conclusions. I don't believe that the U.S. and U.K. are invested in military action. Those troops are advisors and instructors. This interpretation is very cynical and pessimistic and I don't buy it.

My background is International Relations and I am watching the chess pieces on the board and I challenge this interpretation and find it very unhelpful and in itself can be contributing towards War rather than supporting the diplomatic actions towards Peace.

Merlin 2015-03-10 21:02

L.S. 2015-03-10 20:06

So talk to me about the advisors that Eisenhower put in Viet Nam. Then talk to me about Kennedy expanding on their number. Then talk to me about the Viet Nam War.

You state:

"My background is International Relations and I am watching the chess pieces on the board and I challenge this interpretation"

I challenge YOU because either you a not what you claim or you sure did not learn very much.

Kev C 2015-03-10 21:24

If you don't see what is happening now then your a lousy chess player. Don't give up though. Practice makes perfect. However beware there are not many nations left that haven't been smeared then bombed by the US and we are running out nations and out of time before the US blow all our asses off the face of the planet for that self serving act of pathetic vanity which will be countersigned in hell with 'Property of The US Military.'

jsluka 2015-03-11 00:17

"Advisors and intructors" - Don't be naive. And what happens when some of them get killed? What is the likelihood or statistical probability of escalation after that? This is clearly provocative and dangerous and does absolutely nothing for "peace" or "security" of anyone.

Radscal 2015-03-11 00:27

L.S. "...I am watching the chess pieces on the board..."

Does your use of that analogy imply that you read Ziggy Brzezenski's 1998 book, "The Grand Chessboard," in which he explains why the U.S. must take control of Ukraine as key to controlling Eurasian resources, and ultimately to conquer Russia and China?

RODNOX 2015-03-11 05:14

history has shown the USA always has some underhanded agenda--some self serving plan---and often plays BOTH sides of the problem--just to escalate it----WHEN WILL WE STOP THEM ????? THIS IS TRULY THE 1 % IN ACTION--WE--THE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM

wrknight 2015-03-12 20:47

Quoting L.S.:
I do not agree with these conclusions. I don't believe that the U.S. and U.K. are invested in military action. Those troops are advisors and instructors.

Like the advisors the U.S. sent to South Vietnam in the 1950's.

Archie1954 2015-03-10 20:16

Exceptional, indispensable? More like irrational, despicable! What we need is for Putin to call up Obama and tell him point blank that if the US doesn't get the hell out of Ukraine, Russia will make it! If you don't think it can, think again!

jsluka 2015-03-11 00:20

I appreciate your emotion here, but that would be really really scary because I imagine the US would respond with even greater belligerance and "justify" it by saying "Putin is threatening us" - even though, ironically, it is the US that is doing all the threatening.

Vardoz 2015-03-10 21:17

It's more like war madmen then warmongers and it's all very frightening. Putin is crazy too and we have no right getting involved so that the Fuking military can make profits!!!! Enough!!!!! Our military is out of control with a suicidal war agenda and they don't care about the consequences or the collateral damage. It's just war all around, kick out the jams no matter how many die- they don't give a damn. Seemed like Germany was making some constructive headway and Merkel should tell the US where to go. This is all so dirty and obscene and wrong.

Radscal 2015-03-11 00:33

You do know that the U.S. was not even invited to the peace talks, right?

Similarly, it was EU members, Russia and then-president Yanukovych who signed the agreement with the Maidan Protest leaders on 2/21/14 in which Yanukovych acquiesced to every one of their demands.

That was when Vickie Nuland's "Fuck the EU" plan went into action and the neo-nazis stormed the government buildings, including the Parliament and drove about 2 dozen Members of Parliament and the President to flee for their lives.

And that, is why those who followed the events call it a "coup."

jdd 2015-03-11 07:28

The ceaae-fire came about because the "Normandy Four" excluded the US and UK, whose participation would have guaranteed failure. Now the efforts of all, but especially that of Putin have led to a fragile peace. The response from a disappointed Victoria Nuland crowd continues to speak of sending arms and "advisors" to Ukraine in order to throw gasoline on the embers.

dsepeczi 2015-03-11 08:21

Quoting ericlane:
Another moronic article. Who do you think was behind the peace deal?
Ummm. I believe the organizers of that peace deal were Europe, Ukraine and Russia. The US, wisely, was not invited to the table.

jsluka 2015-03-11 00:13

Is "US Goes Ballistic" a scary pun here? I.e., as in "nuclear armed ballistic missiles". Also, isn't that how it all started in the Vietnam War - with "advisors"? This is batcrap crazy, but then many people have now begun to realise that US politicians have become homocidally psychotic. It's "back to the future" and return of Dr. Strangelove.

[email protected] 2015-03-11 06:22

We have no business in Ukraine, we have no business antagonizing the Russians. We Slavs have been demonized, mocked and denigrated as imbeciles and barbarians by the West for centuries. Stay the hell away from us, already. We don't need to be like you.

Buddha 2015-03-11 17:10

"To the dismay of the Pentagon, the White House war crowd, and the rest of the American bloviating class of chickenhawk hardliners, the warring sides in Ukraine are disengaging and the ceasefire has almost arrived (March 7 was the first day with no casualties)."

John McCain's dick just got limp again. Oh well, there is always ISIS and Iran to try to stoke up WWIII, right Uncle Fester?

Kootenay Coyote 2015-03-16 10:12

"Until Americans, and especially American policy maker, face fundamental realities in and about Ukraine….". Or any fundamental realities, for that matter: cf. Global Warming. The nearest thing to reality that's considered is that of the weapon makers & warmongers, & that's pretty meagre.

[May 03, 2015] How U.S. Journalists Inflame Middle East Sectarianism - e.g. Liz Sly

May 03, 2015 | moonofalabama.org

Sectarianism in the Middle East is regularly inflamed by the Sunni Salafi/Wahhabi groups and countries in the Middle East. It is directed against all other strains of Islam as well as against all other religions.

But as the "western" governments and media favor the Saudi Arabian side and often denigrate the "resistance" side, be it Shia, Sunni or whatever else, they insist that it is the Shia side that is preaching sectarianism. One can often experience this with reports on speeches of Hizbullah leader Nasrallah who is always very careful to not ever use sectarian language. When Nasrallah condemns Takfiri terrorists like AlQaeda and the Islamic State as non-Muslim and calls them the greatest danger to Sunnis, Shia and Christians alike the "western" media like to report that he warns of Sunnis in general and is thus spreading sectarianism.

Many such reports come from "western" reporters who are stationed in Beirut, speak no Arabic and depend on the spokespersons and translators in the offices of the Saudi-Lebanese Sunni leader Hariri. For an ever growing collection of typical examples see the Angry Arab here and here.

The finding of non-existent sectarian language in "resistance" leaders' communications and the emphasizing of it has been internalized by "western" reporters. You can clearly see the process in the exemplary Twitter exchange copied below.

Liz Sly is the Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post in Beirut and does not speak Arabic. Elijah J. Magnier is Chief International Correspondent for the Kuwaiti TV station AL RAI. He speaks Arabic and has covered the war on Iraq and other wars on the ground for decades.

The issue at hand is a defense bill in front of the U.S. Congress which refers to Sunni militia, Kurds and other groups in Iraq as distinguished "countries" which are to be armed separately from the state of Iraq. "Divide and rule" writ large. Many Iraqi politicians including the Prime Minister have spoken out against it. The Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr warned of the consequences should the bill go through which he says would include an unleashing of his troops against U.S. interests.

Notice how Liz Sly insist on a sectarian aspect/intent in Sadr's proclamation even when there clearly is none. She keeps in insisting on it even after she gets pointed to an official denial of any sectarian intent by a Sadr spokesperson. The exchange:

Liz Sly 17h17 hours ago
Moqtada Sadr to the US: if you arm Iraq's Sunnis, we will fight Americans in Iraq. https://twitter.com/jihadicas/status/593512749235249152 …

Elijah J. Magnier 8h8 hours ago
@LizSly Moqtada didn't say that https://twitter.com/EjmAlrai/status/593324552437903360 …

Liz Sly ‏ 6h6 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Didn't mean literally fighting US troops, but to fight against US presence in Iraq. Presumably would hit embassy, personnel etc?

Elijah J. Magnier 6h6 hours ago
@LizSly U r right as Moqtada said he will fight USA in Iraq and abroad but didn't say if Sunni are armed.

Elijah J. Magnier ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly "We shall hit US interest in Iraq & abroad, as possible, ', if US approves supporting each religion independently",

Liz Sly ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Right, he means if Sunnis are armed directly by the US under that weird bill

Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly I spoke to S. Ali Seism who said it is not directed to Sunni but 2 all religions (incl Kurds) as there are more than Sunnis in Iraq.

Elijah J. Magnier ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly In fact the communique' doesn't say in any line the word "Sunni" but "all religions".

Liz Sly ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai The bill is aimed at arming Sunnis and my tweet makes it clear Muqtada is against the US arming Sunnis, not against arming them

Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly Moqtada communique' clearly didn't mention Sunni: "Not arming religions": Fayli, Turkman, Sunni, Shia, Yazidi... Feel free.

Liz Sly ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Ok, but it's clear he's against a bill whose goal is to permit the US to directly arm Sunnis, not eg Fayli. As are many Iraqis.

The last paragraph of Sadr's statement says:

American should know that if it wants to exacerbate sectarian sentiment, we would continue to tread on the path of national unity. Let sectarianism fall out of existence! This is the very sectarianism that seeks to create [artificial] borders.

The U.S. Congress introduces a law that would exacerbate sectarianism in Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr responses with a statement explicitly speaking out against sectarianism. Liz Sly insist that it is therefore Sadr who is playing a sectarian card.

Is this insistence by Liz Sly on sectarian "Shia leader Sadr is against Sunnis" justified by anything but sly, willful exaggeration, and even falsification, of what Sadr wrote? Who is the sectarian here?

Posted by b at 11:24 AM | Comments (54)


Mike Maloney | Apr 30, 2015 11:56:41 AM | 1

Another good example of this is the NYT story from yesterday, An Eroding Syrian Army Points to Strain, about various religious sects and ethnic groups in Syria losing confidence in the SAA. Penned by Anne Barnard and Eric Schmitt, it is clearly a CIA-sponsored tale, built mostly out of quotes from an anonymous "Syrian with security ties."

The chief target of the anonymous source's ire is of course Hezbollah.

Amer | Apr 30, 2015 3:03:25 PM | 2

Non-sectarian nature of the resistance...This point needs to be made over and over again.

Funny that this Scott Horton interview from 2 days ago focuses exact same point about Syrian government as in reality non-sectarian and pluralistic: http://scotthorton.org/interviews/2015/04/28/42815-brad-hoff/

Based on bizarre story of military vet moving to live in Syria: https://medium.com/@BradRHoff/a-marine-in-syria-d06ff67c203c

james | Apr 30, 2015 3:39:11 PM | 4

thanks b. given the background on this, i'm inclined to believe it's intentional. or is it that it fits with the constant mantra on the problem in the middle being one of sectarian conflict that the usa and the west want to always present?

@2 mike. thanks more of the same bs from the same sources, in this case cia, although i they aren't referenced in the article.. nyt - cia/blackhouse mouthpiece..

KerKaraje | Apr 30, 2015 4:04:42 PM | 5

The "Hooligan theory"...
http://radioyaran.com/2015/04/30/the-hooligan-theory-and-syria/

"It is extremely delusional and childish to assume that tens of thousands of well-armed and battle-hardened Jihadists who have gotten accustomed to roaming their (and other people´s) country to kill "infidels", "apostates", "traitors" (e.g. fellow Sunnis who fight in the Syrian army) or simply "Shabiha" (a derogatory expression used to defame and dehumanize all kind of Sunni and non-Sunni militias and civilians who reject the rebels) would lay down their weapons and re-enter their ordinary civilian life on the day the Syrian government falls and Assad is killed..."

Wayoutwest | Apr 30, 2015 5:03:43 PM | 7

Al Sadr and his Iranian allies don't want any US involvement in Iraq. He certainly doesn't want the Kurds armed by anyone for obvious reasons and the Sunni tribes are considered a possible threat especially because they remember how Sadr's Mahdi Army carefully planned and viciously executed the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad's Sunni civilian population. Actions speak much louder than words.

Nasrallah has to carefully chose his words because the Shia are a minority in Lebanon but again actions are more telling than words. Hezbollah attempted to overthrow the government of Lebanon to create a Shia led Islamic Republic which I think is still their goal.

Deebo | Apr 30, 2015 5:20:57 PM | 8

I wonder what would happen if the media started talking about US support for Jewish terror groups ???

@ WOW as per usual your talking shit. Maybe you should ask sadr about his father and unclear death, while their killers were at the time roaming around free under US protection, kinda the same as KSA now

I really do admire your methods of being a paid propagandist -- Whether your in India or Tel Aviv or receive your pay checks from them, you really do have a way of talking doo doo

Yes maybe you should ask the nuns of maloola that your friends Way Out West seemed to have forgotten about if Hezbollah wants a Islamic Republic

You clearly are a Zionist because you seem to know enough about the Middle East, yet those who know as "much" as you so would not generally distort the truth unless they had an agenda, and most people who tread your path and masturbate heavily Iran Syria Hezbollah are generally yids

Sorry dude u have been exposed

I also wonder if Israel will comply with UNIFIL new resolution demanding they withdraw from all Lebanese territory and stop violating its air space

Israel sure is a funny country shame they cant beat a "rag tag" militia lol

jfl | Apr 30, 2015 6:34:50 PM | 10

' sly, willful exaggeration, and even falsification ' is the basis for the US aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine ... the issue is not so much the sly exaggerators and falsifiers in the government ... all 546 of those at the top are owned lock, stock and barrel by the aggressors, and so, of course, are their mouthpieces and hired hands ... but us, zombified cogs on the wheels of imperial slaughter, sitting on our thumbs and switching from cnn, to foxx, to msnbc eating popcorn and the 'news' along with. At what point do you call our self-delusion willful, and how long ago was that point passed?

The only people among us asserting ourselves are Americans of color, who've been pinched, lynched, and gunned down in the streets long enough. For far too long, of course, but now, with a black president and successive attorneys general leading the charge against them, black Americans have given up all hope of help from above/outside their own ranks.

White/Black - Sunni/Shia - Xtian/Muslim ... divide, devastate and destroy worldwide. The US is as monstrous in 2015 as Germany was in 1935, but no one seems to notice. And the EUnuchs, Israel and the KSA are filling in for Italy and Japan.

Jen | Apr 30, 2015 7:19:59 PM | 11

I see this tweet exchange between Sly and Magnier as an example of Sly having been told by her employer (and probably the US govt through its embassy) to ratchet up the Sunni / Shia sectarian divide whenever and wherever possible. In addition Sly seems quite brainwashed and primed to see sectarianism even where it doesn't exist. This would explain her idiotic responses to Magnier's tweets.

The US govt is using identity politics as part of its "divide and rule" strategy to set different religious and ethnic groups at one another's throats. To their credit, people like Moqtada al Sadr and Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah among others recognize that this strategy encourages tensions between and among various groups leading to continuous instability, turbulence and chaos that the US and other foreigners can use to their advantage.

The Western media is also at fault for deploying to the Middle East and other areas around the world as foreign correspondents people who have no background knowledge or understanding of the peoples, languages and cultures in the areas they have to report on.

Virgile | Apr 30, 2015 8:44:33 PM | 12

Liz Sly and Ann Barnard are the mini-version of the notorious Judith Miller, the NYT journalist that has been the promoter of lies that lead to the Iraq war.

Judith Miller was on Israel payroll. Whose payroll Liz Sly and Ann Barnard are on?

Lone Wolf | Apr 30, 2015 10:59:21 PM | 15

@b

Thanks for yet another enlightening post about the inner workings of the so-called MSM. Their efforts to reproduce a narrative that combines official government views with those of the WaPo's editorial board are truly pathetic.

@mcohen@3

why do we not hear from liz sly herself... hey liz what do you think of these allegators made against you in this article by the blogger

i await your reply

Good try, but no cigar. You will wait until hell freezes over. She cannot step down from her clay feet pedestal to answer a commoner's question. No sir. She would be fired if she does for violation of...submission.

@Wayoutwest@7

Hezbollah attempted to overthrow the government of Lebanon to create a Shia led Islamic Republic which I think is still their goal.

This time, Way-out-there outdid himself, his ignorance about Hezbollah, Lebanon and the Shia, of galactic proportions.

@Jen@11

I see this tweet exchange between Sly and Magnier as an example of Sly having been told by her employer (and probably the US govt through its embassy) to ratchet up the Sunni / Shia sectarian divide whenever and wherever possible. In addition Sly seems quite brainwashed and primed to see sectarianism even where it doesn't exist. This would explain her idiotic responses to Magnier's tweets.

Bingo. Great summary of the whole guacamole. Thanks.

mcohen | May 1, 2015 7:33:08 AM | 20

Re: lone wolf.15

.....this chick has got the goods....British intellectuality and all

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/emma-sky

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/03/20/petraeus-the-islamic-state-isnt-our-biggest-problem-in-iraq/

liz sly and emma sky........

..wondered what happened to the biographer....maybe she got the cigar

lol?.......league of liars

mcohen | May 1, 2015 7:57:01 AM | 21

emma sky wrote this in 2014.....now petraeus is back in iraq looking almost a year later and .....and .......and liz on the sly is tweeting about ........not sure what .....anyone understand this stuff,

there is so many billions up for grabs the whole thing looks like one big criminal exercise.....

one thing is for sure ....sectarianism is just a cover, surely a religion would not stoop this low

In his June 19 statement, U.S. President Barack Obama said,

"Iraqi leaders must rise above their differences and come together around a political plan for Iraq's future. Shia, Sunni, Kurds -- all Iraqis -- must have confidence that they can advance their interests and aspirations through the political process rather than through violence."

Obama is right to pressure Iraqi politicians to form a new government, rather than insisting that they support Maliki. He correctly recognized that any military options would be effective only if they were in support of an overall political strategy that a new broad-based government agreed to.

The United States has a key role to play in helping broker a new deal among the elites that creates a better balance among Iraq's communities. A new broad-based Iraqi government will need to win back the support of Sunnis against ISIS -- and the Obama administration should be prepared to respond positively to requests for assistance to do so.

farflungstar | May 1, 2015 12:26:13 PM | 25

From Feb 22 - old news, I know:

General Clark reveals that Daesh is an Israeli project
http://www.voltairenet.org/article186827.html

"General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO, told CNN that the Islamic Emirate ("Daesh") had been "created by our friends and allies to defeat Hezbollah."

General Clark thus clearly put into question the responsibility of Israel.

Since 2001, General Clark has been the spokesman for a group of senior officers opposed to Israeli influence on the foreign policy of the United States, its aggressive imperialist developments and the remodeling of the "Greater Middle East". He had opposed the deployment of troops in Iraq, and wars against Libya and against Syria." (With accompanying video).

Some reminder regarding pretend-journalists/model-type cupcakes you may wanna put the boots to (well not Emma Sky) slanting stories to influence people to believe that USSA, Israel and KSA ONLY are fighting ISIS, Daesh, ISIL, Al-Qaeda, whatever name their bosses want to give them this week.
Selling lies thru their fascist party dolls taking pouty selfies on the side.

Lone Wolf | May 1, 2015 7:34:26 PM | 38

@Wayoutwest@7

Addendum

Even Wikipedia had to give in and publish a marginal note about "Israeli censorship" (sure, they don't call it lies.) FYI.

2006 Lebanon War

"...Hezbollah rocket attacks also targeted and succeeded in hitting military targets in Israel. The Israeli military censorship was, however, very strict and explicitly forbade Israel-based media from reporting such incidents. The war time instruction to media stated that "The Military Censor will not approve reports on missile hits at IDF bases and/or strategic facilities."[131] A notable exception was the rocket attack 6 August, on a company of IDF reservists assembling in the border community of Kfar Giladi, which killed 12 soldiers and wounded several others. Initially Israel did not confirm that the victims were military but eventually relented..."

So? Figures lie and liars figure...

guest77 | May 1, 2015 8:43:15 PM | 40

In fact the subject of this post and that of the last Ukraine famine post are very similar. It is the same game being played, with many of the same methods. Make no mistake: given its position so far from.the consequences of sparking these deep-seated ethnic conflicts, the sheer fact of any fighting, no matter what the outcome, is a "victory" for.our cynical masters. Nothing new - similar games were.played in Nicaragua w the Miskito (sorry for spelling). Its quite remarkable display the.power.to split people and turn them against one another. People w/ hundreds of years of peaceful coexistence.

Lone Wolf | May 1, 2015 11:28:10 PM | 44

@Laguerre@36

...It's been evident for some months that Israel was trying to turn Hizbullah's flank.

Good point. No better proof can be found of the proxy links between ISIS and Israel than ISIS drive into the Qalamoun Mountains. mcohen@30, 34 is way off line with his opinions about Hezbollah's "miscalculations." Just recently, Syria's Defense Minister visited Iran and got all the support Syria needs, and more to continue its existential fight against the Axis of Terror, US/Israel/KSA et al.

The war on Syria has geopolitical repercussions beyond the region, and neither Iran, nor Iraq, or Russia will allow the fall of Assad. Hezbollah will not allow the taqfiris control of the Qalamoun and surroundings, for obvious strategic reasons; ISIS would have direct access to the Bekaa Valley. Iran will not permit the taqfiris to succeed in their efforts to drive a strategic wedge against Hezbollah, which will expose Syria's northern front and Lebanon; Iraq cannot afford losing Syria to the taqfiris and get surrounded by a hostile sea of Sunnis, and Russia will support Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah efforts to avoid cutting Syria in two on a SW/NE axis, that will effectively isolate the port of Tartus, Russia's naval base on the Mare Nostrum.

Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah is not a man prone to miscalculations, whether political or military and he learns from his mistakes. For example, he admitted the Israeli response to the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers that ignited the 2006 Summer War, was a surprise for Hezbollah, which didn't expect such a reaction, even though Israel had concrete plans after getting kicked out of southern Lebanon in 2000, to bomb Lebanon as a punishment for not disarming Hezbollah. Hezbollah intervention in Syria, after Nasrallah deemed the taqfiris an "existential threat" for the Shiites and Lebanon has been confirmed correct by later developments.

Martin | May 2, 2015 8:18:24 AM | 49

Washington Post is making laugh of itself:

"If what is happening in Baltimore happened in a foreign country, here is how Western media would cover it:

International leaders expressed concern over the rising tide of racism and state violence in America, especially concerning the treatment of ethnic minorities in the country and the corruption in state security forces around the country when handling cases of police brutality. The latest crisis is taking place in Baltimore, Maryland, a once-bustling city on the country's Eastern Seaboard, where an unarmed man named Freddie Gray died from a severed spine while in police custody.

Black Americans, a minority ethnic group, are killed by state security forces at a rate higher than the white majority population. Young, black American males are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than white American males.

The United Kingdom expressed concern over the troubling turn of events in America in the last several months. The country's foreign ministry released a statement: "We call on the American regime to rein in the state security agents who have been brutalizing members of America's ethnic minority groups. The equal application of the rule of law, as well as the respect for human rights of all citizens, black or white, is essential for a healthy democracy." Britain has always maintained a keen interest in America, a former colony.

Palestine has offered continued assistance to American pro-democracy activists, sending anti-tear-gas kits to those protesting police brutality in various American cities. Egyptian pro-democracy groups have also said they will be sharing their past experience with U.S.-made counter-protest weapons.

A statement from the United Nations said, "We condemn the militarization and police brutality that we have seen in recent months in America, and we strongly urge American state security forces to launch a full investigation into the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. There is no excuse for excessive police violence." The U.N. called on the United States to make a concerted effort to make databases of police violence public to improve transparency and cut down on corruption in the justice system.

International analysts predict the seeds of a so-called "American Spring," fomented by technology. "It's amazing what social media is doing for the cause of justice in America," said a political rights analyst based in Geneva. "The black youth of America are showing what 21st-century civil rights activism looks like, using technology, social media and a decentralized organizing strategy to hold authorities accountable and agitate for change. These kids represent what modern-day freedom fighting looks like. The revolution will be tweeted, Periscope-d and Snapchatted."

Local leaders in the American township of Baltimore imposed a state of martial law this week after peaceful protests turned violent. In response, countries around the world have advised darker-skinned nationals against non-essential travel to areas noted for state violence against unarmed people of color, especially in recent hot spots such as New York, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Ohio, California, Michigan, Virginia and now Maryland.

International human rights groups have appealed to the global community to facilitate asylum for America's ethnic black minorities. When asked whether the European Union was willing to take on more black refugees risking their lives in fleeing American state violence, an E.U. human rights spokesman said: "More black refugees? We are dealing with our own Mediterranean crisis, so now is not really a good time for that for us. Furthermore, we believe in American solutions to American problems." The African Union has not responded to requests for comment.

American government officials took to state media, characterizing the protesters as "thugs," a racially coded word increasingly used to describe black males in America. Commentators in national media have frequently compared the protesters and riots to various characters and events from the popular television series "The Wire," set in early-2000s Baltimore.

America's ethnic blacks have been displaced from many of their communities due to a phenomenon experts on the region call "gentrification," when wealthier residents move into a lower-income area. Baltimore is no exception to this trend, with some areas seeing home values rise as much as 137 percent after corporate dollars move in on opportunities in poverty-stricken areas.

Resident Joe Smith, a member of the white majority ethnic group, said outside of a brand-new Starbucks near Baltimore's Inner Harbor, "I don't know why these blacks are destroying their own communities. Why don't these people follow Martin Luther King's example? Those guys got it good from the police back then too, but they didn't try to rise up and fight back and make everyone uncomfortable, you know?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/04/30/how-western-media-would-cover-baltimore-if-it-happened-elsewhere/

Jesrad | May 2, 2015 8:02:41 PM | 51

The media in Mordor has been all "sectarianism" all the time, since late 2003. They needed an explanation for the ongoing violence in Iraq, besides "guerilla war", which was completely unacceptable with an election approaching.

So they invented the nonsense that the Iraqis were attacking themselves and the noble Orcs were desperately trying to prevent it. I think the nonsense was that al-Ciada was targeting the anti-occupation Arabs to provoke a civil war thereby forcing the occupation to continue since they were 'winning' and about to leave. Apparently al-ciada hadn't heard about the permanent bases. This protection conveniently involved treating the Arab population like the Palestinians and putting them under guard behind concrete and barbed wire wherever possible.

Why the pro-occupation Kurds didn't need to be forced into dozens of bantustans, was something I've never seen asked by anyone. That the Iraqi population was heavily intermarried and had never had a 'civil war' or any history of 'sectarian violence' was also deemed not newsworthy.

After 10+ years of even the 'alternative' media repeating this garbage it has become accepted as fact among the limited portion of the population who are even vaguely aware of the endless colonial wars.

U.S. Hasn't Helped Kiev's "Endless Dysfunction" by Michael S. Rozeff

Criticism of Kiev's administration and its war against Donbas likewise strikes some as pro-Russian. This too is a false conclusion. The making of war by any state against breakaway regions or regions seeking autonomy or constitutional changes or secession is anti-libertarian.
LewRockwell.com

Balazs Jarabik, who is associated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and who focuses on Ukraine, has an article titled "Ukraine: The War Must Go On?". It's a pertinent article because both sides are re-arming and both sides are more skilled now at war. Renewed fighting, if serious war breaks out again, will be more devastating than the earlier engagements. It will likely enter new areas and, in the process, undermine Ukraine altogether.

Jarabik writes "As terrible as it sounds, Kyiv's endless dysfunction is the Kremlin's most powerful ally in the current crisis-a point that is glossed over in Western policy debates on sending lethal aid to Ukraine."

Critics of the libertarian positions on Ukraine should read and heed what the non-libertarian Jarabik says about Kiev and Ukraine. U.S. and NATO aid, bank financing, training and military advice are not helping Ukrainians. Quite the opposite.

The libertarian refrain calling for U.S. disengagement from Ukraine (and other of the Empire's venues) strikes some as being either pro-Russian or not anti-Russian enough. This is a false conclusion that doesn't follow from a non-interventionist stance. It only follows from a non-libertarian perspective of supposing that the U.S. should be helping Ukraine achieve independence from Russian pressures. But such so-called help is destroying Ukraine and promises worse to come.

Criticism of Kiev's administration and its war against Donbas likewise strikes some as pro-Russian. This too is a false conclusion. The making of war by any state against breakaway regions or regions seeking autonomy or constitutional changes or secession is anti-libertarian.

Both U.S. disengagement from Kiev and criticism of Kiev's war-making are policies that will help, not harm, ordinary Ukrainians. Sons will not be drafted, ill-trained, ill-equipped and sent into unwinnable and destructive wars. The government won't go bankrupt in the process. Huge debts won't be levied on generations of Ukrainians. The currency won't crash, as it has, destroying the wealth of anyone holding it, small savers or holders of debt denominated in that currency. Resources can be put toward peaceful purposes. Similarly, people in Donbas won't face the severe destruction wrought by war. Refugees can come home. People won't be driven from their homes. Population centers, ranging from villages to major cities, won't be shelled.

The war-making and other related decisions are promoted by the U.S. and NATO. The U.S. is re-arming one side and improving the weaponry. The Russians are re-arming the other side, and that side too will bring in new ways of fighting. The level of destructiveness can only escalate as a consequence of a U.S. and Kiev decision to bring Donbas back into Ukraine by military means.

Libertarian calls for the U.S. completely out of Ukraine are for the good of Ukrainians themselves, although surely not all of them. This policy doesn't satisfy Ukrainian nationalists who insist on union of west and east, come hell or high water. Hell it may be.

[Apr 28, 2015] Ten Years Later, What Paul Wolfowitz 'Owes to the Country' by James Fallows

The Atlantic

Andrew Bacevich has a wonderful essay, in the form of an open letter to Paul Wolfowitz, in the current Harper's. You have to subscribe to read it -- but, hey, you should be subscribing to any publication whose work you value. This essay isolates the particular role Wolfowitz had in the cast of characters that led us to war. As a reminder, they included:

  • Dick Cheney, who was becoming a comic-book churl by this stage of his public life;
  • Colin Powell, the loyal soldier, staffer, and diplomat whose "Powell Doctrine" and entire life's work stood in opposition to the kind of war that he, with misguided loyalty, was to play so central a role in selling;
  • Tony Blair, the crucial ally who added rhetorical polish and international resolve to the case for war;
  • Donald Rumsfeld, with his breezy contempt for those who said the effort would be difficult or long;
  • Paul Bremer, whose sudden, thoughtless dismantling of the Iraqi army proved so disastrous;
  • Condoleezza Rice, miscast in her role as White House national-security advisor;
  • George Tenet, the long-time staffer who cooperated with the "slam-dunk!" intelligence assessment despite serious disagreement within the CIA;
  • and of course George W. Bush himself, whose combination of limited knowledge and strong desire to be "decisive" made him so vulnerable to the argument that the "real" response to the 9/11 attacks should be invading a country that had nothing to do with them.

But Paul Wolfowitz was in a category of his own because he was the one who provided the highest-concept rationale for the war. As James Galbraith of the University of Texas has put it, "Wolfowitz is the real-life version of Halberstam's caricature of McNamara" [in The Best and the Brightest].

Bacevich's version of this assessment is to lay out as respectfully as possible the strategic duty that Wolfowitz thought the U.S. would fulfill by invading Iraq. Back before the war began, I did a much more limited version of this assessment as an Atlantic article. As Bacevich puts it now, Wolfowitz was extending precepts from his one-time mentor, Albert Wohlstetter, toward a model of how the United States could maximize stability for itself and others.

As with the best argumentative essays, Bacevich takes on Wolfowitz in a strong rather than an oversimplified version of his world-view. You have to read the whole thing to get the effect, but here is a brief sample (within fair-use limits):

With the passing of the Cold War, global hegemony seemed America's for the taking. What others saw as an option you, Paul, saw as something much more: an obligation that the nation needed to seize, for its own good as well as for the world's....

Although none of the hijackers were Iraqi, within days of 9/11 you were promoting military action against Iraq. Critics have chalked this up to your supposed obsession with Saddam. The criticism is misplaced. The scale of your ambitions was vastly greater.

In an instant, you grasped that the attacks provided a fresh opportunity to implement Wohlstetter's Precepts, and Iraq offered a made-to-order venue....In Iraq the United States would demonstrate the efficacy of preventive war.... The urgency of invading Iraq stemmed from the need to validate that doctrine before the window of opportunity closed.

Bacevich explains much more about the Wohlstetter / Wolfowitz grand view. And then he poses the challenge that he says Wolfowitz should now meet:
One of the questions emerging from the Iraq debacle must be this one: Why did liberation at gunpoint yield results that differed so radically from what the war's advocates had expected? Or, to sharpen the point, How did preventive war undertaken by ostensibly the strongest military in history produce a cataclysm?

Not one of your colleagues from the Bush Administration possesses the necessary combination of honesty, courage, and wit to answer these questions. If you don't believe me, please sample the tediously self-exculpatory memoirs penned by (or on behalf of) Bush himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Bremer, Feith, and a small squad of eminently forgettable generals...

What would Albert [Wohlstetter] do? I never met the man (he died in 1997), but my guess is that he wouldn't flinch from taking on these questions, even if the answers threatened to contradict his own long-held beliefs. Neither should you, Paul. To be sure, whatever you might choose to say, you'll be vilified, as Robert McNamara was vilified when he broke his long silence and admitted that he'd been "wrong, terribly wrong" about Vietnam. But help us learn the lessons of Iraq so that we might extract from it something of value in return for all the sacrifices made there. Forgive me for saying so, but you owe it to your country.

Anyone who knows Andrew Bacevich's story will understand the edge behind his final sentence. But you don't have to know that to respect the challenge he lays down. I hope Paul Wolfowitz will at some point rise to it.

For another very valuable assessment of who was right and wrong, when, please see John Judis's piece in The New Republic.

[Apr 22, 2015] M of A - Ukraine Both Sides Touched By NATO Related Murder Of The Other Side

Apr 22, 2015 | moonofalabama.org

The Washington Post's Michael Birnbaum invented a new funny way to equalized victims and perpetrators of serious crimes:

MOSCOW - A pro-Russian Ukrainian journalist was gunned down in Kiev on Thursday, authorities said, a day after a Ukrainian politician supporting Moscow was found dead.

The killing of Oles Buzyna, 45, raised fears of a new wave of back-and-forth violence in the streets of Ukraine after a string of unsolved deaths that has touched both sides of the conflict between Ukraine's Western-allied government and pro-Moscow separatists.

Indeed the "unsolved deaths" "touched both sides" with eleven people on one side getting murdered while the other side covered up these murders as "suicides" and very likely also provided the killers.

Eight politicians of the Party of Region of former president Yanukovich, ousted in a U.S. inspired coup, were killed as were three journalists un-sympathetic to the now ruling coup government.

There is some curious connection between some of the recent killings and NATO. As RB at NiqNaq provides (recommended):

On Apr 14, a profile of Oles' Buzina was added to https://psb4ukr.org/ site (where Ukrainian government encourages people to fink the authorities on the people suspected of separatism); on Apr 15, Oles' Buzina was killed near his home with 4 shots. I (my correspondent – RB) looked up the Web address where they posted Buzina's address, and found that it's hosted on a NATO server.

The Niqnaq post provides details and screenshots demonstrating the connection to NATO. (A short take is also here.) I was myself researching the issue for MoA when I found that Niqnaq post and I can confirm the findings and add a bit.

Two names and personal data of persons recently assassinated in Ukraine were posted on a "nationalist" website shortly before those persons were killed. That website, screenshot) screenshot), is headlined:

"Peacemaker"

RESEARCH CENTRE FEATURES OF CRIMES AGAINST UKRAINE'S NATIONAL SECURITY, PEACE, SECURITY AND HUMANITY international law
Information for law enforcement authorities and special services about pro-Russian terrorists, separatists, mercenaries, war criminals, and murderers.

Next to some news pieces the site carries a list for download with some 7,700 names of "saboteurs" and "terrorists".

On a first view the name "psb4ukr.org" is anonymously registered through the U.S. company Wild West Domains.

A "traceroute" command shows that Internet Protocol requests to the server "psb4ukr.org" end in a datacenter in Dallas, Texas at dallas-ipc.com and the IP number 208.115.243.222.

A "nslookup" command with the input "psb4ukr.org" confirms in its output the registered IP Number to be "208.115.243.222" (screenshot).

A reverse "nslookup" command with the input "208.115.243.222" provides the output "psb4ukr.nato.int". (screenshot).

"nato.int" is the Internet domain namespace registered and reserved for NATO. Why is a server for a website which is hunting for dissidents in Ukraine - some of whom have been killed - registered within the NATO Internet namespace?

After some additional research we find that the non-anonymous registration to "psb4ukr.org" is to one Vladimir Kolesnikov, 98 Lenin St, Velyka Oleksandrivka, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine.

Further searching for Vladimir Kolesnikov we find that Mr. Kolesnikov has registered several other websites through Limestone Networks, Inc in Dallas, Texas.

Some of these website seem to be concerned with crypto payment, teletraining and unrelated stuff. Some others are related to the nasty "nationalist" side of the Ukraine conflict. Operativ.info asks for tip offs about "saboteurs" and "terrorists" and their operations while informnapalm.org is a general "nationalist" news collection.

There is no hint of any NATO-relation in these other sides. A reverse nslookup like the one that shows a relation like between "psb4ukr.org" and "psb4ukr.nato.int" does not deliver such results for the other website registered to Mr. Kolesnikov.

One possible explanation for the "psb4ukr.nato.int" lookup result might be that the website was originally build or tested within the NATO namespace and later transferred outside without cleaning up some of the original name references.

Posted by b on April 17, 2015 at 03:06 PM | Permalink

james | Apr 17, 2015 5:45:27 PM | 1

thanks b.. any connection to nato is really riveting if true.. the fact all the people murdered are opposed to the present gang in kiev speaks volumes as well.. i hope some western msm will pick some of this up, but i highly doubt it.. it will be more bs like the wapo is famous for.. spewing propaganda 24/7, these media outlets make the prvada of previous times look like amateurs..

jfl | Apr 17, 2015 6:33:22 PM | 2

Excellent work, b. It is true that the MSM sill never publish anything like this ... but it is also true that the 'market' for news has been bifurcated at this point : those who want to know the truth are engaged in the search for it on their own and those who definitely do NOT want to know the truth are reading, viewing the MSM.

Attending to the MSM has become an act of complicity with the crimes of the empire in itself.

JerseyJeffersonian | Apr 17, 2015 6:43:55 PM | 3

So, death squads on the menu?

Ah, takes me back to those golden times in Iraq, El Salvador...

Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 17, 2015 11:55:44 PM | 5

I've come to appreciate the value of the "both sides" meme.

It's a 24ct guarantee that USrael or one of their "good friends" has been caught perpetrating inexcusable atrocities, upon civilians, which need to be urgently diluted.

The "Israelis" have turned it into an art form - an absolute necessity given that ALL the victims of the Shitty Little Country's insane anti-Palestinian hubris have been civilians.

It's quite clever in a cowardly, sneaky, "Israeli" kind of way...

Fete | Apr 18, 2015 12:41:56 AM | 604/17/2015 19:57

Russian Spring

Commenting an appeal of Donbass community to the guarantors of the Minsk agreements, Presidents of Russia and France, Vladimir Putin and François Hollande as well as Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, the Chairman of Peoples Council of Donetsk Republic Andrey Purgin assumed that today's Kiev moves toward Ukrainian Nazism.

"Mass arrests and intimidation are common. Those who disagree to live with the Ukrainian ethnic nazism are prosecuted. The most active ones are incarcerated", asserted Purgin

According to him, thousands are jailed for their political convictions.

"Of course, there are calls to (international) community, to Merkel, Europe to interfer. Unfortunately, those live in framework of different (double) standards and are not going to do anything. Instead, they call to yield to Ukraine, where arrests and burning houses are taking place", added Purgin.

@b

Why is a server for a website which is hunting for dissidents in Ukraine - some of whom have been killed - registered within the NATO Internet namespace?

Russian Defense Minister summed it up very well, at Moscow's annual security conference.

"The United States and its allies have crossed all possible lines in their drive to bring Kiev into their orbit..."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/16/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-idUSKBN0N70W820150416

Lone Wolf | Apr 18, 2015 2:05:47 AM | 7

JerseyJeffersonian@3 is right on target reminding us of the infamous "Death Squads" in El Salvador and Iraq. Targeting of opposition figures by parallel security forces killing not-so anonymously, is an integral part of any regime hell-bent on imposing by force a quasi-fascist form of government.

The purpose is to inflict terror on a massive scale, a psychological war that aims at paralyzing others from opposing the regime. It is the ABC of any counterinsurgency manual, and it clearly shows the hand of the CIA behind the systematic killing of Yanukovich allies, perceived or real pro-Russian individuals/organizations/regional or city governments, as it happened recently in Kharkov, and a couple of days ago in Odessa.

This is lustration on a higher level, not just firing from government posts all of those considered "opposition," not enough for the Ukrainian neo-nazis, they have to be physically eliminated. As bastard children of nazi ideologues, they have to follow their German masters in their "purification" of society (lustration from Latin = purification), cleansing it from any elements that could endanger the "purity" of their new fascist dystopia.

The WaPo, a mouthpiece of Neoconland/Deep State, is an accomplice to murder not only in Ukraine, and has played a crucial role white-washing the crimes of the criminal Kiev junta from day one. Shame on you, Michael Birnbaum, you're justifying the slaughter of innocents just to keep a miserable job writing horseshit, and killing them a second time with your blatant lies.

CTuttle | Apr 18, 2015 2:23:51 AM | 8

Aloha, b...! Salon has a great interview with Stephen Cohen... The New York Times "basically rewrites whatever the Kiev authorities say": Stephen F. Cohen on the U.S./Russia/Ukraine history the media won't tell you

And here's a great article from Jeff Kaye... CIA Intervention in Ukraine Has Been Taking Place for Decades

james @1
i hope some western msm will pick some of this up, but i highly doubt it.

The western msm have picked up on it but to claim that an anti-Kiev oligarch who funded the Party of Regions is killing them off to cover his tracks over that funding.

Posted by: blowback | Apr 18, 2015 8:41:03 AM | 10

An organisation called the 'Ukrainian Insurgent Army' has claimed responsibility for the murders of Chechetov, Peklushenko, Miller, Kalashnikov and Buzina.

https://z5h64q92x9.net/proxy_u/ru-en.en/http/antifashist.com/item/ukrainskaya-povstancheskaya-armiya-vzyala-na-sebya-otvetstvennost-za-rasstrel-buziny-i-kalashnikova.html

Posted by: Yonatan | Apr 18, 2015 9:29:19 AM | 11

CTuttle at 8 --

I second your recommendation. I spotted some short extracts at Russia Insider, and I share their recommendation that you read the whole piece. Here's a small sample, .

Q: In a historical perspective, do you consider Russia justified?

Well, I can't think otherwise. I began warning of such a crisis more than 20 years ago, back in the '90s. I've been saying since February of last year [when Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in Kiev] that the 1990s is when everything went wrong between Russia and the United States and Europe. So you need at least that much history, 25 years. But, of course, it begins even earlier....

Q: I take Kiev's characterization of its war in the eastern sections as an "anti-terrorist campaign" to be one of the most preposterous labels out there right now.

But, then, why did Washington say OK to it? Washington has a say in this. Without Washington, Kiev would be in bankruptcy court and have no military at all. Why didn't Washington say, "Don't call it anti-terrorist?" Because if you call it "anti-terrorism" you can never have negotiations because you don't negotiate with terrorists, you just kill them, a murderous organization with murderous intent....

So the United States has been deeply complicit in the destruction of these eastern cities and peoples....

Ever since the Clinton administration, we've bleated on about the right to protect people who are victims of humanitarian crises. You've got a massive humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine.... Where is Samantha Power, the architect of "right to protect?" We have shut our eyes to a humanitarian crisis in which we are deeply complicit. This is what's shameful, whether you like or don't like Putin. It's got nothing to do with Putin. It has to do with the nature of American policy and the nature of Washington-and the nature of the American people, if they tolerate this.

See also his comments on Yeltsin. Increasing ill and under the thumb of the oligarchs, he cozied up to Washington. Cohen reports that Medvedev, a number of years ago, advised that Zyuganov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation had actually won the election that gave Yeltsin his final term.

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 18, 2015 11:04:39 AM | 12

Terror in Odessa: mass arrests of protesters: 53 people reported detained at demonstration in support of local autonomy;

New detentions of peaceful protesters in Odessa: 30 people reported detained at Odessa rally for cultural autonomy and a peaceful solution to the civil conflict: "The People's Council [of Bessarabia] is the grassroots, peaceful initiative."

So far the People's Council of Bessarabia is looking like an effort to use what legal space seems to exist under current junta law to organize "within the system," while the Odessa People's Republic appears to be extralegal and separatist. But the reality is that there is no legal space within fascism for any opposition to organize:

Ukrainian Neo-Nazi march in Odessa

Posted by: Vintage Red | Apr 18, 2015 11:43:21 AM | 13

jj, lw, bb at 3, 7 & 10 --

Extrajudicial repression has been a staple of the ruling class since antiquity. See the murder of Tiberius Gracchus in the 2nd. cent. BC. But along with creating "insurgencies" (Nicaragua, Afghanistan) the Amercan Century has really made it one of its art forms. A sort of "Abstract Repressionism;" we're disinclined to think of the human cost, let alone accept responsibility for it.

Fort Russ has this report that the "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA) claimed responsibility for recent murders of regime opponents. Translator K. Rus says it could either be "the far right taking matters into their hands" or an attempt by the regime to distance itself, after posting the "wanted" notice.

If you want some good fantasy fiction writing, I'd recommend the Kyiv Post's weirdly informative article, Murders of two journalists, ex-lawmaker spook Kyiv. It begins, "The atmosphere was spooky in Kyiv on April 16 as news broke about the murder of a third prominent person in four days." Quite lit'ry, weren't it? It's the Party of Regions, it's the Russian, it's a scheme to disrupt Victory Day.

It goes on to some highly negative spin about Kalashnikov and Buzina, and finishes with short accounts of rash of "suicides" amongst regime opponents.

Meanwhile, repression is spreading in Odessa. A mixed group of local Maidan activists, police, and PravSek militiamen detained protesters. They wanted a free trade zone and were unhappy with utility prices and pensions. A clear and present danger. Whereabouts presently unknown. -- VR at 13, just saw yrs. I'll have to ck'out the NeoNazi bit.

It will be then no suprise that figures close to Poroshenko are arguing for mass internment and deportations for dissenters. The administration itself is advising on how to distort the Second World War for fun and profit. "Current defenders of Ukraine should be considered as successors of the winners over Nazism."

All one can say is, how bizarre!

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 18, 2015 12:20:55 PM | 14

VR -- well that was depressing. In part 'cause it lead me to what the link called "Drunk With Permissiveness: Nazis Execute Journalist Buzina, Promise New Bloodshed." The page itself is a little more mundane, Ukrainian Insurgent Army Claims Responsibility for Death of Reporter Buzina. It provides further details than the Fort Russ account above.

It links the rise in violence to the recent proclamation of the collaborators as victors over their fascist patrons, taken as a green light for a bit of the ultra-violence. They promise "a ruthless insurgent battle against the traitors of the Ukrainian regime and Moscow henchmen..." They seem as good as their word. Too bad....

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 18, 2015 12:44:54 PM | 15

Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?

The Thomas a Becket school of oppo neutralization...

Posted by: ǝn⇂ɔ | Apr 18, 2015 12:45:23 PM | 16

Another intresting find..


1. WHOIS dingbatter.com

and you will get:

Admin Name: Ophelia Dingbatter
Admin Organization:
Admin Street: Box B 646
Admin City: Black Diamond
Admin State/Province: Alberta
Admin Postal Code: T0L 0H0
Admin Country: Canada
Admin Phone: +1.4039337890
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email: [email protected]
Registry Tech ID:

2. Tech Name: Helmut Morscher

Tech Organization: Webby Inc
Tech Street: Box 646
Tech City: Black Diamond
Tech State/Province: Alberta
Tech Postal Code: T0L 0H0
Tech Country: Canada
Tech Phone: +1.4039337890
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax:
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email: [email protected]
Name Server: NS.WEBBY.COM


3.
Google Helmut Morscher
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/helmutmorscher

"International Media Liaison
Maidan Alliance"

and
"International issues advisor
Maidan web-site"

Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 18, 2015 12:48:32 PM | 17

These incidents are so historically familiar. When reading your article b, I couldn't help thinking about Italy and the murders and terrorism that occurred through out the 1950's to 1980's. Incorrectly, many of our contemporaries believe that the Gladio which was created by NATO, the UK and the US is defunct. As revealed by Professor Daneile Ganser, Gladio is a live and well and operates globally. Yes, NATO is the culprit. Just as it was the instrumental culprit that was used as a tool in Kosovo for US interests. As for the monsters in Kiev, Reinhard Gehlen, one of the Nazi architects of the stay-behind-network would be proud.

Posted by: A.E.W | Apr 18, 2015 1:01:36 PM | 18

en1c at 15 -- Very droll! It's been renamed "plausible deniability" to suite modern sensibilities.

vr at 13 -- I followed your link.

Depressing, in part 'cause I followed this link there, "Drunk With Permissiveness: Nazis Execute Journalist Buzina, Promise New Bloodshed." It provides further details than the Fort Russ item cited at 14. Folks will have to find it on their own, I'm afraid. It wouldn't post my link from Sputnik -- though the link in the preview worked. Others have had that problem.

"We are unfolding a ruthless insurgent battle against the traitors of the Ukrainian regime and Moscow henchmen...." They claim five murders, including Kalashnikov and Buzina. So they look to be as good as their word. Too bad.

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 18, 2015 1:07:53 PM | 19

@18 Poroshenko will call it Russian propaganda. MSM will just ignore it.

Posted by: dh | Apr 18, 2015 1:32:55 PM | 20

Thank you for your links, CTuttle @ 8. I don't know Stephen Cohen very well, but I took a dislike to Katherine his wife way back when the Nation came out so strongly against Ralph Nader as a candidate, and seeing her on Charlie Rose didn't warm me to her either. There are some folk on the 'left' who need to come right out and admit they have been wrong to endorse anti-common-folk principles in the past, due to the damage they have caused by supporting the oligarchs.

They are taking a page out of Putin's book: he was in government during the Yeltsin era when policies were strongly skewed to get along with US oligarchies and Russia's own. Putin has changed course, no two ways about it, and his people as a consequence love him. I just hope these folk will have the same intention - Katherine, you will have to stop sniping at Ralph if you want us to love you.

Posted by: juliania | Apr 18, 2015 3:45:28 PM | 21

The problem of Ukrainian nationalism is that they do not have "democratic template", heroes of the past were hetmans, otamans and fascists. To be patriotic, you have to be bloody minded. So patriots are murdering enemies of the people, and the West gives green light by giving aid and not raising stink. [disclamer: I do not despise patriotism, but like love and religion, it can motivate excesses including murder, mass murder, lies, mass lies and so on, emotional attachment can be a positive force, but as we know, it is not always the case. Below, "patriot" describes the self-assessment.]

The Newsweek story http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/17/ukraine-plagued-succession-unlikely-suicides-former-ruling-party-320584.html that b found is extremely symptomatic. American patriots in the media are following the official clues how to cover stories from the confusing lands outside our borders. Apparently, in the case of Ukraine, one has to follow explanations of Ukrainian patriots. And the version plied in Newsweek was that an oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, is ordering murders of his former confidants and benefactors to "remove witnesses", somehow failing to consider the following clues: murders are being covered up by the current authorities, the minister in charge of police is a fascist (according to Guardian, "there is only one fascist in Ukrainian cabinet"), and Akhmetov is not allied with the current authorities.

Since 1945, members of UPA and related organizations were cooperating with CIA, so when American government want to find reliable familiar faces in Ukraine they will always start with "fascists". In the West (due to the limits of my education, that means USA and UK) one can see somewhat weird disputes if those people are really fascist. In Russia they get "fascist" label automatically, in Poland few would think that "banderowcy" label is any better than "fascist" (for parochial reason, as they murdered ca. 100,000 Poles).

A mixed blessing is that Obama administration is liberal, which apparently translates into "moderate mayhem", contrasting with much more grandiose approach advocated by GOP and neocons (who can be Democrats and Republicans).

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Apr 18, 2015 4:45:25 PM | 22

From article I wrote in 2010:

In 1976, journalist Peter Watson was at a NATO conference in Oslo, when a U.S. Navy psychologist, Dr. Thomas Narut, from the U.S. Naval Hospital in Naples told Watson and New Jersey psychologist Dr. Alfred Zitani, that the Navy sought men to train as assassins in overseas embassies. The following is from the London Sunday Times, "The soldiers who become killers," September 8, 1974, but reproduced from a conspiracy site, as the original, and most references to it, plentiful even when I first read about it some years ago, are limited now to a few dozen conspiracy sites. The story is also told at some length in Watson's book (out of print), War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology, published by Basic Books in 1978.
[Narut's] naval work involved establishing how to induce servicemen who ma[y] not be naturally inclined to kill, to do so under certain conditions. When pressed afterwards as to what was meant by "combat readiness units," he explained this included men for commando-type operations and – so he said – for insertion into U.S. embassies under cover, ready to kill in those countries should the need arise. Dr. Narut used the word "hitmen" and "assassin" of these men.

The method, according to Dr. Narut, was to show films specially designed to show people being killed and injured in violent ways. By being acclimated through these films, the men eventually became able to dissociate any feelings from such a situation. Dr. Narut also added that U.S. Naval psychologists specially selected men for these commando tasks, from submarine crews, paratroops, and some were convicted murderers from military prisons. Asked whether he was suggesting that murderers were being released from prisons to become assassins, he replied: "It's happened more than once."

http://pubrecord.org/law/8527/assassination-court-argues-legal/

Posted by: Jeffrey Kaye | Apr 18, 2015 5:23:49 PM | 23

Or how about this:

"For the first time, U.S. officials acknowledge that in 1965 they systematically compiled comprehensive lists of Communist operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres. As many as 5,000 names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured, according to the U.S. officials," Kathy Kadane wrote for South Carolina's Herald-Journal on May 19, 1990. [Kadane's article also appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on May 20, 1990, the Washington Post on May 21, 1990, and the Boston Globe on May 23, 1990.]

The Indonesian mass murder program was based in part on experiences gleaned by the CIA in the Philippines. "US military advisers of the Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) and the CIA station in Manila designed and led the bloody suppression of the nationalist Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan," notes Roland G. Simbulan (Covert Operations and the CIA's Hidden History in the Philippines).

http://www.infowars.com/cia-assassination-program-revealed-nothing-new-under-the-sun/

Posted by: Jeffrey Kaye | Apr 18, 2015 5:31:45 PM | 24

@PB #21:

In the West (due to the limits of my education, that means USA and UK) one can see somewhat weird disputes if those people are really fascist. In Russia they get "fascist" label automatically, in Poland few would think that "banderowcy" label is any better than "fascist"

One often hears Novorossiyans and Russians saying that the present Banderites are actually worse than the German Nazis were. I concur with that view.

As for American attitudes to Ukie fascism, that's not hard to understand. All you have to think about is the US training death squads in Central America. Fascist thugs are a tool of US foreign policy, in the same way that Islamist terrorists are. This is now a commonplace in the progressive blogosphere.

A mixed blessing is that Obama administration is liberal, which apparently translates into "moderate mayhem"

I recently ran across an interview witb a Ukrainian political scientist who had to flee to Moscow, in which he said that Europeans are finally cottoning on to the true nature of the Kiev regime, so the US no longer has any reason to restrain the fascists. Hence the recent slew of assassinations and terror. (Sorry, I'm too lazy to dig up the link.)

Posted by: Demian | Apr 18, 2015 7:29:07 PM | 25

@24 You are probably thinking of this...

http://thesaker.is/rostislav-ishchenko-about-the-assassination-of-oles-buzina/

Poles know what's going on too.

http://newcoldwar.org/top-polish-military-advisor-completely-withdraws-his-support-of-ukraine-govt/

Posted by: dh | Apr 18, 2015 7:51:36 PM | 26

@dh #25:

Hey, thanks, man. I forgot it was a video. I just remembered it being in Russian, which confused me. Well worth watching, IMO. Americans have no idea of what Russians think.

To repeat myself, the prevailing Russian view (and with the Internet, the collapse of communism, and Putin's revival of Russia, I think that pretty much all Russians are on the same page except for the 10% or less of the Russians who are "liberals") seems to be that the EU was totally eager to make Ukraine an economic colony of the West, but unlike the US, it does not want war in Ukraine. So the views of the US and the EU on the Ukraine diverge significantly, although net everyone here thinks that. (Of course, Russian policy towards the Ukraine since the coup has been largely predicated on that.)

And thanks for the second link.

His change of view is prompted by the law passed by the Ukrainian Parliament on April 9 glorifying World War.
It was pretty predictable that this would happen eventually. And then it turns out that Poles are saying what Russians have been saying since last May:
Their savagery was beyond human imagination. Nazi Germany did not come up with what those Ukrainians were doing
The American public has no idea of this. (In Europe, it's probably only England and the pesky Balts.)

Posted by: Demian | Apr 18, 2015 9:28:56 PM | 27

"Poles know what's going on" ... it is more complex than that. The government and more established media took very pro-American and anti-Russian perspective. The main opposition party build its current set of slogans around anti-Russian paranoia. That said, in Communist times the issue of the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and other regions with mixed population was almost hidden by the authorities, but now it is common knowledge, and after the law acknowledging the perpetrator as heroes the critique of the government is increasingly mainstream.

In particular, the U-turn of Gen. Skrzypczak is related to perceived "slap in the face". Polish president made a speech to Ukrainian parliament with very warm support, and the law that is extremely irritating to Poles was passed "few hours later", and that was duly noted by leftist opposition in the Parliament. That is not insignificant, because there are good chances that the ruling party will be forced into a coalition with those people.

As nationalists go, Ukrainian ones seem worse than most. The last election were preceded with massive nationwide intimidation campaign and few little massacres. The really have a cult of force and violence, which is reflected in putting boxers in the parliament, and -- surprise, surprise -- getting fist fights in that parliament. The lie compulsively -- recall American senators who got photos taken in Georgia as the proof of Russian columns in Ukraine (see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Franz_Roubaud._Count_Argutinsky_crossing_the_Caucasian_range._1892.jpg ). They seem to care nothing about the economy, instead, they want to eliminate Communism and Russian language. Poor Ukrainian people seemed to have the choice of hopelessly corrupt and hopelessly insane, so kicking out the previous corrupt lot is not as much of an improvement as Western liberals (and the Russian emigrants who are cited in the mainstream media) perceive.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Apr 18, 2015 9:37:20 PM | 28

@27 Well I should have said 'some' Poles know what's going on. No doubt there is a range of opinion in Poland.

The BBC mentioned the killings albeit with an anti-Russian spin..

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32361718

Not to worry. Poroshenko has promised a full and thorough investigation.

Posted by: dh | Apr 18, 2015 9:47:11 PM | 29

@rufus magister@14

All one can say is, how bizarre!

Yup, it's a bizarro world out there. It's a total land of confusion

Posted by: Lone Wolf | Apr 18, 2015 10:40:38 PM | 30

dh @25

Thanks for the link to the Polish military adviser. Links like that, where a guy with impeccable 'pro-West' credentials says the right things about Ukraine, can be used to persuade our 'normal, conventional' friends.

LET'S DO IT.

Posted by: fairleft | Apr 19, 2015 12:41:23 AM | 31

Warmongering by one fucking American NATO commander Lt. Gen. Frederick Ben Hodges , an interview across the western compliant media:

Europe faces a 'real threat' from Russia, warns US army commander

Posted by: Oui | Apr 19, 2015 5:57:29 AM | 32

More, Europe has two enemies Russia and ISIS …

European Union Army Plan Aims to Protect Continent from Russia, ISIS

Posted by: Oui | Apr 19, 2015 5:57:59 AM | 33

About European Union Army: there is a whiff of hilarity there. On one hand, the dangers from ISIS and Russia are both quite remote, so they are not treated seriously. The force being pencilled is about as large as the part of Ukrainian army that was encircled in Debaltsevo (should there be a Wiki entry "Debaltsevo debacle"?). Of course, it makes some sense of practicing coordination of national units so it is not a moronic project, but a very smallish project with very outsized among of debates, announcements, analysis and so on.

While Europe has few problems defending itself against some putative onslaught, "projecting force" is another matter. The French can do it in Chad, Mali etc., but how large a European Corps should be to make a difference in conflicts between local nationalists of Georgia and Ukraine with Russian-supported internal opponents? It is like trying to defend Paraguay against the forces of Triple Alliance: we could promise economic sanctions on Argentina, Brasil and Uruguay would they invade Paraguay again, but above all, we would urge Paraguay not to pick fights with the neighbors. (Incidentally, currently Paraguay has a "pro-Western" government, and the three former opponents, "anti-Western", so it is a good case study for comparisons.)

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Apr 19, 2015 9:05:36 AM | 34

side board

On : Eight politicians of the Party of Region of former president Yanukovich, ousted in a U.S. inspired coup, were killed as were three journalists un-sympathetic to the now ruling coup government.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/04/16/the-murderers-of-kiev/

I suspect there are many names of murdered unknown, unlisted.

Political 'covert' or open, blatant assassinations are unfortunately normal in such situations. Tallying them is arduous, because the murderous impulse is reflected right down into the street, it is not just a State - Power - Corp enterprise.

Viktor, 33, son of Viktor Yanukovych died in March 2015, in an accident on Lake Baikal. His vehicle, with 6 on board, went through the ice, 5 survived, he died. He was the driver.

one garbled article, the telegraph

http://tinyurl.com/ly8csrl

I'm not advocating he should be added to that list. Abandonment (one article suggested that all scrambled to save themselves thus leaving Viktor with no help..) is part of that…

Just to say, that lists like this are dodgy and depend on the MSM, snippets from blogs and the like. Viktor Junior might easily have been included, his death is exremely suspicious, etc. Or it might be considered a typical rich son demise due to hubris, stupidity, assumed invicibility forging ahead in a risky 'sport.'

Posted by: Noirette | Apr 19, 2015 1:05:25 PM | 35

Lone Wolf at 29 -- "Land of Confusion" is a good call, suits the time now better than it did before. Unfortunately the vid you linked to was not available in my loc. But I happen to have it in my browser history, for anyone that missed their daily dose (or yearly allotment) of Genesis. And let me throw in my favorite early Peter Gabriel track, Here Comes the Flood. The problems of global warming give it a different meaning now than in 80's. Best live version, IMHO. "It'll be those who gave their island to survive...."

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 19, 2015 6:07:59 PM | 36

@rm 35:

Thanks for the link. I couldn't figure out what the song was from the title. Sorry, but Phil Collins' voice always reminds me of Miami Vice.

Speaking of people in music videos with fat faces, consider this (which I have probably posted here before):

Rammstein: America

I don't think that there's much doubt that the Apollo program was America's pinnacle. (As is the case with other great human achievements, it took a German to make it happen.) Compared to when America made it to the moon, the country is now absolutely pitiful and pathetic, and I think everyone understands that on one level or another.

I read up on the Apollo program at Wikipedia recently. It really was a mind boggling achievement. Think of the self-confidence those scientists and engineers must have had to work out such a project, when no one had any experience of being in space. No wonder there is a conspiracy theory that it was all a hoax. (Of course, the Russians deserve some credit even here, since it was they who provided the motivation to the Americans to get to the moon.)

How could America fall so low from such a peak? To hazard a guess, what made the Apollo program possible was the inheritance from the US WW II effort. Not just Werner von Braun, but also central economic planning and the restraint of avarice by a sense of national purpose.

Perhaps America's fate was sealed when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. That made the dollar an international reserve currency that could be printed without limit, removing any pressure from the US to be economically competitive or have a manufacturing base. Thus the current situation, in which the main way that the US interacts with the outside world is by waging one war after another, all to keep the dollar in place.

And finally, since we're sharing music videos again, here is an 80s antidote to Genesis:

Flying Lizards: Sex Machine

Posted by: Demian | Apr 19, 2015 7:35:55 PM | 37

P. Berman at 33 -- While I've not followed it too closely (I stay busy watching the Banderaists), the problem of the EuroForce is puzzling. It's the kind of rapid reaction force that the French have had for decades with Foreign Legion -- professional interventionists. And as they were volunteers, often foreign, little political cost for use.

So you'd think in principle it's well with the the organizational and logistical capabilities of the Eurozone. Clearly the problems are political, around domestic sovereignity and foreign entanglement. As well as the one you raise, who will it be used against, and where?

I'm not sure the Paraguay analogy fits, but I'd have to bone up on that one. I'm glad that we've drawn someone capable of bringing it up, good fit or bad. I always find it hard to think of land-locked Paraguay has having been a power frightful enough to unite its neighbors against it in the late 1800's.

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 19, 2015 10:32:16 PM | 39

The Phoenix Program comes to Ukraine.

Posted by: guest77 | Apr 20, 2015 8:08:59 PM | 45

Posted by: Demian | Apr 20, 2015 10:12:19 PM | 48

And now, for just a minute, anyway, back onto the Ukraine.

Fort Russ has Vladimir Lepekhin explaining Why the Ukrainian army is doomed to defeat.

The main source of power of the Ukrainian military machine... is in its reliance on wide array of means of waging war in pursuit of "Ukrainianness".

This machine is based on lies, cruelty, direct terror, the use of forbidden weapons (I think that if the regime had nuclear weapons it would have used them by now), and the lowest imaginable methods of warmaking, such as the destruction of the civilian population, hostage-taking, torture, and the murder of prisoners of war and opponents....

It is not especially subordinate to the political leadership, but instead is purposed for, to some extent or another, the destruction of everything that does not fit into the "one state-one nation-one idea" conception.

The power of the Ukrainian military machine also resides in the fact that it is backed by the entire "civilized world" which is rendering Kiev moral, political, financial, military, and legal support.

He goes on to note that the Ukrainians have no effective leadership, capable of inspiring the ranks to sacrifice and victory. This is in part due no cohesive, appealing ideology.

As translator J. Hawk points out about Ukrainian nationalism, "Everyone who's ever adopted it, lost. They did not merely lose badly, they lost ugly, and made the ideology appear even more despicable and monstrous than it was before." Having cut themselves off from the Russian and Soviet past, they're left with Bandera and the OUN-UPA atrocities as models of "Ukrainainness."

I sadly expect this run of bad luck on the part of the heroes of the Ukraine will continue.

Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 20, 2015 10:52:01 PM | 50

@Demian,

If you're trying for true anonymity, you've already failed because this web site records IP addresses of all who post, unless you've already sought ways to block or falsify your IP address from the very beginning.

Equally email access has the same problem: irrespective of what information the email provider requires you to give, all a surveillance agency would need would be to access the IP addresses from which a given account is logged into.

True, the IP address isn't necessarily very accurate - typically in the 3-5 mile range - but additional filtering can narrow that down considerably, especially if traces are then put on said IP address to look for patterns of behavior (times of day a target typically uses the internet, writing/grammar patterns, lists of web sites frequented, etc).

Posted by: ǝn⇂ɔ | Apr 21, 2015 10:51:54 AM | 53

@⇂ɔ #53:

I am not trying for true anonymity. I just don't want my identity to be obvious to any fascist (at this current point in history, the word "fascist" is more or less synonymous with "Ukrainian") idiot who might be reading this blog.

@ALL:

If Atlantos were civilized, they would commit harikiri: Bridge Burning: EU to Bring Antitrust Charges against Gazprom http://t.co/8TrQ4LWoze

- Adalbrand (@Adalbrand) April 21, 2015

Now, on a lighter note: Kiev junta magic underwear???

Patriotic Underwear to Increase Morale

Posted by: Vintage Red | Apr 21, 2015 5:50:44 PM | 56

All I can say about this, yes, it seems serious. Patriotic underwear to increase morale of the Ukrainian army. So you can't say you weren't briefed on the new dress code.

On a darker note, here's a very well-made threat for you. Security forces say "Ukrainophobes" ought to "lower their rhetoric to zero". Senior SBU investigator Vasiliy Vovk, speaking officially, said "I think that... when we are practically at war... we should not have people... who are speaking out against Ukraine and against Ukrainianness. I advise them to do it because nothing good will come of it."

When asked if he could define "Ukrainophobia," Vovk said "No. But we know what we are talking about."

You might need a laugh after that. With All of Ukraine Blocked by the Gridlock From Successive Russian Invasions, arrangements are being made for overflow parking in Poland and Belarus.

[April 20, 2015] Another Idiotic Plan to Hurt Russia by MIKE WHITNEY

April 20, 2015 | CounterPunch

"The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests…..We must, however, be mindful that…Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States."

-The Wolfowitz Doctrine, the original version of the Defense Planning Guidance, authored by Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, leaked to the New York Times on March 7, 1992

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia…and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."

-THE GRAND CHESSBOARD – American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, page 30, Basic Books, 1997

The Laussanne negotiations between Iran and the so called P5+1 group (the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany) have nothing to do with nuclear proliferation. They are, in fact, another attempt to weaken and isolate Russia by easing sanctions, thus allowing Iranian gas to replace Russian gas in Europe.

Laussanne shows that Washington still thinks that the greatest threat to its dominance is the further economic integration of Russia and Europe, a massive two-continent free trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok that would eventually dwarf dwindling US GDP while decisively shifting the balance of global power to Asia. To counter that threat, the Obama administration toppled the elected government of Ukraine in a violent coup, launched a speculative attack on the ruble, forced down global oil prices, and is presently arming and training neo-Nazi extremists in the Ukrainian army. Washington has done everything in its power to undermine relations between the EU and Russia risking even nuclear war in its effort to separate the natural trading partners and to strategically situate itself in a location where it can control the flow of vital resources from East to West.

Laussanne was about strategic priorities not nukes. The Obama administration realizes that if it can't find an alternate source of gas for Europe, then its blockade of Russia will fail and the EU-Russia alliance will grow stronger. And if the EU-Russia alliance grows stronger, then US attempts to extend its tentacles into Asia and become a major player in the world's most prosperous region will also fail leaving Washington to face a dismal future in which the steady erosion of its power and prestige is a near certainty. This is from an article titled "Removing sanctions against Iran to have unfavorable influence on Turkey and Azerbaijan":

"If Washington removes energy sanctions on Iran…then a new geopolitical configuration will emerge in the region. Connecting with Nabucco will be enough for Iran to fully supply Europe with gas…

Iran takes the floor with inexhaustible oil and gas reserves and as a key transit country. Iran disposes of the 10% of the reported global oil reserves and is the second country in the world after Russia with its natural gas reserves (15%). The official representatives of Iran do not hide that they strive to enter the European market of oil and gas, as in the olden days. Let's remember that the deputy Minister of Oil in Iran, Ali Majedi, offered to revive project of Nabucco pipeline during his European tour and said that his country is ready to supply gas to Europe through it…

"Some months earlier the same Ali Majedi reported sensational news: 'two invited European delegations' discussed the potential routes of Iranian gas supply to Europe," the article reads." … It is also noted that the West quite materially reacted to the possibility of the Iranian gas to join Nabucco." (Removing sanctions against Iran to have unfavorable influence on Turkey and Azerbaijan, Panorama)

So, is this the plan, to provide "energy security" to Europe by replacing Russian gas with Iranian gas?

It sure looks like it. But that suggests that the sanctions really had nothing to do with Iran's fictitious nuclear weapons program but were merely used to humiliate Iran while keeping as much of its oil and gas offline until western-backed multinationals could get their greasy mitts on it.

Indeed, that's exactly how the sanctions were used even though the nuclear issue was a transparent fake from the get go. Get a load of this from the New York Times:

"Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America's 16 intelligence agencies." (U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb, James Risen, New York Times, February 24, 2012)

See? The entire US intelligence establishment has been saying the same thing from the onset: No Iranian nukes. Nor has Iran ever been caught diverting nuclear fuel to other purposes. Never. Also, as nuclear weapons physicist, Gordon Prather stated many times before his death, "After almost three years of go-anywhere see-anything interview-anyone inspections, IAEA inspectors have yet to find any indication that Iran has - or ever had - a nuclear weapons program."

The inspectors were on the ground for three freaking years. They interviewed everyone and went wherever they wanted. They searched every cave and hideaway, every nook and cranny, and they found nothing.

Get it? No nukes, not now, not ever. Period.

The case against Iran is built on propaganda, brainwashing and bullshit, in that order. But, still, that doesn't tell us why the US is suddenly changing course. For that, we turn to an article from The Brookings Institute titled "Why the details of the Iran deal don't matter" which sums it up quite well. Here's a clip:

"At heart, this is a fight over what to do about Iran's challenge to U.S. leadership in the Middle East and the threat that Iranian geopolitical ambitions pose to U.S. allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia. Proponents of the deal believe that the best way for the United States to deal with the Iranian regional challenge is to seek to integrate Iran into the regional order, even while remaining wary of its ambitions. A nuclear deal is an important first step in that regard, but its details matter little because the ultimate goal is to change Iranian intentions rather destroy Iranian capability." (Why the details of the Iran deal don't matter, Brookings)

Notice how carefully the author avoids mentioning Israel by name although he alludes to "the threat that Iranian geopolitical ambitions pose to U.S. allies". Does he think he's talking to idiots?

But his point is well taken; the real issue is not "Iranian capability", but "Iran's challenge to U.S. leadership in the Middle East". In other words, the nuclear issue is baloney. What Washington doesn't like is that Iran has an independent foreign policy that conflicts with the US goal of controlling the Middle East. That's what's really going on. Washington wants a compliant Iran that clicks its heals and does what its told.

The problem is, the strategy hasn't worked and now the US is embroiled in a confrontation with Moscow that is a higher priority than the Middle East project. (The split between US elites on this matter has been interesting to watch, with the Obama-Brzezinski crowd on one side and the McCain-neocon crowd on the other.) This is why the author thinks that easing sanctions and integrating Iran into the predominantly US system would be the preferable remedy for at least the short term.

Repeat: "The best way for the United States to deal with the Iranian regional challenge is to integrate Iran into the regional order." In other words, if you can't beat 'em, then join 'em. Iran is going to be given enough freedom to fulfill its role within the imperial order, that is, to provide gas to Europe in order to inflict more economic pain on Russia. Isn't that what's going on?

But what effect will that have on Iran-Russia relations? Will it poison the well and turn one ally against the other?

Probably not, mainly because the ties between Iran and Russia are growing stronger by the day. Check this out from the Unz Review by Philip Giraldi:

"Moscow and Tehran are moving towards a de-facto strategic partnership, which can be easily seen by the two groundbreaking announcements from earlier this week. It's now been confirmed by the Russian government that the rumored oil-for-goods program between Russia and Iran is actually a real policy that's already been implemented, showing that Moscow has wasted no time in trying to court the Iranian market after the proto-deal was agreed to a week earlier. Providing goods in exchange for resources is a strategic decision that creates valuable return customers in Iran, who will then be in need of maintenance and spare parts for their products. It's also a sign of deep friendship between the two Caspian neighbors and sets the groundwork for the tentative North-South economic corridor between Russia and India via Iran." (A Shifting Narrative on Iran, Unz Review)

But here's the glitch: Iran can't just turn on the spigot and start pumping gas to Europe. It doesn't work that way. It's going to take massive pipeline and infrastructure upgrades that could take years to develop. That means there will be plenty of hefty contracts awarded to friends of Tehran –mostly Russian and Chinese–who will perform their tasks without interfering in domestic politics. Check this out from Pepe Escobar:

"Russia and China are deeply committed to integrating Iran into their Eurasian vision. Iran may finally be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the upcoming summer summit in Russia. That implies a full-fledged security/commercial/political partnership involving Russia, China, Iran and most Central Asian 'stans'.

Iran is already a founding member of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); that means financing for an array of New Silk Road-related projects bound to benefit the Iranian economy. AIIB funding will certainly merge with loans and other assistance for infrastructure development related to the Chinese-established Silk Road Fund…" (Russia, China, Iran: In sync, Pepe Escobar, Russia Today)

Get the picture? Eurasian integration is already done-deal and there's nothing the US can do to stop it.

Washington needs to rethink its approach. Stop the meddling and antagonism, rebuild relations through trade and mutual trust, and accept the inevitability of imperial decline.

Asia's star is rising just as America's is setting. Deal with it.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

[Apr 18, 2015] Petro Poroshenko's REAL Problem (And It's Not Russia) by Raymond Sontag

Quote: "If basic rule of law and tolerance for dissent are not observed, what chance does Ukrainian democracy have? Therefore, it is in Poroshenko and Ukraine's interest to see that the fighting in the east stops for good, even if it means the country de facto loses control of that territory, at least temporarily. If such a loss proves to be part of the price Ukraine pays for a functioning democracy, it will be well worth it. It is also in the interest of Poroshenko and his supporters to not misdiagnose political violence and radicalism as a purely foreign import or as something that hurts the country only to the extent that it discredits the current government."
Apr 18, 2015 | The National Interest

Ukraine has had a string of opposition figures die in 2015. Between late January and early March, seven former officials associated with deposed President Viktor Yanukovych died in apparent suicides, but many suspect they were murdered. Then this week, Oles Buzina, a pro-Russian journalist, Oleh Kalashnikov, a former member of parliament from Yanukovych's political party, and Sergey Sukhobok were shot and killed. On Friday, Kiev political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko wrote on his Facebook page that he had received a letter from a group called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) claiming responsibility for the murder of Buzina and Kalashnikov and for three of the seven "suicides." UPA, incidentally, was the name of the Ukrainian partisan paramilitary force that fought Soviet and German armies in the 1940s, suggesting Ukrainian nationalists were taking credit.

... ... ...

...Of course we do not know if the note Fesenko received is genuine, or who committed these murders, or how many were actually murders, as opposed to suicides. We do know, though, that Ukraine has a serious problem with radical politics and politically motivated violence and that these problems are greatly exacerbated by the war in the east.

Unable to raise an army sufficient to fight the Russian-backed separatist movement, the government has relied on nationalist paramilitary groups to do a good part of the fighting. While this strategy may be a necessity, it does raise questions about the government's ability to control these groups or even to defend itself from them, should it need to. Last fall, right-wing protesters clashed with police outside the parliament building, and this spring, the Dnipro-1 paramilitary group briefly took a state-owned oil company as part of dispute between the government and the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. The war has also sparked proliferation of weapons in Ukraine, with gun violence on the rise across the country.

Beyond the dangers posed by paramilitary groups and freely available arms, the war has seriously aggravated divisions within Ukrainian society between those who feel culturally or linguistically closer to Russia and those who are more oriented toward western Europe. As these recent killings would seem to show, these divisions can be deadly even outside of areas where the war is being fought.

If basic rule of law and tolerance for dissent are not observed, what chance does Ukrainian democracy have? Therefore, it is in Poroshenko and Ukraine's interest to see that the fighting in the east stops for good, even if it means the country de facto loses control of that territory, at least temporarily. If such a loss proves to be part of the price Ukraine pays for a functioning democracy, it will be well worth it. It is also in the interest of Poroshenko and his supporters to not misdiagnose political violence and radicalism as a purely foreign import or as something that hurts the country only to the extent that it discredits the current government. As Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko put it,

"In this twisted logic the far right are criticized first of all for putting their partisan interests above Ukraine's national interests. In other words, they are criticized not for being anti-democratic, reactionary, xenophobic and for propagating discriminatory ideas, but for not being nationalist enough."

... ... ...

Raymond Sontag is an adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for The National Interest

[Apr 17, 2015] Will Ukraine Push the US Into War

As for question "What are the forces that have us "stumbling to war"?" the answer is chick hawks ("liberal interventionalists" which are indistinguishable from neocons) from current administration and military industrial complex.
Apr 17, 2015 | The American Conservative
"Could a U.S. response to Russia's action in Ukraine provoke a confrontation that leads to a U.S.-Russia War?" This jolting question is raised by Graham Allison and Dimitri Simes in the cover article of The National Interest.

The answer the authors give, in "Countdown to War: The Coming U.S. Russia Conflict," is that the odds are shortening on a military collision between the world's largest nuclear powers. The cockpit of the conflict, should it come, will be Ukraine.

What makes the article timely is the report that Canada will be sending 200 soldiers to western Ukraine to join 800 Americans and 75 Brits on a yearlong assignment to train the Ukrainian army.

And train that army to fight whom? Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine whom Vladimir Putin has said will not be crushed, even if it requires Russian intervention. Says Putin, "We won't let it happen."

What are the forces that have us "stumbling to war"?

On our side there is President Obama who "enjoys attempting to humiliate Putin" and "repeatedly includes Russia in his list of current scourges alongside the Islamic State and Ebola." Then there is what TNI editor Jacob Heilbrunn calls the "truculent disposition" that has become the "main driver of Republican foreign policy." A "triumphalist camp," redolent of the "cakewalk war" crowd of Bush II, is ascendant and pushing us toward confrontation.

This American mindset has its mirror image in Moscow.

"Putin is not the hardest of the hard-liners in Russia," write the authors. "Russia's establishment falls into … a pragmatic camp, which is currently dominant thanks principally to Putin's support, and a hard-line camp" the one Putin adviser calls "the hotheads."

The hotheads believe the way to respond to U.S. encroachments is to invoke the doctrine of Yuri Andropov, "challenge the main enemy," and brandish nuclear weapons to terrify Europe and split NATO. Russian public opinion is said to be moving toward the hotheads.

Russian bombers have been intruding into NATO air space. Putin says he was ready to put nuclear forces on alert in the Crimea. Russia's ambassador has warned Copenhagen that if its ships join a NATO missile defense force, Denmark could be targeted with nukes.

In coming war games, Russia will move Iskander missiles into the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad on Poland's northern border. "Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash," brays the director of the television network Rossiya Segodnya.

As of now, the "pragmatists" represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov retain the upper hand. They believe Russia can still do business with the United States and Europe. "The 'hotheads' take the opposite view," the authors write, "they argue that NATO is determined to overthrow Putin, force Russia to its knees, and perhaps even dismember the country."

In Ukraine, Putin has drawn two red lines. He will not permit Ukraine to join NATO. He will not allow the rebels to be crushed.

Russia hard-liners are confident that should it come to war in Ukraine, Russia would have what Cold War strategists called "escalation dominance." This is what JFK had in the Cuban missile crisis-conventional and nuclear superiority on sea and land, and in the air around Cuba.

With Ukraine easily accessible to Russian forces by road and rail, sea and air, and Russia's military just over the border while U.S. military might is a continent away, the hard-liners believe Russia would prevail in a war and America would face a choice-accept defeat in Ukraine or escalate to tactical atomic weapons.

The Russians are talking of resorting to such weapons first.

The decisive date for Putin to determine which way Russia will go would appear to be this summer. The authors write:

Putin will attempt to exploit the expiration of EU sanctions, which are scheduled to expire in July. If that fails, however, and the European Union joins the United States in imposing additional economic sanctions such as excluding Moscow from the SWIFT financial clearing system, Putin would be tempted to respond, not by retreating, but by ending all cooperation with the West, and mobilizing his people against a new and 'apocalyptic' threat to 'Mother Russia.'

As a leading Russian politician told us, 'We stood all alone against Napoleon and against Hitler.'

As of now, the Minsk II cease-fire of February seems to be holding. The Ukrainian army and pro-Russian rebels have both moved their heavy weapons back from the truce lines, though there have been clashes and casualties.

But as Ukraine's crisis is unresolved, these questions remain: Will the U.S. train the Ukrainian army and then greenlight an offensive to retake the rebel-held provinces? Would Russia intervene and rout that army? Would the Americans sit by if their Ukrainian trainees were defeated and more Ukrainian land was lost?

Or would we start up the escalator to a war with Russia that few Europeans, but some Americans and Russians, might welcome today?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority. Copyright 2015 Creators.com.

EU pushing Ukraine towards trilateral free trade, with Russia

et Al, April 16, 2015 at 9:31 am

euractiv: EU pushing Ukraine towards trilateral free trade, with Russia
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/europes-east/eu-pushes-ukraine-toward-trilateral-free-trade-including-russia-313816

Fearing that Russia could retaliate against Ukraine following the entry into force of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) later this year, the European Commission is now pushing Ukraine to agree to a trilateral trade format, including Russia.

On Wednesday (15 April), a Ukrainian parliamentarian reacted angrily to messagess from EU officials, who said that Ukraine should seek to accommodate its EU free trade agreement with an older arrangement his country had with Russia.

Ironically, it was Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich who appealed for such an approach two years ago, which was flatly rejected by Brussels…

…Neighbourhood Commissioner Johannes Hahn backed the main conclusions of the paper in the following terms:

"The study rightly recognises that integration [for Ukraine] with Russia and EU are not in principle mutually exclusive. The study goes on to suggest that at least partial restoration of links with Russia, and the so-called Eurasian Economic Union will be important to Ukraine's economic recovery, and that Ukraine should diversify its export markets and develop trade relations in many directions."

The Commissioner said that the EU wasn't looking for an exclusive economic relationship with Ukraine.

"This is important to be stressed. There is nothing in our new agreement that would stop Ukraine from continuing to export products to Russia. Approximation with EU standards will not prevent Ukraine from trading with Russia," he went on. In his terms, the Association Agreement left Ukraine free to determine its own trade policy.

"Ukraine already has preferential trade relations with the members of the Eurasian economic union within the framework of the Community of Independent States free trade area. These are perfectly compatible with the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, and there is no reason why they should not be maintained. So the EU-Ukraine bilateral DCFTA does not impose a false choice on Kyiv. Those who say so are wrong or may have their own agenda," Hahn said….
####

More at the link.

So Brussels admits failure and that it was wrong? No. Brussels has got the message from Germany and others that they will not take over Russia's former subsidy of the Ukraine.

So there you have it – Brussels wants this unfortunate misunderstanding brushed under the table with the backing of EU states that still want to continue sanctions against Russia. Silence from the US.

[Apr 17, 2015] Graham Allison on World War I, Ukraine and Realism

Apr 17, 2015 | The National Interest
https://youtu.be/hR3HakDTlLo?list=UUgp3Ipjacu00pea4DD1bU_w

Please Note: The following is a note from The National Interest's Editor, Jacob Heilbrunn.

Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon professor of government and Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School and a member of the National Interest's Advisory Council, has enjoyed a long and distinguished career both in academia and government. His accomplishments include his landmark book Essence of Decision, a study of the Cuban missile crisis as well as serving as assistant secretary of defense for policy and plans in the Clinton administration. His approach to realism in foreign policy -- a habit of thought that he calls an "endangered species" -- is grounded in a practical and hardheaded understanding of international affairs. As he notes in this interview, it was Henry Kissinger who profoundly influenced his thinking. Other Harvard professors who helped shape his thinking include Samuel Huntington and Ernest May, both of whom were keen students of history and international relations.

In his numerous essays and books, Allison focuses on statesmanship -- averting and ending crises. His most recent book, together with Robert D. Blackwill, consists of extended interviews with Lee Kuan Yew, the former leader of Singapore who, as Kissinger puts it in a foreword, is "not only one of the seminal leaders of our period, but also a thinker recognized for his strategic acumen."

Currently, Allison is completing a book on what he calls the Thucydides Trap -- the moment when an established power is challenged by a rising one, as, for example, Wilhelmine Germany sought to surpass the British empire with calamitous results both for itself and the rest of Europe. Indeed, with a number of contributions to the National Interest web site, Allison has examined the legacy of World War I for contemporary events, asking whether the crisis in Ukraine might, as the Balkans once did, presage a larger and even more sanguinary conflict that could menace the very foundations of the Western world that has existed since the end of World War II. It's an unsettling thought. But then again, Allison is a provocative thinker who is rarely satisfied with what passes for conventional wisdom in Washington, DC or elsewhere.

In the lively and engaging interview above, he discusses his understanding of how the past may shape the present, the deep impression left upon him by Kissinger, and what lessons World War I and the Cuban missile crisis may offer. Perhaps most provocatively, he dismisses the notion that President Obama has failed in foreign policy, withholding great praise for Obama but also noting that he disagrees with the prescriptions offered by leading neoconservatives. Nuanced, cogent, meditative -- these are all adjectives that might be appropriately applied to Allison, who knows that simple truculence cannot substitute for discerning diplomacy when conducting foreign affairs.

Articles by Graham Allison

Vladimir Putin's Dicey Dilemma: Russia Stands at a Fateful Fork in the Road

Despite the Obama administration's narrative of a Russia that is not a player in global affairs -- Moscow matters. Yet, major challenges remain if the Ukraine crisis remains unresolved.

Graham Allison Is America on the ISIS Hit List?

"To whom does ISIS pose the most imminent and even existential threat?"

Graham Allison Graham Allison on World War I, Ukraine and Realism

TNI's editor speaks with Harvard's Graham Allison.

Graham Allison How to Solve the Ukraine Crisis

"If Ukraine is to have a chance to succeed as a modern nation, it will require a degree of acceptance and cooperation from Russia as well as its Western neighbors."

Graham Allison Could the Ukraine Crisis Spark a World War?

We should not forget that in 1914, the possibility that the assassination of an Archduke could produce a world war seemed almost inconceivable.

Graham Allison Good News From Ukraine: It Doesn't Have Nukes

Looking back at Kiev's risky, carefully negotiated decision to give up its nuclear weapons after it escaped the Soviet Union.

Graham Allison A "Belgian Solution" for Ukraine?

"Given the reality that is Ukraine today, an internationally-recognized neutral state within its current borders would be a victory for all."

Graham Allison Putin's Olympic Gamble

A report from Sochi.

Graham Allison 2014: Good Year for a Great War?

Prospects for peace seemed to be looking up in 1913, as in 2013. What are the chances we're wrong again?

Graham Allison An Interview with Graham Allison

A conversation on the Syria deal, Russia's power, the Iran overtures, and more.

Graham Allison Lee Kuan Yew, Grand Master of Asia

Singapore's éminence grise sees China rising and India falling.

Robert D. Blackwill The Coming Clash Over Iran

Relations between the United States and Israel may soon be dominated by disagreements about the Islamic Republic.

Shai Feldman The Three 'Nos' Knows

In the previous issue of The National Interest, John Mueller argued that the threats from nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war are exagger

Graham Allison Apocalypse When?

Graham AllisonJoseph CirincioneWilliam C. PotterJohn Mueller

Churchill, Not Quite

With America facing grave threats, the Bush Administration has failed to demonstrate a willingness to establish a hierarchy of priorities.

Graham AllisonDimitri K. Simes In Brief: Thoughts on National Security

Graham AllisonIan BremmerHarlan UllmanDerek Chollet Not If, but When: Imagining a Nuclear 9/11

As unpleasant and as frightening as it may be, the United States must come to grips with the prospect of facing a terrorist strike using nuclear materials--a "nuclear 9/11"--within the coming decade.

Graham Allison The New Containment

Forging a U.S.-Russian alliance to prevent nuclear terrorism should be America's top priority in the post-September 11 world; here is a blueprint for one.

[Apr 14, 2015] Nuland Ensconced in Neocon Camp Who Believes in Noble Lie

Mar 5, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
RPI Director Daniel McAdams is interviewed on RT. Transcript below; video here.

Victoria Nuland's anti-Russian rhetoric comes from the neocon camp of US politics, seeking to stir the Ukraine crisis, thrilled by the prospect of defense industry expansion and more arms sales, Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Peace Institute told RT.

RT: World leaders and international monitors agree the situation in Ukraine is generally improving. Why are we still witnessing aggressive rhetoric from some US officials?

Daniel McAdams: Because the US does not want peace to break out. The US is determined to see its project through. But unfortunately like all of its regime change projects this one is failing miserably. Victoria Nuland completely disregards the role of the US in starting the conflict in Ukraine. She completely glosses over the fact that the army supported by Kiev has been bombarding Eastern Ukraine, as if these independent fighters in the east are killing themselves and their own people. Victoria Nuland was an aid to Dick Cheney; she is firmly ensconced in the neocon camp. The neocons believe very strongly in lying, the noble lie… They lied us into the war in Iraq; they are lying now about Ukraine. Lying is what the neocons do.

RT: Nuland listed a lot of hostile actions by Russia without providing any reliable proof. Do you think she can she be challenged on these topics?

DM: Maybe she is right but the US hasn't provided one piece of proof, except for Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt's Rorschach tests he passes off as a satellite photo. Maybe they are true but we have to present some evidence because we've seen now the neocons have lied us into the war. This is much more serious than the attack on small Iraq. This has the potential for a global nuclear war. So I think they should be held to a higher level of scrutiny. Thus far they have not provided any. We do know however that the US is providing military aid. As the matter of fact this week hundreds of American troops are arriving in Ukraine. Why is that not an escalation? Why is it only an escalation when the opponents of the US government are involved?

RT: How probable is that the Western nations ship lethal aid to Ukraine?

DM: It is interesting because Victoria Nuland this week spent some time with Andriy Parubiy, one of the founders of the fascist party in Ukraine and I believe one of the founders of the Joseph Goebbels Institute. She met with him this week and had a photo taken with him. He came back to Ukraine and assured his comrades that the US will provide additional, non-lethal weapons - whatever that means - and felt pretty strongly that they would provide lethal weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey has been urging the US government to provide lethal weapons as has the new US defense secretary [Ashton Carter], both of whom come from the military industrial complex which is thrilled by prospect of a lot more arms to be sold.

RT: Nuland has said the State Department is in talks with EU leaders for another round of sanctions on Russia. Do you think the EU will agree?

DM: I think they will be pressured into agreeing. It is interesting that Nuland said that the new Rada, the new Ukrainian parliament, in this first four months has been a hive of activity. I was just watching some videos from the fights in the Ukrainian parliament. So that was one bit of unintentional humor probably in her speech. It looks like a fight club over there.
Related

[Apr 14, 2015] Toronto Orchestra Drops Pianist Over Tweets About Ukraine

Freedom of speech in the USA is a three-card monte. It is granted, according to NYT, only to those who follow the Washington's party line... So what's the difference with the USSR then ? Quote: "Ms. Lisitsa insisted that the only aim of her Twitter feed was "to get the other side of the story heard, the one you never see in the mainstream media - the plight of my people, the good and bad things that were happening in Ukraine." NYT pressititutes were afraid to open comments to this story...
Quote:" Ms. Lisitsa, who now lives in Paris, said that her use of vulgar illustrations on Twitter was partly inspired by French satire. She said that one of the tweets the orchestra had particularly objected to was a scatological cartoon she had adapted from Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly, to illustrate, in crude terms, the idea that the Western media were being fed lies about Russian involvement in Ukraine concocted by Ukrainian intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency."
Apr 8, 2015 | NYTimes.com

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra abruptly canceled a performance of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto on Wednesday after parting ways with a Ukrainian soloist over concerns that her ribald Twitter commentary had crossed the line into "intolerance."

The orchestra's president, Jeff Melanson, said in a telephone interview that his staff had asked Valentina Lisitsa, the pianist who had been scheduled to perform, to explain dozens of inflammatory tweets in which she used vulgar imagery and language to attack Ukrainian nationalists. Ms. Lisitsa, he said, confirmed that she did write the messages posted on her account under the alias NedoUkraďnka, including one that mockingly compared Ukrainian teachers in traditional dress to African tribesmen.

Continue reading the main story

Ukrainian Internet activists, who call Ms. Lisitsa a supporter of Russian-backed separatists, celebrated the orchestra's decision. They also pointed to a number of other tweets in which she seemed to echo Kremlin propaganda that Ukraine has been in the grip of bloodthirsty "Nazis" since protests toppled the pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, last year.

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Mr. Melanson said that the orchestra had tried to resolve the matter quietly by finding a replacement for Ms. Lisitsa as pianist late last week and paying her fee, but she went public on Monday, defending her right to use "satire and hyperbole" in online debates over the war in Ukraine. She also asked her fans to speak out against "censorship" by demanding that she be allowed to perform as scheduled.

Continue reading the main story

Writing on Facebook, Ms. Lisitsa insisted that the only aim of her Twitter feed was "to get the other side of the story heard, the one you never see in the mainstream media - the plight of my people, the good and bad things that were happening in Ukraine."

Continue reading the main story

The pianist attributed the backlash against her to what she called the success of her efforts to expose the suffering caused by Ukrainian government forces and the anti-Russian bias of Western news media reports.

"I translated news stories from Ukrainian language websites, I translated eyewitness accounts of atrocities," she said. "I became really good in unmasking fakes published by Western media in order to make one side of the civil war look whiter and softer than Easter bunny, and another - as sub-humans, not worthy of mercy, the 'collateral damage.' "

Continue reading the main story

Her fans and supporters of the rebel cause in Ukraine responded by flooding the orchestra's Facebook page and Twitter mentions with outrage and heckling the local pianist lined up to replace Ms. Lisitsa, Stewart Goodyear.

Continue reading the main story

Writing on Facebook late Tuesday, Mr. Goodyear explained that he had decided to withdraw as a result of the "social media frenzy" surrounding the engagement.

"Words of bile and hatred were hurled in my direction," he wrote. "Suddenly I was accused of supporting censorship, and bullied into declining this engagement. What started out as one of the happiest moments of my life turned into a shattering display of mob hysteria."

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

"With all due respect to the pianist who I was going to replace, one must own one's opinions and words," Mr. Goodyear added. "Her words offended many people who perceived her as pro-violence and anti-love."

Ms. Lisitsa, a naturalized American citizen who moved to the United States in 1991, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to an independent Ukraine, embodies some of the complexity of Ukrainian identity politics. While calling herself "an ethnic Ukrainian," as the daughter of a Ukrainian father and a Russian-Polish mother, she grew up speaking Russian and considers the use of force by the government in Kiev against Russian-backed separatists an outrage. She named her Twitter feed NedoUkraďnka, or SubUkrainian, after reading a disputed translation of comments by the post-revolutionary prime minister in Kiev which suggested that he had referred to Russian-backed rebels as "subhumans."

Continue reading the main story

Speaking by telephone from a hotel outside Toronto on Tuesday, Ms. Lisitsa said that she hoped to find a site to perform for her fans, even without the orchestra. As to who, exactly, her accusers were, she said, "I am in the dark." The orchestra, she said, had refused her request to meet with anyone offended by her Twitter commentary in an attempt to defuse the tension.

Ms. Lisitsa, who now lives in Paris, said that her use of vulgar illustrations on Twitter was partly inspired by French satire. She said that one of the tweets the orchestra had particularly objected to was a scatological cartoon she had adapted from Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly, to illustrate, in crude terms, the idea that the Western media were being fed lies about Russian involvement in Ukraine concocted by Ukrainian intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency.

She also argued that she had been singled out by supporters of the government in Kiev for her role in helping to expose the neo-Nazi sympathies of some of the Ukrainian volunteers fighting Russian-backed separatists. After Elle magazine published a photo spread late last year featuring several young Ukrainian women in camouflage, Ms. Lisitsa discovered that the woman on the title page, Vita Zaverukha, had previously posted images of herself on social media making the Nazi salute and wearing a swastika.

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Ms. Lisitsa also suggested that Ukrainian activists had been angered by her impassioned defense of another artist, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, who was criticized for expressing sympathy for civilians in Donetsk, a separatist-controlled city in eastern Ukraine.

In December, Ms. Netrebko donated a million rubles - more than $18,000 - to the opera house in Donetsk, and was photographed handing the check to Oleg Tsarov, a separatist politician, at a news conference in Russia. She then posed for photographs with him while holding a separatist flag.

Continue reading the main story

Although the money reportedly made its way to civilians in Donetsk, Ukrainian activists tried, and failed, to persuade the Metropolitan Opera to cancel all future performances by Ms. Netrebko over the donation. In a statement rejecting the request, a representative of the New York opera house wrote that "the Met does not have to be in agreement with the personal views of the artists who perform on its stage."

Continue reading the main story

As Ms. Netrebko was being showered with applause after performing in the title role of Tchaikovsky's "Iolanta" in late January, a Ukrainian protester, Roman Torgovitsky, burst onto the Metropolitan stage carrying a placard calling her and the conductor for the performance, Valery Gergiev, "active contributors to Putin's war against Ukraine."

A Ukrainian protester interrupting applause for Anna Netrebko at the Metropolitan Opera in January.

[Apr 14, 2015] The New Militarism: Who Profits?

Quote: "So who is the real enemy? The Russians? No, the real enemy is the taxpayer. The real enemy is the middle class and the productive sectors of the economy. We are the victims of this new runaway military spending. Every dollar or euro spent on a contrived threat is a dollar or euro taken out of the real economy and wasted on military Keynesianism. It is a dollar stolen from a small business owner that will not be invested in innovation, spent on research to combat disease, or even donated to charities that help the needy."
Apr 12, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

Militarism and military spending are everywhere on the rise, as the new Cold War propaganda seems to be paying off. The new "threats" that are being hyped bring big profits to military contractors and the network of think tanks they pay to produce pro-war propaganda.

Here are just a few examples:

The German government announced last week that it would purchase 100 more "Leopard" tanks – a 45 percent increase in the country's inventory. Germany had greatly reduced its inventory of tanks as the end of the Cold War meant the end of any threat of a Soviet ground invasion of Europe. The German government now claims these 100 new tanks, which may cost nearly half a billion dollars, are necessary to respond to the new Russian assertiveness in the region. Never mind that Russia has neither invaded nor threatened any country in the region, much less a NATO member country.

The US Cold War-era nuclear bunker under Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, which was all but shut down in the 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is being brought back to life. The Pentagon has committed nearly a billion dollars to upgrading the facility to its previous Cold War-level of operations. US defense contractor Raytheon will be the prime beneficiary of this contract. Raytheon is a major financial sponsor of think tanks like the Institute for the Study of War, which continuously churn out pro-war propaganda. I am sure these big contracts are a good return on that investment.

NATO, which I believe should have been shut down after the Cold War ended, is also getting its own massively expensive upgrade. The Alliance commissioned a new headquarters building in Brussels, Belgium, in 2010, which is supposed to be completed in 2016. The building looks like a hideous claw, and the final cost – if it is ever finished – will be well over one billion dollars. That is more than twice what was originally budgeted. What a boondoggle! Is it any surprise that NATO bureaucrats and generals continuously try to terrify us with tales of the new Russian threat? They need to justify their expansion plans!

So who is the real enemy? The Russians?

No, the real enemy is the taxpayer. The real enemy is the middle class and the productive sectors of the economy. We are the victims of this new runaway military spending. Every dollar or euro spent on a contrived threat is a dollar or euro taken out of the real economy and wasted on military Keynesianism. It is a dollar stolen from a small business owner that will not be invested in innovation, spent on research to combat disease, or even donated to charities that help the needy.

One of the most pervasive and dangerous myths of our time is that military spending benefits an economy. This could not be further from the truth. Such spending benefits a thin layer of well-connected and well-paid elites. It diverts scarce resources from meeting the needs and desires of a population and channels them into manufacturing tools of destruction. The costs may be hidden by the money-printing of the central banks, but they are eventually realized in the steady destruction of a currency.

The elites are terrified that peace may finally break out, which will be bad for their profits. That is why they are trying to scuttle the Iran deal, nix the Cuba thaw, and drum up a new "Red Scare" coming from Moscow. We must not be fooled into believing their lies.


Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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[Apr 12, 2015] No Longer Quiet On The Eastern Front (Part 3)

...Vaclav Klaus .... stating that Western lies about Russia are 'monstrous'.
Apr 12, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Submitted by Kevin Virgil of Emerging Frontiers,

This is the final installment in a three-part series that explores the ongoing economic standoff in Greece and the Ukrainian civil war, and how these events are converging to launch what will soon become known as the Second Cold War. - By Kevin Virgil, CEO of Emerging Frontiers

* * * * *

Writing a short series of articles about geopolitics carries some risks - namely, that current events can unfold faster than I can hit the 'send' button on my next edition. It appears that I am releasing this missive in the nick of time, as the coming days promise more dramatic developments in the Greek economic crisis and, of particular interest, that country's growing closeness with Russia.

Let us quickly review what has been covered thus far in this series. In part one, we focused on economic tensions between the European Union and Greece, and how the past five years of austerity and hardship may compel the new Greek government to seek stronger ties with Russia. Part two reviewed last year's disintegration of Ukraine, and the chain of events that sparked its ongoing civil war.

Civil unrest in Kiev. Photo courtesy: The Times of London

In this final segment, we will attempt to view both of these conflicts from the Russian perspective, and to provide some insight into (if not a defense of) the Greek point of view. I do not consider myself to be a "Kremlinologist", or even an expert on Russian political affairs. That being said, I do believe that I can offer a relatively informed perspective that comes from living in both Athens and Moscow over the past ten years, at times when both countries were facing economic crises. I also believe that mainstream Western media outlets have thoroughly and utterly failed in their duty to provide a balanced perspective on the causes behind the growing chasm between Russia and the West.

We will begin with a look at the Russian point of view on Ukraine, and then shift our focus back to Greece in an effort to better understand what both Athens and Moscow stand to gain from the perception of closer cooperation against the EU. We will then quickly review other potential flashpoints along the EU's eastern borders, and show how Europe is rapidly losing its appetite for US-led sanctions against Russia. Finally, we will wrap up this adventure tour with an upcoming event that might provide a prophetic glimpse into Russia's future sphere of influence.

With that in mind, let's get started.

-----------------

Any casual watcher of CNN or Sky News is familiar with the Western narrative on Ukraine's last 12 months. Here is a brief summary; for a bit of entertainment, try to imagine Wolf Blitzer's droning voice reading this next paragraph from his teleprompter:

"The Ukrainian people, yearning for democracy in their troubled land, launched the spontaneous Maidan protests to bring down the evil Yanukovych regime. The people succeeded, but Russian President Vladimir Putin exploited the ensuing chaos by waging a propaganda war in Crimea, and a military offensive in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, to take back what Russia lost in the Soviet Union's collapse. And of course, this is only the first step in Putin's grand plan to re-unite the former Soviet Union."

Contents of the previous paragraph resonate well with the American people, who are strangely comforted whenever their media does its best to scare them out of their wits. Which, distressingly, is a constant and unrelenting process these days; I can't watch the first ten minutes of my local six o'clock news without feeling the impulsive need to pack atropine injectors and distress beacons in my kids' school lunches.

Now let's look at events from the Russian perspective.

But first, let's set some ground rules before we take this any further. My intent for this column is neither to defend nor apologize for the Russian government, its foreign policy or its president. To that end, please suppress any indignant references you might want to make regarding the Boris Nemtsov assassination, Sergei Magnitsky, the apartment bombings, Pussy Riot, Sochi's twin toilets, or any other (alleged) Russian transgressions. This is not a nomination essay for the Nobel Peace Prize, but a column about geopolitics.

With that out of the way, let's move on...

Ukraine

It will most likely come as a surprise to Westerners, and particularly Americans, that Russia maintains that it was forced to take action in Ukraine in response to US provocations in Kiev. For the past twenty years Moscow has watched the US attempt to lead NATO expansion into former Soviet satellites such as Ukraine and Georgia, an affront that Russia considers to be a serious threat.

With regard to Crimea, Moscow maintains that the region - which houses an ethnic Russian majority -- has repeatedly sought annexation from Russia since Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev bequeathed it to Ukraine in 1954. The Crimean regional parliament has voted for and announced independence in 1992, again in 1994, and of course in 2014. Yet Russia has ignored all previous requests for annexation - a fact which has been well-documented - and only took action in 2014 when the Yanukovych government was overthrown amidst credible evidence of foreign (US) influence.

The Russians maintain that they have also exercised restraint with the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine. Even though both regions - which also contain significant Russian populations - announced separation from Ukraine in April and May 2014, Moscow has refused to officially recognize the sovereignty or independence of these regions even though many of Russia's political elite are calling for that, and even for the annexation of those regions.

Russia has always bitterly opposed any Ukrainian bid for membership in NATO. Recall that in the previous segment of this series, we discussed how the US had pushed for accession of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO in 2008, but were rebuffed by European partners - notably France and Germany - who had absolutely no interest in deploying military forces into a possible confrontation with Russia. At the time, tensions between the US and Russia were high (though not nearly as high as they are today) because the Bush administration was planning to emplace interceptor missiles in Poland and an advanced radar system in Poland. Though these weapons were ostensibly installed to address the threat of long-range missile strikes from Iran, the Russian government clearly saw their installation as a direct threat to their security and sovereignty, and warned Kiev that any move to join NATO would be met with Russian missiles targeting Ukraine.

In a joint Russian-Ukrainian news conference, held in Moscow in 2008, Putin stated that Russia would be forced to respond if Ukraine joined NATO. "Russia could target its missile systems at Ukraine," he said. "Imagine that for a second. It's horrible to say and even horrible to think." That threat certainly gave pause to Ukraine's attempts to court NATO, but even Putin's rhetoric paled in comparison to the sledgehammer that Russia wields over Ukraine and ultimately most of continental Europe - namely, Gazprom. Eighty percent of Russia's natural gas supplies to Western Europe are transported along pipelines through Ukrainian territory, elevating Ukraine to the vaunted and much-desired status of 'energy transit country' with estimated revenues of nearly US$ 2 billion per year (equivalent to 3% of its national budget). Consequently, neither Ukraine nor Western Europe have felt any particular need to poke the Russian bear any further on this issue, and even the US chose to drop plans for its 'missile shield' as part of the Obama administration's much-vaunted (and, plainly by now, failed) "reset" with Russia.

US diplomat Victoria Nuland, providing snacks to anti-Yanukovych protestors in Kiev. Russian media exploited this image to further portray the US as the aggressor in Ukraine. Source: US Department of State

The Russian position is that the US has been the aggressor nation in Ukraine from the outset. Russian media outlets have honed in on US attempts to influence and strengthen the Maidan protests and remove Yanukovych from power. They have been particularly effective at painting US diplomatic envoy Victoria Nuland (featured in part two of this series) as the villain and chief architect of American covert influence in Ukraine, in order to insert a more Western-friendly government that has been seduced by the allure of NATO and the West. From their perspective, movements to annex Crimea and deploy military forces in the Donbas region of Ukraine were necessary to stop the Kiev government's offensive against ethnic Russians in those regions.

From Moscow's perspective, US indignation over its actions in Ukraine is deeply hypocritical. Russian news and propaganda outlets have very effectively portrayed US efforts to establish a missile shield, to implement economic sanctions, and the toppling of the Yanukovych government as a long-term containment strategy designed to limit Russia's influence in eastern Europe. Consequently, anti-American sentiment is higher in Russia today than it has been since the first Cold War. Recent polls indicate that 87% of Russians distrust or carry negative opinions of the United States, and that as many as 62% believe that their country is 'on the right track'.

Most Russians see little reason to negotiate with, or even engage in dialogue with, the Obama Administration which seems to have little interest in Russia other than to marginalize the country or insult their leader. A quick perusal of recent Western stories on Putin seems to confirm this (examples here, here and here); mainstream newspapers regularly portray Putin as a thuggish buffoon whose grip on power is at risk of collapsing any day now.

I will point out the obvious here. Love him or hate him, Vladimir Putin has outmaneuvered and outwitted the Obama Administration at nearly every turn since it first occupied the White House in 2009. Whether in Libya (by refusing to support the United Nations coalition that destabilized that country), Syria (forcing the Americans to back down from planned military action, and driving a wedge between the UK and US), his refusal to extradite Edward Snowden, and now in Ukraine where that country has virtually disintegrated, Putin is proving to be the USA's most accomplished adversary on the global geopolitical stage.

... ... ...

Over the past year I have begun to notice an unmistakable trend amongst both politicians and the general public: there are an increasing number of Putin admirers in Europe, and even in the US. This clearly is not attributable to any newfound sympathy or support for Russia, or Putin's geopolitical agenda. Instead, I believe his rising popularity is driven by a grudging admiration that is naturally felt for a strong leader who gets things done and protects the interests of his people. Nigel Farage, a UK politician and prominent Eurosceptic, caused a stir last year when, asked which current world leader he most admired, replied: "As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin."

Nearly every country in Europe now has at least one political party that is broadly pro-Russian. In Greece's case, Syriza is now in power while Podemos, another left-wing party in Spain, has become a credible threat to Madrid's political establishment even though it was only formed last year. Close ties with Russia are not restricted to socialists; France's National Front is making waves with a far-right nationalist agenda, and its leader Marine Le Pen is an admirer of Putin, stating that "I admire his cool head…because there is a cold war being waged against him by the EU at the behest of [the] United States, which is defending its own interests."

Even Poland, probably the most hostile country toward Russian influence in the EU, now has a party whose primary stance is the condemnation of Western sanctions against Russia. Zmiana ("change") claims it will win as much as 12% of the popular vote ahead of general Polish elections later this year. It is easy to marginalize such parties as fringe extremists – though some caution might be required here as that is exactly what the Spanish establishment said about Podemos a year ago.

A quick look at other events on the EU's eastern borders further supports this point of view. Throughout the region, governments are increasingly voicing skepticism on continued sanctions against Russia, and openly doubting US motives and intentions behind their use.

Let's take a quick tour of some other potential hotspots in the region:

Hungary

EU officials are objecting to a recent decision to award a €10 billion contract for construction of two nuclear reactors to Rosatom, the Russian state-owned company. Hungarian President Viktor Orban, formerly an active anti-Soviet dissident in the 1990s, has recently begun to pursue closer relations with Russia. Hungary has stopped short of objecting to EU and US sanctions against Moscow, but was the first EU country to invite Putin for a bilateral summit since Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine last year - a disaster for which the West blames Russia, and Russia denies. Until recently Hungary had put the bidding process up for tender, but awarded the contract to Rosatom after Russia offered attractive financing terms for 80% of the project over 21 years. US-Japanese construction giant Westinghouse was previously considered the front-runner and is lobbying aggressively with the EU to be awarded the contract.

Czech Republic

Last September Czech President Milos Zeman caused a diplomatic stir when he openly voiced opposition to EU and US sanctions against Russia, referred to the Ukrainian conflict as a "civil war" and refused to denounce Russia's actions in that country. Earlier last year he proclaimed that sanctions against Russia would work no better than those that had been enforced against Cuba for the past fifty years, and called for them to be dropped altogether. His predecessor Vaclav Klaus has gone even further, calling for the EU to be scrapped and stating that Western lies about Russia are 'monstrous'.

Events in Prague took an even more interesting turn last week when the US Ambassador told Czech television that it would be "awkward" should Zeman attend the upcoming Russian Victory Day celebrations in Moscow as the only head of state from an EU country. (Which is untrue, since both Alexis Tsipras of Greece and Nicos Anastasiades of Cyprus also plan to attend - more on that a bit later). Zeman is not known for his soft-spoken diplomacy, and has now barred the US ambassador from further access to Prague Castle.

Greece

Ah, Greece. The country offers so much low-hanging fruit for geopolitical bloggers and late-night comedians that it's impossible to resist talking about it again, even though the entire first installment of this series focused on their ongoing crisis. We seem to be approaching an endgame and a potential 'Grexit'; as of this writing the Greek government has made a €458m (US$ 503m) payment to the IMF that was due on 9 April. However, with another €1.2 billion coming due within the next month it is increasingly difficult to see how Athens can meet both its foreign and domestic obligations.

Meanwhile, new Greek President Alexis Tsipras has just returned from a visit to Moscow where, on 8 April, he and Putin agreed to "restart and revive" bilateral relations in a calculated move that was surely intended to put the world on notice that their two countries are at least considering a collaboration against their mutual adversary in Brussels.

... ... ...

Over the past few weeks rumors have increased that Greece and Russia may reach some sort of accord that provides the former with critical financial assistance, and the latter with increased leverage against the European Union. The EU is due to debate and vote on continued Russian sanctions in June of this year, and renewal will require a unanimous vote from its 28-member bloc. As already mentioned above, support for continued sanctions is increasingly shaky and both the Greeks and Russians have much to gain by using these much-hyped overtures as leverage against the West.

It is increasingly clear that Tsipras has little to lose as a 'Grexit', or Greece's exit from the Eurozone, becomes more likely. Regardless of whether an exit is forced or voluntary, the result will almost certainly be a move away from Europe and toward Moscow's sphere of influence. Greece shares an Orthodox religious heritage with Russia and cultural ties are arguably stronger between the two countries than any affiliation that Greece shares with northern Europe. Their increasingly adversarial relationships with the EU will only serve to strengthen that relationship.

As with Ukraine, when analyzing the Greek financial crisis it is important to contrast the Western narrative with the Greek point of view. It is nearly impossible to defend Greece's fiscal policies since joining the Euro; in hindsight, it was plainly a mistake to admit a country that had no chance of fulfilling the economic guidelines required for admission. However, the EU's strategy to resolve the crisis - to punish its people for the profligacy of its ruling class - is clearly doomed to failure.

Last week I came across the following column from the Daily Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, which very effectively describes the flaws in the EU's approach toward Greece:

"IMF minutes from 2010 confirm what Syriza has always argued: the country was already bankrupt and needed debt relief rather than new loans. This was overruled in order to save the euro and to save Europe's banking system at a time when EMU had no defences against contagion"

Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis rightly calls the EU austerity plan 'a cynical transfer of private losses from the banks' books onto the shoulders of Greece's most vulnerable citizens'...Marc Chandler, from Brown Brothers Harriman, says the liabilities incurred – pushing Greece's debt to 180% of GDP - almost fit the definition of "odious debt" under international law. "The Greek people have not been bailed out. The economy has contracted by a quarter. With deflation, nominal growth has collapsed and continues to contract," he said."

The Greeks know this. They have been living it for five years, victims of the worst slump endured by any industrial state in 80 years, and worse than European states in the Great Depression. The EMU creditors have yet to acknowledge in any way that Greece was sacrificed to save monetary union in the white heat of the crisis, and therefore that it merits a special duty of care. Once you start to see events through Greek eyes – rather than through the eyes of the north European media and the Brussels press corps - the drama takes on a different character."

Mr. Evans-Pritchard also points out that no developed country has ever defaulted on a payment to the IMF. Given the arduous path being forced upon Greece by its EU creditors, I believe that the IMF's ratio of 'non-performing loans' (banker-speak for 'default') is about to see an increase.

----------------

The next twelve months are going to be a defining era for the European Union, which is dealing with several crises in parallel - a significant downward move in the euro's value, its potential (and in my opinion, inevitable) eviction of a member country, and a pending decision on whether to further extend Russian sanctions.

Those first two problems are difficult enough to deal with, but it is the third that may ultimately drive a wedge between the US and the EU. As mentioned in the second part of this series, the US is indifferent to Russian sanctions - trade with Russia comprises less than 0.3% of US GDP. Yet Russia is normally a significant importer of EU agricultural goods - which Moscow banned in response to last year's sanctions. Loss of that market is proving catastrophic to several large European agricultural and industrial companies, leading many politicians - including the Italian foreign minister - to call for an end to sanctions. This transatlantic divergence of economic interests may prove to be the ultimate undoing of America's anti-Russian containment strategy.

I also believe that another factor may prove to have even more of an impact - namely, America's plummeting reputation in foreign policy circles when it comes to hot air and broken promises. Putting aside its incompetent and capricious foreign policy in the Middle East - immortalized in this Twitter quote - the Obama Administration is making no friends in eastern Europe. Take Ukraine, for example, where US Secretary of State John Kerry pledged to "stand by" the Ukrainian government even though less than half of the aid it promised last year has been delivered. Instead of the aid promised, the Ukrainians received a speech from Kerry with a long list of platitudes and tough talk, but no commitment to action or clarity on when or whether promised aid will actually be delivered.

... ... ...

European governments are increasingly employing 'realpolitik' when it comes to their dealings with America, as evidenced by widespread interest in joining China's new infrastructure investment bank despite strong US lobbying. This new reality is also playing out in eastern Europe, where decision-makers are comparing historical US and NATO commitment against Putin's resolve and track record.

Given the past year's events, it is perhaps not surprising that Europe's eastern periphery is rapidly becoming more pragmatic in its dealings with Russia.

---------------

The best way to wrap up this series does not involve further analysis of the past. Instead, we should search for indicators that provide any insights for what the future holds with relations between Russia and the West.

One event worthy of a close look is the upcoming Victory Day celebrations in Moscow, as mentioned earlier. This will be the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the Russians - who absorbed more of the burden in defeating the Nazis than any other country - take the event seriously. In past years the event has been well-attended by Western heads of state, to include US President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This year, nearly all Western leaders will boycott the event - with the exceptions of Greece, Cyprus and the Czech Republic. Twenty-six other heads of state are reportedly on the confirmed attendee list, to include Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, President Xi Jinping of China, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea. The latter two are particularly interesting in light of Russia's increasing focus toward the opening of new export markets and alliances in North Asia - which as I have previously commented, will see a greater economic transformation in the next twenty years than any other region on Earth. On 9 May, the VIP reviewing stand in Red Square will provide a telling glimpse into Russia's expanding sphere of influence.

-------------

Less than three years ago US President Obama mocked his political opponent Mitt Romney for citing Russia as the USA's primary geopolitical threat, stating "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Because the Cold War has been over for 20 years."

Politicians are not known for issuing mea culpas, and this particular President is certainly not known for speaking with journalists who ask tough questions - but I would gladly buy a ticket to any studio broadcast today where the interviewer played that sound bite for the President and asked him whether he still believes that to be true.

Russia certainly has many flaws and weaknesses - some of the world's worst demographic statistics, its "one-trick pony" export economy, and frequent hostility toward foreign investors - but its near-monopoly on natural gas supplies, nuclear arsenal and military force projection capabilities shall ensure that it retains a position of strength relative to the European Union for the foreseeable future.

If Western leaders want to contain a resurgent Russia and limit the damage of another Cold War, they would be well-advised to drop unhelpful rhetoric, seek an immediate end to anti-Russian sanctions, and adjust economic policies that are pushing periphery EU countries into Moscow's orbit.

The Middle East's ongoing descent into chaos and China's impending ascendancy to the status of global superpower are just two of the many threats that the US, European Union and Russia all share. Each of these issues should certainly occupy a higher position on their respective agendas than the breakup of Ukraine or the insolvency of Greece. Leaders of all three governments would be well-advised to set aside their differences, or at least to prevent those differences from obstructing cooperation on more important issues. Unlike its predecessor, the Second Cold War will not be bilateral. Today's world is far more chaotic, kinetic and dangerous than it was fifty years ago.

[Apr 09, 2015] Ukraine The Global Corporate Annexation

Notable quotes:
"... 'For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, It's a Gold Mine of Profits' ..."
Apr 21, 2014 | Jesse's Café Américain
"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

There is certainly a long established difference between a just war, a defensive war, and a war of adventure or aggression. No one understand this better than those who suffer loss in fighting them.

Like quite a few people I found myself asking, 'Why the Ukraine? Why the sudden push there, risking conflict with Russia on their own doorstep?' Why are we suddenly risking all to support what was clearly an extra-legal coup d'état?'

It is telling perhaps that one of the first things that happened after the coup d'état is that all of the Ukraine's gold was on a flight to New York, for the safekeeping by those same people who have managed to misplace a good portion of the German people's gold. It is the most transportable and fungible store of wealth, where the transfer of less portable assets by computerized digits may lag.

Follow the money...

GlobalResearch
Ukraine: The Corporate Annexation
'For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, It's a Gold Mine of Profits'
by JP Sottile

As the US and EU apply sanctions on Russia over its annexation' of Crimea, JP Sottile reveals the corporate annexation of Ukraine. For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, there's a gold mine of profits to be made from agri-business and energy exploitation.

The potential here for agriculture / agribusiness is amazing production here could double Ukraine's agriculture could be a real gold mine.

On 12th January 2014, a reported 50,000 "pro-Western" Ukrainians descended upon Kiev's Independence Square to protest against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Stoked in part by an attack on opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko, the protest marked the beginning of the end of Yanukovych's four year-long government.

That same day, the Financial Times reported a major deal for US agribusiness titan Cargill.

Business confidence never faltered

Despite the turmoil within Ukrainian politics after Yanukovych rejected a major trade deal with the European Union just seven weeks earlier, Cargill was confident enough about the future to fork over $200 million to buy a stake in Ukraine's UkrLandFarming...

Read the entire report here.

[Apr 04, 2015] The majority of Maidan supporters are experiencing severe impoverishment instead of welfare bonanza from EU they expected

Notable quotes:
"... The vast majority of the Maidan supporters were expecting some sort of welfare bonanza "when they joined the EU" after signing the association agreement. Instead they are experiencing impoverishment. ..."
"... I think there is a fair chance it will be the equivalent of an european Afghanistan. ..."
marknesop.wordpress.com

kirill, April 3, 2015 at 6:11 am

Ukraine will be a consolidated fascist state without an economy. Right. It was mentioned elsewhere that the only thing keeping the regime in power is the war. It sure isn't the economy. But eventually the economic decline will break the bubble.

The vast majority of the Maidan supporters were expecting some sort of welfare bonanza "when they joined the EU" after signing the association agreement. Instead they are experiencing impoverishment.

So this ridiculous delusion is going to break down. But delusions are very resilient things.

et Al, April 3, 2015 at 2:49 pm
I think there is a fair chance it will be the equivalent of an european Afghanistan. In a sense it already is with various oligarchs controlling bits of territory and sort of cooperating in Kiev. Elections are not much more than a Afghan Jirga.

Still, it is interesting to see Russia play the long game, the latest being a $285 three month gas contract with Kiev. When the Ukraine finally implodes, Russia can clearly point out how it could have pulled the plug at any time it wanted but it didn't because it has the best interests of its closest neighbor in mind. It also sets a benchmark for all the promises from the EU and US to be compared to, the latter far more likely to creatively reinterpret supposedly solid agreements than Russia especially if Kiev doesn't sing from the same hymnbook 200%. It is also a warning to Berlin and the EU – we pull the plug and it's all yours baby!

marknesop, April 3, 2015 at 3:16 pm
Yes, the people of Ukraine will never stand for this ridiculous substitution – a goose-stepping Nazi police state in place of the cushy streets-paved-with-gold paradise they were led to expect in exchange for their support for Maidan and the coup. They would probably put up with anything if it meant widespread prosperity, but they are indisputably much worse off now than they were prior to The Great Ukrainian Leap Forward and the trend is remorselessly downward for at least another year – even the IMF forecasts a considerably worse contraction of a further 10% rather than the 6% it forecast earlier. And that's with the most lipstick The New Atlanticist – a relentlessly pro-western publication whose current headlines include Wesley Clark's prediction of a Russian Spring offensive, the manifestly ridiculous contention that "Putin's war against Ukraine" has had the effect of uniting Ukrainians, and Russia's paranoid fantasies about the west representing a threat are all in its head – can put on it. Moreover, there is likely to be zero growth in 2016 as well. That assessment probably assumes certain realities that do not now exist, such as Kiev bringing the east back under its thumb, rather than it slipping further from its control and perhaps even expanding its territory.

[Apr 03, 2015] Were not cattle Kiev protesters throw manure at US embassy

Apr 03, 2015 | offguardian

Life News reports:

About two and a half thousand Ukrainians surrounded the US embassy in Kiev on the first of April. People who disagree with the appointment of foreigners to the Ukrainian government, as well as the intervention of the Americans and Europeans in the public administration of the country, holding banners saying "We are not cattle!" And they made sounds imitating animals.

Besides the protesters braying and bleating, they were eating cabbage, which was distributed by the organizers of the protest.

They also kept two-meter carrots with the symbols of the European Union. By the end of the demonstration of dissent Kiev residents pelted the US embassy with manure.

It is noteworthy that the video from the protest was removed from all the Ukrainian sites and users were blocked. Local journalists hardly covered the event.

[Apr 03, 2015] U.S. Trained Fascists To Storm Kiev

Notable quotes:
"... Enough baksheesh spread around this way, and you have built a nice local tier of warlord support. ..."
Apr 01, 2015 | M of A

barrisj | Apr 1, 2015 1:08:35 PM | 8

It seems as though the Yanks have revived the notion behind "The School of the Americas" era, where American Special Forces operatives would train up various battalions of "security forces", National Guard, "Presidential Guards", whatever, expressly to support Latin American fascistic dictatorships and to keep their respective countries on-side in the "war against Communism" in the Western Hemisphere.

So, today we have boatloads of Special Forces contingencies in the Middle East, in Africa, in South Asia, and now in Eastern Europe or in the former States of the Soviet Union (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, et al), all with the specific task of supporting autocrats and dictators against their own respective peoples.

And the gullible US public is being sold this as "advancing the democratic agenda"...so blatant and so pathetic. This to promote US "leadership", and to create proxy military forces to advance US "strategic goals". Blowback, blowback, we don't see no steenkin' blowback!

rufus magister | Apr 1, 2015 10:23:52 PM | 9

Alberto at 6

Germany was both Protestant and Catholic. The Catholic Centre Party opposed the Nazis; I believe you'll find the Lutheran state churches of northern Germany the most accepting of their regime. Lutheran Scandinavia produced generous nos. of collaborators and volunteers for the Waffen-SS "Viking" Division. Bulgaria and Romania both had collaborationist governments drawn from local fascists.

en1c at 1

I think they plan on using brute force to keep power. There are several reports at Fort Russ about about a purge and revamping at the SBU.

Nalivaychenko, its leader, says it's going to be schooled in the Banderaist/OUN school of political repression. And here is a comprehensive guide to their methods.

Meanwhile, searches at the Ministry of the Interior have begun.

At Russia Insider, Rostislav Ishchenko argues that War in the East Is the Only Thing Preventing Ukraine Collapse. Which will not be pretty when it happens.

There is nothing good in store for Ukraine. I think during this year it will sustain a military defeat and the disintegration of its army, another coup and the collapse of what is left of its government agencies, all-out chaos, the total destruction of the economy and the start of subsistence farming for survival.... Survivors will be set back a century in terms of living standards and civilization. This is why foreign intervention to restore law and order to Ukraine after the collapse of Project Ukraine will be inevitable.

I hope he's exaggerating about that century thing.

Some good news -- miners near Kharkov are fighting to be paid.

Fete | Apr 1, 2015 11:39:02 PM | 10

04/01/2015 23:59

Russian Spring

Eduard Basurin, the Deputy Commander in Chief of Donetsk Republic Defense, read out to journalists excerpts of an intelligence obtained plan of Ukrainian special operation, which, in particular designated "special mobile groups to assault key infrastructure objects and crowded places".

Basurin said that this plan "of a special operation in sector B has been approved by the Ukrainian side and is being implemented". Therefore, the end of March intelligence about sending approximately thirty five Ukrainian subversion-reconnaissance group to areas of Shirokino and Donetsk to arrange provocations under disguise of combatants is confirmed.

According to the presented documents, the subversives were also tasked with liquidation of Donetsk Republic leaders, spreading panic among locals, opening random mortar and small arms fire from Donetsk and the airport toward settlement Peski, where positions of the Ukrainian forces are installed.

jfl | Apr 2, 2015 4:27:24 AM | 13

@9
The purge going on in Western Ukraine may be the sign that they have given up on war with the East ... that would have been their instruction from the CIA, in that case ... and are preparing to internalize the war. I'm probably quoting J Hawk or K Rus. Everything is so wrong in Ukraine ... and getting daily wronger ... that they desperately need some overarching threat to 'keep everyone's mind off the pain'. The poor, poor Ukrainians.

I don't think the author at Russia Insider meant that the collapse of the Ukraine would last 100 years, 'just' that the 'lifestyle' of the Ukrainians would be more similar to their lifestyle 100 years ago than to their 21st century fantasies. The ground is the place to build up from. And slowly and thoughtfully, with an appreciation for what is real and what is not, is the way to go.

It is not only the Ukrainians who will be in this position in the near future. I agree with Mike Maloney@7 ... "how can all this not end up becoming globalized total war?"

ǝn⇂ɔ | Apr 2, 2015 9:19:48 AM | 16

"US training" in practice seems more an economic outcome than a military one. Much like sourcing the F35 - US training of indigenous troops presents limitless opportunities for kickbacks, theft, and other means of securing payment for local warlords. Trainers have to be fed, housed, and protected - all activities which generate income. Trainees have to be furnished equipment - which can be stolen and sold. Training itself consumes resources: ammunition, food, etc which also can be stolen and sold.

Enough baksheesh spread around this way, and you have built a nice local tier of warlord support.

rufus magister | Apr 2, 2015 11:05:14 PM | 26
It's Official – All Kiev's Investigations of Maidan Crimes Deadlocked

"Council of Europe report finds that official Ukrainian investigations into crimes committed during the Maidan protests are a total shambles and are going nowhere."

Harold | Apr 3, 2015 2:56:26 AM | 28

As billmon predicted the Ukraine has called Russia's number -- for now: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/02/us-ukraine-crisis-gas-idUSKBN0MT0B420150402
Richard Steven Hack | Apr 3, 2015 1:44:14 PM | 31

Obama fully intends to get a war or at least threat of war started in the Ukraine between Russia and NATO in order to boost the military-industrial complex and the US military budget.

The alleged intent of the Ukraine crisis was to make Ukraine into a NATO base on Russia's borders. But Russia will never stand for that. And it's not certain that everyone in the Beltway was ignorant of that. These people can read the articles that pointed out that Russia would not stand for that.

But Russia didn't take the bait and invade Ukraine. Instead they merely supported the anti-Kiev forces in the east.

So Obama has to up the ante. The only way to do that is to support the far-right neo-Nazi forces in the Ukraine and get them to take over the government. This is because Russia will never accept a Nazi-led Ukraine, either.

The goal is to force Russia to deal militarily directly with Ukraine, thus justifying a NATO threat response, which will boost the Cold war and boost the US and EU military-industrial complex.

Never forget that Obama is owned and operated by his masters in Chicago who are both Israel-Firsters and stock holders in the military-industrial complex.

Demian | Apr 3, 2015 2:14:25 PM | 32

Funny that this isn't showing up on Western news channels:

offguardian: "We're not cattle": Kiev protesters throw manure at US embassy (with video)

Note that unlike the EuroMaidan, this protest is peaceful.

Demian | Apr 3, 2015 5:58:20 PM | 33

Republicans see Obama as a greater threat to the US than Putin. For once, they are right.
jfl | Apr 3, 2015 6:11:32 PM | 34

@31,32
Looks like the Ukrainians are finally beginning to understand just how badly they have been played. Maybe they will no longer stand for a Nazi-led Ukraine, either?

I mean ... how have they benefited at all from NAZI rule?

[Mar 30, 2015] Nuland's Mastery of Ukraine Propaganda By Robert Parry

In other words, many of the "free-market reforms" are aimed at making the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder – by cutting pensions, removing work protections, forcing people to work into their old age and making them pay more for heat during the winter.
March 11, 2015 | consortiumnews.com
Exclusive: In House testimony, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland blamed Russia and ethnic-Russian rebels for last summer's shoot-down of MH-17 over Ukraine, but the U.S. government has not substantiated that charge. So, did Nuland mislead Congress or just play a propaganda game, asks Robert Parry.

An early skill learned by Official Washington's neoconservatives, when they were cutting their teeth inside the U.S. government in the 1980s, was how to frame their arguments in the most propagandistic way, so anyone who dared to disagree with any aspect of the presentation seemed unpatriotic or crazy.

During my years at The Associated Press and Newsweek, I dealt with a number of now prominent neocons who were just starting out and mastering these techniques at the knee of top CIA psychological warfare specialist Walter Raymond Jr., who had been transferred to President Ronald Reagan's National Security Council staff where Raymond oversaw inter-agency task forces that pushed Reagan's hard-line agenda in Central America and elsewhere. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Victory of 'Perception Management.'"]

One of those quick learners was Robert Kagan, who was then a protégé of Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams. Kagan got his first big chance when he became director of the State Department's public diplomacy office for Latin America, a key outlet for Raymond's propaganda schemes.

Though always personable in his dealings with me, Kagan grew frustrated when I wouldn't swallow the propaganda that I was being fed. At one point, Kagan warned me that I might have to be "controversialized," i.e. targeted for public attack by Reagan's right-wing media allies and anti-journalism attack groups, like Accuracy in Media, a process that did indeed occur.

Years later, Kagan emerged as one of America's top neocons, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, which opened in 1998 to advocate for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, ultimately gaining the backing of a large swath of the U.S. national security establishment in support of that bloody endeavor.

Despite the Iraq disaster, Kagan continued to rise in influence, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a columnist at the Washington Post, and someone whose published criticism so alarmed President Barack Obama last year that he invited Kagan to a White House lunch. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's True Foreign Policy Weakness."]

Kagan's Wife's Coup

But Kagan is perhaps best known these days as the husband of neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, one of Vice President Dick Cheney's former advisers and a key architect of last year's coup in Ukraine, a "regime change" that toppled an elected president and touched off a civil war, which now has become a proxy fight involving nuclear-armed United States and Russia.

In an interview last year with the New York Times, Nuland indicated that she shared her husband's criticism of President Obama for his hesitancy to use American power more assertively. Referring to Kagan's public attacks on Obama's more restrained "realist" foreign policy, Nuland said, "suffice to say … that nothing goes out of the house that I don't think is worthy of his talents. Let's put it that way."

But Nuland also seems to have mastered her husband's skill with propaganda, presenting an extreme version of the situation in Ukraine, such that no one would dare quibble with the details. In prepared testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, Nuland even slipped in an accusation blaming Russia for the July 17 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 though the U.S. government has not presented any proof.

Nuland testified, "In eastern Ukraine, Russia and its separatist puppets unleashed unspeakable violence and pillage; MH-17 was shot down."

Now, it's true that if one parses Nuland's testimony, she's not exactly saying the Russians or the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine shot down the plane. There is a semi-colon between the "unspeakable violence and pillage" and the passive verb structure "MH-17 was shot down." But anyone seeing her testimony would have understood that the Russians and their "puppets" shot down the plane, killing all 298 people onboard.

When I submitted a formal query to the State Department asking if Nuland's testimony meant that the U.S. government had developed new evidence that the rebels shot down the plane and that the Russians shared complicity, I received no answer.

Perhaps significantly or perhaps not, Nuland presented similarly phrased testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday but made no reference to MH-17. So, I submitted a new inquiry asking whether the omission reflected second thoughts by Nuland about making the claim before the House. Again, I have not received a reply.

However, both of Nuland's appearances place all the blame for the chaos in Ukraine on Russia, including the 6,000 or more deaths. Nuland offered not a single word of self-criticism about how she contributed to these violent events by encouraging last year's coup, nor did she express the slightest concern about the actions of the coup regime in Kiev, including its dispatch of neo-Nazi militias to carry out "anti-terrorist" and "death squad" operations against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Nuclear War and Clashing Ukraine Narratives."]

Russia's Fault

Everything was Russia's fault – or as Nuland phrased it: "This manufactured conflict - controlled by the Kremlin; fueled by Russian tanks and heavy weapons; financed at Russian taxpayers' expense - has cost the lives of more than 6,000 Ukrainians, but also of hundreds of young Russians sent to fight and die there by the Kremlin, in a war their government denies."

Nuland was doing her husband proud. As every good propagandist knows, you don't present events with any gray areas; your side is always perfect and the other side is the epitome of evil. And, today, Nuland faces almost no risk that some mainstream journalist will dare contradict this black-and-white storyline; they simply parrot it.

Besides heaping all the blame on the Russians, Nuland cited – in her Senate testimony – some of the new "reforms" that the Kiev authorities have just implemented as they build a "free-market state." She said, "They made tough choices to reduce and cap pension benefits, increase work requirements and phase in a higher retirement age; … they passed laws cutting wasteful gas subsidies."

In other words, many of the "free-market reforms" are aimed at making the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder – by cutting pensions, removing work protections, forcing people to work into their old age and making them pay more for heat during the winter.

Nuland also hailed some of the regime's stated commitments to fighting corruption. But Kiev seems to have simply installed a new cast of bureaucrats looking to enrich themselves. For instance, Ukraine's Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko is an expatriate American who – before becoming an instant Ukrainian citizen last December – ran a U.S. taxpayer-financed investment fund for Ukraine that was drained of money as she engaged in lucrative insider deals, which she has fought to keep secret. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine's Finance Minister's American 'Values.'"]

Yet, none of these concerns were mentioned in Nuland's propagandistic testimony to the House and Senate – not that any of the committee members or the mainstream press corps seemed to care that they were being spun and even misled. The hearings were mostly opportunities for members of Congress to engage in chest-beating as they demanded that President Obama send U.S. arms to Ukraine for a hot war with Russia.

Regarding the MH-17 disaster, one reason that I was inquisitive about Nuland's insinuation in her House testimony that the Russians and the ethnic Russian rebels were responsible was that some U.S. intelligence analysts have reached a contrary conclusion, according to a source briefed on their findings. According to that information, the analysts found no proof that the Russians had delivered a BUK anti-aircraft system to the rebels and concluded that the attack was apparently carried out by a rogue element of the Ukrainian military.

After I published that account last summer, the Obama administration went silent about the MH-17 shoot-down, letting stand some initial speculation that had blamed the Russians and the rebels. In the nearly eight months since the tragedy, the U.S. government has failed to make public any intelligence information on the crash. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Danger of an MH-17 'Cold Case.'"]

So, Nuland may have been a bit duplicitous when she phrased her testimony so that anyone hearing it would jump to the conclusion that the Russians and the rebels were to blame. It's true she didn't exactly say so but she surely knew what impression she was leaving.

In that, Nuland appears to have taken a page from the playbook of her husband's old mentor, Elliott Abrams, who provided misleading testimony to Congress on the Iran-Contra Affair in the 1980s – and even though he was convicted of that offense, Abrams was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush and thus was able to return to government last decade to oversee the selling of the Iraq War.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Friend (MakePeaceNotWar), March 11, 2015 at 7:25 pm

I'm terribly sorry, but I would like to post this small joke from the other side of the ocean. The knowledge of geography and facts shown by representatives of the U.S. State's Department is so overwhelming that one can proudly claim:

"1 nuland = 100 psakis"

Thank you for your attention, please don't be insulted.

PS Jane Psaki and Marie Harf are inventors of the Belarussian sea (Belarus is a landlocked country), Rostov mountains (Rostov region in Russia consists of flatlands only) and the dependence of Russian on European export and gas (it's the opposite in reality). For Europeans it's like saying Grand Hill of America instead of the Great Canyon and Lincolnton instead of Washington.

PSS Mrs. Nuland claimed that Crimeans are mostly unhappy about joining Russia (well, according to the German GfK survey published in BloombergReview only 4% are unhappy – but it's of course a lie, evil Putin must have put pressur eon GfK to puvlish these data).

dennis morrisseau, March 11, 2015 at 8:12 pm

Cookie Nudelman is perhaps beginning to lose some of her chocolate chips?

2LT Dennis Morrisseau USArmy [armor – Vietnam era] retired.

xxx, March 11, 2015 at 9:15 pm
The crash occurred over territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists, during a battle in Donbass, in an area controlled by the Donbass People's Militia. According to American and German intelligence sources, the plane was shot down by pro-Russian separatists using a Buk surface-to-air missile fired from the territory which they controlled. The Russians denied any and all access to the wreckage, contravening standards for investigating civilian aircraft disasters. Evidence from open sources indicated that separatists in Ukraine were in control of a Buk missile launcher on 17 July and transported it from Donetsk to Snizhne.

Immediately after the crash, a post appeared on the VKontakte social media website attributed to Igor Girkin, leader of the Donbass separatists, claiming responsibility for shooting down an AN-26, but after it became clear that a civilian aircraft had been shot down, the separatists denied any involvement, and the post was taken down. Malaysia said intelligence reports on the downing of MH17 were "pretty conclusive", but more investigation was necessary to be certain that a surface-to-air missile brought down the plane.

US sources attributed the downing to a missile fired from separatist-controlled territory, with their judgment based on sensors that traced the path of the missile, analysis of shrapnel patterns in the wreckage, voice print analysis of separatists' conversations in which they claimed credit for the strike, as well as photos and other data from social media sites.

The underlying assumptions of this and other articles by Mr. Parry on this and other questions regarding Russia is that anything the West says is always a lie and anything Putin says is always the truth.

What absurdity!

Gregory Kruse, March 11, 2015 at 11:04 pm

You should apply for a job at the State Department, but I have a few points to question.
1. The territory held by the "separatists" is so small that it would be impossible to determine that anything occurred "over" that territory.
2. According to German and US propaganda, the plane was shot down by ….etc.
3. The Russians denied any and all access to the wreckage, but the US analyzed the shrapnel patterns and there was plenty of pictures and other data from social media.
4. There were sensors all over the place but there has been no presentation of such data.
5. Some separatists admitted to downing the plane, proven by "voice print analysis of their conversations".
6. Parry thinks the West always lies, and Putin always tells the truth. This is called personalization. How about, " the West always lies, but the East always tells the truth". Or, Victoria Nuland always lies, and Putin always tells the truth". None of these ways of saying it are true, but the first one seems less absurd because it is clever propaganda, and that's the point.

Nick Gibbon, March 12, 2015 at 3:13 am

If from this article you don't question US sources on, oh, most things these days then pity you.

Meanwhile here's some proper, rational analysis about MH17:-

http://cassad-eng.livejournal.com/133434.html

Joe B, March 12, 2015 at 8:36 am

Your sources are not credible at all. None of those "analyses" have any value at all, and the suppression of information by the US proves the deception.

1. "sensors that traced the path of the missile"
In fact no such evidence was presented or claimed: the whole debate would be different if that existed. The US denied any such photos and presented none. Russia claimed photos showing Ukraine fighter planes near the plane.

2. "analysis of shrapnel patterns in the wreckage"
The evidence was concealed, reports were of shrapnel vs. bullets although photos showed bullet-like holes. If a missile it might have just as well have been air-launched. If ground-launched, both sides had SAMs in the area.

3. voice print analysis of separatists' conversations … from social media sites.

This evidence is absurdly vague and suspect. If such persons so claimed, it was apparently gossip; we are of course not given the contrary gossip.

The fact that the USG suppressed the aerial photos, flight recorder data, ATC communications, etc., and accused Russia repeatedly of sending in armored divisions with no evidence whatsoever, proves the intent to deceive We the People by any and all means whatsoever. No USG "evidence" in this matter has any credibility, and those who accept it at face value merely state a lack of concern for truth and justice.

Joe L, March 12, 2015 at 10:31 am

Have you read Robert Parry's article "Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case" (October 20, 2014)? I believe this article is based on a Der Spiegel article where German Intelligence, the BND, claim that they believe that the "rebels" shot down MH-17 but they did it with a "captured" BUK missile system from a "Ukrainian Military Base"! Also in the article it points out that the German BND dismiss Russian evidence of an SU-25 shoot-down but also that photos provided by the Ukrainian Government of MH-17 "have been manipulated". Also, you are using "evidence" from "social media" as evidence? Well for me, if this truly was shot down by Russia or the "rebels" I am sure that the US would have satellite data since I believe there was a satellite overhead on that day and the US being the largest surveillance apparatus on the planet. With such surveillance power available to the west, why has the investigation of MH-17 devolved to mainly evidence from "social media"?

By the way, here is the article to Mr. Parry's article.

Consortium News: "Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case" (October 20, 2014):
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/20/germans-clear-russia-in-mh-17-case/

spktruth200, March 11, 2015 at 10:41 pm

Russia told the EU that they had a sat image proving Kiev Right Wing Nazis in charge of the Kiev military actually shot down the plane in an effort to blame Russia. Immediately Merkel and Holland made a desperate trip to Moscow to keep them from responding…Notice, not one corporate media has ever brought that issue up again. EU and foreign governments also know who really did 911, and PUTIN threatened to go public on that issue too.

madeleine, March 12, 2015 at 12:32 am

thank you for showing how deceitful these neocons really are.

seems like the US is the new USSR !

Huley, March 12, 2015 at 1:36 pm

No, that is totally wrong: The necon-US is getting more and more a HITLER-style regime, a NAZI-regime, mentally sick, preparing and organizing chaos, regime-change, war, ethnic clensing all over the world: "Exceptionalsm", "leader of the world", "to be the first", are nothing but synonyms for conquering the world. The US is getting the most hatetd state in the world.

The neocons should be eliminated before they take their chance destroying the world.

Andrew Nichols, March 12, 2015 at 12:43 am

Nuland is of the Goebbelsian propaganda school where it doesnt matter whether or not what she says is true, it becomes the truth because its repeated enough. I do wonder if she thinks she can survive nuclear war. We live in dark times a pivotal moment where the Empire really is upping the ante. We may not survive it.

Mary, March 12, 2015 at 1:18 am

Nuland and her hubby - war pigs.

Sydney Vilen, March 12, 2015 at 2:08 am

Why did Hillary Clinton bring Nuland, former adviser to VP Dick Cheney, into the State Department? The answer to this seems very relevant to the next presidential election.
Bob, March 12, 2015 at 12:48 pm
I completely agree, the answer to this question may well be the answer to All of our perplexing questions…

jimbo, March 12, 2015 at 11:49 am

I have been with Parry and his view that the Russians are the better guys in this conflict but I am being swayed in another direction especially due to a report on Vice which shows how active duty Russian soldiers had been killed in the Ukraine.

Huley, March 12, 2015 at 1:18 pm

This rotten mad creature should be brought to justice like the complete bunch of neocon organized criminals and fascists.

Tom Coombs, March 12, 2015 at 2:24 pm

Hey Robert keep up the good work. I was checking my bookmarked "Project for New American Century" today (it's been a long time since i visited the site) the website is gone, is there anyway to get an archived copy? I was introducing your website and your books to a friend of mine who is the editor of the "Valley Voice" a bi-weekly paper in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia in Canada. I lent her the four books of yours and was trying to show her the American Century website. Could you e-mail me and let me know how i can get a copy of their manifesto, i consider it the mein kamf of our time…Tom Coombs

Charron, March 12, 2015 at 2:35 pm

I saw the testimony Ms. Nuland gave before the Senators of the Foreign Affairs Committee last week on CSpan. After hearing a number of questions and comments by the Senators of the Foreign Relations committee I was extremely depressed. I have never heard such drivel in all my 84 years.

One Senator wanted assurance that we would install a nuclear missile system in the Ukraine, and I well remember what our reaction was when we learned that Soviet Russia was installing missile systems in Cuba. They were so cocksure and oblivious to reality I felt we were being governed by mad men.

I mean I came away extremely scared. They were all so unconnected with reality, it was unbelievable, and the Democrat Senators on the committee were as bad as the Republican. They had no understanding of what was going on in the Ukraine! You would think that as Senators they would have some slight understanding but they were all posturing as defenders of freedom and protectors of America from the evil Putin. They were all playing out a role in the morality play that they had created, that had no connection with reality. I mean I am used to baloney from our members of Congress, but this was on another level. Unbelievable!

[Mar 28, 2015] Psaki was very careful to avoid answering questions about what role the US played in the Ukrainian coup, but sometimes her answers were extremely cynical

Quote: "she apparently forgot how Obama had recently boasted to Congress that because of US sanctions, the Russian economy was in tatters."

Mar 28, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile, March 28, 2015 at 4:07 am

This is what Psaki says, as I posted 3 days ago after seeing an article about the Dozhd TV interview in Komsomolskaya Pravda:

I thought Sobchak had fucked off, anyway, because her life is in danger – allegedly: I wish she would.

Джен Псаки: Смещение Путина не является нашей целью, мы хотим изменить курс России

Jen Psaki: The ousting of Putin is not our goal: we want to change the direction that Russia is taking

Extracts and précis:
-----------------------------------The official U.S. state Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki is soon to go on maternity leave and will quit her post, which has become famous even in distant Russia. But before doing that, on Wednesday night Jen gave an interview with Ksenia Sobchak in a live "Dozhd" transmission.

Psaki: We cooperate with Russia on many issues, but we have serious disagreements about the Ukraine. About a year ago, Russian separatists invaded the Ukraine, and we had serious differences of opinion about this. We have drawn different conclusions as regards whether this action meets international standards.

Psaki then said what would happen following the U.S. Congress request that Obama begin arms shipments to the Ukraine:

Psaki: Congress gives authority for the president to act, but it is up to him to decide whether to take any action. Of course, our goal is to make Russia and Pro-Russian separatists in the Ukraine strictly comply with the Minsk agreement. We are not going to wage a proxy war with Russia, but we are considering different options depending on what is happening. We are only talking about defensive weaponry, but weighing all the facts, we are trying to understand what decision will bring a resolution to the conflict in the Ukraine. There are many other levers: the introduction of new sanctions, negotiations with our external partners. The USA has a lot of options…

Russia and Pro-Russian separatists have encroached into Ukraine territory. There are Russian troops there, so there are good reasons for what Congress has recommended.

Asked by Sobchak if she thought Putin was a dictator, Psaki answered:

It is a pity that he seems to have ignored the economic decline of the country, which is having a direct impact on the Russian people, and is focusing on unlawful interference in Ukrainian affairs. Political leaders in America would be prosecuted if they chose such a path.

Sobchak: Is the purpose of the US to oust Putin?

Psaki: No, that is not our goal. Our goal is to stop the illegal invasion by Russia and pro-Russian separatists of Ukrainian territory. This is not about changing the leadership of the country. This should be the choice of the Russian people. But Russia is taking action specifically in Ukrainian matters, and Russia has the opportunity to change its course of action.

Psaki was very careful to avoid answering questions about what role the US played in the Ukrainian coup, but sometimes her answers were extremely cynical as, for example, in the case of the expulsion of Yanukovych.

Psaki: We tried to work with Yanukovych, but he left the country. There was chaos, and we are reminded of this today- and with deep regret.

Sometimes Psaki clearly deviated from the general line of the US leadership. For example, she apparently forgot how Obama had recently boasted to Congress that because of US sanctions, the Russian economy was in tatters. She said:

"We do not consider Russia as an opponent. We wish you success and prosperity."

Psaki did a lot of talking about cooperating with Russia – over both achievable and desirable goals. However, the sincerity of her statements did not lend itself to be very much believed.
-----------------------------------

End of excerpts and précis.

kat kan, March 28, 2015 at 4:40 am

About a year ago, Russian separatists invaded the Ukraine, and we had serious differences of opinion about this. We have drawn different conclusions as regards whether this action meets international standards.

Hmmm…. good question., What ARE international standards about people living where they live? When does living in your own house turn into an invasion?

colliemum, March 28, 2015 at 5:29 am

When someone else wants to have your house?

[Mar 27, 2015] Obama's Drone Policy Crashes and Burns BY Leonard C. Goodman

But until we end the partnership between government and corporate power, three things will remain constant: Our foreign policy will be expensive for U.S. taxpayers, profitable for the war contractors and disastrous for everyday people.
In These Times
The unraveling of Yemen should be a wake-up call for Obama loyalists. Obama was elected in large part because of his opposition to the disastrous Iraq War and his promise of a smarter Middle East policy, one less reliant on invasion and occupation. Nevertheless, in office, Obama has supported the occupation of Afghanistan and the NATO-led overthrow of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, which led to chaos.

Still, as Obama explained in a September 2014 foreign policy speech, the centerpiece of his strategy in the Middle East has been a more long-distance approach: "taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines." In other words: air strikes, drones and military aid. He touted the success of this strategy in Yemen and Somalia.

Indeed, Yemen has been the poster child for Obama's Middle East strategy. Using the U.S. military bases that surround Yemen, we have propped up the corrupt and repressive regimes of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his successor, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi (i.e., our "partners on the front lines"). In exchange, they let us incinerate alleged militants. And when we slaughter innocents (like 35 women and children in a 2009 bombing, or 12 members of a wedding party in a 2014 drone strike), our partners help cover up our crimes, even jailing the Yemeni journalist who exposed the U.S. role in the 2009 attack.

Of course, the cover-up was effective only in the United States, where most of our news comes from corporate sources that almost never challenge official pronouncements about military or CIA missions. The Yemeni people know all too well our criminal acts. Last September, 13-yearold Mohammed Tuaiman al-Jahmi told the Guardian that "he lived in constant fear of the 'death machines' in the sky that had already killed his father and brother" in 2011, as they were out herding the family's camels. In February, Mohammed himself was killed by a U.S. drone.

The Obama "success story" in Yemen had already come to an end in January, when Houthi rebels took control of the presidential compound in Sanaa, ousting Hadi, his prime minister and his entire cabinet. The motto of the new leaders is "Death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam." On February 10, the State Department confirmed that it had closed the U.S. embassy in Yemen, the third in an Arab country since 2012.

In truth, Obama's foreign policy is similar to George W. Bush's. The war contractors want to keep the rivers of taxpayer cash flowing into their coffers, while multinational energy firms want the U.S. to keep supporting brutal, undemocratic regimes that keep their boots on the necks of restive citizens who might object to foreign firms exploiting national resources. And as long as our laws permit corrupt ties between corporate interests and politicians, we will continue to see disastrous failure after failure of our foreign policy.

In February, Obama led a three-day summit on countering violent extremism. The president's remarks at this summit, of course, made no mention of our odious drone policy. No citizens of Yemen or Pakistan were invited to speak about how living with the constant anxiety caused by armed drones buzzing in the sky drives residents to join anti-U.S. terror groups. Nor was there any talk of the blowback caused by the U.S. military bases which garrison the greater Middle East, or of the corrupt, repressive regimes that those U.S. bases support. Instead, leaders of some of those regimes attended the summit.

Obama did offer empty rhetoric about how we are not at war with Islam. Such words are unlikely to impress Muslims outside the United States, who know that it's Muslims who populate Obama's kill list, who are indefinitely detained at Guantánamo without charges and whose systematic torture by the CIA was swept under the rug by Obama.

Americans, who are ill-informed about our actions overseas, will hear Obama's empathetic rhetoric and quite rationally conclude that the reason we are losing in places like Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan is because Obama is too soft. Perhaps our next president will be someone who promises to get tougher on Muslim extremists.

But until we end the partnership between government and corporate power, three things will remain constant: Our foreign policy will be expensive for U.S. taxpayers, profitable for the war contractors and disastrous for everyday people.

[Mar 26, 2015] Ukraine pleads for quick restructuring of debts by Larry Elliott

"I guess at some point last year they made the strategic decision that any credibility amongst those who are well informed could be sacrificed. Very few Westerners (especially in the Anglosohere) will make the effort to find alternative sources, and the rest can easily be gulled." ... "How embarassing for the Guardian; history will not be kind to the complicit, useful idiots who have prostituted their credibility on the altar of propaganda." This neocons who run the show has thrown Ukrainian people into abysmal poverty and horrors of civil war and now want to sell all the assets for pennies on the dollar. Note activity of Psakibots (psigone, jessam, nickpossum, Mike_UK, etc) in comments. Quote: "I notice the Graun finally reported on the Kolomoisky situation. Only a week after he sent his armed gangs to occupy corporate HQs in Kiev. Not bad, not bad at all. I guess it takes time to be sure what the party line is in such delicate situations. Safer to say nothing than the wrong thing."

Mar 24, 2015 | The Guardian

Finance minister Natalie Jaresko wants to see debt cut and interest on remainder reduced so Ukraine can move towards stability

Jeremn -> MartinArvay 26 Mar 2015 09:04

It is Shock Therapy II. Deregulation. Privatisation ("privatization of everything that can be privatized and we plan to start it this year," she said on 13 March). Selling off assets. Firing staff.

See the number of staff being sacked from state institutions. 50% from the economic ministry alone. The minister helpfully remarked

"One can't do anything with old staff."

OldStickie -> Goodthanx 26 Mar 2015 06:53

East European oligarchs usually buy themselves Israeli citizenship. There is no extradition from Israel so that is where you go when justice begins to catch up with you.

sodtheproles Goodthanx 26 Mar 2015 05:47

Common sense dictates federalisation for the whole of Ukraine. The existing situation benefits only the US, and their arms manufacturers, no one else

61gvern 25 Mar 2015 21:12

I notice the Graun finally reported on the Kolomoisky situation.

Only a week after he sent his armed gangs to occupy corporate HQs in Kiev. Not bad, not bad at all. I guess it takes time to be sure what the party line is in such delicate situations. Safer to say nothing than the wrong thing.

nnedjo 25 Mar 2015 17:37

As far as I understand, with Ukraine is happening now something similar with the patient over which performs open-heart surgery. So, while the surgeons do not complete the operation, they must attach a patient to the artificial heart and artificial lungs, otherwise he would have died.

Similarly, the Ukraine until recently was inextricably linked with Russia's economic and industrial complex. Severing those ties were equally to the separation of man from his heart during surgery. And, IMF now plays the role of an artificial heart, which should maintain the patient's bloodstream until they implanted a new heart to him. How long the operation will last, and whether it will ever be successful, it is obvious that neither the IMF knows himself. Because, as Natali Jaresko said, Ukraine is a very big country, and throughout the EU is currently a major crisis.

Also, it is not known how the patient (Ukraine) will pay "the cost of the operation" to the IMF, if one day he really healed, and will he ever be able to do so.

sodtheproles -> Gonzogal 25 Mar 2015 17:12

I meant for ability to use government to line her own pockets, certainly not for her investment 'skills'

Jeff1000 25 Mar 2015 17:02

Prof. Steven Cohen, of Princeton and NYU, calls the Ukraine situation "the worst international crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWzHhW_qNiM

He's probably just a Putin-bot.


Gonzogal -> sodtheproles 25 Mar 2015 16:22

That $150 million WNISEF fund handed by Jaresko has lost more than a third of its value since the Ukrainian economy tanked. As she steps into office, Kiev's foreign reserves are down to $10 billion and shrinking, while inflation roars at 22 percent.

albatros18 -> todaywefight 25 Mar 2015 16:06

http://tass.ru/en/world/784470

my sources mostly Russian and Ukrainian news agencies or blogs. There has been occupations and clashes between the regime forces and battalions in Kiev, Dniepr and also in Odessa.

However my best independent source is Colonel Cassad.

Gonzogal 25 Mar 2015 15:43

Some background on Natalie Jaresko:

Ukraine's new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, a former U.S. State Department officer who was granted Ukrainian citizenship only this week, headed a U.S. government-funded investment project for Ukraine that involved substantial insider dealings, including $1 million-plus fees to a management company that she also controlled.

Jaresko served as president and chief executive officer of Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which was created by the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) with $150 million to spur business activity in Ukraine. She also was cofounder and managing partner of Horizon Capital which managed WNISEF's investments at a rate of 2 to 2.5 percent of committed capital, fees exceeding $1 million in recent years, according to WNISEF's 2012 annual report.

The growth of that insider dealing at the U.S.-taxpayer-funded WNISEF is further underscored by the number of paragraphs committed to listing the "related party transactions," i.e., potential conflicts of interest, between an early annual report from 2003 and the one a decade later.

In the 2003 report, the "related party transactions" were summed up in two paragraphs, with the major item a $189,700 payment to a struggling computer management company where WNISEF had an investment.

In the 2012 report, the section on "related party transactions" covered some two pages and included not only the management fees to Jaresko's Horizon Capital ($1,037,603 in 2011 and $1,023,689 in 2012) but also WNISEF's co-investments in projects with the Emerging Europe Growth Fund [EEGF], where Jaresko was founding partner and chief executive officer. Jaresko's Horizon Capital also managed EEGF.

From 2007 to 2011, WNISEF co-invested $4.25 million with EEGF in Kerameya LLC, a Ukrainian brick manufacturer, and WNISEF sold EEGF 15.63 percent of Moldova's Fincombank for $5 million, the report said. It also listed extensive exchanges of personnel and equipment between WNISEF and Horizon Capital.

Though it's difficult for an outsider to ascertain the relative merits of these insider deals, they could reflect negatively on Jaresko's role as Ukraine's new finance minister given the country's reputation for corruption and cronyism, a principal argument for the U.S.-backed "regime change" that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February.

Read more: https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/05/ukraines-made-in-usa-finance-minister/

DerFremde -> Jeff1000 25 Mar 2015 15:02

That's nothing their president Poroshenko has been on the American payroll since at least 2006.

Wikileaks Cable 06KIEV1706_a

frankverismo -> psygone 25 Mar 2015 14:30

"Russian President Putin's game plan now in Ukraine is to turn it into a failed state as an example to the others in his EurAsian (customs) Union."

As if Putin and Lavrov need to do anything - it's already a failed state. All thanks to Washington, its NATO stooges and a woefully naive Ukrainian population.

Jeff1000 -> psygone 25 Mar 2015 13:07

Ukraine is a disaster - anybody can see that. Your decidedly odd efforts to convince...somebody...that Ukraine is about to turn around and become a healthy economy is, frankly, mad.

If there isn't another coup, or at least huge unrest in Kiev, by the end of the year it will be a near miracle.

HollyOldDog -> SHappens 25 Mar 2015 10:38

The foundations of the bridge between Russia and Crimea are due to go in this spring though the bridge completion could take 2years. Has anyone heard of how the pipelines from Russia to Crimea are progressing - one for gas and the other for water. I think it's best for Crimea to be totally physically seperated from Ukraine for the safety of the Crimean citizens.

Griffon79 -> nnedjo 25 Mar 2015 10:09

pretty sure the shadow government in the US has decided to destroy the US - the social compact has been broken - no longer do they act in national interests, but private, commercial ones.

I give them about a half century before collapse followed by civil war.

Griffon79 -> UncleSam404 25 Mar 2015 10:05

Incorrect, but either your juvenile patriotism, or ignorance, or possibly payola prevents you from seeing the absurdness of your position.

Luckily, the rest of the world as they say is not so dim.

Griffon79 -> Jonathan Stromberg 25 Mar 2015 10:01

No, there isnt. This little coup has made that clear to the intellectuals in the West - you know, the ones not in government in journalism, the ones who make the society tick, that our media is at least as, if not more corrupt than any media, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, with the possible exception of North Korea.

So, I guess the elite thought we would either swallow this, after Syria, Iraq, Libya and countless other misadventures, or that they could retain some credibility after this propaganda assault.

Wrong on both counts.

Griffon79 -> Jonathan Stromberg 25 Mar 2015 09:58

Alleged? ALLEGED? Please.

Here, from the fine Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/05/ukraine-women-fighting-frontline

Check out the insignia on the vehicle behind 'anaconda'. Really great people our 'leaders' have elected to ally with eh?

Just to defend against your next deflection, it is in fact the neonazo simple 1488, as the Guardian, under pressure BTL, was forced to admit.

I bet some poor staffer got in trouble for that.

Griffon79 -> Mike_UK 25 Mar 2015 09:55

Ukraine was not attacking anyone until they had a coup, didnt like resistance in the East, and so sent a bunch of neonazi hooligans and their poorly equipped army to attack civilian populations.

Facts. Unsubjective ones. You feel me, Guardian?

Griffon79 -> psygone Mar 2015 09:52

Yes, and America will be nowhere to be seen. America likes to talk big but when it comes down to the wire, they will sacrifice their 'allies' in a heartbeat.

Griffon79 -> Mike_UK 25 Mar 2015 09:42

They weren't Ukrainian nuclear weapons ; they were Russian. The Russians were taking back what they owned. Also, given recent history, its probably a good thing the nutcases in the Ukrainian coup government do not have nukes, n'est pas?

What do you think happens to the US economy when oil is no longer being traded almost exclusively in US dollars?

Just curious what the Langley view is.

Griffon79 -> rogermell1e 25 Mar 2015 09:38

This point, from the HEAVENS:

"This is really a victory for Russia, because at one time a substantial part of the intelligentsia had some trust in the western MSM. This has now almost completely evaporated."

Griffon79 -> Systematic 25 Mar 2015 09:35

They don't conform to their dishonest narrative, so they wont report on it.
Right now meetings are being held to determine the best possible way to spin the news for the few dullards who remain supportive in Western nations of the Ukrainian coup government.

Griffon79 -> TOR2000 25 Mar 2015 09:34

ah yes but don't expect the vaunted Guardian to report that; they think we are rubes who will swallow their outrageous lies hook line and sinker

newsflash, kids in short pants, you are the ones killing your creditibility, not us

johnbonn -> Goodthanx 25 Mar 2015 09:31

You are on fire today, 'how are you'. Keep it going.

Griffon79 -> GreatMountainEagle 25 Mar 2015 09:31

Erm. Ukraine can. Ukraine is like a child that does not understand why her parents wont give her more money after she spends her allowance on candy.

Only instead of candy, she is spending her money on weapons with which to attack her own (former) citizens.

Griffon79 -> Demi Boone 25 Mar 2015 09:26

Its getting bad then since this has been true from the start.

How embarassing for the Guardian; history will not be kind to the complicit, useful idiots who have prostituted their credibility on the altar of propaganda.

johnbonn -> retsdon 25 Mar 2015 09:25

How else was the US going to conduct a regime change. And speaking of thugs and carpet baggers Joe Biden fits in nicely.

And why would you put the words western and credibility together - - a contradiction in terms.

Griffon79 -> jezzam 25 Mar 2015 09:19

"Ukraine will not be allowed to founder by the West whatever "

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Are you really that naive? Explains a lot, if you are Ukrainian. Idealists, not realists.

Griffon79 -> Vladimire_Poutine 25 Mar 2015 09:16

Well, as a Canadian, I certainly don't support your blatant lies and distortions.

The misinformation campaign headquartered in Langley has failed, miserably. People are only too aware of how our corrupt governments have connived in order to support a coup. People are only too aware that the coup government is a mashup of neonazi nationalists, corrupt oligarchs and poorly trained and equipped (and led - look at Debaltseve) conscripts who are deserting in droves.

We are aware the vast majority of the roughly 1 MILLION refugees fled East, to Russia. Not West, to the people trying to kill them. We are aware the vast majority of the killed civilians were killed by the Ukrainian coup government using artillery and that those same forces are being trained and equipped by our subservient governments.

We are aware Ukraine is a financial black hole that our governments will throw taxpayer dollars into, despite a crumbling domestic economy.

Oh - on the neonazis, dont even try to deny it. The Guardiane even posted an article about 'women of the revolution' unintentionally exposing their neonazi leanings when they were photogrpahed next to a van showing the brigade insignia of the SS (yes, that SS, WAFFEN SS)

Long and short, the battle for 'hearts and minds' is long lost. If the US agitates for WWIII to save their bankrupt state, I think the leaders best check their heads are still attached to their shoulders. People are the power, not the banksters and their puppets.

This conflict has done more to awaken Western citizens to the utter abrogation of our soverignity to US aggression than any of their previous illegal adventures. We dont like what we see.

sodtheproles -> MaiKey Dee 25 Mar 2015 08:34

That's why they called shelling their own citizens an anti-terrorist operation. The Americans have a lot to answer for, not least their abuse of the English language. Anyone remember 'collateral damage'?

MaiKey Dee 25 Mar 2015 08:26

I thought the IMF was not permitted to lend to countries in a state of civil war

todaywefight 25 Mar 2015 08:08

Poroshenko: Ukrainian army among five strongest in Europe

Yet they have to "orderly" retreat in the middle of the night from Debaltsevo leaving dead and injured behind as well as equipment. Furthermore they keep on begging for more money to arm these army while the population cannot afford to feed itself...

retsdon 25 Mar 2015 07:56

As this well-researched article at the Saker makes evident, the Ukrainian leadership is a rat's nest of criminals, thugs, and carpet-baggers. It debases western credibility entirely that we even deal with such people at all, leave alone support and court them. And it dirties the rest of us by association.

http://thesaker.is/kolomoisky-finishing-ukraine-up/

ivan2034 -> Drifterrus 25 Mar 2015 07:47

Victoria Nuland's background is even more telling. Quite frightening in fact.

todaywefight -> Standupwoman 25 Mar 2015 07:28

I have taken the liberty to copy your post to a series of documents that I keep since the beginning of this sad episodes...as your comment is one of the very few posts that is solid and deeply relevant, as such it affects ones feelings just as deeply, thank you.

sodtheproles -> HollyOldDog 25 Mar 2015 07:03

Robert Parry
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/05/ukraines-made-in-usa-finance-minister/

SHappens 25 Mar 2015 06:49

Moody's has downgraded Ukraine's "long-term issuer and government debt ratings to Ca from Caa3" with a "negative" outlook. The ratings agency said in a press release that its move "reflects Moody's expectation that Ukraine's government and external debt levels will remain very high, in spite of the debt restructuring and plans to introduce reforms."
https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Ukraines-sovereign-ratings-to-Ca-outlook-remains-negative--PR_320764

Meanwhile:

Crimea has been experiencing an upsurge in development following its reunification with Russia thanks to the country's investment in the republic. "Crimea has not developed at such a pace as it has in the past year over the past twenty years.

Unfortunately, the 23-year-long tenure in Ukraine has been the time of regression for Crimea. The Ukrainian government did not invest a single penny into Crimea, at the same time it sucked out all possible resources from here," Polonsky told Sputnik, stressing that Russia "is taking an entirely different route" which is making a "drastic" difference on the peninsula. But even if Crimea residents were told not to expect any investment from the Russian government a year ago, they would have "still made the choice of becoming part of Russia," the minister stressed. The social standards, salaries and the level of medical services in Crimea grew sharply in the past year.

Standupwoman 25 Mar 2015 06:49

"Everybody in the free world should be doing more to help Ukraine. This is a country that has given its life for democracy and is protecting Europe from an aggressive neighbour".

Listen, Ms 'Insider Trading' Jaresco, and I'll tell you what you and your country have actually done to Britain.

You've damaged our economy by unjust sanctions, and used our taxpayers' money to fund your murderous war on your own people. British citizens are reduced to living off food banks, but you're demanding we divert our spending into NATO defence – to fight an enemy that would never have been a threat if you hadn't interfered in the first place.

You've released a poison into Europe that will take generations to cure. You've split us in two, revived old racial hatreds, and brought back the spectre of Nazism to the countries that suffered from it most. You've forced us into provocations that have brought us to the very brink of war – and one that threatens to destroy us all.

You've insulted our war dead by your revision of history. You've hailed Hitler as a liberator, deified those who committed mass murder under the Nazi flag, and defiled monuments to those who resisted him. You've made our war sacrifices worthless, and forced us to stand by while Nazi sympathizers glorify their heroes at the site of our own Cenotaph. You've forced us to insult our war allies by snubbing the May 9th acknowledgement of the millions of Russian dead whose sacrifice enabled our own country to survive. You've dishonoured us all.

You've taken away our self-respect, and put us for ever on the wrong side of history. You've forced us to condone the destruction of democracy, and made us complicit in war crimes. You've put us in breach of the Hague Conventions, the Geneva Conventions, the Vienna Conventions for the protection of Embassies, and even made us abandon the presumption of innocence. God knows we didn't have much moral credibility after our colonial past, but you've taken from us every last little shred of decency we had left.

And now you want us to pay for the privilege?

No, Ms Jaresco. You can take your begging bowl back to Washington and tell them, 'You broke it – you own it.' Get them to stop the war, bring justice to the innocent, and give freedom to the people of the East. Get them to help those ordinary decent Ukrainians who only wanted the chance of a better life, and were misled by you to their ruin. Get them to rebuild Donbass, give back homes to the 1.5 million displaced people, help and compensate the bereaved families of those 60,000 dead. And when they've done all that, then it'll be time to start thinking about what reparations you can make to us…

sodtheproles -> Albatros18 25 Mar 2015 06:49

Let's hope she's booked her ticket
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Saigon-hubert-van-es.jpg

Goodthanx -> oleteo 25 Mar 2015 06:43

Its fantastic isnt it? You couldnt script better characters than a self styled President in rent a Prop Poroshenko, Pre Menstraul Yatsintook, 'Its a miracle i can walk' Tymoshenko.. The list goes on..

TrueBrit1066 -> Jeff1000 25 Mar 2015 06:42

Thanks for this. Why does this not surprise me? :)

oleteo -> Jeff1000 25 Mar 2015 06:37

I'd wish a success to Ukies but ultranationalism can't be a success

HollyOldDog -> justTR 25 Mar 2015 06:37

Except for those countries who refuse to keep filling the pot.

Sargv_ -> jezzam 25 Mar 2015 06:35

> The only countries in recent history that have resorted to mass killings of their own people are Russia, China and Cambodia

USSR was not Russia, not even by a long shot. For starters, Russians were a minority on all levels of early-days soviet state machine, and were, by far, the most oppressed nation during communist rule. Consider the gains and losses for all the nations occupied by bosheviks prior to communist revolution, and after the Soviet collapse.

It's Russians, Chechens Russian Germans who lost the most, while Georgia - a homeland of Stalin, and Ukraine - a homeland of Kruschev and Brezhnev, gained enormous territories and industries. They lost most of this in just 25 years, but that's anothe story.

todaywefight -> Albatros18 25 Mar 2015 06:32

Sorry I don't see any mention of demonstrations and the army getting ready mate..just give me a link please

Albatros18 -> todaywefight 25 Mar 2015 06:32

she is the only candidate who does not scream for war. People, especially his allies, are fed up with Yatsenyuk's foul, nonsense, warmongering language. Let's see who will be the winner of this fight for power.

todaywefight -> Albatros18 25 Mar 2015 06:28

Thank you very much

oleteo 25 Mar 2015 06:27

Good girl, good start.

At the beginning there was the begging for money, now and then there would be an incessant begging to write off.

Albatros18 -> todaywefight 25 Mar 2015 06:27

Porkoshenko's website.

Verbum -> jezzam 25 Mar 2015 06:25

The US spent 5 billion between 1991 and 2014 on the development of standard democratic institutions in Ukraine

Is Kolomoisky and his private army one of the 'standard democratic institutions' funded by the US in Ukraine?

Verbum -> Albatros18 25 Mar 2015 06:23

Kolomoisky, Poroshenko, Yats... Is it the 'democracy' the Yanks spent 5 billion dollars on? The dollar doesn't seem to buy much nowadays. And Nuland's cookies to top it all up... All wasted.

Sargv_ 25 Mar 2015 06:21

With all that constant 'donate for the good cause' narrative here and there, Ukraine should finally drop the idea of being a sovereign state (as they are clearly suck at this) and register as a World-first 45mln-strong charity organisation instead.

Goodthanx -> Albatros18 25 Mar 2015 06:19

I say let them! The fighters of DPR are looking forward to the resupply!


Jeff1000 25 Mar 2015 06:18

Finance minister Natalie Jaresko...

Interesting notes on the career/life of Ms Jaresko:

- Born in America, still a US citizen.
- Not a Ukrainian citizen until 2014, Poroshenko pushed a special law through parliament in order to make her FM.

- Her dual citizenships are illegal under Ukrainian law (they seem to be OK with it).

- Held jobs at: The US State Dept, the US Treasury and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Just another sign that the USA has absolutely NOTHING to do with the mess in Kiev, and it certainly isn't about grabbing money, influence and/or natural resources.

Goodthanx -> todaywefight 25 Mar 2015 06:17

I have never lived there, but a close examination and reading of history plus an attitude that remembers we are talking about human life.. Is enough to convince me to the virtues of this cause.

ID075732 -> Parangaricurimicuaro 25 Mar 2015 06:16

But it's no secret where she came from!

todaywefight -> Albatros18 25 Mar 2015 06:16

Apparently he resigned... and Poroshenko accepted his resignation and installed one of his followers to the position.

Do you have any links to the rest of your post? if that lady becomes the PM Ukraine is gone for all money.

Sargv_ -> nickpossum 25 Mar 2015 06:15

> Two simple truths. The West does not want a war with Russia. If Russia attacks the West, it will be destroyed.

If Russia attacks the West, it'll attack the part it can reach, which is, obviously, the EU.

So the outcome will be slightly more complicated: Russia attacks The West, EU and Russia are both destroyed, while The Rest of The West grab all the gains (nobody will ever mention that $17tln debt; there'd be no high-end market competition wit US goods - and so on, and so forth).

There's only one winner in this conflict, no matter how hot it will get: the USoA. Europeans are predefined to the role of economical donor for pro-US Ukraine at best, WW3 cannon fodder at worst.

todaywefight -> Goodthanx 25 Mar 2015 06:12

What is sad is that, having lived in the country for many years I feel so sorry for the people, the normal people, not the Gucci, Ferragamo and Zegna brigade the guys wearing $4000 suits wth a black tee shirt, the ones that their idea of being part of parliament is to sit the whole day in Passage, or go to Da vinci fo lunch or go to Mafia for dinner and look important when their chauffeurs open the door of the black mercs a disgusting low life.

It will never be the same, forces were unleashed last year by Nuland that helped create a generational hatred and the loss of life not to mention the lose of 1/5 of the country and if Poroshenko or anyone else think that the eggs can be unscrambled I can advise them that they do not need the IMF but a bunch of Clinical Psychiatrists

HollyOldDog vr13vr 25 Mar 2015 06:09

But it won't last. The Anericans always screwup.

Sargv_ -> geedeesee 25 Mar 2015 06:06

> "Jaresko said that, in five years, she wanted to see a Ukraine at peace"

"In five years I want to be a five years sober." We definitely need an international AA for country-wide hangovers caused by 'we are the people' riots.

HollyOldDog -> someoneionceknew 25 Mar 2015 06:05

But the USA fallout is to destroy whatever is left of the Ukraine economy leaving it citizens with far higher food and fuel costs.

While Russia is finding new friends and markets the World over. Strange how many countries are now learning that if you don't protect your back then expect an USA knife trying to rip your guts out .

DerFremde -> HollyOldDog 25 Mar 2015 06:05

wag the dog, Holly, wag the dog

first law of democratisation, you will open your markets to us in full. nationalised assets will be privatised and you will take out IMF loans to do the 'restructuring' not the so-called investors. this debt will be paid for by the population in due course.

Albatros18 25 Mar 2015 06:03

Kolomoisky sacked by Poroshenko, the former's private army is on alert to attack government buildings, hundreds protest in Kiev asking Yatsenyuk's head, the reports suggest that the finance minister, the Chicago born lady to become PM, the junta still shells Donetsk towns, and what the Americans want: send more weapons. Only continuing conflict would save the Americans' crooks in Kiev in short term.

todaywefight -> Goodthanx 25 Mar 2015 05:57

Yes actually I saw one of the interviews, she wants the Russians not to call the debt, she also wants peace and then she turns the switch on and talks like Nuland and proceeds to shit all over Russia, It think the girl will be done like a dinner in no time...

todaywefight -> jezzam 25 Mar 2015 05:47

Probably the most important part about your posts is that they are totally disconnected from reality, and, as such we do not really have to even give you the courtesy of an answer.

todaywefight -> jezzam 25 Mar 2015 05:42

...the 2,000,000 to 3,600,000 killed in Vietnam and the millions left without limbs and the destruction of their cities. How about the hundreds of thousands dead in latin america due to the intervention of the US...the exceptional country...the thing is that all these deaths were based on lies invented by your country

AlexRS -> psygone 25 Mar 2015 05:41

Don't lie. Russia defaulted only on its internal debt in 1998. Russia cleared Soviet debt by 2006 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2945924/Reborn-Russia-clears-Soviet-debt.html

todaywefight -> jezzam 25 Mar 2015 05:37

What exactly do you call the targeted wooden buildings and the firebombing of these buildings by 300 b29s killing an US official "100000" and two days later the bombing of Hyrishima and Nagasaky, the 1,000,000 killed in Ira


Goodthanx -> Vladimire_Poutine 25 Mar 2015 02:36

As a Jew myself, i can tell you that Kolomovsky and the likes of him, does not represent me or the greater Ukrainian Jewish community. Referencing a 'dial-a-jew', does not provide validity to your argument, just provides further fuel to the propoganda fire.

Lastly i believe the question was, 'who do you work for?'

MSM is full of articles and comments that demonise Putin and Russia. The problem is, there is no where near enough attention and scrutiny brought towards the country that staged a violent coup helped by neo nazis who now control critical ministerial positions in the Rada, declared an ATO on their own civilian population in the east, murdered opposition and intimidate the rest, burn thru international funds and pocket the rest, war crimes..etc

These are the issues.

PlatonKuzin 25 Mar 2015 02:04

Kolomoisky id no longer a governor but the questions remain and the conflict between the oligarchs in Ukraine gains strong momentum. What next?

todaywefight 25 Mar 2015 01:58

In 1887, the struggle for control of Hawaii was at its height as David Kalakaua was elected to the Hawaiian throne. King Kalakaua signed a reciprocity treaty with the United States making it possible for sugar to be sold to the U.S. market tax-free, but the haole - or "white" - businessmen were still distrustful of him. They criticized his ties to men they believed to be corrupt, his revival of Hawaiian traditions such as the historic Hula, and construction of the royal Iolani Palace. A scandal involving Kalakaua erupted in the very year he was crowned, and it united his opponents, a party of businessmen under the leadership of Lorrin Thurston. The opposition used the threat of violence to force the Kalakua to accept a new constitution that stripped the monarchy of executive powers and replaced the cabinet with members of the businessmen's party. The new constitution, which effectively disenfranchised most native Hawaiian voters, came to be known as the "Bayonet Constitution" because Kalakaua signed it under duress.

Replace Nuland for Thurston and there you have a good example of there is no reason for reinventing the wheel.

irishinrussia -> UncleSam404 25 Mar 2015 01:16

Russia is not broke by any stretch of the imagination. It has a very low debt to GDP ratio. It still has $360 billion in reserves (even if that figure continues to decline at its current rate - unlikely as the rouble has stabilised - that would still give them almost three years before that money ran out). The budget deficit for last year was very small. This year it is projected to be around 3% (incidentally, about what the US deficit was last year and is projected to be for the next ten years). It continues to run a balance of payments surplus even with lower oil prices. The situation in Russia is certainly not peachy, but it is a far cry from "broke".

Demi Boone -> Vladimire_Poutine 25 Mar 2015 01:09

Oh Vlad, take a look at the marches honoring the Ukranian SS that just took place across Ukraine where thousands showed up, or the SS armbands worn by extreme right participants in the Maiden or the Azov Battalion who brags of their SS devotion (but they are quick to denounce the atrocities of WW2) I challenge you to show any article promoting NeoNazi's in Russia. You have obviously not read any Russian History to know the hatred these people have for the idea of the Nazi. Your accusations of Nemstov's murder are pure speculation based on your biased opinion. There were no Nuclear threats made by Russia rather they were saying that all systems were on alert. When a Russian plane flies close to the UK you had better believe they are on the same high alert. With regards to your statement about News credibility most media sources in the US whitewash the news. Did you read anything in any major papers about the people who were run over by Ukranian forces and given permission to "shoot to kill" if the crowd got too out of hand and began to fight back?

someoneionceknew -> Goodthanx 25 Mar 2015 00:57

What is it by the way, with her numerous investments in Ukraine and Moldova?

CIA, buddy. She's a company gal.

someoneionceknew 25 Mar 2015 00:51

"The good news is that we have made great progress on stability."

Words fail me.

These CIA types certainly can gild a lily when required.


Jerome Fryer normankirk 25 Mar 2015 00:44

The Russian economy in GDP terms is expected to have a 5% contraction year on year, then pick up growing. That assumes no favourable changes in oil price, and doesn't factor in Putin's attempts to steer the Russian economy into greater self-sufficiency. Oil is likely to recover, and the attempt to shift / diversify the economy could go either way.

(At a minimum, they will be replacing as much of Ukraine's former supply of critical components as quickly as possible. Russia have been handing out citizenship papers and jobs like candy to any Ukrainians that were working in the defense related industries. Putin isn't trying to rebuild the USSR, but he is trying to maintain the capabilities of the USSR by drawing critical personnel -- and allegedly machinery -- into Russia.)


Jerome Fryer -> BorninUkraine 25 Mar 2015 00:33

It is very sad.

Western propaganda used to be a lot smarter, presumably because of the 'clash of ideologies' background. Now we are back to the old, pre-Communist threat, standard of "The Kaiser eats babies".

Most people tend to only 'believe' this nonsense at a superficial level, though. Ask them about the 'reporting' and you'll find that they consider the assertions dubious. Effective propaganda is intended to operate at more of a subliminal / emotional level, and bypass our thinking abilities.

Jerome Fryer -> pantaraxia 25 Mar 2015 00:25

He is also president of European Council of Jewish Communities, which probably translates into backing from powerful Jewish interests in the US and Israel.

That is debatable, and incorrect. See here for why he resigned from the ECJC and started his own "European Jewish Union".

Kolomoisky is no less divisive than Poroshenko. He is, however, very much an 'old school' Jewish mafia type -- and prone to blatant aggressive behaviour such as the recent takeover of the UkrTransNafta building by his 'private security'.

Oh, and it appears that Poroshenko has gone with the option to try to arrest Kolomoisky's 'private security', as a start. (Source seems to be RT, though, so about as reliable / unreliable as the BBC.)

todaywefight -> Vladimire_Poutine 25 Mar 2015 00:17

Are you from the newly created Ministry of Truth in Kyiv? or "ukraine tomorrow"?
The former is an oxymoron Truth and Ukraine should never be on the same sentence unless it says Ukraine failed to tell the truth...that is acceptable...

I dont know Vladimire...in view of the current events and the little fight amongst the Oligarchs...and accusations against Kolomoisky, his partners and his rather strong response, I am not sure who the crazy ones are here.

HollyOldDog ID075732 25 Mar 2015 00:15

I could be wrong but I half remember a political cartoon depicting the USA as a Wreaking Ball against some other economy. I will have to check later.

BorninUkraine rogermell1e 25 Mar 2015 00:04

Wow! The circus keeps going.

Poroshenko relieved Kolomoisky of duties of Dniepropetrovsk governor (directive 173/2015).

In response, Kolomoisky promised to take his battalions from the war zone with LNR/DNR and direct them to take over Kremenchug power plant and the office of Ukrtransgas (Ukrainian "state" company involved in transport of natural gas). Mega-thieves started all-out struggle, revealing the criminal nature of current Ukrainian state for all to see in the process.

How can Western media report such a piece of evidence directly incriminating the US and EU?

Old_Donkey 24 Mar 2015 23:53

Let's hope that Natalie Jaresko's skills as a financier are better than her skills as a diplomat. She's asking Russia to accept a haircut on $3 billion of debt, and Ukraine's situation is so desperate that you can't blame her for trying. But if she wants the Kremlin to "buy into this vision", she will need to learn some manners and show Russia some more respect first. Jaresko presents Ukraine as a country that is "protecting Europe from an aggressive neighbour". No one who wanted to persuade Vladimir Putin to restructure the debt would say that unless they were either very stupid or dutifully repeating State Department propaganda (or both).

The fundamental problem with the Ukrainian government is that it is incapable of restoring stability to Ukraine and instead seems hell-bent on a continuation of the civil war. The Kiev government remains absolutely opposed to finding a political solution to the problems in Eastern Ukraine and refuses to recognize the authority of the rebel leaders, who, in Donetsk and Lugansk, are clearly "the only game in town". Jaresko's own government is busily wrecking the Minsk 2 agreement and has thereby enormously increased the political risks attached to any new loans. Already, Ukrainian forces have violated the ceasefire by firing on Russian journalists and OSCE observers near Shirokino.

The purpose of an IMF loan is not to enable a country to rearm or to continue fighting a civil war but to help it to rebuild its financial system. Until we can be confident that Kiev is committed to implementing Minsk 2, all IMF loans to the Kiev government would therefore be irresponsible and offered on a dishonest basis. The IMF is specifically prohibited from offering war loans by its own charter. At the moment, it looks as though Kiev needed Minsk 2 merely for form's sake, so that it could screw some more cash out of Christine Lagarde to pay for a reconquest of the Donbass once spring arrives.

Madame Lagarde's career has always benefitted from American support, and her eagerness to return the favour is understandable. She knows how the game is played but she also knows that loyalty to a patron has its limits. So if Jaresko and her State Department controllers expect Madame Lagarde to violate the IMF's own rules by continuing to fund Ukraine's neo-Nazi war machine, they may find themselves disappointed. Madame Lagarde still has a reputation to protect but Jaresko lost hers as soon as she joined the criminal regime in Kiev.

Goodthanx 24 Mar 2015 23:46

"we are lucky to have the support of the IMF."

Yes well according to Jaresko's biography which includes very cosey relationship with the IMF, i dont think luck played any hand in it.

What is it by the way, with her numerous investments in Ukraine and Moldova? Conflict of interest? Or just business as usual?

http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=70651&privcapId=23915&previousCapId=47577789&previousTitle=Shatkin%2520Arbor,%2520Inc.

ID075732 24 Mar 2015 23:43

Jaresko said she could not complain that Ukraine had been ignored while the European Union tried to sort out the problems of Greece.

It's a joke isn't it?

Jaresko parachuted in by the US to help shore-up the coup they created financially and think it should have the same status as Greece. Now claiming a similar restructuring package that the EU refused for Tsipras?

The difference being that Ukraine is not part of the EU, nor part of NATO.

Jaresko is claiming that Russia is a threat to Europe? We all know Putin's big idea was for more trade integration with Europe that was the actual threat the US didn't want. So they turned Ukraine into a buffer against this happening, although its become more of a punch bag.

Another wreaking US intervention, we're all wise to this now. And when it's wreaked buy it cheap - great for Amerika's business. A win win for US backed business, a lose lose for the Ukrainian people!

EugeneGur 24 Mar 2015 23:31

Well, the oligarch war in Ukraine is intensifying. Kolomoiskyi threatened the head of Naftogas to take his battalions out of the war zone and to occupy the office of Ukrtransgas and Kremenchug power station. Poroshenko just fired Kolomoiskyi from his position of the Governor of Dnepropetrovsk region, which Kolomoiskyi is not about to give up, of course. The Ukrainian parliament, Rada, in the meantime is considering privatization of Privatbank owned by Kolomoiskyi, the move that could crush whatever is left of the Ukrainian financial system. Curiouser and curiouser.

I do hope that even those people in the West who had no clue before now realize that kind of personages their governments brought to power in Ukraine. Ukraine is in chaos, there is no government to speak of, and all these colorful individuals keep their personal airplanes ready for immediate departure.


Goodthanx 24 Mar 2015 23:09

"There is always a risk of a default," she added, noting that several factions in Ukraine's parliament were demanding that the government go down that route.

In Ukraine, we call it the classic 'Ha Ha..screw you maneuver.'

twiglette 24 Mar 2015 23:04

This absurd narrativeve that Ukraine is a beacon of Western democracy! It is a corrupt racist state whose current elite came to power in a U.S. inspired coupe that threw out the elected government that wished to join Russia. It has fought a viscous war against its Russian east. It deserves nothing.


rogermell1e 24 Mar 2015 23:03

Looks like Kolomoiskyi has had it. The "Kyiv Post" just ran an article in which they mention that Kolo has (gasp) "connections to organised crime".
:-D

Last week they were *very* careful about what they said about Kolomoiskyi to the point of barely reporting the events. But now the rats are fleeing the sinking ship.

Kolo had better skedaddle before we see yet another mysterious defenestration.

OneTop 24 Mar 2015 22:58

Natalie Jaresko wants to see debt cut and interest on remainder reduced so Ukraine can move towards stability

Jaresko is a US citizen who was appointed by Nuland [Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs] to run the finance ministry of the Ukraine. (the Ukraine granted her citizenship -- to give the appearance of legitimacy).

The Ukraine is run by very powerful oligarchs who have to date, much more political and real power than the western installed and supported Poroshenko.

There is no doubt the US / West will continue to support Poroshenko as he desperately needs US support to maintain his position, the more powerful "other" oligarchs with their private armies do not.

Jaresko is simply parroting US diktat (her paymasters) which is building the narrative that Ukraines' debt to Russia (primarily for energy) be legally declared as odious debt.

Which means that the Ukraine could stiff Russia for the billions it owes for goods and services already rendered.

In plain words, Jaresko is a mindless mandarin installed by America in an effort to wrest Ukraine from their evil Russian masters.


Vaska Tumir Kata L 24 Mar 2015 22:11

America's Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, has now informed him, in no uncertain terms, that "the law of the jungle" must end in Ukraine.

Ambassador Pyatt's statements are taken very seriously by Ukrainian Government officials.

Really?

They ARE the "law of the jungle" enforcers in Ukraine, as Pyatt knows perfectly well. In this instance, what we have is a situation in which a set of criminals of exactly the same sort as those in power but currently not in the government itself (Kolomoysky and his lot) is stronger than the set of criminals the USA put in power in Kiev. That's what comes from having a foreign policy based on pure banditry.

ChristopherMyers 24 Mar 2015 22:09

I realize this may be a very bizarre thought, but the situation here in the Ukraine bears a striking resemblance to the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 by the United States.

BorninUkraine -> rogermell1e 24 Mar 2015 21:57

It's not only the media, it is much broader than that. When I left USSR in 1991, most educated people believed BBC, Voice of America, and Western media in general, and had fairly good feelings about the US and Europe.

When I started reading Russian news sites last year (simply because the Western narrative about Ukrainian crisis made no sense to someone who has friends and relatives all over Ukraine), I was appalled by the level of anti-American and anti-EU feelings. Americans are called almost invariably "pindós" [Cyrillic spelling пиндос], which is a pretty derogative term, the US is called "pindostan", and most people think that Western media lie almost as much as Ukrainian media, which are notorious for ludicrous lies (like the story that Russia used nukes in the fight for Lugansk airport).

In the USSR I always knew that Soviet media are spewing propaganda, using half-truths and blatant lies. However, compared to current reporting on Ukraine in the Western media, even Soviet papers look truthful. It is very sad.

pantaraxia 24 Mar 2015 21:45

It will be fascinating to see which way the US goes with Kolomoisky vs. Poroshenko.

On the one hand a lot of time and energy has been expended propping up the Poroshenko gov't. In spite of this he is rapidly losing popularity with the populace and may be seen as expendable. A convenient scapegoat for the failed military operation in eastern Ukraine. However another regime change at this point would threaten the country with absolute chaos and would make external financing arrangements problematic to say the least.

Kolomoisky is hooked into the US state department, via Bursima, the murky gas company where both VP Biden's son and Kerry's stepson(?) are members of its Board. He is also president of European Council of Jewish Communities, which probably translates into backing from powerful Jewish interests in the US and Israel. Kolomoisky and Nuland seem to be kindred spirits both in their advocacy for a military solution as well as their general ziocon tendencies.

Interesting times indeed.


whitemangotnodreamin -> normankirk 24 Mar 2015 21:41

Because they are probably under instructions to support Poroshenko and his side kick no matter what..lest they want their hard drives smashed to smithereens in the carpark as it happened before. They did it with Iraq, Libya, Syria, Torture and Kidnapping, Diego Garcia...all of these glossed over...lately even the "suicide" of 7 party of regions members they reported as 4 and did not open for comments...such is life


frankverismo -> Chirographer 24 Mar 2015 21:39

"I don't think anybody really wants to lend or give the Ukraine any money because of the rampant corruption and "mismanagement" referred to in the article."

I don't think you get how this works. Or you simply don't wish to see the sheer depth of the venality at work. Jaresko has been put there by Washington. The plan is exactly the opposite of granting Ukraine its sovereign independence but rather to put it even further into debt thus putting it completely at the mercy of outside forces. It's already a black hole - and she's asking for the death blow.

"And the Ukraine's problems didn't start with the war or Yanukovich. While he might have been the biggest crook who ruled the country, he has competition for that title from previous leaders too."

Correct.

"Russia's aggression and policy of destabilisation is a huge aggravating factor at present"

Kindly tell us all about this 'aggression'. Be specific. You are, I assume, aware that Russia has had its Black Sea Fleet stationed in Crimea since the 18th century? What was Russia going to do when a US-backed coup happened on her doorstep? Hand her naval base over to NATO and let Kiev do to Crimea what they've been doing in Donbass? Really? Be honest. What would you have done?

"Ukraine's failing economy is another anchor, with low oil prices and western sanctions, tied to the feet of a sinking Russia."

Were the Russian economy remotely similar to the US' this might be so. But it isn't. It has a low debt-to-GDP ratio, an expanding manufacturing base and countries other than Europe and the US perfectly willing to trade with it (and not in US$). The sanctions are certainly an annoyance as is the low oil price but long-term this will only serve to further divorce Russia from the West's sick fiat system - a very healthy thing.

rogermell1e Systematic 24 Mar 2015 21:34

"I wonder how long can The Guardian & Co."

I guess at some point last year they made the strategic decision that any credibility amongst those who are well informed could be sacrificed. Very few Westerners (especially in the Anglosohere) will make the effort to find alternative sources, and the rest can easily be gulled.

This is really a victory for Russia, because at one time a substantial part of the intelligentsia had some trust in the western MSM. This has now almost completely evaporated.

TOR2000 24 Mar 2015 21:33

Kiev continues to violate the ceasefire (OSCE):

Between 09:40 and 10:40hrs, whilst at an observation point in the eastern outskirts of Sopyne (government-controlled, 15km east of Mariupol, 2.5km west of Shyrokyne) the SMM heard heavy engagement of small arms, machine guns, automatic grenade launchers and mortars, including 70 outgoing 82mm and 120mm mortar shells. The SMM assessed that the fire originated from one kilometre to the east and was directed further east of the SMM's position. An additional ten 82mm mortar shells hit 400m east of the SMM's position, some of which detonated in the air indicating that they were fitted with distance or time delay fuses. Due to the security situation, the SMM relocated to another observation point 4km north-west of Shyrokyne ("DPR"-controlled, 20km east of Mariupol, 102km south of Donetsk). Between 11:33 and 12:06hrs the SMM observed three incoming 82mm mortar shells exploding above Ukrainian Armed Forces positions north of Berdyanske (government-controlled, 18km east of Mariupol). It also heard small arms and light weapons fire as well as ten mortar detonations but was not able to ascertain the direction and calibre.
The SMM unarmed/unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) monitored both sides of the contact line east of Mariupol. At 17:38hrs, in Shyrokyne the SMM UAV observed outgoing mortar fire from a Ukrainian Armed Forces position.

The SMM revisited four Ukrainian Armed Forces heavy weapons holding areas, all of which comply with the respective withdrawal lines and remain in situ. All serial numbers are consistent with previous visits. Additionally, the SMM intended to monitor two additional holding areas, but these sites no longer contained any heavy weapons.

BorninUkraine -> rogermell1e 24 Mar 2015 21:33

Yes, the competition between two mega-thieves, Kolomoisky and Poroshenko, intensified in the last few days. Considering that the head of SBU (Ukrainian KGB) Nalivaichenko, who is CIA agent and US citizen, took the side of Poroshenko, the US plans to play against Kolomoisky. This does not guarantee Poroshenko win, though: this is about a lot of money to be made on oil, gas, etc, and then on grain that will be paid by farmers in return for credits for gas, diesel, and lubricants they need for planting.

It is well known (not in the West, I am sure, where people are fed ridiculous lies) that for this amount of money Kolomoisky would kill his own mother, let alone Poroshenko or even US ambassador.

So buying some popcorn is a good idea.

whitemangotnodreamin -> Jerome Fryer 24 Mar 2015 21:21

No prospect to repay 'loans' makes those loans unlikely.

Precisely, what Jaresko is essentially saying is give us the money but don't ask for it back... Nick is a confused soul...or a purposely confused one.


whitemangotnodreamin 24 Mar 2015 20:41

I actually watched one of her interviews on Bloomberg, full of softballs, she seldom if ever answered a question, in particular what would happen if Russia demands payment at the end of the year, and the fact that they are asking creditors to take a rather large haircut. The softest thing about this woman are her teeth, but as we will see being hard does not translate to being tough, hit a brick in the right place and it breaks.

So let's see who is Natalie Jaresko:

" A Chicago-born investment banker who received her Ukrainian citizenship in December 2014, she. is Ukraine's finance minister and in total control of Ukrainian financial policy. In the late '80s and early '90s, she just so happened to hold several positions at the US State Department before taking the position of Chief of the Economic Section of the US Embassy in Ukraine. She also managed the USAID-financed Western NIS Enterprise Fund, which kindly provided funds for 'pro-democracy' movements in Belarus, Moldova and, predictably, Ukraine. "

Ms.Jaresko, is involved in court proceedings, again. This time for breaching US passport laws. She was previously a US State Dept. employee and was granted Ukrainian citizenship so she could take the job.

She has previously been in court over the misappropriation of US funding through her previous company Horizon Capital. This company just happened to be a partner of Yatsenyuk's pre maidan campaign. The other party in the case is her husband who she has been attempting to silence by court order. She has also so far managed to silence her former husband spilling the beans of some significant loan improprieties.

But, hey what would one expect of a President who, was secretly palling up to the US's embassy in Kyiv when he was a minister for 3 different administrations in Ukraine, a man whose latest Human resource success was the employment of "Help me or I'll eat my red tie" Saakashvili a man wanted in Georgia who was being kept quietly in the US until now.

bobby_fisher 24 Mar 2015 20:33

US citizen, financial shaister and former State Department employee Natalie Jaresko is well positioned as Finance minister of Ukraine to oversee implementation of the H.R. 5859, the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, that among other things gives control to Washington over Ukrainian Energy policies, provides protections to American oil, gas, biotech, financial corporate interests over legitimate interests of Ukrainian people.

This seals the fate of Ukraine as US colony, instead of an independent state.

Chirographer 24 Mar 2015 20:32

I don't think anybody really wants to lend or give the Ukraine any money because of the rampant corruption and "mismanagement" referred to in the article.

And the Ukraine's problems didn't start with the war or Yanukovich. While he might have been the biggest crook who ruled the country, he has competition for that title from previous leaders too.

Russia's aggression and policy of destabilisation is a huge aggravating factor at present, but there will have to be real and substantial changes in the way Ukrainians conduct their businesses and government before they're going to get the kind money the finance minister is asking for.

It does seem fitting though, that given the economic ties between the two countries, Ukraine's failing economy is another anchor, with low oil prices and western sanctions, tied to the feet of a sinking Russia.


HollyOldDog DerFremde 24 Mar 2015 20:23

The Russian Steppes? The Ukrainian fracking has not shown commercial quantities of gas/oil. To try the same techniques in East Ukraine would mean closing down the existing coal mines first and even then there is a serious risk of contaminating the fresh water both underground and surface waters. All this with only minor prospects of finding commercial quantities of Fracked oil/gas.

If the existing cialthey mines in East Ukraine were closed down then where would West Ukraine get its coal of a suitable quality to be used in its coal fired power stations?

HollyOldDog Manolo Torres 24 Mar 2015 20:11

And not forgetting the looting of the Iraq museums by any sneak theif who walked through the unguarded doors . Only the Oil Ministry was important to the Americans.


pantaraxia HollyOldDog 24 Mar 2015 20:09

The Japanese had been attempting to surrender months before Hiroshima. The back channels went through the USSR with no constructive response from the American side.

According to a number of analysts there was another reason for dropping the nuclear bombs - to showcase to the USSR and the world the raw power available to the US military. A scare tactic.

Manolo Torres -> DIPSET 24 Mar 2015 19:30

That seems indeed a very good book, but one may end up extremely disgusted after reading it. From the review, to give our friends an idea of what Mrs Jaresko might be up to now and why her urgent plead:

An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad's Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq. The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us with him into the Zone; into a bubble, cut off from wartime realities, where the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competed with the distractions of a Little America-a half-dozen bars stocked with cold beer, a disco where women showed up in hot pants, a movie theater that screened shoot-'em-up films, an all-you-could-eat buffet piled high with pork, a shopping mall that sold pornographic movies, a parking lot filled with shiny new SUVs, and a snappy dry-cleaning service- much of it run by Halliburton

In the vacuum of postwar planning, Bremer ignores what Iraqis tell him they want or need and instead pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutions-a flat tax, a sell-off of Iraqi government assets, and an end to food rationing. His underlings spend their days drawing up pie-in-the-sky policies, among them a new traffic code and a law protecting microchip designs, instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity production.

Mordantdude 24 Mar 2015 19:14

Everybody in the free world should be doing more to help Ukraine. This is a country that has given its life for democracy and is protecting Europe from an aggressive neighbour," she said.

Meanwhile with the little help from "the free world" Ukraine downgraded further into junk by Moody's. Do you need more?

pantaraxia 24 Mar 2015 19:14

The whole IMF program is a con job, transferring debt onto the Ukrainian government and its taxpayers (with the inevitable austerity and privatization programs to follow), while leaving the back door wide open to systemic abuse by well-connected oligarchs.

As for where the IMF money which has been paid into the Ukrainian banks has gone, the report discloses … the banking system faced large foreign currency outflows (US$3.1 billion). Capital controls likely prevented larger outflows, but were not fully effective in stemming them."

In short, of the $3.2 billion disbursed to the Ukrainian treasury by the IMF at the start of May, $3.1 billion had disappeared offshore by the middle of August.

The looting continues.

HollyOldDog -> nickpossum 24 Mar 2015 19:08

There is a history of the other side of the coin with the actions of the USA. When Japan was on the point of defeat and negociations for Japan's surrender to the USA and its allies were occuring , the USA decided to drop nuclear bombs on Japan. A senior military spokesman from that period gave the reasons why.

1. To force Japan to surrender more quickley and solely under the terms Givern solely by the USA.

2. If it saved only ONE DAY of negociations then dropping nuclear bombs on Jalan would be worth it.

Millions of Japanese citizens died either through the the blasts themselves or by radiation sickness just for the Americans to save ONE DAY of negociations.


pantaraxia 24 Mar 2015 18:36

For the sordid backstory on the IMF loan to Ukraine:

THE IMF IS POSTUREPEDIC, SO IGOR KOLOMOISKY CAN SLEEP WELL AT NIGHT
http://johnhelmer.net/?p=12944#more-12944

some excerpts:

The new loan terms announced by the IMF last week, postpone reform by the commercial banks until well into 2016. In the meantime, the IMF says it will allow about $4 billion of its loan cash to be diverted to the treasuries of the oligarch-owned banks. That is almost one dollar in four of the IMF loan to Ukraine.

The biggest beneficiary of last year's IMF financing is likely to repeat its good fortune, according to sources close to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). This is PrivatBank, controlled by Igor Kolomoisky , governor of Dniepropetrovsk region and financier of several units fighting on Kiev's side in the civil war.

snip

…Kolomoisky has been assured by the IMF that he is one of the few Ukrainian taxpayers to be safe from an increase in income tax.

snip

The justification for the PrivatBank payout, …
For collateral, Gontareva (NBU Governor) has accepted a shareholding in the bank, plus an undisclosed number of airplanes owned by Kolomoisky, or by airlines associated with the Privat group. …. They are all bankrupt, and so the asset value is uncertain and the subject of creditor claims pending in several countries

and the punch line:

…." A Geneva banker with an office close to Kolomoisky's residence in the city comments: "Not even the Swiss have thought of war financing like this – funding civil war, then taking international loans for compensation, then banking the profit margin in Geneva."


DIPSET Manolo Torres 24 Mar 2015 18:17

Be fair, most of that money to rebuild Iraq was stolen by the same homicidal maniacs that destroyed the country in the first place.

True that.

You won't find a better tome than this book on the whole debacle and financial corruption the Yanks got into in Iraq.....

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Imperial_Life_in_the_Emerald_City.html?id=Tz2LT0gL_pYC&redir_esc=y

Some juicy bits........

Because of bureaucratic delays, only 2 percent of the $18.4 billion Supplemental had been spent. Nothing had been expended on construction, health care, sanitation, or the provision of clean water, and more money had been devoted to administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy, and governance combined. At the same time, the CPA had managed to dole out almost all of a $20 billion development fund fed by Iraq's oil sales, more than $1.6 billion of which had been used to pay Halliburton, primarily for trucking fuel into Iraq.

Or this......

The first guy who was assigned to help rebuild Iraq's health sector was named Skip Burkle. And Skip is physician. He has a Master's degree in public health. He has four postgraduate degrees. He teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He had worked in Kosovo, in Somalia and in Northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. He also was employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and a USAID colleague called him the single most talented post-conflict public health specialist in the U.S. government. But a few weeks after the fall of Saddam's government, Mr. Burkle was informed by an email from a superior at USAID that he was being replaced. He was told that the White House wanted, quote/unquote, "a loyalist" in the job. And I write in the book that Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the President.

In his place was sent Jim Haveman. Jim Haveman does not have a medical degree. He was a social worker, and he was the former Director of Community Health in the State of Michigan. Prior to his stint in government, he had a little bit of international experience, but it was largely in the context of being a director for International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that promotes Christianity in the developing world in conjunction with development assistance. And prior to that, he headed up a large adoption agency in the State of Michigan that urges pregnant women not to have abortions.

Well, Haveman showed up, and his view was that, look, Iraq didn't need a huge infusion of money to rebuild its hospitals, even though I and other people who have been to Iraqi hospitals have seen them to be thoroughly decrepit and really, you know, in need of an overhaul, and particularly with the violence that's wracking that country today and the number of injured from insurgent attacks. You would think that really putting resources toward rebuilding emergency rooms would be a top priority.

Instead, Haveman devoted resources to other projects.

And now they have moved onto Ukraine.

Good luck is all i can say......

Bosula -> Mike_UK 24 Mar 2015 17:56

Ukraine is a country not a business. The interests of countries are very different from fund mangers, hedge funds, etc.

Very unusual to bring in a foreigner to a country to run a finance ministry when there are serious legal allegationS about propriety hanging over her head.

Could you imagine bringing in a Sate Department official to run the finances of the UK?

Ukraine has a lot of smart people...

Another Nuland buddy meddling in Ukrainian affairs.


DIPSET BunglyPete 24 Mar 2015 17:53

now emblazined with Bransons face in giant ads as testament to the corporate takeover

Ah yes, the faustian pact and it's tentacles are eating Ukraine up (and soon to spit out an empty husk) right in front of our eyes.

Remember that American company that brought up all that pure and rich soil and agricultural land in Ukraine ?

Look what's been happening back at the ranch in Yankee Land......

After paying an original sum of $2.4 million to reimburse farmers for contaminating their fields with genetically modified wheat that had not even yet been approved for farming, Monsanto has been forced to pay another $350,000 in order to settle a class action lawsuit brought upon by numerous farmers from over seven different states.

The news comes amid economic struggles for the biotech juggernaut that have resulted in the loss of share value and poor projections for the long term future. In last year's fourth quarter, Monsanto reported a loss of $156 million. And for the multi-billion dollar company, it's not about the monetary figure, but the future of its genetically modified creations that the public just simply isn't buying.

In the latest legal settlement, we find that Monsanto's new method of simply paying off farmers just isn't going to cut it when it comes to international trade. Following the news that GMO wheat had contaminated nearby wheat supplies, Japan and South Korea suspended a number of wheat orders from the United States - a blow towards the national economy in full thanks to Monsanto.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/monsanto-hit-with-fine-for-genetically-contaminating-wheat-supply/5438551

And these are the "friends" Ukraine have placed their trust in since this whole think kicked off last year.

Who needs enemies, eh ?

Fascinating times...

frankverismo -> nnedjo 24 Mar 2015 17:36

"Why has the United States spent so much money and time so disastrously trying to rebuild occupied nations abroad, while allowing its own infrastructure to crumble untended? Why do we even think of that as "policy"?

The Wolfowitz Doctrine is a giant boot sworn to crush national self-determination wheresoever on the globe it may be found. If ordinary Americans have to pay the bill, so be it.

It's not much of a policy - but it's what happens when Washington is taken over by those the White House used to rightly refer to as 'The Crazies'.

BunglyPete DIPSET 24 Mar 2015 17:30

9

10

It gets better! Pinchuk made donations to the Clinton fund before Maidan, and not only this he was the top contributor.

Back in September 2013 they all met with Blair, Branson, IMF and more to hash it all out in Yalta at a Pinchuk bash.

Check vesti-ukr.com a Ukraine news site now emblazined with Bransons face in giant ads as testament to the coporate takeover. Fantastic stuff.

Reply | Pick

Report


nnedjo -> nnedjo 24 Mar 2015 17:27

Here's another interesting article on the same topic:
How Not to Reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan -- or America
Peter Van Buren

Some images remain like scars on my memory. One of the last things I saw in Iraq, where I spent a year with the Department of State helping squander some of the $44 billion American taxpayers put up to "reconstruct" that country, were horses living semi-wild among the muck and garbage of Baghdad. ...

I flew home that same day, a too-rapid change of worlds, to a country in which the schools of my hometown in Ohio could not afford to pay teachers a decent wage. Once great cities were rotting away as certainly as if they were in Iraq, where those horses were scrabbling to get by.

To this day I'm left pondering these questions: Why has the United States spent so much money and time so disastrously trying to rebuild occupied nations abroad, while allowing its own infrastructure to crumble untended? Why do we even think of that as "policy"?

Canigou 24 Mar 2015 17:24

I like the picture at the top of the article-----it shows burning tires, tired and hungry-looking men sitting on makeshift seats and shivering, trash strewn about, some motley men in the background standing about doing nothing, some sinister-looking smoke rising as a backdrop. A bleak, hellish, desperate, post-apocalyptic landscape.

It seems to be from the Maidan riots of last year, but makes a fitting image for an article about the Ukraine economy of 2015.

EugeneGur 24 Mar 2015 17:23

Well, people of Europe, it's time to open up your wallets to pay for the handiwork of your leaders. Ukraine is indeed a large country on the verge of economical collapse marred in a civil war. The present "government" did everything in its power to ruin the economy succeeding quite well. They alienated and then destroyed Donbass responsible for a good part of the country's economic output. They disrupted economic ties with Russia, the main trading partner, so most enterprises have closed or are closing throwing workers out on the streets.

Give these people more money - and they'll spend some on the war they'll lose, and steal the rest. It is hard to tell whether they are more inept or corrupt - I guess they are just well-rounded individuals combining the highest degree of greed and corruption with utter stupidity/ineptitude and total disregard for their country's interests. One example: Ukraine is short on coal, but the miners in Volyne region, the only coal deposit outside of Donbass, haven't been paid for months and are now on strike. Is that what they mean by "structural reforms", not paying salaries any more?


HollyOldDog -> UncleSam404 24 Mar 2015 17:23

Interesting, so you agree with the Ukrainian Oligarts having a right to plunder the assets of Ukraine - Let the People eat cake. Perhaps this attitude that the West has to Ukraine will bolster the undercurrent of discontent within West Ukraine citizens to boot out its current government and Western Freeloaders.

A French style revolution baring the gillotine is in the cards.


nnedjo 24 Mar 2015 17:19

Jaresko said the IMF loan was enough to stabilise the economy but not sufficient to "reorganise and renew" it.

The intention to "reorganise and renew" Ukraine's economy is very generous indeed. However, before accepting this job, Ms. Jaresko should draw some lessons from previous unsuccessful attempts of the kind:

The U.S. has spent more reconstructing Iraq and Afghanistan than it did rebuilding Germany after World War II. And it's not done yet.

Released: January 18, 2013

The United States has invested more reconstructing Iraq and Afghanistan than it did rebuilding Germany after World War II. $60.45 billion has been spent in Iraq, more than $100 billion in Afghanistan. For comparison, the U.S. spent less than $35 billion in today's dollars in Germany from 1946 through 1952...
These are reconstruction costs only; the total cost to the U.S. of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts exceeds $1.4 trillion.


babalua Mike_UK 24 Mar 2015 17:18

Ukraine is not to be compared to anything, let alone to a company. Parasite living off Russia, EU and everyone else. Should not really be a state. With crooks in power? Not only crooks, but literally scum?! You call it a country and compare it to whatever? Oh, god, wake up. You know , the funnu thing is that this black hole of Europe even wants to compete with Russia. Who are these people from U? Are they taking LSD?


DIPSET BunglyPete 24 Mar 2015 17:17

She also recently spoke at the Brookings insitute of which Nulands husband is a key member. Theyre all in it together in one big circle of dodgy deals and kickbacks.

:-)

As always, you are spot on Sir.

I'm sure you have read this but sharing is caring as they say lol..........

Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and – from op-ed pages – he demands Congress buy more weapons.

......a new Cold War took shape. Prominent neocons, including Nuland's husband Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century which masterminded the Iraq War, hammered home the domestic theme that Obama had shown himself to be "weak," thus inviting Putin's "aggression."

In May 2014, Kagan published a lengthy essay in The New Republic entitled "Superpowers Don't Get to Retire," in which Kagan castigated Obama for failing to sustain American dominance in the world and demanding a more muscular U.S. posture toward adversaries.

According to a New York Times article about how the essay took shape and its aftermath, writer Jason Horowitz reported that Kagan and Nuland shared a common world view as well as professional ambitions, with Nuland editing Kagan's articles, including the one tearing down her ostensible boss.

Though Nuland wouldn't comment specifically on her husband's attack on Obama, she indicated that she held similar views. "But suffice to say," Nuland said, "that nothing goes out of the house that I don't think is worthy of his talents. Let's put it that way."

Horowitz reported that Obama was so concerned about Kagan's assault that the President revised his commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of the criticism and invited Kagan to lunch at the White House, where one source told me that it was like "a meeting of equals."

I found this bit even more fascinating......

And, whenever peace threatens to break out in Ukraine, Nuland jumps in to make sure that the interests of war are protected. Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande hammered out a plan for a cease-fire and a political settlement, known as Minsk-2, prompting Nuland to engage in more behind-the-scenes maneuvering to sabotage the deal.

In another overheard conversation - in Munich, Germany - Nuland mocked the peace agreement as "Merkel's Moscow thing," according to the German newspaper Bild, citing unnamed sources, likely from the German government which may have bugged the conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel and then leaked the details.

Picking up on Nuland's contempt for Merkel, another U.S. official called the Minsk-2 deal the Europeans' "Moscow bullshit."

Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the practical impact of the Ukraine war on Europe: "They're afraid of damage to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia." According to the Bild story, Nuland also laid out a strategy for countering Merkel's diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis.

"We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them," Nuland reportedly said

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/

Yikes!!!

Europe has got itself entangled in some bullshit it is going to regret for a looooong time.

Hope them cookies tasted good and were worth it.

BunglyPete 24 Mar 2015 16:57

Jaresko is quite possibly the most poorly judged person to be in her position, nevermind make these claims.

She is not only a US citizen ex State Dept employee who was granted Ukrainian citizenship just to take the job, she is involved in other affairs that seriously question her credibility.

Firstly she is involved in a lawsuit filed by her ex husband who claims she missappropriated USAID funds through her Ukrainian company Horizon Capital. She had a court injuction taken out to prevent her husband discussing the case.

Furthermore, Horizon Capital funded Yatsenyuk's Open Ukraine campaign in the years before he came to power.

The whole idea of the new government was to get rid of corruption and outside influence and move to a new honest and accountable system.

Now we have a foreigner trying their hardest to push more IMF debt which benefits very few people other than those friendly to Jaresko; which would be, western financial and corporate interests, the main IMF stakeholders and the Yatsenyuk government.

Ukrainian citizens lose pensions and fight over food in supermarkets as Jaresko is chaffeuered around in the most expensive car her ministry has ever bought.

She also recently spoke at the Brookings insitute of which Nulands husband is a key member. Theyre all in it together in one big circle of dodgy deals and kickbacks.

nnedjo -> Mike_UK 24 Mar 2015 16:56

What the hell was the problem before the Russians invaded that justified armed take over of police stations and tanks being sent into Ukraine.

The government which the Ukrainian people voted in the previous election was violently overthrown in Kiev, by the people for which the people from the Donbas not only never voted, but in many cases not even know them.

So, it's very simple. People from Donbas took care to protect their police stations and other government buildings that foreign visitors would not have entered into them.

frankverismo 24 Mar 2015 16:56

"Everybody in the free world should be doing more to help Ukraine. This is a country that has given its life for democracy and is protecting Europe from an aggressive neighbour," she said.

Was a more incorrect statement ever made? The 'democracy' of which she speaks was, sadly, Victoria Nuland's idea of democracy: "the democracy Ukraine deserves".

Does Ukraine really 'deserve' to be torn apart by warring oligarchs while being used by Washington as a proxy war theatre to bait Russia into a wider conflict? Should the Ukranian people have seen this coming? Probably. Did they ever have much choice in the matter? Little, if any. A bloody tragedy.


brianboru1014 psygone 24 Mar 2015 16:44

Russian economy going down the tubes?
I very much doubt it. They have what the West needs, and lots of it

The article is about this Ukrainian Foreign Minister, a woman with a begging bowl and really zero to offer the West except a monstrous headache. Too bad Bush's neocon Victoria Nuland (who should have been dismissed by Obama, but wasn't) but was able to poison everything in this particular part of the world with her now famous obscene comment referring to the European Union.[11] After discussing Ukrainian opposition figures Nuland stated that she preferred the United Nations as mediator, instead of the European Union, adding "Fuck the EU,".
So as a result, the EU will give her zero.

nnedjo 24 Mar 2015 16:34

"Everybody in the free world should be doing more to help Ukraine. This is a country that has given its life for democracy and is protecting Europe from an aggressive neighbour," she [Mrs Jaresko] said.

So, practically until yesterday, in its economic existence Ukraine relied on its "aggressive neighbor." This is what Russian PM Medvedev wrote about it in his article, at the end of last year:

How Russia supported the Ukrainian economy

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of this (including the gas transport system) went to Ukraine. In addition, Russia took on the entire Soviet debt. Ukraine entered a new era in its history, free of any burden. That is why in 1991 its initial conditions for economic growth were among the best in the post-Soviet space. And that's precisely why the economy of independent Ukraine managed to remain afloat. Until recently, Ukraine was using its past achievements to survive. It continued to rely on cooperation with Russia. And it used our resources.

Does Mrs. Jaresko thought to this when she said that "Ukraine protects Europe from its aggressive eastern neighbor." Okay, no problem. Aggressive eastern neighbor no longer needs to pumped gas and money to Ukraine with its invasive methods. As of this moment its "less aggressive" Western friends can take on this responsibility. In particular, the country of origin of Mrs. Jaresko, United States, could take care of it. It is also a very big country, and besides, they constantly boast to their economic superiority over Russia.
Well then, if you wanted, here you go, be our guest!

SHappens -> Mike_UK 24 Mar 2015 16:26

It's the same with ISIS supporters and ISIS terrorists, they need each other for their terrorist activities to spread

Indeed, what we do not hear about is that while we fight the Islamic State, alias ISIS, in Iraq and Syria, Washington and the Caliphate are fighting on the same side in Ukraine.

Nobody is paying attention to the role played by the Dudayev Battalion, a fighting force of Islamic radicals consisting of Chechens, but also including fighters from the Caucasus and some Ukrainians.

geedeesee -> Mike_UK 24 Mar 2015 16:24

"What the hell was the problem before the Russians invaded..."

If the Russians had invaded it would be a war, whether declarations had been made or not. The Ukraine-Russian War. But there is no war between the two states. Kiev instead calls it an "anti-terror operation". Objective observers like me would call it a civil war.

Steve Ennever 24 Mar 2015 15:48

That's American, Natalie - I'm Ukrainian now - Jaresko, right? Strange, even David Cameron had some thoughts on this subject...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEwREymsSNU

It appears supporting the overthrow of one democratically elected president because you didn't like him & he was corrupt, apparently doesn't remove the corruption.
But other things should be raising the eyebrows of lenders right now, & Jaresko.

Power grabs are in play. The Oligarch, Kolomoysky, worth an estimated $6 billion, is currently causing problems for Poroshenko & his fragile presidency.
http://redpilltimes.com/kolomoysky-calls-for-federalisation-of-ukraine-ukrnafta-building-in-kiev-seized-by-dnepr-1-battalion-us-ambassador-pyatt-warns-kolomoysky/


normankirk 24 Mar 2015 15:34

This is a country that has given its life to democracy......

The major loss of life has been in the Donbass, where its civilians have been killed in the tens of thousands.They are the ones who can be said to have given their lives to democracy.

Once again "democracy" has been the trojan horse for corporate interests and the Wolfowitz doctrine.

I hope that one day Ukraine does achieve a true democracy,but it wont be through the efforts of the criminal Nuland-Pyatt crowd.

DIPSET 24 Mar 2015 15:24

C'mon Larry, it ain't a plea for "help".

It's pure, unprincipled, without a sliver of self pride and shame begging.

Beg for gas
Beg for coal
Beg for weapons
Beg for money
Beg for EU membership
Beg for money again
Beg for cookies
Beg for a football tournament to be cancelled
Beg for men to be sent to die in the East

After they stupidly get the real war and invasion they have been moaning for, watch them *beg for mercy.

*Shout out to G-Unit for those that know ;-)

Watch them in the next couple of weeks beg Russia to not call in that 5 Billion loan repayment that is due.

2015 is going to be one helluva year.....

brianboru1014 24 Mar 2015 14:58

Ukraine is protecting Europe from an aggressive neighbor she said with a straight face.
She says the country had 70 years of Communism, which it had, and 23 years of incomplete reforms.

She should have said 23 years of thievery because the people of Ukraine didn't see too much benefit. Twenty three years of neo liberalism. That's a very hard sell.

[Mar 24, 2015] Are NGOs Agents of Subversion by Patrick J. Buchanan

March 24, 2015 | Antiwar.com

Though "Bibi" Netanyahu won re-election last week, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will still look into whether the State Department financed a clandestine effort to defeat him.

Reportedly, State funneled $350,000 to an American NGO called OneVoice, which has an Israeli subsidiary, Victory 15, that collaborated with U.S. operatives to bring Bibi down.

If we are now secretly pumping cash into the free elections of friendly countries, to dump leaders President Obama dislikes, Americans have a right to know why we are using Cold War tactics against democracies.

After World War II, my late colleague on CNN's "Crossfire," Tom Braden, delivered CIA cash to democratic parties in Europe imperiled by communist parties financed from Moscow.

But that was done to combat Stalinism when Western survival was at stake in a Cold War that ended in 1991.

Hopefully, after looking into OneVoice and V15, the Senate will expand its investigation into a larger question: Is the U.S. using NGOs to subvert regimes around the world? And, if so, who decides which regimes may be subverted?

What gives these questions urgency is the current crisis that has Moscow moving missiles toward Europe and sending submarines and bombers to probe NATO defenses.

America contends that Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea and backing for pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine is the cause of the gathering storm in Russian-NATO relations.

Yet Putin's actions in Ukraine were not taken until the overthrow of a democratically elected pro-Russian regime in Kiev, in a coup d'etat in which, Moscow contends, an American hand was clearly visible.

Not only was John McCain in Kiev's Maidan Square egging on the crowds that drove the regime from power, so, too, was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

In an intercepted phone call with our ambassador in Kiev, Nuland identified the man we preferred when President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted. "Yats," she called him. And when Yanukovych fled after the Maidan massacre, sure enough, Arseniy Yatsenyuk was in power.

Nuland also revealed that the U.S. had spent $5 billion since 1991 to bring about the reorientation of Ukraine toward the West.

Now, bringing Ukraine into the EU and NATO may appear to Nuland & Co. a great leap forward for freedom and progress.

But to Russia it looks like the subversion of a Slavic nation with which she has had intimate ties for centuries, to bring Ukraine into an economic union and military alliance directed against Moscow.

And if NATO stumbles into a military clash with Russia, the roots of that conflict will be traceable to the coup in Kiev that Russians believe was the dirty work of the Americans.

If the U.S. had a role in that coup, the American people should know it and the Senate should find out whether Nuland & Co. used NGOs to reignite a Cold War that Ronald Reagan brought to an end.

And if we are now using NGOs as fronts for secret operations to dump over regimes, we are putting all NGOs abroad under suspicion and at risk.

Not in our lifetimes has America been more distrusted and disliked. And among the reasons is that we are seen as constantly carping at governments that do not measure up to our standards of democracy, and endlessly interfering in the internal affairs of nations that do not threaten us.

In this new era, U.S. foreign policy elites have boasted of the "color-coded" revolutions they helped to foment in Belgrade, Kiev, Tbilisi. In 2003, we helped to overthrow the Georgian regime of Eduard Shevardnadze in a "Rose Revolution" that brought to power Mikheil Saakashvili. And Saakashvili nearly dragged us into a confrontation with Russia in 2008, when he invaded South Ossetia and killed Russian peacekeepers.

What vital interest of ours was there in that little nation in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin, to justify so great a risk?

Nor is it Moscow alone that is angered over U.S. interference in its internal affairs and those of its neighbor nations.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt has expelled members of U.S. NGOs. Beijing believes U.S. NGOs were behind the Occupy-Wall-Street-style street blockages in Hong Kong.

If true, these U.S. actions raise a fundamental question:

What is the preeminent goal of U.S. foreign policy?

Is it to protect the vital interests and national security of the Republic? Or do we believe with George W. Bush that, "The survival of liberty" in America "depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

If it is the latter, then our mission is utopian – and unending.

For if we believe our liberty is insecure until the whole world is democratic, then we cannot rest until we witness the overthrow of the existing regimes in Russia, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Belarus, most of the Arab and African nations, as well as Venezuela and Cuba.

And if that is our goal, our Republic will die trying to achieve it.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

[Mar 24, 2015] Russia Under Attack by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Mar 24, 2015 | CounterPunch

The Return of Dr. Strangelove

While Washington works assiduously to undermine the Minsk agreement that German chancellor Merkel and French president Hollande achieved in order to halt the military conflict in Ukraine, Washington has sent Victoria Nuland to Armenia to organize a "color revolution" or coup there, has sent Richard Miles as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan to do the same there, and has sent Pamela Spratlen as ambassador to Uzbekistan to purchase that government's allegiance away from Russia. The result would be to break up the Collective Security Treaty Organization and present Russia and China with destabilization where they can least afford it. For details go here.

Thus, Russia faces the renewal of conflict in Ukraine simultaneously with three more Ukraine-type situations along its Asian border.

And this is only the beginning of the pressure that Washington is mounting on Russia.

On March 18 the Secretary General of NATO denounced the peace settlement between Russia and Georgia that ended Georgia's military assault on South Ossetia. The NATO Secretary General said that NATO rejects the settlement because it "hampers ongoing efforts by the international community to strengthen security and stability in the region."

Look closely at this statement. It defines the "international community" as Washington's NATO puppet states, and it defines strengthening security and stability as removing buffers between Russia and Georgia so that Washington can position military bases in Georgia directly on Russia's border.

In Poland and the Baltic states Washington and NATO lies about a pending Russian invasion are being used to justify provocative war games on Russia's borders and to build up US forces in NATO military bases on Russia's borders.

We have crazed US generals on national television calling for "killing Russians."

The EU leadership has agreed to launch a propaganda war against Russia, broadcasting Washington's lies inside Russia in an effort to undermine the Russian people's support of their government.

All of this is being done in order to coerce Russia into handing over Crimea and its Black Sea naval base to Washington and accepting vassalage under Washington's suzerainty.

If Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad, and the Taliban would not fold to Washington's threats, why do the fools in Washington think Putin, who holds in his hands the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, will fold?

European governments, apparently, are incapable of any thought. Washington has set London and the capitals of every European country, as well as every American city, for destruction by Russian nuclear weapons. The stupid Europeans rush to destroy themselves in service to their Washington master.

Human intelligence has gone missing if after 14 years of US military aggression against eight countries the world does not understand that Washington is lost in arrogance and hubris and imagines itself the ruler of the universe who will tolerate no dissent from its will.

We know that the American, British, and European media are whores well paid to lie for their master. We know that the NATO commander and secretary general, if not the member countries, are lusting for war. We know that the American Dr. Strangeloves in the Pentagon and armaments industry cannot wait to test their ABMs and new weapons systems in which they always place excessive confidence. We know that the prime minister of Britain is a total cipher. But are the chancellor of Germany and the president of France ready for the destruction of their countries and of Europe? If the EU is of such value, why is the very existence of its populations put at risk in order to bow down and accept leadership from an insane Washington whose megalomania will destroy life on earth?

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts' How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.

[Mar 24, 2015] The MSM ignore and blatantly lie about the nature of the regime the West is backing

Mar 22, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.6com

Tim Owen, March 22, 2015 at 9:35 am

This strikes me as very good big picture analysis:

"So there are two ways by which the current stand-off will play out.

  • The first one, and arguably the less likely one, is that Russia backs down and ultimately, under continued economic pressure, agrees to privatize its national monopolies or even sell them directly to Western firms, and thus become a sort of Saudi Arabia of the North.
  • The second one is that Russia fends off this latest Western encroachment, forcing the West to re-examine the structure of its post-Cold War political economy. With economic expansion no longer on the table, the West will have a choice of rediscovering the benefits of redistributive policies, or embark on exclusionary policies that would have to be backed by a police state."

http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/03/the-end-of-history-third-way-and.html

cartman, March 22, 2015 at 10:17 am

If the MSM will ignore and blatantly lie about the nature of the regime the West is backing, then Western governments will take what they have learned from the junta and apply them to their own societies.

Fern, March 23, 2015 at 6:23 am

Tim, thanks for posting the 'fortruss' article by J Hawk – a very good analysis. FWIW, my own thoughts are that it is absolutely essential for the EU and the West generally that Crimea does not prosper. i would go so far as to say that, to a large extent, the future of the neo-liberal economic order depends on Crimea becoming an economic disaster zone. For what has happened as a result of its reunification with Russia, almost an accidental bi-product, you might say, is that the world and its wife has the opportunity to watch two different development models in action, literally side by side. In Ukraine, there's the IMF 'austerity' model – privatisation, asset stripping, foreign ownership of key parts of the economy, cutting back the role of the state to the bare minimum, poverty for much of the population etc. In Crimea's there's a different model, one that sees a role for the state as well as private enterprise – much like the mixed economies of the west in the 1970's before the neo-liberals grabbed control – and where's there's genuine job-creating, value-adding investment in infrastructure planned and already happening.

If Crimea delivers a much higher standard of living for its people than is achieved in Ukraine, then what price neo-liberalism, what lessons might Greece, Spain, Portugal etc learn? Crimea cannot be allowed to succeed, the threat of a good example is too dangerous.

marknesop, March 23, 2015 at 7:49 am

An excellent point, Fern, and that might make a good subject for a post in the not-too-distant future.

Oddlots, March 23, 2015 at 9:10 am

I think you are dead right. The stakes could barely be higher.

It's funny, Russian politics kind of reminds me of Canada in the 70s under Trudeau. Before the southern strategy and the radical "government is the problem, not the solution" ideology of Reagan, Thatcher etc. it was still possible in the west to voice a common purpose that roughly mapped onto government initiative. After 30 years of this pro-oligarchy drivel we can barely conceive of a common purpose. The parasite has taken over the host's mind.

et Al, March 23, 2015 at 9:45 am

I would quibble with this:

However, while Globalization was marketed as a win-win proposition for both the global North and South, in reality the developing states have gotten the losing side of the bargain.

The smaller southern states have been picked off but are fighting back, as we see in Ecuador, Venezuela, Boliva. The 'Developing World' successfully stopped the Doha round of globalization talks because the North wanted full liberalization of their markets at drop of a hat so that they can waltz in and buy anything worthwhile.

Brazil has refused this, India has (for example its textile and other industries) and Africa was mostly ignored because the North is racist and thinks they have nothing to offer except South Africa and a few northern bits (which is blatantly wrong as China has been the trailblazing investor in Africa with serious money, development and actually building roads, hospitals and infrastructure – followed eventually by Japan, India & the US).

I think that maybe the North's dismissing of Africa may well be part of its undoing.

As for the rest of it, I can agree, but I am weary of being presented with such a limited number of outcomes.

rymlianin, March 23, 2015 at 11:05 am

Noam Chomsky agrees . Free markets are for the third world, so that 1st world countries can easily get rid of their excess products.

yalensis, March 22, 2015 at 10:28 am

Here we go again! At first I thought this item was from a few days ago, but it's from today. Then I thought it was GroundHog Day!

Because Kolomoisky has done it again, and his guys (maybe not him personally) have invaded a different oil company, this time UkrNafta (not to be confused with UrkTransNafta, which is a different company). Benny's guys have barricaded themselves inside the company HQ, at Nesterovsky Street in Kiev.

A spokesperson says this siege is a continuation of the story (explained by Jen, in comment above) whereby the rules were changed for what constitutes a quorum among shareholders.

The Ukrainian government owns (50% + 1) share of UkrNafta. Now, just like the previous case, the government wants to put in its own management, while expelling Benny's henchmen from the big boardroom.

The article states that Benny must not have listened to Pyatt's warnings.

[yalensis: I mentioned in comment, above, that Benny is a proud and stubborn man, who listens to nobody.]

james, March 22, 2015 at 12:35 pm

thanks for these kolowonky updates… what i find fascinating is a guy being allowed to have a goon squad and parading around ukraine with the goon squad doing these kinds of acts.. what would happen if he had some competition and goon squads started to lock themselves into privatbank locations?

how do ordinary citizens of ukraine view this guy? there are no parallels in western societies that i am aware of!

james, March 23, 2015 at 3:49 pm

article today suggests that my question from earlier is being answered here – http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/03/kolomoisky-vs-poroshenko-kiev-junta.html

2. Poroshenko ordered to disarm all armed guards near the office of "Ukrnafta".

3. Continuing the theme, Poroshenko said:

"Territorial defense will obey the clear military vertical of power and no Governor will be allowed to have his own pocket UAF (armed forces of Ukraine).

see the article for more..

marknesop, March 23, 2015 at 11:05 pm

He is setting himself up for a mini civil war in Kiev if he thinks to order Benny to disperse his private army now, because they are loyal to their employer – Benny, who pays them directly, when they know all too clearly they are not going to be allowed to have this much fun roughing up and killing people ever again while getting paid for it – and the time to do it was the second it became known Benny was doing it, because the constitution forbids it and Porky always knew that.

He let him get away with it because it was useful, and there is no use in his attempting to stand on the law now: funny how when you trample on the law every day and only obey what suits you, how difficult it is to get back to the world of law when you need to. And what else does Porky have but the moral high ground he is attempting to claim? Would the Ukie army obey him if he ordered them to wipe out Benny and his boys? Glad it's not my decision. If you run for it now, Porky, you might avoid being turned into bacon. Yes, I said it. Bacon.

Moscow Exile, March 24, 2015 at 12:08 am

Bacon butty, anyone? The heat is on? Breaking: Kolomoysky raids Ukrnafta

yalensis, March 24, 2015 at 2:29 am

VZGLIAD is taking online poll as people place their bets on their cock-fight.

Results so far (of 11609 people voting):
64.6% think Benny will win the fight
15.7% think Porky will win.
19.7% say it will end in draw

I explained my reasons in above comment, I placed my bets on Porky, and I went ALL IN!
(or "va bank" as the Russians say!)

Moscow Exile, March 24, 2015 at 3:03 am

The Germans also use the expression "Va banque" – sometimes spelt "Vabanque".

A well known usage of this term allegedly took place during a conversation between Hermann Göring und Adolf Hitler on their hearing of the British declaration of war against Germany on September 3rd, something which they had not expected to happen as a result of the German invasion of Poland two days earlier and had therefore considered that invasion a risk worth taking.

Apparently, Göring said to Hitler:

"Wir wollen doch das Vabanque-Spiel lassen", worauf Hitler antwortete: „Ich habe in meinem Leben immer Vabanque gespielt.

"We should go for broke", whereupon Hitler answered: "I have my whole life always gone for broke".

It means to play against the bank, to lay all your stakes against what the bank has; if you win, you win big time: if you lose, you lose everything.

The vulgar expression where I come from is "shit or bust".

So rephrasing Hermann and Adolf's little exchange above:

– Well, it looks like it's shit or bust.

– All my life it's been shit or bust with me.

Only thing is, Adolf didn't use dirty language.

And he liked dogs as well.

And he was a veggie.

yalensis, March 22, 2015 at 11:00 am

Roman Bochkala, Ukrainian journalist and patriot.

  1. Four months ago: We must not surrender the airport to the Separatists!"
  2. Two days ago: Ukraine has plunged into poverty .
TRANSLATION (of piece done by Bochkala on Ukrainian TV)

The (Ukrainian) people are suffering real poverty. Here is just one sad example:
Yesterday I happened to be in Zaporozhie. We popped into a deli. Ahead of me in the queue was a young girl and an old woman. And some very basic products on the belt. The girl was purchasing yogurt, some hot dogs, margarine, and eggs. All this came to around 70 or so.
When she was ready to pay, she studied the receipt, and discovered that the real price was higher than what was marked (on the products). "What you have on the price tags is lower than this," she told the check-out clerk. She said this matter-of-factly, not like she was disputing the price, just complaining about it.

"We didn't have time to change the price tags. Sorry," the young clerk apologized. I concluded that the young girl had calculated in her head how much she would pay, when selecting her products. In other words, for her this was a serious sum. She doesn't have the option of just buying yogurt, without factoring in the price. Then my attention was turned to the sound of coins clanking.

The old woman was pouring out of a cellophane (baggie) a small heap of coins, of varying denominations. "That's all I have," she said. "I don't have any more money." The old woman was neatly dressed, but looked hopeless.

The clerk methodically moved the coins from one heap to another (while counting them). "You need 27.5 but you only have 25," he concluded, counting the money again. It became an issue (for her): what should she put back, the bread, or the flour?

I took out 200 hryvnas and gave it to the woman. She looked at me, with the look of a dog who has been many times abused and deceived.

Then she burst out crying.

And such people are ever more numerous in Ukraine.

marknesop, March 22, 2015 at 11:39 am

I don't have the words to tell you how sad that is to me.

kirill, March 23, 2015 at 6:03 pm

Not a single squeak about this theme in the whole western media.

Quite the propaganda chorus the western media is.

Moscow Exile, March 22, 2015 at 11:16 am

Igor Mosiychuk heads a meeting in mourning for and dedicated to the victims of the Holodomor.

kirill, March 22, 2015 at 11:31 am

I should take this opportunity to point out, once again, that the western Ukraine did not live through Holodmor. All of western Ukraine not just some part of it. But the Donbas did live through Stalin's forced collectivization famines.

So we have the Nazi allied Bandera vermin using the deaths of people in the Donbas as a pretext to kill people in the Donbas. Sick.

But they have the following logic: Before the Holodomor the Donbas was populated by virgin ethnic Ukrs. The residents of the Donbas after the famine are all Russian squatters. My relatives believe this SHIT. I need to stop treating them as my relatives.

Some facts about the Donbas:

  1. There are many Ukrainians living there, which is inconsistent with the genocide claim. Genocides totally remove demographic traces. You can see this in western Ukraine where there are no longer Poles and Jews in regions they previously populated in large numbers.
  2. There are Serbs and Greeks still living in eastern Ukraine. Did Stalin settle them there?
  3. We should ask the current residents of the Donbas who tend to graves going back into the 1800s what they think about the Banderite claims.

kirill, March 22, 2015 at 11:43 am

Ignore this BS map in the east. Novorossia was not part of Ukraine until the Soviets.

marknesop, March 22, 2015 at 11:42 am

I don't suppose he sees any irony at all in commemorating an event in which people starved to death when he himself displaces roughly as much water as a Buick Skylark.

kirill, March 22, 2015 at 11:47 am

To be fair, he likely has a thyroid disorder and insulin resistence. Obesity is not simply due to stuffing your face and it is a fact that thin people can consume more calories than obese people.

This applies to the insulin resistant who instead of turning glucose into heat (as "normal" people do) turn it into fat. Calorie restriction for insulin resistant metabolism types is guaranteed to fail.

They need high fat, low carbohydrate type diets.

Jen, March 22, 2015 at 7:49 pm

Symptoms of iodine deficiency include obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes. They go together in a vicious circle and teasing out which causes which almost amounts to time-wasting Titanic deckchair rearrangements.

Max, March 22, 2015 at 9:06 pm

Not so fast…

https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/more-on-the-fake-holodomor/

The 7 million figure was invented after World War 2 by Ukrainian nationalists, many of whom had fought with the Nazis and killed many Jews by participating in the Holocaust. The 7 million figure was invented by these people to be higher than the 6 million Jews killed by Hitler in the Holocaust. In other words, Stalin was worse than Hitler, and Hitler was right to go to war against Judeo-Bolshevism. Get it?

yalensis, March 23, 2015 at 5:22 pm

Seven million people? Peanuts!

More like TWO HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE! Killed by commies, yeh!

yalensis, March 23, 2015 at 5:32 pm

Interesting footnote, which I saw in above wiki piece. (To be specific: footnote #12 – the word "Crimea" caught my eye").

Here is link to footnote:

So, one year after George W. Bush dedicated the monument, designed to exasperate the Chinese government, then the first anniversary of this exercise in extreme hypocrisy, was held in Crimea, with Tatars playing the role of "victims du jour".

The event organizers had selected Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as the background music. This well-known symphony is regarded a symbol of both the beginning and the end of Communism in Eastern Europe. In 1918, the top Communist leaders, including Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, participated in the first anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution by attending a performance at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Seventy-one years later, shortly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein conducted the Ninth Symphony on Christmas Day in West Berlin.

It was very touching to see more than 20 wreaths lined up in the grassy area adjacent to the Memorial site waiting to be presented at the ceremony. They were in alphabetical order, starting with Afghanistan and ending with Ukraine. (……)

The Crimean Tatar wreath was presented in the name of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis (Assembly), Simferopol, by the International Committee for Crimea (ICC), Washington, DC. The inscription on one of the ribbons read: "Honoring the memory of more than 200,000 victims of famine, deportation and political repression." I had the honor of presenting the Crimean Tatar wreath in person. We are grateful to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation for providing a platform where we can link to other people of different national, ethnic, religious or cultural backgrounds, who were victimized by Communist authorities. Together we can support the Foundation and work toward the common goal of educating the public about Communism's crimes against humanity.

Plus ça change, plus ça la męme chose!

yalensis, March 23, 2015 at 5:37 pm

P.P.S. – one link leads to another . ICC still exists, and still sobbing about violated Tatars rights. Meanwhile, in reality Tatars have more rights now, in Russian Crimea, than they ever had in Ukie Crimea.

ICC logo appears to be a Ukie trident flipped upside down and ready to sink into the Black Sea…

Maybe like a sinking boat?

yalensis, March 23, 2015 at 5:38 pm

http://www.iccrimea.org/

colliemum, March 23, 2015 at 10:29 pm

It's how things work: once a group of people has become a designated 'victim group', they can do no wrong in the eyes of the MSM and of course their supporters in the West. It doesn't matter if these designated 'victim groups' are in foreign countries or actually living on the soil of a Western country.

I have no idea how the process of selecting a 'victim group' works. For example, in the UK Pakistani and Bangladeshi muslims are 'victims' – Kurds, who've been persecuted by various Turkish regimes, are not. And it's not about skin colour either, because neither Sikhs nor Hindus are 'victim groups' …

I think someone ought to do a bit of research into this!

(Not me – I'm pounding the pavements and doing other electioneering, until May 7th)

Moscow Exile, March 22, 2015 at 11:57 am

Referring back to the previous posting concerning Psaki's replacement, Rathke, and Harfe and how Matt Lee tackles these double-talking spokespersons for the State Department:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfEIXy64HL0

Warren, March 22, 2015 at 2:43 pm

Published on 22 Mar 2015

MORE DOCUMENTARIES HERE: http://www.youtube.com/RTDocumentaries/

Miguel Francis, a Los Angeles film school graduate, travels to Crimea to discover how life there has changed since it was reunited with Russia. He explores the beautiful peninsula's history and cultural heritage, as well as taking in some of Crimea's tourist attractions while talking to locals about their attitudes to becoming Russian citizens.

Tim Owen, March 22, 2015 at 6:05 pm

Did he graduate?

Jen, March 22, 2015 at 5:24 pm

Miguel Francis Santiago also made a documentary on Donetsk and the Donetsk rebels. From memory, I think he visited the airport with the rebels and talks to Givi.
http://rtd.rt.com/films/donetsk-an-american-glance/

davidt, March 22, 2015 at 3:28 pm

For a change of pace and emphasis, the American University in Moscow website has a nice, and interesting, interview with Charles Bausman, of Russia Insider fame.
http://us-russia.org/3032-orthodox-american-crowdfunds-a-major-volunteer-media-watchdog-site.html

I think it's worth reading.

Warren, March 22, 2015 at 5:40 pm

With that announcement on #Syria the #UK breaks international law OFFICIALLY & should shut up about #Russia forever. pic.twitter.com/j6oufVHQC0

- Jason Han (@hanjixin) March 23, 2015

Warren, March 22, 2015 at 5:53 pm

EXCLUSIVE: Detained by #SBU, beaten by #RightSector – Story of French businessman in #Ukraine http://t.co/49YFrNd6M5 pic.twitter.com/bNx0Ct5INf

- Russia Insider (@RussiaInsider) March 21, 2015

Pavlo Svolochenko, March 22, 2015 at 8:27 pm

http://ria.ru/world/20150322/1053911387.html

Benny admits DNR and LNR defacto authorities in Donbass.

http://www.politnavigator.net/nachinaetsya-kolomojjskijj-potreboval-finansovojj-federalizacii.html

Benny wants 90% of regions' tax take to stay with regional authorities.

So much for the champion of edina Ukraina.

kat kan, March 23, 2015 at 12:07 am

He'd love them to stay separate. With 90% of taxes? he has a racket worked out already for taking it off them. Whereas they're of a bent to nationalise things they believe were illegally obtained.

yalensis, March 23, 2015 at 3:07 am

American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine fires its president , most probably for his "pro-Russian" views.

Namely, Bernard Casey was outspoken in his views against Maidan as a violent coup, and felt that Crimea should return to Russia.

KievPost "exposed" Casey; after their expose, he was toast, and then he got fired from his job.

Casey apparently hails from San Jose California [yalensis: I have been there, it's actually a lovely place, the local inhabitants keep their property in perfect shape, almost obsessively landscaping their yards], anyhow Casey's expertise is small business and start-up companies.

Nothing in Casey's bio that suggests that he is a rebel, or even anything "ethnic" going on there…

Maybe he is simply an honorable man who tells the truth as he sees it, and pays the consequences for that?

kirill, March 23, 2015 at 5:47 am

He is definitely a heretic. NATO is even going to establish rapid internet reaction forces to stop the spread of Russian false narratives. We are back in the era of the crusades.

marknesop, March 23, 2015 at 8:05 am

Because everyone knows the people are too stupid and unwordly to know for themselves that they are being fed bullshit. In fact, NATO's successful transmission of its own narrative depends on it.

james, March 23, 2015 at 8:46 am

thanks yalensis.. the kiev post is an interesting american publication, or at least that is what it looks like to me! reading the article on caseys views which were also published in the kiev post confirms the fact he was looking for objectivity in an atmosphere which was opposed to it..i am surprised the kiev post let his thoughts be known!

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/chamber-disavows-ex-presidents-remarks-supporting-russias-annexation-of-crimea-384197.html

yalensis, March 23, 2015 at 4:53 pm

KievPost has the WORST commenters, bunch of low-IQ, prejudiced Banderite diaspora trash.

Like this one, for example:

A commenter called "OlenaG" makes gratuitous attack not only against Mr. Casey but entire San Jose State University, which is actually a component of the California State University system (which is highly respected educational system, even internationally):

"He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the San Jose State University and an MBA degree at Santa Clara University."

Anyone that knows the reputation of San Jose State as a "Party College" (rated by U.S. News and World Report in its annual College ratings) and knows the Political Correctness of Santa Clara County both in California and in South San Francisco Bay would know to not have hired Casey.

(….)

Talk about ad hominem attacks! This idiot has no proof whatsoever that Mr. Casey spent his time partying instead of studying electrical engineering; and moreover, the very fact that Mr. Casey joined the Chamber of Commerce probably indicates that he was NOT politically correct at all!

Pavlo Svolochenko, March 23, 2015 at 5:23 pm

The worst American university would still compare favourably with the best Ukrainian one, I suspect.

yalensis, March 24, 2015 at 3:34 am

Well, Ukraine USED to have good universities, especially in Soviet times.
Now, I am not so sure…

yalensis, March 23, 2015 at 3:24 am

More on Kolomoisky's antics.

Linked piece is entitled: "Kolomoisky goes va-banque", which is a Russian phrase (actually French), meaning, as Americans would say, in a poker game, "all in".

In other words, Benny continues to occupy the UkrNafta company offices in Kiev.
(Not to be confused with the other oil company, UkrTransNafta, which Benny had to cede.)

To beef up the ranks of his goons, Benny sent his personal battalion "Dnepr-1″. Leaving the war zone of the "Anti-Terrorist Operation", this battalion arrived back in Kiev to seize UkrNafta.

Benny has explained that his military operation against UkrNafta is necessary to thwart the "raider" attempt by his (Benny's) arch-enemy, Igor Eremeev. Eremeev is a fellow oligarch and also a member of Ukrainian Parliament.

This exciting event is all happening on Monday, March 23.

There was a confrontation when one of Porky's allies, the deputy named Mustafu Nayem, attempted to enter the building. Benny's goons would not allow Mustafu inside. Ukrainskaya Pravda reported that Mustafu was beaten up. (see the video)
Mustafu elucidated on his Facebook that he was roughed up, but not badly beaten.
According to the description of the video (which I have not had time to watch), Mustafu asked Benny: "What are you doing here, Igor Valeryevich?"
To which Benny replied: "I came to see a Parliamentary Deputy. And who are you, a journalist or a deputy?"

Mustafu replied that within 2 months, UkrNafta will be a nationalized company belonging to the state.

Benny shot back, that this will not happen, because UkrNafta is a private company, and that he himself (=Benny) owns 42% of it.

And on and on… lots more… but the thrust of the article is that things are getting serious now.

james, March 23, 2015 at 8:58 am

yalensis, i am confused by these actions. in most countries where the rule of law supposedly operates, the police would come and evict these squatters… why isn't this happening here? or is this the type of system they have where oligarchs goon squads can do whatever their goon demands they do without any legal ramifications?

james, March 23, 2015 at 3:51 pm

2. Poroshenko ordered to disarm all armed guards near the office of "Ukrnafta".

3. Continuing the theme, Poroshenko said:

"Territorial defense will obey the clear military vertical of power and no Governor will be allowed to have his own pocket UAF (armed forces of Ukraine).
http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/03/kolomoisky-vs-poroshenko-kiev-junta.html

Jen, March 23, 2015 at 4:08 pm

Kolomoisky funds at least five paramilitary battalions including Aidar, Azov, Dnepr-1, Dnepr-2 and Donbass which are part of the National Guard.

A good proportion of his "goons" are probably members of these battalions. Whatever passes for the police (under Arsen Avakov's authority) in Kiev doesn't have a hope against these people.

marknesop, March 23, 2015 at 11:10 pm

Baby, what you said. Hopeless. Run for it, Porky.

yalensis, March 24, 2015 at 2:05 am

Are we in the process of placing bets? Because I am still betting on Porky. To be sure, he doesn't have much of an army.

But he has Geoffrey Pyatt and the American marines behind him. That has to count for something!

"From the halls of Montezuma, to the walls of UkrNafta…"

(or something like that)

colliemum, March 24, 2015 at 2:23 am

He's also got a squad of UK army 'instructors' …
;-)

Moscow Exile, March 24, 2015 at 2:33 am

Which side is Yats Rats on? I reckon he's the one that runs the show there: he's Nudelman's boy after all.

james, March 23, 2015 at 6:29 pm

more info/subjective angle – http://cassad-eng.livejournal.com/150328.html

yalensis, March 24, 2015 at 2:08 am

Yeah, see, Cassad agrees with me. Benny is toast!

davidt, March 23, 2015 at 5:46 am

Alastair Crooke has posted two new articles at Conflicts Forum. The first discusses a possible Iran agreement. To quote from the article:

"Iran has already dropped the dollar as a means of trading. And as the non-dollar economic system expands with a SWIFT financial clearing system already launched, with Central Bank non-dollar currency swaps in place and a putative non-dollar jurisdiction banking system under construction by China and Russia, Iranians are now seeing the alternative, and getting fed up with hanging on the eternal "will they/won't they" lift sanctions hiatus."

http://www.conflictsforum.org/2015/how-would-an-iran-agreement-impact-on-irans-geo-political-situation/

davidt, March 23, 2015 at 5:57 am

The second of Alastair Crooke's posts considers Greece's travails with the EU "system", which he sees as similar to Russia's conflict with the global "system".

http://www.conflictsforum.org/2015/widening-geo-political-linkages-and-the-middle-east/

... ... ....

Moscow Exile, March 24, 2015 at 12:08 am
Bacon butty, anyone? The heat is on?

Breaking: Kolomoysky raids Ukrnafta

marknesop, March 24, 2015 at 11:15 am

Kolomoisky is out of control – before any of those too-rich-to-give-a-fuck oligarchs start thinking about an armed takeover, they should consider how their plan meshes with the west's plan. Because if they are in competition rather than harmony, that oligarch will be squashed. And Benny is embarrassing – it was already inconceivable that Ukraine would be accepted for membership in the European Union, the west just wants to use it as a "stone frigate" against Russia, but how much more inconceivable is it now, with Benny's antics? Besides, he did not even make Nuland's "A" list, so obviously the notion of his being the rebel King of Ukraine was never entertained. Nuland wants Yats, who is watching with interest to see who will emerge victorious from this street fight.

On a totally unrelated subject, I just picked up Mrs. Stooge from the Ferry home; she spoke glowingly of your handsomeness, enviable bearing and manner. Mrs. Exile will have to keep you on a short leash, you lady-killer. For the prizewinners Jen and James, I have acquired perhaps the only set of metal Novorossiyan soldiers in Canada. I haven't seen them yet, the missus just dropped me off at work and headed home without even taking her suitcase out of the car, but I will get about the business of sending them forthwith. I think I will save Strelkov for last or for the 100,00th comment, but once I have a look at them I will describe the others for the winners' choice – Jen first, and then James.

et Al, March 23, 2015 at 12:16 pm

RT OpEd: Anti-Russian propaganda is 'unconvincing', because Western narrative is false

http://rt.com/op-edge/243237-eu-russia-propaganda-counter-war/

###

Neil Clark doesn't mess about and it is not complicated. The West's response to the failure of the general public to swallow hook, line and sinker its bs line on Ukraine is because it is bs an people know it. Their strategy to counter 'Russian propaganda' is nothing more than shouting louder. Now how retarded is that? As I posted from an earlier piece from euractiv, Brussels would like a return on this investment! That's Planet Brussels for you!

marknesop, March 23, 2015 at 1:38 pm

In other news, there was no protest in Odessa yesterday, it was all a faked, crappy provocation by a Kremlin-sponsored TV station that provided not only the phony protesters, but phony Right Sektor goons to attack them. Totally phony, from the word "Go". Nothing to see here, return to your homes.

Moscow Exile, March 23, 2015 at 1:16 pm

By way of Russia Insider by A. Karlin:

The Moor Has Done His Duty*

Freedom! Don't ya'll just love the sound of that word!

Freedom of speech, freedom of the press! You just cannot get enough of it in the Land of the Free.

From a comment to the above:

I even think that Putin, where [sic] he a sane man, could have obtained the return of Crimea peacefully had he not been a psychotic killer.

Another Internet clinical psychiatrist, I presume.

* "The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go" .

From Schiller's "Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua" [Fiesco's Conspiracy at Genoa]: Der Mohr hat seine Schuldigkeit getan, der Mohr kann gehen, meaning "once you have served your purpose, you are no longer needed".

[Mar 24, 2015] Regime Change America's Failing Weapon Of International Deception

Zero Hedge
Authored by Ben Tanosborn,

For years, Winston Churchill's famous quote, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried," has served as Americans' last word in any political discussion which requires validation of the US government, no matter how corrupt or flawed in its behavior, as the best in the planet, comparatively or by default. Never mind the meaning that Mr. Churchill had intended back in 1947, or how the international political panorama has changed during the past seven decades.

These remarks were made by Britain's prime minister before the House of Commons a few months before there was a changing of the guards in the "Anglo-Saxon Empire" as the Brits gave away their colonial hegemony in favor of the super-influential economic and military power represented by the United States. And that was symbolically marked by Britain's relinquishing its mandate in Palestine, and the creation of Israel.

Such reference to democracy in the quote, explicitly defining it as a "government by the people," basically applied to Britain and the United States at the close of World War II; but such condition has deteriorated in the US to the point where the "common people" no longer have a say as to how the nation is run, either directly or through politicians elected with financial support provided by special interests, undoubtedly expecting their loyalty-vote. Yet, while this un-democratization period in our system of government was happening, there were many nations that were adopting a true code of democracy, their citizens having a greater say as to how their countries are governed. Recognizing such occurrence, however, is a seditious sin for an American mind still poisoned by the culture of exceptionalism and false pride in which it has been brainwashed.

And that's where our empire, or sphere of influence, stands these days… fighting the windmills of the world, giants that we see menacing "American interests," and doing it under the banner of "for democracy and human rights." Such lofty empire aims appear to rationalize an obscene military budget almost twice as large as those of Russia, China, India and United Kingdom combined! Americans, representing less than 5 percent of the world's population, are footing a military bill almost twice as large as that expended by half of the world's population. If that isn't imperialistic and obscene, it's difficult to image what other societal behavior could be more detrimental to peace and harmony in this global village where we all try to co-exist.

Empires and global powers of the past most often resorted to deposing of antagonistic foreign rulers by invading their countries and installing amicable/subservient puppet rulers. The United States and the United Kingdom, perhaps trying to find refuge, or an excuse, in their democratic tradition, have resorted to regime change "manipulations" to deal with adversary governments-nations. [Bush43's Iraq invasion stands as a critical exception by a mongrel government: half-criminal (Dick Cheney-as mentor), and half-moronic (George W. Bush-as mentee).]

Regime change has served the United States well throughout much of the Americas from time immemorial; an endless litany of dictators attesting to shameless in-your-face puppetry… manipulations taking the form of sheer military force, or the fear of such force; bribery of those in power, or about to attain power – usually via military coup; or the promise of help from the Giant of the North (US) in improving economic growth, education and health. Kennedy's 1961 Alliance for Progress proved to be more political-PR than an honest, effective effort to help the people in Latin America… such program becoming stale and passé in Washington by decade's end; the focus shifting in a feverish attempt to counter the efforts by Castro's Cuba to awaken the revolutionary spirit of sister republics in Central and South America (Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua…).

After almost two centuries of political and economic meddling in Latin America under the Monroe Doctrine (1823) banner, much of it involving regime change, the US is finally coming to terms with the reality that its influence has not just waned but disappeared. Not just in nations which may have adopted socialist politics, but other nations as well. US' recent attempt to get other regional republics to label Venezuela (Maduro's leftist government) as a security threat not only met with opposition from the twelve-country Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) but has brought in the end of an era. It's now highly unlikely that secretive efforts by the CIA to effect regime change in Latin America will find support; certainly not the support it had in the past.

To Washington's despair, similar results, if for other reasons, are happening throughout North Africa and the extended Middle East; certainly not the results the US had hoped for or anticipated from the revolutionary wave in the Arab Spring, now entering its fifth year. It is no longer the flow of oil that keeps Washington committed to a very strong presence in the Middle East. It is America's Siamese relationship with Israel.

But if regime change is no longer an effective weapon for the US in Latin America or the Middle East, the hope is still high that it might work in Eastern Europe, as America keeps corralling Russian defenses to within a holler of American missilery. Ukraine's year-old regime change is possibly the last hurrah in US-instigated regime changes… and it is still too early to determine its success; the US counting on its front-line European NATO partners to absorb the recoil in terms of both the economy and a confrontational status now replacing prior smooth relations.

Somehow it is difficult to envision an outcome taking place in Ukraine which would allow the United States a foothold at the very doorsteps of Russia; something totally as inconceivable as if China or Russia were contemplating establishing military bases in Mexico or any part of Central America or the Caribbean.

The era of using regime change as a weapon of mass deception may have already ended for the United States of America… and hopefully for the entire world.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 22:46 | 5920475 JustObserving

America has always lied itself to war - few believe US lies now. Obama almost lied his way to a war with Syria about sarin:

Lies: An Abbreviated History of U.S. Presidents Leading Us to War

8. Vietnam (Kennedy, Johnson, 1964) -- Lies: Johnson said Vietnam attacked our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in August, 1964.Truth: The US didn't want to lose the southeast Asia region, and its oil and sea lanes, to China. This "attack" was convenient. Kennedy initiated the first major increase in US troops (over 500).

9. Gulf War (G.H.W. Bush, 1991) -- Lies: To defend Kuwait from Iraq. Truth: Saddam was a threat to Israel, and we wanted his oil and land for bases.

10. Balkans (Clinton, 1999) -- Lies: Prevent Serb killing of Bosnians. Truth: Get the Chinese out of Eastern Europe (remember the "accidental" bombing of their embassy in Belgrade?) so they could not get control of the oil in the Caspian region and Eastward. Control land for bases such as our huge Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, and for the proposed Trans-Balkan Oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea area to the Albanian port of Valona on the Adriatic Sea.

11. Afghan (G.W. Bush, 2001) -- Lies: The Taliban were hiding Osama. Truth: To build a gas/oil pipeline from Turkmenistan and other northern 'xxstan' countries to a warm water (all year) port in the Arabian Sea near Karachi (same reason the Russians were there), plus land for bases.

12. Iraq (G.W. Bush, 2003) -- Lies: Stop use of WMDs -- whoops, bring Democracy, or whatever.Truth: Oil, defense of Israel, land for permanent bases (we were kicked out of Saudi Arabia) to manage the greater Middle East, restore oil sales in USD (Saddam had changed to Euros)

http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/13-lies-abbreviated-history-of-us.ht...

Lies and Consequences in Our Past 15 Wars

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/9419-lies-and-consequences-in-our-pas...

gdogus erectus

Even articles like this erroneously refer to the US as a democracy. WTF. The programming runs deep.

"A republic...if you can keep it."

cornfritter

Very poorly written article. Better to say that Andy Jackson was about the last bad ass to fight of the banksters and die a natural death, then Salmon Chase and his buddies passed the legal tender laws, and shortly thereafter (or possibly before) London dispatched the Fabian socialists with their patient gradualism. We were firmly back under the yoke of London banking cartel come 1913. And you are correct, a republic is an EXTREMELY limited form of democracy (not truly akin to traditional 51% takes it democratic concepts at all). The elected leader's function was supposed to be to guard the principles of the Constitution and the limited Republic, and history will remember that, despite this cruft of an article.

In the eyes of many who founded this nation, it was only a stepping stone to a global government, the new Rome - but the new Rome will be the UN with a global bank, and the multinational corporations holding court, and then the end come.

Then again, I may be wrong.

negative rates

What passes for gvt is silly these days, we are a legend in our own minds.

suteibu

"Governments would become political churches"

Like in the Middle East? And you will counter by saying that people are forced to live under those governments and, yet, thousands are freely going there from around the world to join ISIS.

Otherwise, such a system would work right up until one government church decided there wasn't enough room in the area for competitors (probably within a year, maybe six months). Let the political/religious tribal wars begin.

anusocracy

Bankers couldn't be banksters without government.

Maybe it's the monopoly of force thingy you don't understand.

|

[Mar 24, 2015] Why Ron Paul is Right about Ukraine by Dan Sanchez

Mar 24, 2015 | antiwar.com

How should libertarians assess the crisis in Ukraine? Some would have us believe that a true commitment to liberty entails (1) glorifying the "Euromaidan revolution" and the government it installed in Kiev, (2) welcoming, excusing, or studiously ignoring US involvement with that revolution and government, and (3) hysterically demonizing Vladimir Putin and his administration for Russia's involvement in the affair. Since Ron Paul refuses to follow this formula or to remain silent on the issue, these "NATO-tarians," as Justin Raimondo refers to them, deride him as an anti-freedom, anti-American, shill for the Kremlin.

Dr. Paul takes it all in stride of course, having endured the same kind of smears and dishonest rhetorical tricks his entire career. As he surely knows, the price of being a principled anti-interventionist is eternal patience. Still, it must be frustrating. After all he has done to teach Americans about the evils of empire and the bitter fruits of intervention, there are still legions of self-styled libertarians whose non-interventionism seems to go little further than admitting that the Iraq War was "a mistake," and who portray opposition to US hostility against foreign governments as outright support for those governments.

"Yes, the Iraq War was clearly a mistake, but we have to confront Putin; we can't let Iran 'get nukes;' we've got to save the Yazidis on the mountain; we must crush ISIS, et cetera, et cetera. What are you, a stooge of the Czar/Ayatollah/Caliph?"

Some of these same libertarians supported Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012, and presumably laughed along with the rest of us when the neocons tried to paint him as "pro-Saddam" for opposing the Iraq War and for debunking the lies and distortions that were used to sell it. Yet, today they do not hesitate to tar Dr. Paul as a "confused Pro-Putin libertarian" over his efforts to oppose US/NATO interventions in Ukraine and against Russia. Such tar has been extruded particularly profusely by an eastern-European-heavy faction of Students for Liberty which might be dubbed "Students for Collective Security."

It should be obvious that Ron Paul holds no brief for Putin and the Kremlin. Let me inform the smear-artists and their dupes what Ron Paul is trying to do with his statements and articles about Ukraine and Russia. He is not trying to support Putin's government. He is doing what he has always done. He is trying to prevent US intervention. He is trying to stop war.

Some NATO-tarians have responded to this assertion by asking, "If that is so, why can't he just limit himself to simply stating his principled opposition to intervention? Why must he go beyond that, all the way to reciting Kremlin talking points?"

First of all, this is one of the most egregious fallacies that Ron Paul's critics regularly trot out: the allegation that, "because A voices agreement with B about statements of fact, then A must be doing so in the service of B."

To see the fallacy involved clearly, let us draw out the Iraq War comparison a bit more. Before and during that war, in spite of Bush Administration and media propaganda to the contrary, Ron Paul argued that Saddam Hussein did not have a weapons of mass destruction program or ties to Al Qaeda. Saddam argued the same thing. So was Ron Paul just "reciting Baghdad talking points" back then? Was he being a "confused pro-Saddam libertarian"? No. Do you know why Ron Paul was saying the same thing as Saddam? Because it was true. As is widely accepted today, Saddam did nothave a WMD program or ties to Al Qaeda. Is it valorizing Saddam to admit that he told the truth? Again, no; it is simply to abstain from hysterically demonizing him. Of course Saddam was a head of state, and as such, he was a lying murderer. But in this instance, telling the truth happened to serve his interests, which included trying to avoid a war in which he might be overthrown and killed. Ron Paul also told the truth, because he's not a lying murderer, and because he also wanted to prevent such a disastrous war: although of course not for Saddam's sake, but for the sake of avoiding all the catastrophic results that would surely (and did) flow from it.

Ron Paul had no love for Saddam then or for Putin today, just as, notwithstanding endless smears to the contrary, there was no love nurtured by Murray Rothbard for Khrushchev, Justin Raimondo for Milosevic, Lew Rockwell for Lukashenko, or Jacob Hornberger for Chavez. Rather, it just so happens that, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, the truth has a well-known anti-war bias. That is the only reason why, when speaking about the same international crises, principled anti-war voices so frequently find themselves in agreement over points of fact with tyrants who want to avoid being attacked. The truth can, in some cases, happen to serve the purposes of both good and evil men. That doesn't stop it from being the truth.

Similarly, there are a great many true (and intervention-disfavoring) points of fact concerning Ukraine and Russia that are being completely ignored by the media, which instead regurgitates the intervention-favoring propaganda it imbibes directly from Washington, London, and the NATO bureaucracy. These truths are broadcasted, and this propaganda refuted, both by the Kremlin and by Ron Paul. But again this coincidence does not occur because the two are in cahoots. The Kremlin engages in this broadcasting and refuting because it considers avoiding US/NATO intervention to be in its state interest. Ron Paul does so because, again, it is the truth, and because he considers avoiding US/NATO intervention to be moral and in the interest of humanity in general (Americans, Russians, and Ukrainians, included).

What is this propaganda that Ron Paul labors to refute, along with his Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and like-minded alternative media outlets like Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com?

According to the Washington/NATO/Kiev/neocon narrative, a peaceful protest movement emerged in Kiev against an oppressive government, was met with a deadly, unprovoked, and uncompromising crackdown, but ultimately prevailed, causing Ukraine's dictator to flee. A popularly-supported, freedom-loving, self-determination-exemplifying government then emerged. But dastardly Putin horribly invaded and conquered Crimea, and engineered a "terrorist" revolt in the east of the country. Putin is the new Hitler, and if the US and Europe don't confront him now, he will continue his conquests until he has recreated the Soviet Empire and re-erected the Iron Curtain.

The reality of the situation, which Dr. Paul and only a handful of others strive to represent, is far different.

First of all, the chief grievance of the protesters was not about domestic oppression; it was over foreign policy and foreign aid. They wanted closer ties with the west, and they were angry that (the duly elected) President Viktor Yanukovych had rejected a European Union Association Agreement over its severe stringency.

Far from "organic," the movement was heavily subsidized and sponsored by the US government. Before the crisis, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bragged about the US "investing" $5 billion in "helping" Ukraine become more western-oriented.

Once the anti-government protests in Kiev were under way, both Nuland and Senator John McCain personally joined the demonstrators in Maidan Square, implicitly promising US support for a pro-western regime change. Nuland even went so far as to pass out cookies, like a sweet little imperial auntie.

Far from peaceful, the protesters were very violent, and it is not clear which side fired the first gunshot. The Foreign Minister of Estonia, while visiting Kiev, was shown evidence that convinced him that protest leaders had hired snipers to shoot at both sides. And the BBC recently interviewed a Maidan protester who admitted to firing on the police before the conflict had become pitched.

In fact, the hard core of the Euromaidan movement, and its most violent component, was comprised of Nazis. And no, I don't mean to say "neo-Nazi," which is a term really only appropriate for people who merely glean inspiration from historical Nazis. On the other hand, the torchlight marching fascists that spearheaded the Ukraine coup (chief among them, the Svoboda and Right Sector parties) are part of an unbroken lineal tradition that goes back to Stepan Bandera, the Nazi collaborator who brought the Holocaust to Ukraine. Even a pro-Maidan blogger wrote for The Daily Beast:

"Of course the role that the Right Sector played in the Euromaidan cannot be underestimated. (…) They were the first to throw Molotov coctails and stones at police and to mount real and well-fortified barricades."

Maidan protesters bearing armbands with the neo-Nazi wolf's hook symbol

More fundamentally, what is often forgotten by many libertarians, is that revolutionary street and public square movements like Euromaidan are not "the people," but are comprised of would-be members of and partisans for a new state, every one of which is inherently an engine of violent aggression. What we saw in the clash at Maidan Square was not "Man Vs. State," but "Incoming State vs. Outgoing State."

Far from being completely intransigent, Yanukovych agreed to early elections and assented to US demands to withdraw the riot police from the square. As soon as he did that, the government buildings were seized. The city hall was then draped with white supremacist banners.

Far from being supported and appointed popularly and broadly, the new government's backing is highly sectional and heavily foreign. It was installed by a capital city street coup, not a countrywide revolution. In a deeply divided country, it only represented a particularly aggressive component of one side of that divide. Moreover, its top officeholders were handpicked by Nuland, and its installation was presided over by the US Vice President, as was famously revealed in an intercepted and leaked telephone recording.

And the only thing saving the extravagantly warlike new government from bankruptcy is the unstinting flow of billions of dollars in aid from the US, the EU, and the IMF, as well as "non-lethal" military aid (including drones, armored Humvees, and training) from the US.

Far from being freedom-loving, top offices are held by an ex-bankster (Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom Nuland handpicked when she said "Yats is our guy" in the above recording), a corrupt oligarch (chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko), and, yes, Nazis (including Andriy Parubiy, until recently the National Security chief, and Oleh Tyahnybok, also mentioned by Nuland in the recording as a key advisor to the new government, and pictured at the top of this article with Nuland and "Yats").

Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the far-right Svoboda Party, formerly the "Social-National Party." Get it? Social-National: National Socialist?

Far from being an exemplar of self-determination, the new regime responded to eastern attempts to assert regional autonomy with all-out war, shelling civilian centers (with cluster bombs, even) and killing thousands. Of course Nazis have also played a key role in the war. As the famous journalist Robert Parry wrote:

"The U.S.-backed Ukrainian government is knowingly sending neo-Nazi paramilitaries into eastern Ukrainian neighborhoods to attack ethnic Russians who are regarded by some of these storm troopers as "Untermenschen" or subhuman, according to Western press reports.

Recently, one eastern Ukrainian town, Marinka, fell to Ukraine's Azov battalion as it waved the Wolfsangel flag, a symbol used by Adolf Hitler's SS divisions in World War II. The Azov paramilitaries also attacked Donetsk, one of the remaining strongholds of ethnic Russians opposed to the Kiev regime that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February."

Plagued by failure and desertion in spite of massive western aid, the "pro-freedom" new regime in Kiev has resorted to conscripting its non-rebeling citizens. Meeting stiff draft resistance and opposition to the war, it has jailed a journalist for merely advocating draft-dodging, prepared a law restricting the travel of draft-age citizens, contemplated conscripting women over 20, and passed a law allowing the military to shoot deserters on the spot.

And the Nazis have also played in key role in the stifling and crushing of internal dissent as well. After the coup, Right Sector began patrolling the streets and squares of Kiev. And in Odessa, Right Sector toughs joined a mob in trapping and burning to death 38 anti-Maidan protesters in the Trades Union House.

Whatever involvement Moscow has in it, the revolt in the east is far from engineered. People there do not need Russian money and threats to know they had absolutely no say in the regime change in distant Kiev, and that it was executed by their political enemies. Russian-speaking and heavily industrial, it would have suffered grievously, both economically and politically, had it been dragged into a new expressly anti-Russian order. It was made abundantly clear which way the wind was blowing when Tyahybok's Svoboda, as the Christian Science Monitor put it, "pushed through the cancellation of a law that gave equal status to minority languages, such as Russian," even if the cancellation was temporary.

Far from "terrorists," the rebels are not trying to destabilize or overthrow the government in Kiev, but are seeking to establish autonomy from it. If anything, it is Kiev, with its high civilian death toll, that has been more engaged in terrorism.

And far from Soviet revanchism, Russian policy has been largely reactive against US aggressiveness. Since Moscow dropped its side of the Cold War by relinquishing its empire, including both the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, the US has taken advantage by progressively expanding NATO, an explicitly anti-Moscow military pact, all the way to Russia's borders: a policy that even Cold War mastermind George Kennan, in 1998, predicted would prove to be tragic. Moscow warned Washington that Russia could not abide a hostile Ukraine, which would be a bridge too far.

But Washington blithely pushed on to snatch Ukraine anyway. The sheer flippancy of it can be seen most vividly when Gideon Rose, editor of the US foreign policy establishment organ Foreign Affairs (published by the Council on Foreign Relations) went on The Colbert Report in the midst of the crisis and jocularly boasted about how "we want to basically distract Russia" with the shiny Olympic medals it was winning at the Sochi Olympics while getting Ukraine "to flip sides." Colbert aptly characterized this geopolitical strategy as, "Here's a shiny object! We'll just take an entire country away from you," to which Rose enthusiastically responded, "Basically!" (Perhaps to atone for such an embarrassing and pandering display of naďveté and frivolity, Rose later published an excellent article by respected establishment foreign policy expert John Mearsheimer arguing "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault." Even that old CFR-associated murder-monger Henry Kissinger has urged reconsideration.)

The takeover included Crimea which is heavily Russian-speaking and has been under effective Russian control since the 18th century. Unsurprisingly, Washington's brilliant "Shiny Object" doctrine failed miserably, and rather than see its only warm-water port pass under the sway of an increasingly antagonistic rival, Russia asserted control over Crimea, doing so without loss of life. Later, following a referendum, Crimea was formally annexed.

Of course this act was not "libertarian"; hardly anything that a state does is. But it is simply a warmongering distortion to characterize this bloodless foreign policy counter-move as evidence of reckless imperial Russian expansionism, especially when you compare the "invasion" of Crimea with the bloody havoc the US has wreaked upon the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia for the past 14 years.

As for whatever meddling Russia is guilty of in eastern Ukraine, let's try to put it in perspective without absolving it. Just imagine what the US would do if Russia had supported a coup in Ottawa that installed an anti-American Canadian government right on our border, and then perpetually re-armed that government as it bombed English-speaking separatists in British Columbia. Compared to what you'd expect to follow that, Russia's response to a US-sponsored, anti-Russian junta bombing Russian speakers right on its border has been positively restrained.

After all, it is Putin who has been constantly pushing for ceasefires against American militant obduracy and European reluctance, just as, in 2013, it was Putin who successfully pushed for a deal that prevented the US from launching yet another air war, this time against the Syrian government.

Again, this is not to claim that any foreign intervention on the part of Moscow is at all justified on libertarian grounds, or to argue that Putin is anything more than a lying murderer who happens to be more intelligent and sane than our own lying murderers. It is only to make clear that in this respect too, Russia's involvement in the affair is hardly evidence of grand imperial designs.

As an aside: Putin's foiling of neocon war aims in Syria (and potential future such foilings) may be the reason that the anti-Russian putsch in Ukraine, and the new Putin-threatening Cold War it engendered, was advanced by Nuland, who is a neocon holdover from the Bush Administration and the wife of leading neocon Robert Kagan, in the first place.

To think that any country is too big or too dangerous (especially if destabilized) to be targeted by neocons for regime change would be naďve. And to think Putin is too naďve to know this would be equally naďve.


So much for the Washington/NATO/Kiev/neocon narrative. Now to return to the NATO-tarian objection from above: why must Ron Paul stress these points of fact, especially when they make wicked Putin look better, or at least not-so-wicked? Why can't Dr. Paul merely state his principled opposition to intervention?

It might make sense for him to do so if that were enough to make a difference. But the thing is, it's not. The sad but inescapable fact is that the American people are not operating under the same moral premises as Ron Paul and other principled libertarians. As such, the public is susceptible to war lies and distortions. And the Washington/NATO/Kiev/neocon narrative about Ukraine and Russia is nothing but a tissue of war lies and distortions.

As the warmongers are abundantly aware, if Kiev is sufficiently falsely valorized, Washington/NATO sufficiently falsely absolved, and Putin and the eastern separatists sufficiently falsely demonized, then American opinion will provide cover for US intervention, regardless of what principled libertarians say. So the only way to practically stop such intervention is to go beyond statements of principle and to debunk those war lies and distortions; moreover, to debunk them bravely and forthrightly, even if the Kremlin is also trying to debunk them, and even if simple-minded or lying critics will use that parallel to smear you as an agent of a foreign power.

Besides, if Ron Paul's statements really are part of some ulterior pro-Putin agenda, how could he possibly hope for his efforts to advance such an agenda? He couldn't. He is not writing in or speaking Russian; he has zero effect on Putin's domestic support. The only real effect he has is on opinion and policy in the English-speaking world. So, as it concerns the Ukraine crisis, the only real impact he could hope to have is to dissuade intervention.

So much for Ron Paul's "ulterior motives." But what about some of his critics? A question actually worth asking is as follows: Why are some of his avowedly libertarian critics, many of whom profess not to favor intervention (or at least studiously avoid talking about that question concretely) so absolutely livid over Ron Paul's challenge to their narrative? Their English-language blasts against Dr. Paul are also not likely to effect Putin's domestic support one way or the other. Their only possible impact is also on US foreign policy. So, why are they so extremely sensitive about the acceptance in America of a narrative that lends itself toward intervention and confrontation? The question answers itself.

Let me close with a few additional questions.

Why is it "defending tyranny" for Ron Paul to agree with Putin on points of fact, but not for "libertarians" to hail a government that rose to power in a violent putsch, that welcomes outright Nazis in its ranks, that conscripts its people, and that drops cluster bombs on civilians?

What exactly is "libertarian" about NATO, which amounts to an hegemonic, dual-hemisphere, nuclear tripwire, species suicide pact?

What is so secure about a state of "collective security" in which petulant, reckless nationalists in small eastern European countries can drag the whole world into nuclear war over a border dispute?

And finally, why should a new Cold War be launched, and the risk of nuclear annihilation for all our families and hometowns be heightened over the question of which clique rules a particular river basin on the other side of the world?

Ron Paul has excellent, solidly libertarian answers to all these questions. Do his critics?


Also published at Medium.com. Follow Dan Sanchez via Twitter, or TinyLetter.


Dax

Wow, what a sad mess the U.S. government is. It's quite frustrating how little say we peons have on what our rulers arbitrarily do to other countries that are no threat to us whatsoever. And these wannabe Ukrainian Nazis...I had no idea they were so powerful in number. Are their attacks on ethnic Russians some sort of "cosmic revenge" for the Soviet Union's starvation of Ukrainians in the 30's? The whole thing is a nightmare. May our leaders burn in hell for the misery they've helped create.

johndavit66

Besides, if Ron Paul's statements really are part of some ulterior pro-Putin agenda, how could he possibly hope for his efforts to advance such an agenda? He couldn't. He is not writing in or speaking Russian; he has zero effect on Putin's domestic support. The only real effect he has is on opinion and policy in the English-speaking world. So, as it concerns the Ukraine crisis, the only real impact he could hope to have is to dissuade intervention. Thank for share
Friv 100000

Michael

mind blowingly rational stream of conscious and geo-political conscience! It makes tremendous sense particularly if you feel we have been recently duped into 20 or so highly profitable (for oligarchs and financial institutions) wars. Assuming they are going to have another real war with Russia for fun and neo-con profit, where are they going to live in blissful retirement to spend the loot without getting attacked or dripped-on by glow-in the dark irradiated zombies? Are some wars better not started regardless of the causus belli or opportunity for plunder? Is setting-up a game of nuclear armed chicken with the second most powerful alliance on the planet still a good idea if you were planning to retire and spend time growing rhodos and fishing and playing baseball with your grandchildren?

Do neo-cons have a we-were-just-kidding plan "B" or are they truly to committed to a global sepuku / samson option if they / we lose? Do neo-cons do anything other than dream big about obliterating evil comic book enemies and ruling the world? Is it too late to invent a drug or make a video game or addictive snuff porn to keep them better occupied? How come all the neo-cons are moving to the USA and no one elsewhere is complaining about a shortage of them?


Claus Eric Hamle

It is really like 2+2=4: Deployment of missiles in Eastern Europe (Poland and Romania) leads to Launch On Warning (probably by 2017) and Suicide by accident/mistake. What else can the Russians do to defend themselves ? Will they even announce when they adopt Launch On Warning=Suicide Guaranteed. The crazy Americans asked for it -- The Russians want to be certain that they won't die alone. Stupid, crazy, bloody fools in the Pentagon !!!

[Mar 24, 2015] The West has no respect for Russian liberals or kreaklies

To be a Russian liberal or kreakly to have a fanatical belief that the West is right all the time and on everything
Warren March 23, 2015 at 4:28 pm
The West has no respect for Russian liberals or kreaklies. The moment a Russian liberal or kreakly steps out of line or fails to sing from the same hymn sheet they will be ostracised and labelled a Putin/Kremlin lackey.

To be a Russian liberal or kreakly is to be a member of a religion, to be a believer in "Westernism" as Karlin coins it. Russian liberal or kreakly is a lay person who has no right to question or challenge the high priests of Westernism, to do so is heresy and will condemn you to become a benighted undemocratic uncivilised Russian heathen again.

The treat of Gorbachev and Solzhenitsyn by the Western media is evidence that the West has no respect for any Russian political figure or dissident that goes off message and goes off the reservation.

Russian liberals and kreaklies only function is to denigrate their own country and people incessantly. If a Russian liberal or kreaklies, dares to defend the Russian perspective or interests, then they cease being a liberal or a kreakly.

To be a Russian liberal or kreakly to have a fanatical belief that the West is right all the time and on everything.

[Mar 21, 2015] Propaganda Shouldn't Pay by NICK COHEN

July/August 2014 | standpointmag.co.uk

Spinner-in-chief: Every tinpot PR now thinks he is Alastair Campbell

As with Nye Bevan and Conservatives so with me and PR departments: "No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for press officers. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin." Or as the BBC's economics editor Robert Peston put it in his recent Charles Wheeler lecture, "I have never been in any doubt that PRs are the enemy."

Let me explain how they are the nearest thing to prostitutes you can find in public life. You might say that biased reporters look more like sex workers, as they try to satisfy their readers' every whim. But there is a small difference. The biased journalist occasionally tells the truth. He might produce propaganda, but his bias or that of his editor will cause him to investigate stories conventional wisdom does not notice. Right-wing journalists uncover truths about corruption in the European Union. Left-wing journalists discover truths about the crimes of Nato armies. They look at scandals others ignore precisely because they do not think like level-headed and respectable members of the mainstream.

Press officers have no concern with truth. It is not that all of them lie - although many do - rather that truth and falsity are irrelevant to their work. Their sole concern is to defend their employers' interests. That they can manipulate on behalf of central government, local authority and other public bodies is an under-acknowledged scandal. The party in power that wishes to stop public scrutiny, or the NHS trust whose executives wish to maintain their positions, use taxpayer funds to advance their personal or political interests. If anyone else did the same, we would call them thieves.

It makes no difference who is in office. Conservatives complained about the spin and manipulation of New Labour but they are no different now. Indeed they are playing tricks those of us who lived through the Blair years haven't seen before.

They withhold information from journalists in the hope of killing a story. If reporters publish nevertheless - as they should - the government tells their editors and anyone else who will listen that they are shoddy hacks who failed to put the other side of the story. An alternative tactic is for press officers to phone up at night, just after an article has appeared online, and try to bamboozle late-duty editors into making changes. I have had the Crown Prosecution Service and the BBC try to pull that one on me. That neither institution is in the political thick of it only goes to show that every dandruff-ridden PR in every backwater office now thinks he is Alastair Campbell.

Politicians and senior civil servants do not rate state-sponsored propagandists by their ability to tell the public what is done in their name with their money. Like corporate chief executives and celebrities, they judge them by their ability to keep uncomfortable stories out of the press.

Compare PRs with other despised trades. Journalists have blown the whistle on journalistic malpractice. Bankers have blown the whistle on financial malpractice. But I have never heard of a press officer going straight and coming clean by explaining how his government department or corporation manipulated public opinion.

Once you could have said that my comparison between press officers and prostitutes was unfair - to prostitutes. Poverty and drug addiction drives women on to the street. Press officers are not heroin addicts or the victims of child abuse. Nor do the equivalent of sex traffickers kidnap media studies graduates and force them to work in "comms". PRs do not do what they do because a cruel world has left them with no alternative to selling their souls, but because they want to.

But that is no longer quite right. As the web destroys the media's business model, PR is where the jobs are. Students leave university and go straight into PR or hang around newsrooms for a few years on internships and petty payments before giving up and joining the former reporters in PR departments.

A profound shift in the balance of power is under way, and the advantage lies with those who can buy coverage. You can see it on the screen and in the press. Television royal coverage is run by Buckingham Palace - I always tell foreigners that if they want to know what Britain would look like if it were a dictatorship, they should watch how the BBC reports the monarchy. Travel journalism is advertising in all but name. Press offices give travel "journalists" free holidays and they repay the favour in kind copy. Political coverage is still of a high quality, but the state-funded BBC is always open to attack from the state's spin doctors. Meanwhile most serious news, business and arts journalism remains clean, but Private Eye has reported anger among Daily Telegraph journalists about the advertising department's attempts to influence what they write.

Such conflicts will grow. The web has made most newspapers imitate most television stations. They give away their content and rely on advertising for an income. At the same time, the web has lowered the price of advertising by making a vast number of new outlets available to advertisers. In his speech, which is worth reading in full online, Peston said: "News that is a disguised advert, or has been tainted by commercial interests, is not worth the name." But the need for money is pushing newspapers into creating more cloaked commercials.

Without sales revenue or conventional advertising revenue, media marketing departments are offering what they call "native" advertisements: commercials disguised as news features. Peston says BBC executives are thinking of doing the same - though how they could hope to retain public funding if they do is beyond me. Readers may not be aware that the videos they are watching or the stories they are reading are "sponsored content", and that is the point. Manipulation works best when no one realises it is happening. PR departments aren't just influencing or stifling news, but creating it, and passing off advertisements as independent journalism.

We are heading towards a media future that is not worth having. To avoid it we will need strict controls, backed by criminal sanctions, against the use of public money for propaganda, and a popular revolt against a pestilential trade. A start could be made by journalists. We should refuse to speak to press officers unless we intend to give them the ridicule and contempt they deserve.

Anonymous

September 8th, 2014
8:09 PM

I don't know whether to laugh or cry and the irony and stupidity of the comparison between PR's and 'sex workers'. This is written by someone who is clearly unable to cast a critical eye on the propaganda campaign which upholds the nasty power structures between men and the women that they demonise in order to exploit. Maybe he can have a decent opinion on propaganda without being aware of how it is saturated into his own understanding of the world but dear God what a way to undermine oneself only a few lines into to a rant against propaganda. Laugh or give up all hope? The predictable defences, outrage and mocking of the other commenters in response to this will probably means hopelessness is the appropriate response.

Captain Nemo Vero

July 30th, 2014
7:07 PM

Cohen ignores (among so much else) the blithe and cosy relationship between the BBC and Guardian on the one hand and "campaigning organizations" on the other. When Greenpeace claimed what they called "bottom-trawlering" (must be something done on Hampstead Heath; I think they mean "bottom trawling", or dredging) "destroyed 10,000 species", they did so without one shred of scientific evidence. Nonetheless, the story was given a DPS in the Times and The Guardian before the PR department at a fishing industry body forced a retraction.

The same PR department won an apology from The Times over inaccurate posters in the London underground falsely repeating Daniel Pauly's now-recanted saw that there would be no fish left in the sea by 2048; and so on and so on.

The liars and whores among journalists (since when is it a "profession" by the way? That implies a barrier to entry, and there is no such thing in journalism)also need exposition, and to ignore this fact is to ignore reality.

Anon

July 28th, 2014
4:07 PM

Nick makes the good point that the balance of power is changing. There used to be lots of journalists with enough time on their hands to properly research a story. That isn't the case now. It means that an increasing amount of copy is PR-generated. Given the financial travails of most media outlets I can't see that changing. A journalist under pressure to fill his/her publication must be tempted to believe any old guff. There is an answer - the internet. I see very many well-informed blogs. I learn more from them than I do from the BBC or newspapers. It's a shame that so few people read them.

Countdown2

July 10th, 2014
2:07 PM

Surely Robert Peston doesn't think the output of a future BBC which would have to pay its way by giving advertisers what they want can be any worse than the current outfit which acts like the propaganda wing of the Green Party?

Richard Whipple

July 9th, 2014
6:07 PM

So, now I have read and digested the article and I see a bunch on my colleagues in this discussion here and I have to ask: WHERE ARE YOUR VOICES IN THE MANAGEMENT OF OUR TRADE (I refuse to demean the term profession)? True press agentry is not the sum total of PR's potential to be a voice in business but how many clients call up a PR agency for a Corporate Conscience. And just where and by whom is this work taught? After three decades work on multiple continents with Fortune 100 companies I am willing to intuit that a good 99% of calls into the name brand PR agencies, which are all controlled by three corporations, are for perception management rather than Corporate Conscience/Governance work.

*** Press officers have no concern with truth. truth and falsity are irrelevant to their work. ***

This is spot on. PRSA pays lip service to ethics but without a revocable professional license, the service to the public is meaningless spin. And they do not want to pursue a licensing agenda. Rather they shame whistleblowers (contrary to policy).

*** They withhold information from journalists in the hope of killing a story. ***

How we have fallen from the management of information to withholding it altogether. Technically, still information management. Amazing what multitude of sins good phrasing can cover up, no? But let's not stop there. Let's consider what PR did for the tobacco industry or in the case of American Express vs. Edward Safra.

*** I have never heard of a press officer going straight and coming clean by explaining how his government department or corporation manipulated public opinion. ***

You would have if you were in PR: Scott McClellan, Edward Bernays, Ivy Lee and others who are/were vilified. My mentor called for licensing and freely admitted his role in black public relations work for everyone: a real gun for hire. He wrote clearly worded books entitled Propaganda and Crystallizing Public Opinion. And that's where I get to the point that this trade will not be a profession – an independent symmetric voice for the public inside institutions to do the kind of work Glenn M. Broom and David M. Dozier detailed in Using Research in Public Relations.

But there is no money in that kind of Corporate Conscience work when you get crowded out of a market managed by an oligarchy of corporations, DSM IV qualified sociopathic. Better financially to play ball and those university students have debt to pay. http://earthisnotround.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/the-10-companies.jpg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5hEiANG4Uk WHERE ARE OUR FEARLESS VOICES? They are not working for the three corporations that own 90% of the industry.

andygreencreativity

July 6th, 2014
1:07 PM

Lively stirring up of debate here - and highlights the need for coherent, robust and relevant theory and definitions of what constitutes 'PR' and 'propaganda'. Can I alert you to an independent, not-for-profit global initiative which would help all sides in this debate, called #PRredefined. It currently covers issues such as 'truthiness', 'integrity' and 'values' and 'propaganda' and welcomes your input at wwww.prredefined.org

wtloild

July 3rd, 2014
2:07 PM

Fantastic piece on an point that doesn't get raised enough. I worked in local govt for 20yrs & the cancerous impact of this spin culture annoyed me throughout. However...I'll make one point in their defence - there are numerous instances where council clients go to the press attacking the authority with their very one-sided story, often a pack of lies, yet because of confidentiality rules, the council is unable to denounce those blatant untruths. I'd suggest that where an individual chooses to share their story, they then waive some right to confidentiality, and the public body can respond with the facts of the case.

Mary WillowAnonymous

July 3rd, 2014
1:07 PM

The problem is the definition of 'lie' is as difficult to pin down as a definition of 'truth' A witness under oath promises to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth- not simply to tell the 'truth'. PR is just PR speak for propaganda whenever its purpose is to deceive or mislead. If PR people had ever attended a Catholic primary school they would know from their catechism that it is perfectly possible to lie by omission and that St Peter at the pearly gates has no tick box for letting you off on a technicality.

Anon

June 27th, 2014
10:06 AM

If PRs were named by whoever quotes them the lies would reduce drastically. The anonymity they enjoy is the fuel that allows them to lie.

Oldster

June 27th, 2014
9:06 AM

'Twas ever thus, as you will recall from John Betjeman's poem "Executive" and Malcolm Muggeridge's description of PR as "organised lying".

James Matthews

June 27th, 2014
8:06 AM

Prostitutes should sue.

reluctant_pseudonym

June 26th, 2014
5:06 PM

"I have never heard of a press officer going straight and coming clean by explaining how his government department or corporation manipulated public opinion." => Damian McBride?

Tim Almond

June 26th, 2014
4:06 PM

"Compare PRs with other despised trades. Journalists have blown the whistle on journalistic malpractice. Bankers have blown the whistle on financial malpractice. But I have never heard of a press officer going straight and coming clean by explaining how his government department or corporation manipulated public opinion." Know what else PRs do? They protect business people from giving a reasonable and honest interview that is twisted into a sensational story that paints them as a villain by pushing certain elements to the fore and omitting certain aspects completely.

Julian Kavanagh

June 26th, 2014
4:06 PM

I think Nick needs to have more faith in journalists and the democratic nature of information in the internet age. I work for a FTSE100 company as a corporate PR (Julian Kavanagh is a pseudonym, by the way). When I speak to journalists (and I do so most days) I push the company line - of course - but my main job is to help journalists navigate the vast swathes of information and opinion already out there and provide background detail and context (often political) to the news that we're announcing. The point about the Telegraph is interesting. In my experience, the woeful journalism at the Telegraph is a result of Telegraph journalists being chained to their desks providing web content rather than going our and getting stories. I should also add that while my loyalty to the company is clear, the first rule of a good PR is that there are no circumstances under which it is acceptable to lie. If you don't like a question or don't want to compromise yourself, then reach for 'no comment.' If my CEO asked me to lie to a journalist, I would resign. Finally, both Robert Peston and Nick Cohen have given the impression with their diatribes against PR that they are on the side of the angels. They and their fellow journalists are clearly not - journalists have their agendas too. If they were on the side of the angels, would CEOs and other feel there is a need for press officers?

Harold

June 26th, 2014
3:06 PM

But even worse are the 'journalists' who get a by-line for regurgiating a slightly altered press release.

[Mar 21, 2015] Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror by George Washington

Mar 18, 2015 | Zero Hedge

There are many documented false flag attacks, where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.

In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally or in writing:

(1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the "Mukden Incident" or the "Manchurian Incident". The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: "Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the 'Incident' was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army …." And see this.

(2) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

(3) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

(4) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union's Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the "Winter War" against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

(5) The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and then falsely blamed it on the Nazis.

(6) The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called "Defenders of Arab Palestine", and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).

(7) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).

(8) The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.

(9) The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.

(10) The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.

(11) The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people's support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security" (and see this) (Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). And watch this BBC special. They also allegedly carried out terror attacks in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and other countries.

False flag attacks carried out pursuant tho this program include – by way of example only:

(12) In 1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that the U.S. launch "a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]".

(13) Official State Department documents show that, in 1961, the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals.

(14) As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

(15) In 1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks on nations within the Organization of American States – such as Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica – and then falsely blaming them on Cuba.

(16) The U.S. Department of Defense even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on Guantanamo."

(17) The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 … manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war.

(18) A U.S. Congressional committee admitted that – as part of its "Cointelpro" campaign – the FBI had used many provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists.

(19) A top Turkish general admitted that Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and blamed it on their enemy. He explained: "In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque." In response to the surprised correspondent's incredulous look the general said, "I am giving an example".

(20) The German government admitted (and see this) that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the outer wall of a prison and planted "escape tools" on a prisoner – a member of the Red Army Faction – which the secret service wished to frame the bombing on.

(21) A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffi's compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist trasmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.

(22) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him "to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident", thus framing the ANC for the bombing.

(23) An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author).

(24) The United States Army's 1994 publication Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces – updated in 2004 – recommends employing terrorists and using false flag operations to destabilize leftist regimes in Latin America. False flag terrorist attacks were carried out in Latin America and other regions as part of the CIA's "Dirty Wars". And see this.

(25) Similarly, a CIA "psychological operations" manual prepared by a CIA contractor for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noted the value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a "martyr" for the cause. The manual was authenticated by the U.S. government. The manual received so much publicity from Associated Press, Washington Post and other news coverage that – during the 1984 presidential debate – President Reagan was confronted with the following question on national television:

At this moment, we are confronted with the extraordinary story of a CIA guerrilla manual for the anti-Sandinista contras whom we are backing, which advocates not only assassinations of Sandinistas but the hiring of criminals to assassinate the guerrillas we are supporting in order to create martyrs.

(26) An Indonesian fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that "elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked".

(27) Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion).

(28) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

(29) The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.

(30) As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror".

(31) Senior police officials in Genoa, Italy admitted that – in July 2001, at the G8 summit in Genoa – planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer, in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters.

(32) The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war. Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is "overwhelming" that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime, that Cheney "probably" had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not 'doing their homework' in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction. Despite previous "lone wolf" claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the state which backed the hijackers. (Many U.S. officials have alleged that 9/11 was a false flag operation by rogue elements of the U.S. government; but such a claim is beyond the scope of this discussion. The key point is that the U.S. falsely blamed it on Iraq, when it knew Iraq had nothing to do with it.).

(33) Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country.

(34) Police outside of a 2003 European Union summit in Greece were filmed planting Molotov cocktails on a peaceful protester

(35) Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having "our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda's ranks, causing operatives to doubt others' identities and to question the validity of communications."

(36) United Press International reported in June 2005:

U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

(37) Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians.

(38) Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers (and see this).

(39) At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence.

(40) Egyptian politicians admitted (and see this) that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts in 2011 to try to discredit the protesters.

(41) A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat.

(42) The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – recently admitted that the Saudi government controls "Chechen" terrorists.

(43) High-level American sources admitted that the Turkish government – a fellow NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government.

(44) The Ukrainian security chief admits that the sniper attacks which started the Ukrainian coup were carried out in order to frame others. Ukrainian officials admit that the Ukrainian snipers fired on both sides, to create maximum chaos.

(45) Britain's spy agency has admitted (and see this) that it carries out "digital false flag" attacks on targets, framing people by writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the target.

(46) U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then "drop" automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants

(47) Similarly, police frame innocent people for crimes they didn't commit. The practice is so well-known that the New York Times noted in 1981:

In police jargon, a throwdown is a weapon planted on a victim.

Newsweek reported in 1999:

Perez, himself a former [Los Angeles Police Department] cop, was caught stealing eight pounds of cocaine from police evidence lockers. After pleading guilty in September, he bargained for a lighter sentence by telling an appalling story of attempted murder and a "throwdown"–police slang for a weapon planted by cops to make a shooting legally justifiable. Perez said he and his partner, Officer Nino Durden, shot an unarmed 18th Street Gang member named Javier Ovando, then planted a semiautomatic rifle on the unconscious suspect and claimed that Ovando had tried to shoot them during a stakeout.

Wikipedia notes:

As part of his plea bargain, Pérez implicated scores of officers from the Rampart Division's anti-gang unit, describing routinely beating gang members, planting evidence on suspects, falsifying reports and covering up unprovoked shootings.

(As a side note – and while not technically false flag attacks – police have been busted framing innocent people in many other ways, as well.)

So Common … There's a Name for It

A former U.S. intelligence officer recently alleged:

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own security services.

This might be an exaggeration (and – as shown above – the U.S. isn't the only one to play this terrible game). The point is that it is a very widespread strategy.

Indeed, this form of deceit is so common that it was given a name hundreds of years ago.

"False flag terrorism" is defined as a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames. Or as Wikipedia defines it:

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy's strategy of tension.

The term comes from the old days of wooden ships, when one ship would hang the flag of its enemy before attacking another ship. Because the enemy's flag, instead of the flag of the real country of the attacking ship, was hung, it was called a "false flag" attack.

Indeed, this concept is so well-accepted that rules of engagement for naval, air and land warfare all prohibit false flag attacks. Specifically, the rules of engagement state that a military force can fly the enemy's flag, imitate their markings, or dress in an enemy's clothes … but that the ruse has to be discarded before attacking.

Why are the rules of engagement so specific? Obviously, because nations have been using false flag attacks for many centuries. And the rules of engagement are at least trying to limit false flag attacks so that they aren't used as a false justification for war.

In other words, the rules of engagement themselves are an admission that false flag terrorism is a very common practice.

Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the danger of false flags:

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death".
– Adolph Hitler

"Why of course the people don't want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

"The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened".
– Josef Stalin

Reaper

These false flags depend upon the trust of their underling sheeple in their leaders and media. Trust is an opiate of each nation's sheeple. Yes, fool, your government/king/media lie to you. Terrorist is word designed to elicit an emote from you Emoting prevents thinking. Power corrupts. Government power corrupts. Media power corrupts. Stupidity enslaves.

"Cui bono" is thinking. Thinking negates blind obeying. There is no virtue, nor honor, nor self-respect in emoting to your leader's stimuli.

I think; therefore I am. I emote; therefore I'm controlled.

raywolf

you missed out the London bombings in 2005, which are riddled with errors, mistakes and evidence of it being organised by military of Britain or perhaps CIA or Israel.... the train the attackers were meant to be on, was cancelled meaning they couldn't even get into London in time to do the bombings... it's all on CCTV and yet the 'official' report just skips over that part....

George Washington

There are scores of false flags I didn't address ... I only focused on the ones that were ADMITTED.

[Mar 21, 2015] Germany riot targets new ECB headquarters in Frankfurt

Quote: "Organisers were bringing a left-wing alliance of protesters from across Germany and the rest of Europe to voice their anger at the ECB's role in austerity measures in EU member states, most recently Greece. The bank, in charge of managing the euro, is also responsible for framing eurozone policy and, along with the IMF and European Commission is part of a troika which has set conditions for bailouts in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus. A spokesman for the Blockupy movement said the troika was responsible for austerity measures which have pushed many into poverty."
BBC News

Dozens of people have been hurt and some 350 people arrested as anti-austerity demonstrators clashed with police in the German city of Frankfurt.

Police cars were set alight and stones were thrown in a protest against the opening of a new base for the European Central Bank (ECB).

Violence broke out close to the city's Alte Oper concert hall hours before the ECB building's official opening.

"Blockupy" activists are expected to attend a rally later on Wednesday.

In earlier disturbances, police in riot gear used water cannon to clear hundreds of anti-capitalist protesters from the streets around the new ECB headquarters.

Organisers were bringing a left-wing alliance of protesters from across Germany and the rest of Europe to voice their anger at the ECB's role in austerity measures in EU member states, most recently Greece.

The bank, in charge of managing the euro, is also responsible for framing eurozone policy and, along with the IMF and European Commission is part of a troika which has set conditions for bailouts in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus.

A spokesman for the Blockupy movement said the troika was responsible for austerity measures which have pushed many into poverty.

Police set up a cordon of barbed wire outside the bank's new 185m (600ft) double-tower skyscraper, next to the River Main.

But hopes of a peaceful rally were dashed as clashes began early on Wednesday.

Tyres and rubbish bins were set alight and police responded with water cannon as firefighters complained they were unable to get to the fires to put them out. One fire engine appeared to have had its windscreen broken.

Activists said many protesters had been hurt by police batons, water cannon and by pepper spray.

Police said as many as 80 of their officers had been affected by pepper spray or an acidic liquid. Eight suffered injuries from stone-throwing protesters.

Police spokeswoman Claudia Rogalski spoke of an "aggressive atmosphere" and the Frankfurt force tweeted images of a police van being attacked. They were braced for further violence as increasing numbers of activists arrived for the rally.

Blockupy accused police of using kettling tactics to cordon off hundreds of protesters and appealed for supporters to press for their release.

What is Blockupy?

Europe-wide alliance of left-wing parties, unions and movements Vehemently against austerity polices of European Commission, ECB and IMF First Frankfurt protest attracted thousands in 2012 Activists from Greece's radical left governing party Syriza and Spain's anti-corruption Podemos are joining the rally
Also includes Germany's Die Linke and Occupy Frankfurt

Rallying call: "They want capitalism without democracy, we want democracy without capitalism"

As the number of protesters grew in the streets away from the new ECB building, the bank's president, Mario Draghi, gave a speech marking its inauguration.

Mr Draghi said that the it "may not be a fair charge" to label the ECB as the main perpetrator of unpopular austerity in Europe.

"Our action has been aimed precisely at cushioning the shocks suffered by the economy," he said.

"But as the central bank of the whole euro area, we must listen very carefully to what all our citizens are saying."

The new headquarters, which had been due to open years earlier, cost an estimated €1.3bn (Ł930m; $1.4bn) to build and is the new home for thousands of central bankers.

Blockupy activists said on their website that there was nothing to celebrate about the politics of austerity and increasing poverty.

[Mar 20, 2015] Rethinking the National Interest by Condoleezza Rice

If you compare this with Nuland's recent testimony, it's clear Condoleezza Rice was higher quality diplomat then Victoria Nuland. Both are neocons although Ms. Rise was less supportive of Israel. But true to neocon doctrine when she said "especially because in 2000 we hoped that it was moving closer to us in terms of values." she means neoliberal values (aka "Washington consensus") under which Russia should play the role of vassal of the USA (like all other countries). A colony.
You should replace "democratization" with "neoliberalization" globally in the text to understand the real interests she defends.
July 1, 2008 | Foreign Affairs

Listen to this essay on CFR.org

What is the national interest? This is a question that I took up in 2000 in these pages. That was a time that we as a nation revealingly called "the post-Cold War era." We knew better where we had been than where we were going. Yet monumental changes were unfolding -- changes that were recognized at the time but whose implications were largely unclear.

And then came the attacks of September 11, 2001. As in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States was swept into a fundamentally different world. We were called to lead with a new urgency and with a new perspective on what constituted threats and what might emerge as opportunities. And as with previous strategic shocks, one can cite elements of both continuity and change in our foreign policy since the attacks of September 11.

What has not changed is that our relations with traditional and emerging great powers still matter to the successful conduct of policy. Thus, my admonition in 2000 that we should seek to get right the "relationships with the big powers" -- Russia, China, and emerging powers such as India and Brazil -- has consistently guided us. As before, our alliances in the Americas, Europe, and Asia remain the pillars of the international order, and we are now transforming them to meet the challenges of a new era.

What has changed is, most broadly, how we view the relationship between the dynamics within states and the distribution of power among them. As globalization strengthens some states, it exposes and exacerbates the failings of many others -- those too weak or poorly governed to address challenges within their borders and prevent them from spilling out and destabilizing the international order. In this strategic environment, it is vital to our national security that states be willing and able to meet the full range of their sovereign responsibilities, both beyond their borders and within them. This new reality has led us to some significant changes in our policy. We recognize that democratic state building is now an urgent component of our national interest. And in the broader Middle East, we recognize that freedom and democracy are the only ideas that can, over time, lead to just and lasting stability, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As in the past, our policy has been sustained not just by our strength but also by our values. The United States has long tried to marry power and principle -- realism and idealism. At times, there have been short-term tensions between them. But we have always known where our long-term interests lie. Thus, the United States has not been neutral about the importance of human rights or the superiority of democracy as a form of government, both in principle and in practice. This uniquely American realism has guided us over the past eight years, and it must guide us over the years to come.

GREAT POWER, OLD AND NEW

By necessity, our relationships with Russia and China have been rooted more in common interests than common values. With Russia, we have found common ground, as evidenced by the "strategic framework" agreement that President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed in Sochi in March of this year. Our relationship with Russia has been sorely tested by Moscow's rhetoric, by its tendency to treat its neighbors as lost "spheres of influence," and by its energy policies that have a distinct political tinge. And Russia's internal course has been a source of considerable disappointment, especially because in 2000 we hoped that it was moving closer to us in terms of values.

Yet it is useful to remember that Russia is not the Soviet Union. It is neither a permanent enemy nor a strategic threat. Russians now enjoy greater opportunity and, yes, personal freedom than at almost any other time in their country's history. But that alone is not the standard to which Russians themselves want to be held. Russia is not just a great power; it is also the land and culture of a great people. And in the twenty-first century, greatness is increasingly defined by the technological and economic development that flows naturally in open and free societies. That is why the full development both of Russia and of our relationship with it still hangs in the balance as the country's internal transformation unfolds.

The last eight years have also challenged us to deal with rising Chinese influence, something we have no reason to fear if that power is used responsibly. We have stressed to Beijing that with China's full membership in the international community comes responsibilities, whether in the conduct of its economic and trade policy, its approach to energy and the environment, or its policies in the developing world. China's leaders increasingly realize this, and they are moving, albeit slowly, to a more cooperative approach on a range of problems. For instance, on Darfur, after years of unequivocally supporting Khartoum, China endorsed the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the deployment of a hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force and dispatched an engineering battalion to pave the way for those peacekeepers. China needs to do much more on issues such as Darfur, Burma, and Tibet, but we sustain an active and candid dialogue with China's leaders on these challenges.

The United States, along with many other countries, remains concerned about China's rapid development of high-tech weapons systems. We understand that as countries develop, they will modernize their armed forces. But China's lack of transparency about its military spending and doctrine and its strategic goals increases mistrust and suspicion. Although Beijing has agreed to take incremental steps to deepen U.S.-Chinese military-to-military exchanges, it needs to move beyond the rhetoric of peaceful intentions toward true engagement in order to reassure the international community.

Our relationships with Russia and China are complex and characterized simultaneously by competition and cooperation. But in the absence of workable relations with both of these states, diplomatic solutions to many international problems would be elusive. Transnational terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, climate change and instability stemming from poverty and disease -- these are dangers to all successful states, including those that might in another time have been violent rivals. It is incumbent on the United States to find areas of cooperation and strategic agreement with Russia and China, even when there are significant differences.

Obviously, Russia and China carry special responsibility and weight as fellow permanent members of the UN Security Council, but this has not been the only forum in which we have worked together. Another example has emerged in Northeast Asia with the six-party framework. The North Korean nuclear issue could have led to conflict among the states of Northeast Asia, or to the isolation of the United States, given the varied and vital interests of China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. Instead, it has become an opportunity for cooperation and coordination as the efforts toward verifiable denuclearization proceed. And when North Korea tested a nuclear device last year, the five other parties already were an established coalition and went quickly to the Security Council for a Chapter 7 resolution. That, in turn, put considerable pressure on North Korea to return to the six-party talks and to shut down and begin disabling its Yongbyon reactor. The parties intend to institutionalize these habits of cooperation through the establishment of a Northeast Asian Peace and Security Mechanism -- a first step toward a security forum in the region.

The importance of strong relations with global players extends to those that are emerging. With those, particularly India and Brazil, the United States has built deeper and broader ties. India stands on the front lines of globalization. This democratic nation promises to become a global power and an ally in shaping an international order rooted in freedom and the rule of law. Brazil's success at using democracy and markets to address centuries of pernicious social inequality has global resonance. Today, India and Brazil look outward as never before, secure in their ability to compete and succeed in the global economy. In both countries, national interests are being redefined as Indians and Brazilians realize their direct stake in a democratic, secure, and open international order -- and their commensurate responsibilities for strengthening it and defending it against the major transnational challenges of our era. We have a vital interest in the success and prosperity of these and other large multiethnic democracies with global reach, such as Indonesia and South Africa. And as these emerging powers change the geopolitical landscape, it will be important that international institutions also change to reflect this reality. This is why President Bush has made clear his support for a reasonable expansion of the UN Security Council.

SHARED VALUES AND SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

As important as relations are with Russia and China, it is our work with our allies, those with whom we share values, that is transforming international politics -- for this work presents an opportunity to expand the ranks of well-governed, law-abiding democratic states in our world and to defeat challenges to this vision of international order. Cooperation with our democratic allies, therefore, should not be judged simply by how we relate to one another. It should be judged by the work we do together to defeat terrorism and extremism, meet global challenges, defend human rights and dignity, and support new democracies.

In the Americas, this has meant strengthening our ties with strategic democracies such as Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile in order to further the democratic development of our hemisphere. Together, we have supported struggling states, such as Haiti, in locking in their transitions to democracy and security. Together, we are defending ourselves against drug traffickers, criminal gangs, and the few autocratic outliers in our democratic hemisphere. The region still faces challenges, including Cuba's coming transition and the need to support, unequivocally, the Cuban people's right to a democratic future. There is no doubt that centuries-old suspicions of the United States persist in the region. But we have begun to write a new narrative that speaks not only to macroeconomic development and trade but also to the need for democratic leaders to address problems of social justice and inequality.

I believe that one of the most compelling stories of our time is our relationship with our oldest allies. The goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace is very close to completion. The United States welcomes a strong, united, and coherent Europe. There is no doubt that the European Union has been a superb anchor for the democratic evolution of eastern Europe after the Cold War. Hopefully, the day will come when Turkey takes its place in the EU.

Membership in the EU and NATO has been attractive enough to lead countries to make needed reforms and to seek the peaceful resolution of long-standing conflicts with their neighbors. The reverse has been true as well: the new members have transformed these two pillars of the transatlantic relationship. Twelve of the 28 members of NATO are former "captive nations," countries once in the Soviet sphere. The effect of their joining the alliance is felt in a renewed dedication to promoting and protecting democracy. Whether sending troops to Afghanistan or Iraq or fiercely defending the continued expansion of NATO, these states have brought new energy and fervor to the alliance.

In recent years, the mission and the purpose of the alliance have also been transformed. Indeed, many can remember when NATO viewed the world in two parts: Europe and "out of area," which was basically everywhere else. If someone had said in 2000 that NATO today would be rooting out terrorists in Kandahar, training the security forces of a free Iraq, providing critical support to peacekeepers in Darfur, and moving forward on missile defenses, hopefully in partnership with Russia, who would have believed him? The endurance and resilience of the transatlantic alliance is one reason that I believe Lord Palmerston got it wrong when he said that nations have no permanent allies. The United States does have permanent allies: the nations with whom we share common values.

Democratization is also deepening across the Asia-Pacific region. This is expanding our circle of allies and advancing the goals we share. Indeed, although many assume that the rise of China will determine the future of Asia, so, too -- and perhaps to an even greater degree -- will the broader rise of an increasingly democratic community of Asian states. This is the defining geopolitical event of the twenty-first century, and the United States is right in the middle of it. We enjoy a strong, democratic alliance with Australia, with key states in Southeast Asia, and with Japan -- an economic giant that is emerging as a "normal" state, capable of working to secure and spread our values both in Asia and beyond. South Korea, too, has become a global partner whose history can boast an inspiring journey from poverty and dictatorship to democracy and prosperity. Finally, the United States has a vital stake in India's rise to global power and prosperity, and relations between the two countries have never been stronger or broader. It will take continued work, but this is a dramatic breakthrough for both our strategic interests and our values.

It is now possible to speak of emerging democratic allies in Africa as well. Too often, Africa is thought of only as a humanitarian concern or a zone of conflict. But the continent has seen successful transitions to democracy in several states, among them Ghana, Liberia, Mali, and Mozambique. Our administration has worked to help the democratic leaders of these and other states provide for their people -- most of all by attacking the continental scourge of HIV/AIDS in an unprecedented effort of power, imagination, and mercy. We have also been an active partner in resolving conflicts -- from the conclusion of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the civil war between the North and the South in Sudan, to active engagement in the Great Lakes region, to the intervention of a small contingent of U.S. military forces in coordination with the African Union to end the conflict in Liberia. Although conflicts in Darfur, Somalia, and other places tragically remain violent and unresolved, it is worth noting the considerable progress that African states are making on many fronts and the role that the United States has played in supporting African efforts to solve the continent's greatest problems.

A DEMOCRATIC MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT

Although the United States' ability to influence strong states is limited, our ability to enhance the peaceful political and economic development of weak and poorly governed states can be considerable. We must be willing to use our power for this purpose -- not only because it is necessary but also because it is right. Too often, promoting democracy and promoting development are thought of as separate goals. In fact, it is increasingly clear that the practices and institutions of democracy are essential to the creation of sustained, broad-based economic development -- and that market-driven development is essential to the consolidation of democracy. Democratic development is a unified political-economic model, and it offers the mix of flexibility and stability that best enables states to seize globalization's opportunities and manage its challenges. And for those who think otherwise: What real alternative worthy of America is there?

Democratic development is not only an effective path to wealth and power; it is also the best way to ensure that these benefits are shared justly across entire societies, without exclusion, repression, or violence. We saw this recently in Kenya, where democracy enabled civil society, the press, and business leaders to join together to insist on an inclusive political bargain that could stem the country's slide into ethnic cleansing and lay a broader foundation for national reconciliation. In our own hemisphere, democratic development has opened up old, elite-dominated systems to millions on the margins of society. These people are demanding the benefits of citizenship long denied them, and because they are doing so democratically, the real story in our hemisphere since 2001 is not that our neighbors have given up on democracy and open markets; it is that they are broadening our region's consensus in support of democratic development by ensuring that it leads to social justice for the most marginalized citizens.

The untidiness of democracy has led some to wonder if weak states might not be better off passing through a period of authoritarian capitalism. A few countries have indeed succeeded with this model, and its allure is only heightened when democracy is too slow in delivering or incapable of meeting high expectations for a better life. Yet for every state that embraces authoritarianism and manages to create wealth, there are many, many more that simply make poverty, inequality, and corruption worse. For those that are doing pretty well economically, it is worth asking whether they might be doing even better with a freer system. Ultimately, it is at least an open question whether authoritarian capitalism is itself an indefinitely sustainable model. Is it really possible in the long run for governments to respect their citizen's talents but not their rights? I, for one, doubt it.

For the United States, promoting democratic development must remain a top priority. Indeed, there is no realistic alternative that we can -- or should -- offer to influence the peaceful evolution of weak and poorly governed states. The real question is not whether to pursue this course but how.

We first need to recognize that democratic development is always possible but never fast or easy. This is because democracy is really the complex interplay of democratic practices and culture. In the experience of countless nations, ours especially, we see that culture is not destiny. Nations of every culture, race, religion, and level of development have embraced democracy and adapted it to their own circumstances and traditions. No cultural factor has yet been a stumbling block -- not German or Japanese "militarism," not "Asian values," not African "tribalism," not Latin America's alleged fondness for caudillos, not the once-purported preference of eastern Europeans for despotism.

The fact is, few nations begin the democratic journey with a democratic culture. The vast majority create one over time -- through the hard, daily struggle to make good laws, build democratic institutions, tolerate differences, resolve them peacefully, and share power justly. Unfortunately, it is difficult to grow the habits of democracy in the controlled environment of authoritarianism, to have them ready and in place when tyranny is lifted. The process of democratization is likely to be messy and unsatisfactory, but it is absolutely necessary. Democracy, it is said, cannot be imposed, particularly by a foreign power. This is true but beside the point. It is more likely that tyranny has to be imposed.

The story today is rarely one of peoples resisting the basics of democracy -- the right to choose those who will govern them and other basic freedoms. It is, instead, about people choosing democratic leaders and then becoming impatient with them and holding them accountable on their duty to deliver a better life. It is strongly in our national interest to help sustain these leaders, support their countries' democratic institutions, and ensure that their new governments are capable of providing for their own security, especially when their nations have experienced crippling conflicts. To do so will require long-term partnerships rooted in mutual responsibility and the integration of all elements of our national power -- political, diplomatic, economic, and, at times, military. We have recently built such partnerships to great effect with countries as different as Colombia, Lebanon, and Liberia. Indeed, a decade ago, Colombia was on the verge of failure. Today, in part because of our long-term partnership with courageous leaders and citizens, Colombia is emerging as a normal nation, with democratic institutions that are defending the country, governing justly, reducing poverty, and contributing to international security.

We must now build long-term partnerships with other new and fragile democracies, especially Afghanistan. The basics of democracy are taking root in this country after nearly three decades of tyranny, violence, and war. For the first time in their history, Afghans have a government of the people, elected in presidential and parliamentary elections, and guided by a constitution that codifies the rights of all citizens. The challenges in Afghanistan do not stem from a strong enemy. The Taliban offers a political vision that very few Afghans embrace. Rather, they exploit the current limitations of the Afghan government, using violence against civilians and revenues from illegal narcotics to impose their rule. Where the Afghan government, with support from the international community, has been able to provide good governance and economic opportunity, the Taliban is in retreat. The United States and NATO have a vital interest in supporting the emergence of an effective, democratic Afghan state that can defeat the Taliban and deliver "population security" -- addressing basic needs for safety, services, the rule of law, and increased economic opportunity. We share this goal with the Afghan people, who do not want us to leave until we have accomplished our common mission. We can succeed in Afghanistan, but we must be prepared to sustain a partnership with that new democracy for many years to come.

One of our best tools for supporting states in building democratic institutions and strengthening civil society is our foreign assistance, but we must use it correctly. One of the great advances of the past eight years has been the creation of a bipartisan consensus for the more strategic use of foreign assistance. We have begun to transform our assistance into an incentive for developing states to govern justly, advance economic freedom, and invest in their people. This is the great innovation of the Millennium Challenge Account initiative. More broadly, we are now better aligning our foreign aid with our foreign policy goals -- so as to help developing countries move from war to peace, poverty to prosperity, poor governance to democracy and the rule of law. At the same time, we have launched historic efforts to help remove obstacles to democratic development -- by forgiving old debts, feeding the hungry, expanding access to education, and fighting pandemics such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. Behind all of these efforts is the overwhelming generosity of the American people, who since 2001 have supported the near tripling of the United States' official development assistance worldwide -- doubling it for Latin America and quadrupling it for Africa.

Ultimately, one of the best ways to support the growth of democratic institutions and civil society is to expand free and fair trade and investment. The very process of implementing a trade agreement or a bilateral investment treaty helps to hasten and consolidate democratic development. Legal and political institutions that can enforce property rights are better able to protect human rights and the rule of law. Independent courts that can resolve commercial disputes can better resolve civil and political disputes. The transparency needed to fight corporate corruption makes it harder for political corruption to go unnoticed and unpunished. A rising middle class also creates new centers of social power for political movements and parties. Trade is a divisive issue in our country right now, but we must not forget that it is essential not only for the health of our domestic economy but also for the success our foreign policy.

There will always be humanitarian needs, but our goal must be to use the tools of foreign assistance, security cooperation, and trade together to help countries graduate to self-sufficiency. We must insist that these tools be used to promote democratic development. It is in our national interest to do so.

THE CHANGING MIDDLE EAST

What about the broader Middle East, the arc of states that stretches from Morocco to Pakistan? The Bush administration's approach to this region has been its most vivid departure from prior policy. But our approach is, in reality, an extension of traditional tenets -- incorporating human rights and the promotion of democratic development into a policy meant to further our national interest. What is exceptional is that the Middle East was treated as an exception for so many decades. U.S. policy there focused almost exclusively on stability. There was little dialogue, certainly not publicly, about the need for democratic change.

For six decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, a basic bargain defined the United States' engagement in the broader Middle East: we supported authoritarian regimes, and they supported our shared interest in regional stability. After September 11, it became increasingly clear that this old bargain had produced false stability. There were virtually no legitimate channels for political expression in the region. But this did not mean that there was no political activity. There was -- in madrasahs and radical mosques. It is no wonder that the best-organized political forces were extremist groups. And it was there, in the shadows, that al Qaeda found the troubled souls to prey on and exploit as its foot soldiers in its millenarian war against the "far enemy."

One response would have been to fight the terrorists without addressing this underlying cause. Perhaps it would have been possible to manage these suppressed tensions for a while. Indeed, the quest for justice and a new equilibrium on which the nations of the broader Middle East are now embarked is very turbulent. But is it really worse than the situation before? Worse than when Lebanon suffered under the boot of Syrian military occupation? Worse than when the self-appointed rulers of the Palestinians personally pocketed the world's generosity and squandered their best chance for a two-state peace? Worse than when the international community imposed sanctions on innocent Iraqis in order to punish the man who tyrannized them, threatened Iraq's neighbors, and bulldozed 300,000 human beings into unmarked mass graves? Or worse than the decades of oppression and denied opportunity that spawned hopelessness, fed hatreds, and led to the sort of radicalization that brought about the ideology behind the September 11 attacks? Far from being the model of stability that some seem to remember, the Middle East from 1945 on was wracked repeatedly by civil conflicts and cross-border wars. Our current course is certainly difficult, but let us not romanticize the old bargains of the Middle East -- for they yielded neither justice nor stability.

The president's second inaugural address and my speech at the American University in Cairo in June 2005 have been held up as rhetorical declarations that have faded in the face of hard realities. No one will argue that the goal of democratization and modernization in the broader Middle East lacks ambition, and we who support it fully acknowledge that it will be a difficult, generational task. No one event, and certainly not a speech, will bring it into being. But if America does not set the goal, no one will.

This goal is made more complicated by the fact that the future of the Middle East is bound up in many of our other vital interests: energy security, nonproliferation, the defense of friends and allies, the resolution of old conflicts, and, most of all, the need for near-term partners in the global struggle against violent Islamist extremism. To state, however, that we must promote either our security interests or our democratic ideals is to present a false choice. Admittedly, our interests and our ideals do come into tension at times in the short term. America is not an NGO and must balance myriad factors in our relations with all countries. But in the long term, our security is best ensured by the success of our ideals: freedom, human rights, open markets, democracy, and the rule of law.

The leaders and citizens of the broader Middle East are now searching for answers to the fundamental questions of modern state building: What are to be the limits on the state's use of power, both within and beyond its borders? What will be the role of the state in the lives of its citizens and the relationship between religion and politics? How will traditional values and mores be reconciled with the democratic promise of individual rights and liberty, particularly for women and girls? How is religious and ethnic diversity to be accommodated in fragile political institutions when people tend to hold on to traditional associations? The answers to these and other questions can come only from within the Middle East itself. The task for us is to support and shape these difficult processes of change and to help the nations of the region overcome several major challenges to their emergence as modern, democratic states.

The first challenge is the global ideology of violent Islamist extremism, as embodied by groups, such as al Qaeda, that thoroughly reject the basic tenets of modern politics, seeking instead to topple sovereign states, erase national borders, and restore the imperial structure of the ancient caliphate. To resist this threat, the United States will need friends and allies in the region who are willing and able to take action against the terrorists among them. Ultimately, however, this is more than just a struggle of arms; it is a contest of ideas. Al Qaeda's theory of victory is to hijack the legitimate local and national grievances of Muslim societies and twist them into an ideological narrative of endless struggle against Western, especially U.S., oppression. The good news is that al Qaeda's intolerant ideology can be enforced only through brutality and violence. When people are free to choose, as we have seen in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq's Anbar Province, they reject al Qaeda's ideology and rebel against its control. Our theory of victory, therefore, must be to offer people a democratic path to advance their interests peacefully -- to develop their talents, to redress injustices, and to live in freedom and dignity. In this sense, the fight against terrorism is a kind of global counterinsurgency: the center of gravity is not the enemies we fight but the societies they are trying to radicalize.

Admittedly, our interests in both promoting democratic development and fighting terrorism and extremism lead to some hard choices, because we do need capable friends in the broader Middle East who can root out terrorists now. These states are often not democratic, so we must balance the tensions between our short-term and our long-term goals. We cannot deny nondemocratic states the security assistance to fight terrorism or defend themselves. At the same time, we must use other points of leverage to promote democracy and hold our friends to account. That means supporting civil society, as we have done through the Forum for the Future and the Middle East Partnership Initiative, and using public and private diplomacy to push our nondemocratic partners to reform. Changes are slowly coming in terms of universal suffrage, more influential parliaments, and education for girls and women. We must continue to advocate for reform and support indigenous agents of change in nondemocratic countries, even as we cooperate with their governments on security.

An example of how our administration has balanced these concerns is our relationship with Pakistan. Following years of U.S. neglect of that relationship, our administration had to establish a partnership with Pakistan's military government to achieve a common goal after September 11. We did so knowing that our security and that of Pakistan ultimately required a return to civilian and democratic rule. So even as we worked with President Pervez Musharraf to fight terrorists and extremists, we invested more than $3 billion to strengthen Pakistani society -- building schools and health clinics, providing emergency relief after the 2005 earthquake, and supporting political parties and the rule of law. We urged Pakistan's military leaders to put their country on a modern and moderate trajectory, which in some important respects they did. And when this progress was threatened last year by the declaration of emergency rule, we pushed President Musharraf hard to take off his uniform and hold free elections. Although terrorists tried to thwart the return of democracy and tragically killed many innocent people, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani people dealt extremism a crushing defeat at the polls. This restoration of democracy in Pakistan creates an opportunity for us to build the lasting and broad-based partnership that we have never achieved with this nation, thereby enhancing our security and anchoring the success of our values in a troubled region.

A second challenge to the emergence of a better Middle East is posed by aggressive states that seek not to peacefully reform the present regional order but to alter it using any form of violence -- assassination, intimidation, terrorism. The question is not whether any particular state should have influence in the region. They all do, and will. The real question is, What kind of influence will these states wield -- and to what ends, constructive or destructive? It is this fundamental and still unresolved question that is at the center of many of the geopolitical challenges in the Middle East today -- whether it is Syria's undermining of Lebanon's sovereignty, Iran's pursuit of a nuclear capability, or both states' support for terrorism.

Iran poses a particular challenge. The Iranian regime pursues its disruptive policies both through state instruments, such as the Revolutionary Guards and the al Quds force, and through nonstate proxies that extend Iranian power, such as elements of the Mahdi Army in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon and around the world. The Iranian regime seeks to subvert states and extend its influence throughout the Persian Gulf region and the broader Middle East. It threatens the state of Israel with extinction and holds implacable hostility toward the United States. And it is destabilizing Iraq, endangering U.S. forces, and killing innocent Iraqis. The United States is responding to these provocations. Clearly, an Iran with a nuclear weapon or even the technology to build one on demand would be a grave threat to international peace and security.

But there is also another Iran. It is the land of a great culture and a great people, who suffer under repression. The Iranian people deserve to be integrated into the international system, to travel freely and be educated in the best universities. Indeed, the United States has reached out to them with exchanges of sports teams, disaster-relief workers, and artists. By many accounts, the Iranian people are favorably disposed to Americans and to the United States. Our relationship could be different. Should the Iranian government honor the UN Security Council's demands and suspend its uranium enrichment and related activities, the community of nations, including the United States, is prepared to discuss the full range of issues before us. The United States has no permanent enemies.

Ultimately, the many threats that Iran poses must be seen in a broader context: that of a state fundamentally out of step with the norms and values of the international community. Iran must make a strategic choice -- a choice that we have sought to clarify with our approach -- about how and to what ends it will wield its power and influence: Does it want to continue thwarting the legitimate demands of the world, advancing its interests through violence, and deepening the isolation of its people? Or is it open to a better relationship, one of growing trade and exchange, deepening integration, and peaceful cooperation with its neighbors and the broader international community? Tehran should know that changes in its behavior would meet with changes in ours. But Iran should also know that the United States will defend its friends and its interests vigorously until the day that change comes.

A third challenge is finding a way to resolve long-standing conflicts, particularly that between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Our administration has put the idea of democratic development at the center of our approach to this conflict, because we came to believe that the Israelis will not achieve the security they deserve in their Jewish state and the Palestinians will not achieve the better life they deserve in a state of their own until there is a Palestinian government capable of exercising its sovereign responsibilities, both to its citizens and to its neighbors. Ultimately, a Palestinian state must be created that can live side by side with Israel in peace and security. This state will be born not just through negotiations to resolve hard issues related to borders, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem but also through the difficult effort to build effective democratic institutions that can fight terrorism and extremism, enforce the rule of law, combat corruption, and create opportunities for the Palestinians to improve their lives. This confers responsibilities on both parties.

As the experience of the past several years has shown, there is a fundamental disagreement at the heart of Palestinian society -- between those who reject violence and recognize Israel's right to exist and those who do not. The Palestinian people must ultimately make a choice about which future they desire, and it is only democracy that gives them that choice and holds open the possibility of a peaceful way forward to resolve the existential question at the heart of their national life. The United States, Israel, other states in the region, and the international community must do everything in their power to support those Palestinians who would choose a future of peace and compromise. When the two-state solution is finally realized, it will be because of democracy, not despite it.

This is, indeed, a controversial view, and it speaks to one more challenge that must be resolved if democratic and modern states are to emerge in the broader Middle East: how to deal with nonstate groups whose commitment to democracy, nonviolence, and the rule of law is suspect. Because of the long history of authoritarianism in the region, many of the best-organized political parties are Islamist, and some of them have not renounced violence used in the service of political goals. What should be their role in the democratic process? Will they take power democratically only to subvert the very process that brought them victory? Are elections in the broader Middle East therefore dangerous?

These questions are not easy. When Hamas won elections in the Palestinian territories, it was widely seen as a failure of policy. But although this victory most certainly complicated affairs in the broader Middle East, in another way it helped to clarify matters. Hamas had significant power before those elections -- largely the power to destroy. After the elections, Hamas also had to face real accountability for its use of power for the first time. This has enabled the Palestinian people, and the international community, to hold Hamas to the same basic standards of responsibility to which all governments should be held. Through its continued unwillingness to behave like a responsible regime rather than a violent movement, Hamas has demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of governing.

Much attention has been focused on Gaza, which Hamas holds hostage to its incompetent and brutal policies. But in other places, the Palestinians have held Hamas accountable. In the West Bank city of Qalqilya, for instance, where Hamas was elected in 2004, frustrated and fed-up Palestinians voted it out of office in the next election. If there can be a legitimate, effective, and democratic alternative to Hamas (something that Fatah has not yet been), people will likely choose it. This would especially be true if the Palestinians could live a normal life within their own state.

The participation of armed groups in elections is problematic. But the lesson is not that there should not be elections. Rather, there should be standards, like the ones to which the international community has held Hamas after the fact: you can be a terrorist group or you can be a political party, but you cannot be both. As difficult as this problem is, it cannot be the case that people are denied the right to vote just because the outcome might be unpleasant to us. Although we cannot know whether politics will ultimately deradicalize violent groups, we do know that excluding them from the political process grants them power without responsibility. This is yet another challenge that the leaders and the peoples of the broader Middle East must resolve as the region turns to democratic processes and institutions to resolve differences peacefully and without repression.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF IRAQ

Then, of course, there is Iraq, which is perhaps the toughest test of the proposition that democracy can overcome deep divisions and differences. Because Iraq is a microcosm of the region, with its layers of ethnic and sectarian diversity, the Iraqi people's struggle to build a democracy after the fall of Saddam Hussein is shifting the landscape not just of Iraq but of the broader Middle East as well.

The cost of this war, in lives and treasure, for Americans and Iraqis, has been greater than we ever imagined. This story is still being written, and will be for many years to come. Sanctions and weapons inspections, prewar intelligence and diplomacy, troop levels and postwar planning -- these are all important issues that historians will analyze for decades. But the fundamental question that we can ask and debate now is, Was removing Saddam from power the right decision? I continue to believe that it was.

After we fought one war against Saddam and then remained in a formal state of hostilities with him for over a decade, our containment policy began to erode. The community of nations was losing its will to enforce containment, and Iraq's ruler was getting increasingly good at exploiting it through programs such as oil-for-food -- indeed, more than we knew at the time. The failure of containment was increasingly evident in the UN Security Council resolutions that were passed and then violated, in our regular clashes in the no-fly zones, and in President Bill Clinton's decision to launch air strikes in 1998 and then join with Congress to make "regime change" our government's official policy in Iraq. If Saddam was not a threat, why did the community of nations keep the Iraqi people under the most brutal sanctions in modern history? In fact, as the Iraq Survey Group showed, Saddam was ready and willing to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction programs as soon as international pressure had dissipated.

The United States did not overthrow Saddam to democratize the Middle East. It did so to remove a long-standing threat to international security. But the administration was conscious of the goal of democratization in the aftermath of liberation. We discussed the question of whether we should be satisfied with the end of Saddam's rule and the rise of another strongman to replace him. The answer was no, and it was thus avowedly U.S. policy from the outset to try to support the Iraqis in building a democratic Iraq. It is important to remember that we did not overthrow Adolf Hitler to bring democracy to Germany either. But the United States believed that only a democratic Germany could ultimately anchor a lasting peace in Europe.

The democratization of Iraq and the democratization of the Middle East were thus linked. So, too, was the war on terror linked to Iraq, because our goal after September 11 was to address the deeper malignancies of the Middle East, not just the symptoms of them. It is very hard to imagine how a more just and democratic Middle East could ever have emerged with Saddam still at the center of the region.

Our effort in Iraq has been extremely arduous. Iraq was a broken state and a broken society under Saddam. We have made mistakes. That is undeniable. The explosion to the surface of long-suppressed grievances has challenged fragile, young democratic institutions. But there is no other decent and peaceful way for the Iraqis to reconcile.

As Iraq emerges from its difficulties, the impact of its transformation is being felt in the rest of the region. Ultimately, the states of the Middle East need to reform. But they need to reform their relations, too. A strategic realignment is unfolding in the broader Middle East, separating those states that are responsible and accept that the time for violence under the rubric of "resistance" has passed and those that continue to fuel extremism, terrorism, and chaos. Support for moderate Palestinians and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for democratic leaders and citizens in Lebanon have focused the energies of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the states of the Persian Gulf. They must come to see that a democratic Iraq can be an ally in resisting extremism in the region. When they invited Iraq to join the ranks of the Gulf Cooperation Council-Plus-Two (Egypt and Jordan), they took an important step in that direction.

At the same time, these countries look to the United States to stay deeply involved in their troubled region and to counter and deter threats from Iran. The United States now has the weight of its effort very much in the center of the broader Middle East. Our long-term partnerships with Afghanistan and Iraq, to which we must remain deeply committed, our new relationships in Central Asia, and our long-standing partnerships in the Persian Gulf provide a solid geostrategic foundation for the generational work ahead of helping to bring about a better, more democratic, and more prosperous Middle East.

A UNIQUELY AMERICAN REALISM

Investing in strong and rising powers as stakeholders in the international order and supporting the democratic development of weak and poorly governed states -- these broad goals for U.S. foreign policy are certainly ambitious, and they raise an obvious question: Is the United States up to the challenge, or, as some fear and assert these days, is the United States a nation in decline?

We should be confident that the foundation of American power is and will remain strong -- for its source is the dynamism, vigor, and resilience of American society. The United States still possesses the unique ability to assimilate new citizens of every race, religion, and culture into the fabric of our national and economic life. The same values that lead to success in the United States also lead to success in the world: industriousness, innovation, entrepreneurialism. All of these positive habits, and more, are reinforced by our system of education, which leads the world in teaching children not what to think but how to think -- how to address problems critically and solve them creatively.

Indeed, one challenge to the national interest is to make certain that we can provide quality education to all, especially disadvantaged children. The American ideal is one of equal opportunity, not equal outcome. This is the glue that holds together our multiethnic democracy. If we ever stop believing that what matters is not where you came from but where you are going, we will most certainly lose confidence. And an unconfident America cannot lead. We will turn inward. We will see economic competition, foreign trade and investment, and the complicated world beyond our shores not as challenges to which our nation can rise but as threats that we should avoid. That is why access to education is a critical national security issue.

We should also be confident that the foundations of the United States' economic power are strong, and will remain so. Even amid financial turbulence and international crises, the U.S. economy has grown more and faster since 2001 than the economy of any other leading industrial nation. The United States remains unquestionably the engine of global economic growth. To remain so, we must find new, more reliable, and more environmentally friendly sources of energy. The industries of the future are in the high-tech fields (including in clean energy), which our nation has led for years and in which we remain on the global cutting edge. Other nations are indeed experiencing amazing and welcome economic growth, but the United States will likely account for the largest share of global GDP for decades to come.

Even in our government institutions of national security, the foundations of U.S. power are stronger than many assume. Despite our waging two wars and rising to defend ourselves in a new global confrontation, U.S. defense spending today as a percentage of GDP is still well below the average during the Cold War. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have indeed put an enormous strain on our military, and President Bush has proposed to Congress an expansion of our force by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines. The experience of recent years has tested our armed forces, but it has also prepared a new generation of military leaders for stabilization and counterinsurgency missions, of which we will likely face more. This experience has also reinforced the urgent need for a new kind of partnership between our military and civilian institutions. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the provincial reconstruction teams that we deploy in Afghanistan and Iraq are a model of civil-military cooperation for the future.

In these pages in 2000, I decried the role of the United States, in particular the U.S. military, in nation building. In 2008, it is absolutely clear that we will be involved in nation building for years to come. But it should not be the U.S. military that has to do it. Nor should it be a mission that we take up only after states fail. Rather, civilian institutions such as the new Civilian Response Corps must lead diplomats and development workers in a whole-of-government approach to our national security challenges. We must help weak and poorly functioning states strengthen and reform themselves and thereby prevent their failure in the first place. This will require the transformation and better integration of the United States' institutions of hard power and soft power -- a difficult task and one that our administration has begun. Since 2001, the president has requested and Congress has approved a nearly 54 percent increase in funding for our institutions of diplomacy and development. And this year, the president and I asked Congress to create 1,100 new positions for the State Department and 300 new positions for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Those who follow us must build on this foundation.

Perhaps of greater concern is not that the United States lacks the capacity for global leadership but that it lacks the will. We Americans engage in foreign policy because we have to, not because we want to, and this is a healthy disposition -- it is that of a republic, not an empire. There have been times in the past eight years when we have had to do new and difficult things -- things that, at times, have tested the resolve and the patience of the American people. Our actions have not always been popular, or even well understood. The exigencies of September 12 and beyond may now seem very far away. But the actions of the United States will for many, many years be driven by the knowledge that we are in an unfair fight: we need to be right one hundred percent of the time; the terrorists, only once. Yet I find that whatever differences we and our allies have had over the last eight years, they still want a confident and engaged United States, because there are few problems in the world that can be resolved without us. We need to recognize that, too.

Ultimately, however, what will most determine whether the United States can succeed in the twenty-first century is our imagination. It is this feature of the American character that most accounts for our unique role in the world, and it stems from the way that we think about our power and our values. The old dichotomy between realism and idealism has never really applied to the United States, because we do not really accept that our national interest and our universal ideals are at odds. For our nation, it has always been a matter of perspective. Even when our interests and ideals come into tension in the short run, we believe that in the long run they are indivisible.

This has freed America to imagine that the world can always be better -- not perfect, but better -- than others have consistently thought possible. America imagined that a democratic Germany might one day be the anchor of a Europe whole, free, and at peace. America believed that a democratic Japan might one day be a source of peace in an increasingly free and prosperous Asia. America kept faith with the people of the Baltics that they would be independent and thus brought the day when NATO held a summit in Riga, Latvia. To realize these and other ambitious goals that we have imagined, America has often preferred preponderances of power that favor our values over balances of power that do not. We have dealt with the world as it is, but we have never accepted that we are powerless to change the world. Indeed, we have shown that by marrying American power and American values, we could help friends and allies expand the boundaries of what most thought realistic at the time.

How to describe this disposition of ours? It is realism, of a sort. But it is more than that -- what I have called our uniquely American realism. This makes us an incredibly impatient nation. We live in the future, not the past. We do not linger over our own history. This has led our nation to make mistakes in the past, and we will surely make more in the future. Still, it is our impatience to improve less-than-ideal situations and to accelerate the pace of change that leads to our most enduring achievements, at home and abroad.

At the same time, ironically, our uniquely American realism also makes us deeply patient. We understand how long and trying the course of democracy is. We acknowledge our birth defect, a constitution founded on a compromise that reduced my ancestors each to three-fifths of a man. Yet we are healing old wounds and living as one American people, and this shapes our engagement with the world. We support democracy not because we think ourselves perfect but because we know ourselves to be deeply imperfect. This gives us reason to be humble in our own endeavors and patient with the endeavors of others. We know that today's headlines are rarely the same as history's judgments.

An international order that reflects our values is the best guarantee of our enduring national interest, and America continues to have a unique opportunity to shape this outcome. Indeed, we already see glimpses of this better world. We see it in Kuwaiti women gaining the right to vote, in a provincial council meeting in Kirkuk, and in the improbable sight of the American president standing with democratically elected leaders in front of the flags of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the future state of Palestine. Shaping that world will be the work of a generation, but we have done such work before. And if we remain confident in the power of our values, we can succeed in such work again.

[Mar 20, 2015] Alexander Lebedev gives up bankrolling Russia's Novaya Gazeta by Roy Greenslade

Mar 20, 2015 | The Guardian

Asimpleguest -> Havingalavrov 20 Mar 2015 15:00

I found more lies and disinformation in the Western news than in the Russian news

in fact the info found on Itar-Tass, Interfax, Sputnik, RT, russia-insider, etc - can be easily verifiable and is reliable...

and another positive aspect - they do NOT use vitriolic aggressive hysterical language when writing about Western politicians - their approach is very PROFESSIONAL, polite, and down-to-earth

the Western media would re-gain their audience if they will start to report HONESTLY from both sides, unbiased...

after the lies we were fed when the press manipulated people to believe in the justice of US invading Afghanistan and Iraq - nobody in his/her right mind believe anything Western politicians said about Libya, Syria and Ukra

enough is enough - we are sick of so many lies

in Ukra the power was taken by the oligarchs after a violent armed coup staged by amer (the vulgar nullity said it clearly in the ''f**k EU'' conversation)

the democratically elected president was threatened that he will be killed like Qaddafi and run away with his family (Obama recognized that US brokered the gov change in Kiev)

President Putin - knowing that Crimeans are majority in the favour of being united with Russia and wanting to protect their military naval base in Crimea - helped Crimea to do a referendum to reunite with Russia - then US mafia was outfoxed - they imagined the NATO will easily take over Russia's base

Biden recognized that US pushed EU to apply anti-Russia sanctions (Obama admitted that US has the habit to twist the arms to make the other countries do want they want)

Donbass asked for the same rights as Crimea had with Ukraine's border
criminal illegitimate Kiev gov launched ATO - sending the far-right punitive private battalions to kill Eastern Ukrainians

Poroshenko promised PEACE and RECONCILIATION during his electoral campaign - after he was elected - he continued killing civilians in the Eastern Ukraine...

Poroshenko, Yats and their criminal gang in Kiev LOST the moral right to govern the Eastern Ukrainians!

Виталий Седин -> JohnNewcomb 20 Mar 2015 11:47

"Estonia - a country that ranks a very high #10 on RSF's World Press Freedom Index 2015."(c)

...and where 15% residents do not have basic civil rights.

Perfect example of Real Democracy (TM) for Russian Bloody Dictatorship (TM).


ijustwant2say -> Виталий Седин 20 Mar 2015 11:14

You still name nothing similar in UK/US, I note.

Are you being serious? Almost every paper or news channel you care to mention in this country has at some stage attacked the government of the day (because governments here change). Just watch Fox News in the US and see what it says about the US President. Watch the Daily Show in the US. Read this newspaper, on which you spend an inordinate amount of time commenting. The Snowden revelations weren't revealed by a Russian newspaper - but by this one and the New York Times. Stop pretending that Russia's, Kremlin controlled media, which has some of the worst press freedoms in the world, is on the same planet as media in the West. In the global press freedoms index, the UK is ranked 34, the US 49 (neither perfect), but Russia comes in at an appalling 152 out of 180 countries . Must make you proud.

ijustwant2say -> Виталий Седин 20 Mar 2015 10:45

Here's one unstoppable national-wide source of anti-Putin hysteria: http://www.echo.msk.ru/

You can only name one, I note. Most papers in this country will happily criticise the actions of the government if they feel it is justifiable. Most regard it as part of their raison d'etre. Don't try and pretend that Russia, which has some of the worst press freedoms in the world, is on the same level as the press over here. I know the press in Russia and I know the press in Europe and the US. The West has some appalling stations (e.g. Fox News) but there is a vast mainstream choice of factually based reporting. Not so much in Russia where most get their news from TV and each of the three major National TV stations are controlled by the Kremlin. How do you think Putin has managed to stay so popular in Russia, while being reviled and distrusted most other places?

Renfrow -> kolarg 20 Mar 2015 10:07

I know in Ukraine all the papers are bankrolled by various oligarchs and each one prints information in accordance with their owners' views and/or interests. Sort of like FOX and MSNBC t.v. stations in the U.S.A. piping their own particular outlook in the world events

Виталий Седин 20 Mar 2015 07:52

Is there smth. comparable with Novaya Gazeta in UK?

ID075732 20 Mar 2015 07:45

Lebedev is basically a thug. A black not a white swan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxYuHySd0LY

[Mar 18, 2015] The 'Opportunity Cost' of America's Disastrous Foreign Policy by Vlad Sobell

Mar 18, 2015 | Russia Insider

Washington is betraying the best interests of the American people through its current foreign policy... European democracy is threatened by US, not Russian, foreign policy

The avalanche of commentary since the Ukrainian crisis erupted a year ago has overshadowed any reflections on the immense forgone benefits (technically speaking, the "opportunity cost") of what might have been if Washington had been working for peace and stability instead of war and chaos.

Imagine the following: After the unraveling of the Communist bloc, Europe, in partnership with the US, had forged a new security system in which Russia was treated as a valued and equal partner – one whose interests were respected. Russia, decimated by a century of wars and Communist imperialism, would doubtless have eagerly reciprocated in kind. Most countries of the former Soviet Union would have then proceeded to build a new Eurasian structure of which Russia would have served as the natural umbrella, given its long-standing interaction with the region's diverse nations and cultures.

Indeed, as Putin himself had proposed in his visionary October 2011 article, the Eurasian Union could have become one of the pillars of a huge harmonized economic area stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok and based on the EU's single-market rules (acquis communautaire). The rising Far Eastern economic powerhouse, with the world's most populous country, China, at its centre, would have linked up with the world's largest economy (the EU). An enormous Eurasian production and financial bloc would have been created – one that drew primarily on secure supplies of Russian energy and other natural resources. Untold investment opportunities would have opened up in Siberia and Russia's Far East as well as in Central Asia. Hundreds of millions of people in Eurasia and elsewhere would have been lifted out of poverty. And, not least, the EU would have been refashioned as an integral part of the dynamic trans-Eurasian economy (rather than as a German-centred empire, as appears to be the case today), thereby making a major contribution to overcoming the ongoing global economic depression.

All of this was not to be, however. Why not? First and foremost, because the self-proclaimed "exceptional" power (actually, a mere "outlying island" in the Atlantic, according to the founder of geopolitics, Halford Mackinder) and its dysfunctional "deep-state" officialdom did not want it to be. How could they have permitted such a thing? How could they have allowed other countries to get on with improving the lives of their citizens without being obliged to seek Washington's approval every step of the way?

European democracy is threatened by US, not Russian, foreign policy

In order to make sure that they were not side-lined, the US elites had to intervene. The Western propaganda machine started churning out all sorts of nonsense that Putin is a new Hitler who is bent on restoring the Soviet empire and who is bullying Europe, while continuing to bang on about his "increasingly autocratic rule". Deadly attacks by chauvinistic proxies were launched on the Russophone people in South Ossetia, Georgia in 2008 and more recently in Ukraine. And in what is eerily reminiscent of Stalinist "bloc discipline", the EU/NATO nomenclature was ordered to implement the absurd strategy of severing the Russian economy from the EU. For their part, the cowering Eurocrats willingly obliged by imposing sanctions on Russia that, perversely, have had a negative impact on their own economies (but, let it be stressed, not that of the US). No questions raised and no public debate on the wisdom of such a strategy permitted.

Stuck in an Orwellian nightmare, Europe has to demonstrate its unfailing loyalty to Big Brother and go along with the view that Russia, an intrinsic and valuable part of the European mainstream both historically and culturally, represents universal evil and that the Earth will not be safe until the Federation has been dismembered and Putinism wiped out once and for all.

This abuse and humiliation of Europe is unparalleled. The continent that gave the world the wonders of the Antiquity, modern democracy, the industrial revolution and what is arguably the greatest tradition of philosophy, fine arts and classical music is being bullied by its oversized offspring. Having self-destructed in two world wars, it has become an easy and even willing prey to an arrogant, ignorant and power-drunk predator that has never experienced the hardships and horrors that Europe has. War and extermination camps are etched into the European DNA. America "knows" about them only from afar – and, not least, from the Hollywood entertainment industry.

Even more terrifying, intellectually third-rate Washington viceroys such as Victoria Nuland and the freelancing armchair warrior Senator McCain are allowed to play God with our continent. The so-called European "leaders" are colluding with them in plunging Europe into the abyss and thereby risking nuclear confrontation.

America, too, is a loser

But this is not just a tragedy for Europe and Eurasia. We are also witnessing the wilful misrule of America and, by default, of the entire West. Indeed, Washington is betraying the best interests of the American people through its current foreign policy. The "democracy-promoters" running Washington's foreign-policy apparatus apparently do not understand that America has nothing to lose and a lot to gain from the Eurasian economic project: the rising tide of global economic welfare would lift everyone's boats, including its own. Why should it matter to Washington if the rising tide comes from other quarters beyond its control?

Indeed, the damage extends beyond the economy. By aligning with the forces of chaos – such as chauvinistic extremists in Ukraine – Washington and its Euro-vassals are corrupting the moral (and intellectual) core of the West. If it continues to support such forces against Russia, united Europe will lose not only its backbone but its very soul. The moral consequences of this loss will be enormous and could lead to the precipitous erosion of Western democracy.

The 'autocrats' want to work with the West, not against it

US and EU leaders believe that the Russian and Chinese "autocrats" are out to destroy the West because the latter hate freedom (as George W. Bush might have put it). And hence, they argue, the autocrats must be stopped in their tracks. The simple truth is that Western leaders are too blinkered to understand that far from desiring to destroy the West, Russia and China want it to prosper so that they can work with it to everyone's benefit. Having enjoyed a privileged position over several centuries and having attained unprecedented prosperity in recent decades, the West simply cannot understand that the rest of humanity has no interest in fomenting the "clash of civilizations" but rather craves peace and stability so that it can finally improve its economic lot.

Perhaps, however, all is not yet lost. It is still possible that reason – and economic forces – will prevail and force the West to correct the errors of its ways. What we need, perhaps, more than ever is the ability to step out of the box, question our fundamental assumptions (not least about Russia and China) and find the courage to change policies that have proved disastrous. After all, critical thought, dispassionate analysis and the ability to be open to new ideas is what made the West so successful in the past. If we are to thrive once again in the future, we must resurrect these most valuable and unsurpassed assets.

Vlad Sobell teaches political economy in Prague and Berlin
Europeans Look On as US Sows Discord on the Continent
Wed, Nov 2

Tom Welsh

What I cannot understand is the naive belief that elected politicians would act in the interests of those whom they represent. Under what other circumstances do we see human beings act with disinterested altruism? So why would a bunch of people who have been ruthlessly selected for selfishness, arrogance, and callousness - a bunch of carefully chosen psychopaths, if you will - behave in that way?

'My Ph.D. dissertation chairman, who became a high Pentagon official assigned to wind down the Vietnam war, in answer to my question about how Washington gets Europeans to always do what Washington wants replied: "Money, we give them money." "Foreign aid?" I asked. "No, we give the European political leaders bagfuls of money. They are for sale. We bought them. They report to us." Perhaps this explains Tony Blair's $50 million fortune one year out of office'.

- Paul Craig Roberts

jabirujoe

"Washington is betraying the best interests of the American people through its current foreign policy".

Not only it's foreign policy but it's domestic policy as well. Let's call it for what it really is. The Wall Street/Corporate policy which is the driving force behind behind everything the US does

Toddrich

"We, the [CENSORED] people, control America and the Americans know it."
-- Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of [CENSORED]

"When we're done with the U.S. it will shrivel up and blow away."

-- Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of [CENSORED]

The welfare or future of the American people are not part of the equation.

[Mar 16, 2015] A Green Light for the American Empire by Ron Paul

March 14, 2015 | ronpaulinstitute.org

The American Empire has been long in the making. A green light was given in 1990 to finalize that goal. Dramatic events occurred that year that allowed the promoters of the American Empire to cheer. It also ushered in the current 25-year war to solidify the power necessary to manage a world empire. Most people in the world now recognize this fact and assume that the empire is here to stay for a long time. That remains to be seen.

Empires come and go. Some pop up quickly and disappear in the same manner. Others take many years to develop and sometimes many years to totally disintegrate. The old empires, like the Greek, Roman, Spanish and many others took many years to build and many years to disappear. The Soviet Empire was one that came rather quickly and dissipated swiftly after a relatively short period of time. The communist ideology took many decades to foment the agitation necessary for the people to tolerate that system.

Since 1990 the United States has had to fight many battles to convince the world that it was the only military and economic force to contend with. Most people are now convinced and are easily intimidated by our domination worldwide with the use of military force and economic sanctions on which we generously rely. Though on the short term this seems to many, and especially for the neoconservatives, that our power cannot be challenged. What is so often forgotten is that while most countries will yield to our threats and intimidation, along the way many enemies were created.

The seeds of the American Empire were sown early in our history. Natural resources, river transportation, and geographic location all lent itself to the development of an empire. An attitude of "Manifest Destiny" was something most Americans had no trouble accepting. Although in our early history there were those who believed in a powerful central government, with central banking and foreign intervention, these views were nothing like they are today as a consequence of many years of formalizing the power and determination necessary for us to be the policeman of the world and justify violence as a means for spreading a particular message. Many now endorse the idea that using force to spread American exceptionalism is moral and a force for good. Unfortunately history has shown that even using humanitarian rhetoric as a justification for telling others what to do has never worked.

Our move toward empire steadily accelerated throughout the 20th century. World War I and World War II were deadly for millions of people in many countries, but in comparison the United States was essentially unscathed. Our economic power and military superiority steadily grew. Coming out of World War II we were able to dictate the terms of the new monetary system at Bretton Woods as well as the makeup of all the international organizations like NATO, the United Nations, and many others. The only thing that stood in America's way between 1945 and 1990 was the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Significant events of 1990 sealed the fate of the Soviet Empire, with United States enjoying a green light that would usher in unchallenged American superiority throughout the world.

Various names have been given to this war in which we find ourselves and is which considered necessary to maintain the empire. Professor Michael Rozeff calls it the "Great War II" implying that the Great War I began in 1914 and ended in 1990. Others have referred to this ongoing war as "The Long War." I hope that someday we can refer to this war as the "The Last War" in that by the time this war ends the American Empire will end as well. Then the greatness of the experiment in individual liberty in our early history can be resumed and the force of arms can be replaced by persuasion and setting an example of how a free society should operate.

There are several reasons why 1990 is a significant year in the transition of modern day empires. It was a year that signaled the end of the USSR Empire and the same year the American Empire builders felt vindicated in their efforts to assume the role of the world's sole superpower.

On February 7, 1990 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union met and ceded its monopoly political power over its empire. This was followed in a short period of time with the breakup of the Soviet system with 15 of the 17 republics declaring their independence from Moscow. This was not a total surprise considering the fact that the Soviets, in defeat, were forced to leave Afghanistan in February 1989. Also later that year, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin wall fell. Obviously the handwriting was on the wall for the total disintegration of the Soviet system. The fact that the Communist Party's leaders had to concede that they no longer could wield the ominous power that the Communist Party exerted for 73 years was a seminal event. None of this could have been possible without significant policy changes instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev after his assuming power as president in 1985, which included Glasnost and Perestroika-policies that permitted more political openness as well as significant economic reforms. These significant events led up to the Soviet collapse much more so than the conventional argument that it was due to Ronald Reagan's military buildup that forced the Soviets into a de facto "surrender" to the West.

The other significant event of 1990, and not just a coincidence, was the "green light" message exchanged between April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990. Though the details of this encounter have been debated, there is no doubt that the conclusion of it was that Saddam Hussein was convinced that the United States would not object to him using force to deal with a dispute Iraq had with Kuwait. After all, the US had just spent eight years aligning itself with him in his invasion and war with the Iranians. It seemed to him quite logical. What he didn't realize was the significance of the changes in the world powers that were ongoing at that particular time. The Soviets were on their way out and the American Empire was soon to assert its role as the lone super power. The US was anxious to demonstrate its new role.

When one reads the communications between Washington and Iraq, it was not difficult to believe that a green light had been given to Saddam Hussein to march into Kuwait without US interference. Without this invasion, getting the American people to support a war with Iraq would have been very difficult. Before the war propaganda by the US government and the American media began, few Americans supported President Bush's plans to go to war against an ally that we assisted in its eight-year war against Iran. After several months of propaganda, attitudes changed and President Bush was able to get support from the US Congress, although he argued that that was unnecessary since he had obtained a UN resolution granting him the authority to use his military force to confront Saddam Hussein. The need for Constitutional authority was not discussed.

US ambassador April Glaspie was rather explicit in her comments to Saddam Hussein: "we have no opinion on Arab – Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." The US State Department had already told Saddam Hussein that Washington had "no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait." It's not difficult interpreting conversations like this as being a green light for the invasion that Hussein was considering. Hussein had a list of grievances regarding the United States, but Glaspie never threatened or hinted about how Washington would react if Hussein took Kuwait. Regardless, whether it was reckless or poor diplomacy, the war commenced. Some have argued that it was deliberate in order to justify the beginning of the United States efforts in rebuilding the Middle East – a high priority for the neoconservatives. Actually whether the invasion by Saddam Hussein into Kuwait was encouraged or permitted by deliberate intentions or by miscalculations, the outcome and the subsequent disaster in Iraq for the next 25 years was a result of continued bad judgment in our dealing with Iraq. That required enforcing our goals with military intervention. The obvious failure of this policy requires no debate.

On August 1, 1990, one week after this exchange between ambassador Glaspie and Saddam Hussein, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq occurred. Immediately following this attack our State Department made it clear that this invasion would not stand and President Bush would lead a coalition in removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait. On January 17, 1991, that military operation began. The forced evacuation of Iraqi troops from Kuwait was swift and violent, but the war for Iraq had just begun and continues to this day. It also ushered in the climactic struggle for America's efforts to become the official and unchallenged policeman of the world and to secure the American Empire.

President Bush was not bashful in setting the stage for this clearly defined responsibility to assume this role since the Soviet Empire was on the wane. A very significant foreign policy speech by Bush came on September 11, 1990 entitled, "Toward a New World Order." This was a clear definition of internationalism with United States in charge in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D Roosevelt. In this speech there was a pretense that there would be Russian and United States cooperation in making the world safe for democracy-something that our government now seems totally uninterested in. Following the speech, the New York Times reported that the American left was concerned about this new world order as being nothing more than rationalization for imperial ambitions in the middle 1980s. Obviously the geopolitics of the world had dramatically changed. The green light was given for the American hegemony.

This arrogant assumption of power to run the world militarily and to punish or reward various countries economically would continue and accelerate, further complicating the financial condition of the United States government. Though it was easy for the United States to push Hussein back into Iraq, subsequent policy was destined to create havoc that has continued up to the present day. The sanctions and the continuous bombing of Iraq were devastating to the infrastructure of that country. As a consequence it's been estimated that over 500,000 Iraqis died in the next decade, many of them being children. Yet there are still many Americans who continue to be mystified as to why "they – Arabs and Muslims – hate us." By the end of 1991, on Christmas Day, the final blow to the Soviet system occurred. On that date Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time, thus officially ending the Soviet Empire. Many had hoped that there would be "a peace dividend" for us since the Cold War was officially ended. There's no reason that could not have occurred but it would have required us to reject the notion that it was our moral obligation and legal responsibility to deal with every crisis throughout the world. Nevertheless we embarked on that mission and though it continues, it is destined to end badly for our country. The ending of the Soviet Empire was a miraculous event with not one shot being fired. It was a failed system based on a deeply flawed idea and it was destined to fail. Once again this makes the point that the use of military force to mold the world is a deeply flawed policy. We must remember that ideas cannot be stopped by armies and recognize that good ideas must replace bad ones rather than resorting to constant wars.

It should surprise no one that a policy endorsing the use of force to tell others how to live will only lead to more killing and greater economic suffering for those who engage in this effort, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Twenty five years have passed since this green light was given for the current war and there's no sign that it will soon end. So far it has only emboldened American political leaders to robustly pursue foreign interventionism with little thought to the tremendous price that is continuously paid.

During the 1990s there was no precise war recognized. However our military presence around the world especially in the Middle East and to some degree in Africa was quite evident. Even though President George HW Bush did not march into Baghdad, war against the Iraqi people continued. In an effort to try to get the people to rebel against Saddam Hussein, overwhelming sanctions and continuous bombing were designed to get the Iraqi people to rebel and depose Hussein. That did not work. Instead it worked to continue to build hatred toward America for our involvement in the entire region.

Our secretive influence in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation had its unintended consequences. One was that we were fighting on the side of bin Laden and we all know how that turned out. Also, in an effort to defeat communism, the CIA helped to promote radical Islam in Saudi Arabia. Some argue that this was helpful in defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan. This most likely is not true since communism was doomed to fail anyway, and the cost to us by encouraging radical Islam has come back to haunt us.

It has been estimated that our policies directed at Iraq during the 1990s caused the death of thousands of Iraqis, many of these coming from the destruction of their infrastructure and creating a public health nightmare. When Madeleine Albright was asked about this on national TV she did not deny it and said that that was a price that had to be paid. And then they wonder why there is so much resentment coming from these countries directed toward United States. Then George Bush Junior invaded Iraq, his justification all based on lies, and another 500,000 Iraqis died. The total deaths have been estimated to represent four percent of the Iraqi population. The green light that was turned on for the Persian Gulf War in 1990 stayed lit and even today the proponents of these totally failed wars claim that the only problem is we didn't send enough troops and we didn't stay long enough. And now it's argued that it's time to send ground troops back in. This is the message that we get from the neoconservatives determined that only armed might can bring peace to the world and that the cost to us financially is not a problem. The proponents never seem to be concerned about the loss of civil liberties, which has continued ever since the declaration of the Global War on Terrorism. And a good case can be made that our national security not only has not been helped, but has been diminished with these years of folly.

And the true believers in empire never pause. After all the chaos that the US government precipitated in Iraq, conditions continue to deteriorate and now there is strong talk about putting troops on the ground once again. More than 10,000 troops still remain in Afghanistan and conditions there are precarious. Yemen is a mess as is also Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Ukraine - all countries in which we have illegally and irresponsibly engaged ourselves.

Today the debate in Congress is whether or not to give the President additional authority to use military force. He asked to be able to use military force anyplace anytime around the world without further congressional approval. This is hardly what the Founders intended for how we dealt with going to war with other nations. Some have argued, for Constitutional reasons, that we should declare war against ISIS. That will prove to be difficult since exactly who they are and where they are located and how many there are is unknown. We do know it is estimated that there are around 30,000 members. And yet in the surrounding countries, where the fighting is going on and we are directly involved, millions of Muslims have chosen not to stand up to the ruthless behavior of the ISIS members.

Since declaring war against ISIS makes no more sense than declaring war against "terrorism," which is a tactic, it won't work. Even at the height of the Cold War, in a time of great danger to the entire world, nobody suggested we declare war against "communism." Islamist extremism is based on strong beliefs, and as evil as these beliefs may be, they must be understood, confronted, and replaced with ideas that all civilized people in the world endorse. But what we must do immediately is to stop providing the incentive for the radicals to recruit new members and prevent American weapons from ending up in the hands of the enemy as a consequence of our failed policies. The incentives of the military-industrial complex along with the philosophy of neoconservatism that pushes us to be in more than 150 countries, must be exposed and refuted. Occupation by a foreign country precipitates hatred and can never be made acceptable by flowery words about their need for American-style "democracy." People who are occupied are always aware of the selfish motivation of the occupiers.

The announcement by President George HW Bush on September 11, 1990 about the new world order was well received. Prior to that time it was only the "conspiracy theorists" who constantly talked about and speculated about the New World Order. Neoconservative ideas had been around for a long time. They were endorsed by many presidents and in particular Woodrow Wilson with his goal of spreading American goodness and making the "world safe for democracy" – none of which can be achieved by promoting war. In the 1990s the modern day neoconservatives, led by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, enjoyed their growing influence on America's foreign policy. Specifically, in 1997 they established the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) for the specific purpose of promoting an aggressive foreign policy of interventionism designed to promote the American Empire. This policy of intervention was to be presented with "moral clarity." "Clarity" it was, but "moral" is another question. Their goal was to provide a vision and resolve, "to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interest."

It was not a surprise that admittedly the number one goal for the New World order was to significantly increase military spending and to be prepared to challenge any regime hostile to America's interests. They argued that America had to accept its unique role as the sole superpower for extending international order as long as it served America's interests. Although neoconservatives are thought to have greater influence within the Republican Party, their views have been implemented by the leadership of both Republicans and Democrats. First on PNAC's agenda was to continue the policy designed to undermine Saddam Hussein with the goal of eventually invading Iraq – once they had an event that would galvanize public support for it. Many individuals signed letters as well as the statement of principles and most were identified as Republicans. Interestingly enough, the fourth person on the list of signatories for the statement of principles was Jeb Bush, just as he was planning his first run for governor of Florida. The neoconservatives have been firmly placed in a position of influence in directing America's foreign policy. Though we hear some debate between the two political parties over when and whom to strike, our position of world policeman is accepted by both. Though the rhetoric is different between the two parties, power always remains in the hands of those who believe in promoting the empire.

The American Empire has arrived, but there's no indication that smooth sailing is ahead. Many questions remain. Will the American people continue to support it? Will the American taxpayer be able to afford it? Will those on the receiving end of our authority tolerate it? All empires eventually end. It's only a matter of time. Since all empires exist at the expense of personal liberty the sooner the American Empire ends the better it will be for those who still strive to keep America a bastion for personal liberty. That is possible, but it won't be achieved gracefully.

Though the people have a say in the matter, they have to contend with the political and financial power that controls the government and media propaganda. The powerful special interests, who depend on privileges that come from the government, will do whatever is necessary to intimidate the people into believing that it's in their best interest to prop up a system that rewards the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. The nature of fiat money and the privileges provided to the special interests by the Federal Reserve makes it a difficult struggle, but it's something that can be won. Unfortunately there will be economic chaos, more attacks on our civil liberties, and many unfortunate consequences coming from our unwise and dangerous foreign policy of interventionism.

Since all empires serve the interests of a privileged class, the people who suffer will constantly challenge their existence. The more powerful the empire, the greater is the need for the government to hold it together by propaganda and lies. Truth is the greatest enemy of an abusive empire. Since those in charge are determined to maintain their power, truth is seen as being treasonous. Whistleblowers and truth tellers are seen as unpatriotic and disloyal. This is why as our empire has grown there have been more attacks on those who challenge the conventional wisdom of the propagandists. We have seen it with the current administration in that the president has used the Espionage Act to curtail freedom of the press more than any other recent president. Fortunately we live in an age where information is much more available than when it was controlled by a combination of our government and the three major networks. Nevertheless it's an uphill struggle to convince the people that it is in their best interests to give up on the concept of empire, foreign interventionism, allowing the special interests to dictate foreign policy, and paying the bills with the inflation of the money supply provided by the Federal Reserve. The laws of economics, in time, will bring such a system to an end but it would be nice if it would be ended sooner through logic and persuasion.

If it's conceded that there was a dramatic change with the green light given by April Glaspie and President Bush in 1990, along with the collapse, almost simultaneously, of the Soviet system, the only question remains is when and who will turn on the red light to end this 25 year war. Sometime it's easier to establish an empire than it is to maintain and pay for it. That is what our current political leaders are in the business of currently doing and it's not going well. It appears that a comparatively small but ruthless non-government entity, ISIS, is playing havoc with our political leaders as well as nearly all the countries in the Middle East. Because there is no clear understanding of what radical Islam is all about -since it is not much about Islam itself - our policies in the Middle East and elsewhere will continue to drain our resources and incite millions more to join those who are resisting our occupations and sanctions. The day will come when we will be forced to give up our role as world policeman and resort to using a little common sense and come home.

This will only occur when the American people realize that our presence around the world and the maintenance of our empire has nothing to do with defending our Constitution, preserving our liberties, or fulfilling some imaginary obligation on our part to use force to spread American exceptionalism. A thorough look at our economic conditions, our pending bankruptcy, our veterans hospitals, and how we're viewed in the world by most other nations, will compel Americans to see things differently and insist that we bring our troops home – the sooner the better.

Vocal proponents of the American Empire talk about a moral imperative that requires us to sacrifice ourselves as we try to solve the problems of the world. If there was even a hint this effort was accomplishing something beneficial, it might be more difficult to argue against. But the evidence is crystal-clear that all our efforts only make things worse, both for those we go to teach about democracy and liberty and for the well-being of all Americans who are obligated to pay for this misplaced humanitarian experiment. We must admit that this 25-year war has failed. Nevertheless it's difficult to argue against it when it requires that that we not endorse expanding our military operations to confront the ISIS killers. Arguments against pursuing a war to stop the violence, however, should appeal to common sense. Recognizing that our policies in the Middle East have significantly contributed to the popular support for radical Islam is crucial to dealing with ISIS. More sacrifices by the American people in this effort won't work and should be avoided. If one understands what motivates radical Islam to strike out as it does, the solution would become more evident. Voluntary efforts by individuals to participate in the struggle should not be prohibited. If the solution is not more violence on our part, a consideration must be given to looking at the merits of a noninterventionist foreign policy which does not resort to the killing of hundreds of thousands of individuals who never participated in any aggression against United States - as our policies have done since the green light for empire was given.

How is this likely to end? The empire will not be ended legislatively or by the sudden embrace of common sense in directing our foreign policy. The course of interventionism overseas and assuming the role of world policeman will remain for the foreseeable future. Still the question remains, how long will that be since we can be certain that the end of the empire will come. Our military might and economic strength is now totally dependent on the confidence that the worldwide financial markets give to the value of the US dollar. In spite of all the reasons that the dollar will eventually be challenged as the world reserve currency, the competition, at present, by other currencies to replace it, is nil. Confidence can be related to objective facts such as how a country runs its fiscal affairs and monetary policy. Economic wealth and military strength also contribute artificial confidence to a currency. Perceptions and subjective reasons are much more difficult to define and anticipate. The day will come when the confidence in the dollar will be greatly diminished worldwide. Under those conditions the tremendous benefits that we in the United States have enjoyed as the issuer of the reserve currency will be reversed. It will become difficult if not impossible for us to afford huge budget deficits as well as very large current account deficits. National debt and foreign debt will serve as a limitation on how long the empire can last. Loss of confidence can come suddenly and overwhelmingly. Under those conditions we will no longer be able to afford our presence overseas nor will we be able to continue to export our inflation and debt to other nations. Then it will require that we pay for our extravagance, and market forces will require that we rein in our support for foreign, corporate, and domestic welfare spending. Hopefully this will not come for a long time, giving us a chance to educate more people as to its serious nature and give them insight into its precise cause. Nevertheless we live in a period of time when we should all consider exactly what is the best road to take to protect ourselves, not only our personal wealth but also to prepare to implement a system based on sound money, limited government, and personal liberty. This is a goal we can achieve. And when we do, America will enjoy greater freedom, more prosperity and a better chance for peace.


Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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Related

[Mar 15, 2015] British security services recruit Russian-language speakers again

Mar 15, 2015 | The Guardian

robertinjapan -> ErnestfromClapham 14 Mar 2015 11:14

Funny you mention that, that bloke you shared an apartment with, did he play up front for Tranmere Rovers, occasionally head the ball in? Anyway I've heard he's operating out of Stamford Bridge these days helping logistics for hotel bookings when Chelsea play away ties in Europe. Rumour round the camp fire has it he got a promotion recently for his efforts in securing excellent booking rates for Chelsea fans in the Clichy-sous-Bois region of Paris. Now to section where you state:

"We were all rather pleased about the end of the Cold War and it is a crime that it is being restarted over a bit of local trouble in the far corner of Ukraine"

What makes you think the cold war ever ended? What peace treaty was signed? What new arrangements were agreed upon? Finally, if Russia agreed to the unification of Germany and essentially the rearming of a nation that twice in the twentieth century came close to obliterating Russia. What concessions did the West concede in this so called ending of the cold war?

grubbedout -> HollyOldDog 15 Mar 2015 14:08

Starting pay?

Civil Servant pay isn't all that great, plus the new 'Alpha' pension scheme has all the credibility of supermarket fuel vouchers.

Me109BfG6 -> Botswana61 15 Mar 2015 00:06

These lands have traditionally been Russian with the Russian majority of the whole population.
Now, what would you say if in Germany the Bavarian dialect should be forced as the only 'state language' instead of the standard German? Quite resembling the situation in the Baltics, where they have forced their aborigine languages while prohibiting the Russian: Less science, less culture, less medic, etc,


Alexandra_Aleshina 14 Mar 2015 04:11

"Russia's "aggressive behaviour" posed a significant threat to the UK"
How Russian "aggressive behavior" poses a threat to the UK, please tell me?
And what is the "Russian aggressive behavior"? Let's only leave aside, these absurd stories about Russian invasion of Ukraine. This lie has already made me pretty tired.


ambivabloke 14 Mar 2015 00:44

I started my Russian language degree in 88 when Russian departments were flush with cash. The bottom dropped out of the field with a little help from Gorby (no, not Ronny).

The CIA was often rumoured to stalk the halls of academe, waiting to pluck students like me who were, unfortunately for the CIA, more interested in Oblomov than Star Wars (Reagan's moronic missile shield).

Come to think of it that's exactly the demographic Mi6 and the CIA should recruit, Russian/English speakers whose only ideology is an appreciation for the depth and complexity of Russian history and culture.


HollyOldDog transplendent 13 Mar 2015 21:53

A Russian speaker from an English University cannot understand the Russian mentality from your stated standpoint. If that is one of the requirements by the British secret services then they can only attract poor quality students.


HollyOldDog RichWoods 13 Mar 2015 21:42

Well if the West Ukrainians started to pay off their gas payment debt instead of stealing gas then no warnings need to be made by Russia about possible interrupted gas supplies beyond Russian control.


Antidyatel 13 Mar 2015 20:47

Ok.OK. I will send my resume. Obviously my track record on this forum is enough to qualify for this job. Fluent English and Russian and good knowledge of history, including all the disgusting nature of western culture.

Inhumanoid -> Speenhamland 13 Mar 2015 20:45

However, these days the net is cast far wider. For a couple of days this week if you entered "Russian language" and "university" into Google's UK search engine, above the results popped a jaunty, paid-for advertisement. "Understand Russian?" it asked. "Help protect the UK." A link took you to MI5's careers website.
Reading, eh? Who has the time?

hogsback -> CaptainFlack 13 Mar 2015 20:08

Erm, there is no tap on the shoulder any more. That's the whole point.
You can apply for a job at any of the three agencies directly online:
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/careers/
https://www.sis.gov.uk/careers.html
http://www.gchq-careers.co.uk/index.html


hogsback -> Linguistician 13 Mar 2015 20:04

No, they recruit from across the entire UK - it's just that if you are recruiting Russian language specialists you are pretty limited in where you can recruit from, but you can guarantee that the students at Durham, Oxford, Bristol, Exeter etc will also have been approached.

hogsback -> Ilja NB 13 Mar 2015 19:46

The only ghetto in which Arabic is widely spoken is Mayfair. Are you suggesting all those millionaire Saudis and Emiratis are up to something? (other than annoying the neighbours by revving their Ferraris at 1am).

RichWoods -> puskascat 13 Mar 2015 19:17

The CIA running shoulder-launched missiles to the Afghan mujahideen via Peshawar? Remind me how that turned out.

ApfelD 13 Mar 2015 18:17

"The war against Russia is an important chapter in the German nation's struggle for existence. It is the old battle of the Germanic against the Slavic people, of the defense of European culture against Muscovite-Asiatic inundation and of the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism. The objective of this battle must be the demolition of present-day Russia and must therefore be conducted with unprecedented severity.

Every military action must be guided in planning and execution by an iron resolution to exterminate the enemy remorselessy and totally. In particular no adherents of the contemporary Russian Bolshevik system are to be spared"
1941


musubi transplendent 13 Mar 2015 17:26

"I'd rather have Russia as an enemy than a friend. At least you know where you stand." So some people apparently feel a need to demonise others in order "to know where they stand".

Oh dear, oh dear, there seems to be little hope for humanity.

ApfelD 13 Mar 2015 16:14

The cold war managed returns as farce
Russians are buying our family brilliants, houses, football clubs and yachts
zillions of Russian speakers are walking around
the Internet is full of Russians
we need spies
LOL


Linguistician Marc de Berner 13 Mar 2015 15:27

I don't think they seriously expect them to be able to pass as Russian. I expect a lot of the job revolves around SIGINT these days, just listening and interpreting. The poster also indicates that they expect their linguists to have spent time in the country and/or have cultural knowledge, i.e. not just sat in a classroom having learnt the cases and conjugations.

Grumpymiddleagedman ID6945587 13 Mar 2015 14:41

I spent years learning German Russian and Portuguese on the back of government promises about employment opportunities in the early 90's. Never saw a single job I could apply for except translating in some awful agency. Stuff the security services. And Up Russia.

CaptainFlack 13 Mar 2015 14:26

I have a background in engineering, and speak Chinese after spending time in the far east when I was younger, but I never got a tap on the shoulder. The most important thing for the security services, like most of the senior military and civil service jobs, is that you come from the "right" schools, because they assume this makes you decent, upright citizens rather than the kind of oikish commonfolk that are the real enemy to them.

Anette Mor 13 Mar 2015 13:34

They already killed trade with Russia, now they are killing of the sources for the UK overseas students. Russia (and Kazakhstan) had state budget sponsored kids sent to universities here, forgot about them from next year. It is already impossible to chat in any of the Russian forums in the UK because of no stop pro-Ukrainian abuse. When you force somebody away so badly you eventually make them an enemy.

Paranoia, abuse, total surveillance - great place to live the UK.

[Mar 15, 2015] Why our leaders can't be heroes any more by Jonathan Powell

Note the the author never used the word "neoliberalism" in the article. This is what "identity politic" is about. for example tony Blair essentially sold his party to banksters and was royally remunerated for that. He also served as lapdog for Bush II neoconservative adventures. Personalities serve as a smoke screen to hide issues of attack of banksters on wellbeing of people. And the key task of neoliberal politician is to deceive people. Quote from comments: "Beyond terrible, an irrelevant article. There is simply no point being made, just a slapdash bundle of clichés thrown out in sequence in the vain hope of forming an argument." and another "Mr Powell kindly take my advice and fuck off, give your old china another award for his international legacy, shut up and be grateful you'll never face a criminal investigation for your part in the Iraq war."
Mar 13, 2015 | The Guardian

We yearn for politicians to fill the shoes of their all-powerful predecessors. But there are terrible dangers in trying to be superman

There is a general lament about the Lilliputian nature of our current leaders. Where are the towering figures of the past? Why do we have such uninspiring leaders who can't even eat a bacon sandwich, or resist chillaxing on the job, or, in the case of the Greens, even remember their policies?

There is, of course, nothing new about this. If you look back at the newspaper columns of the 1960s you will find commentators demanding to know where were the current-day Churchills and Bevans, and in the 1930s they wanted to know where leaders of the stature of Gladstone and Disraeli had gone. It is the familiar syndrome – from which I suffer – that as you get older, policemen look younger and younger.

Nonetheless it is indisputably true that at the moment there is an unusual lack of strong, charismatic leaders, not just in the UK but in Europe too.

It has come to something when Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is the dominant figure in Europe. I admire her quiet and subtle style of leadership, and she towers over her colleagues, but she is scarcely a colossus in the mould of a De Gaulle or even a Kohl. I vividly remember the first time Tony Blair met her, in the new British embassy in Berlin in 2004. Then the leader of the opposition in Germany, the soon-to-be chancellor plonked herself down in front of him and said disarmingly, "I have 10 problems" – and then began to list them, starting with a lack of charisma.

The dearth of strong leaders is more than just the usual feast and famine – or it wouldn't extend across the west

... ... ...

So maybe we should be careful what we wish for. Maybe strong leaders are not quite as alluring as we think, and we should celebrate the fact that our leaders are just like us. Just because one candidate can't remember his whole speech and the other likes to put his feet up on the job doesn't mean they can't govern. It could be that in the more constrained environment of developed democracies and a globalised economy, we actually want and need leaders in shades of grey rather than the towering figures of the past.


Dani123 15 Mar 2015 01:09

I don't want a "Führer", it's good for war and bloodshed only.
In peaceful times grey technocrat manager are maybe abit color- but also bloodless.

People from the past would envy us for our oh-so-boring kind of politicians.

You wish for interesting times with interesting "personalities", well I don't.
I like my lame and uninteresting times quite well, thank you....

VelvetRevolutionary 14 Mar 2015 12:44

Do you want to know why our political "...leaders can't be heroes anymore."? Our 21st century leaders are sorely lacking in human integrity, and they have completely lost their moral compass. That's why.

dilawar 14 Mar 2015 02:20

The French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville, a great observer of man's affairs, while witnessing the birth of democracy in America, thought that the age of democracy will be the age of mediocrity. There will be a dead level plane of achievement in almost every kind of activity. A democratic person, due to various reasons he explains lucidly, does everything in hurry. He is always satisfied with "pretty well" and does not pause for an instance to think what he is doing.

"His curiosity is at once insatiable and cheaply satisfied; for he cares more to know a great deal quickly than to know anything well: he has no time and but little taste to search things to the bottom". To make matter worse, "men of democracy worship chance, and are much less afraid of death than of difficulty".

Despite his strong attachment to democracy, Tocqueville took great pains to point out what he thought to be a negative side of democracy: it will be an unheroic age. Tocqueville maintained that there wont be heroes in democratic societies because democracies are inherently incapable of producing them.

But modern democracies were not able to do without heroes and this was also foreseen by Tocqueville with much misgivings. He believed, rightly or wrongly, that unlike aristocracy, there will not be a proper place for heroes or hero-worshipers in democracies, and when they arose they would sooner or later turn into despots. Modern democracy may or may not do without heroes but they certainly can not do without leaders. And in this modern age, which breeds them in great profusion, the problem is to know what to do with them.

Democracies are no longer restricted to Europe or United States. They are now in many parts of this world in their own peculiar forms. They have acquired some distinct features of the societies in which they are able to grow. Human societies value heroes or charismatic personalities but some among are always more obsessed with them. These days, people seems to be somewhat tired of their politicians but it is not that people are tired for charisma; it only moves from politics to other area of public life. People reserve their praise and transfer their adulation for movie starts, sadhus and sants, sports-personalities and sometimes, for man of sciences.

Here in India and neighbourhood, charismatic people from various fields have been using their charisma in politics. Some have been quite successful. NTR missed becoming the prime minister of India, Imran Khan is trying the same in Pakistan. The appeal of charisma, by which I mean the personal quality that secure instant and unquestioned devotions to the leader of his followers, is in decline everywhere. Not only there is no Nehru today, there is no de Gaulle and Winston Churchill. The consideration of this for the prospect of democracy and health of its institutions deserves some serious attention.

Banditolobster 14 Mar 2015 01:37

I don't particularly want our leaders to be heroic or devastatingly charismatic, I would settle for them being quietly competent and un corrupt, it amuses me that Merkel gets some stick in this article, she strikes me as a better leader by simply getting on with it, than many other leaders who are trying to summon up shades of Churchill and De Gaulle

danielarnaut -> StTrevorofIlford 13 Mar 2015 17:17

Thank you for your interest, though I lived in Britain most of my life I am of Catalan origin so I have always been interested in the ill fortune of some of the men and women who scape the Franco regime on the other side of the Pyrenees, so I started visiting the many concentration camps the Vichy regime built for the republican Spaniards in French soil.

My neighbour in Newbury told me a weird story of Austrians in Frith Hill, or Frimley, near Camberley in Surrey. I heard of concentration camps for Irish freedom fighters in Shewsbury and Bromyard. I haven't got any information about those apparently in Tipperary and Southend. However, there are lots of information and literature on several concentration camps near Douglas and Peel in the Isle of Man which were built during the II WW.

The BBC reported about a concentration camp near Leicester, Donnington Hall.
But the most bizarre discovery I made was this one : I was just driving in the Dordogne (France) in 2010 when I came across a program in France Inter (radio) called " La bas si j'y suis ", I was speechless.

A British historian was being interviewed about thirty concentration camps where more than two hundred thousand unemployed British guys were deported and put to hard labour, after the 1929 crash; these camps were in use up to 1939 ; that means the period under the labour government of Ramsey MacDonald. The idea was called: a New Deal (does it remind you of Tony's campaign for power?)

People were forced to go these camps maybe to stop riots in certain cities. If they refused to go to the camps they had their benefit stopped at once. The inmates lived under awful conditions. They were treated like slaves and put to work for ten hours a day, forced to build roads, chop trees and crack stones.

These were the years previous to the II WW and these concentration camps provided cheap labour before being sent to fight for king and country.

HolyInsurgent, 13 Mar 2015 23:06

Jonathan Powell: In part this vacuum is the result of a familiar pattern that normally a strong leader is immediately followed by a weak one. Margaret Thatcher was followed by John Major, Blair by Gordon Brown, Ronald Reagan by George Bush Sr, and so on.

The theory is obviously meaningless. In each case, which one was the strong leader and which the weak one? Who decides?

Without a substantial army they cannot take a leading role in world affairs. And as part of Nato and the European Union, their scope for independent foreign policy initiatives is severely limited.

Considering NATO is America's military branch to enforce its foreign policy, the UK is simply an American client state. There is nothing to stop NATO from being dissolved and the EU pooling its separate countries' militaries as a united force. But of course America won't allow NATO to be dissolved. Why would it?

No one in Russia would complain that they suffer from weak leaders at the moment.

The Russian people voted for Putin. The West can think what they like of him, but he was elected.

In China, with "Papa Xi", the cult of personality has returned virtually to the levels under Mao.

What does the author suggest be done about it?

Beyond terrible, an irrelevant article. There is simply no point being made, just a slapdash bundle of clichés thrown out in sequence in the vain hope of forming an argument.

VarmintRaptScallion 13 Mar 2015 14:11

I don't think you can get through Michael Sandal's Justice lecture series without acknowledging that the battle between moral principles and moral utilitarianism forces a leader to wade into some pretty grey areas.

As a society it is probably better that we accept the inevitable corruption that takes hold in leaders and design political systems that take account of this. The concept of heroes and villains is at the heart of propaganda and only serves the status quo.

Just like the erroneous belief that the current political paradigm is somehow the pinnacle of human evolution.

BlogAnarchist 13 Mar 2015 13:23

Got up to here and realised this article was a joke piece.

In part this vacuum is the result of a familiar pattern that normally a strong leader is immediately followed by a weak one. Margaret Thatcher was followed by John Major, Blair by Gordon Brown, Ronald Reagan by George Bush Sr, and so on. It is very hard for a new strong leader to grow up in the shadow of an existing strong leader. Their successors are nearly always lower-key figures.

Nathaniel P -> Cape7441 13 Mar 2015 13:21

I noticed this. Politicians are basically allowed no respite, and their very characters are dissected in the media. It is almost as if they are not allowed to be human. It seems to me that the rivalry is just too strong- while debating and having different views is of course central to democratic politics, politicians should never be spiteful and nasty to rival politicians because they have a different political view- they should even feel comfortable complimenting their rivals' ideas and promises if they feel the need, but this never happens because the rivalry was too strong.

Apparently, PM Stanley Baldwin used to politely chat to politicians in Parliament buildings, regardless of their party- maybe if this kind of thing was increased, politicians would be followed and seen as 'heroes' as they would be seen as human beings like the rest of us and not participants in slagging matches!

greyskies 13 Mar 2015 13:15

A politician should be a hero. They have the power to affect the lives of millions and should feel the weight of that responsibility every day. There are thoughtful and responsible MPs in our current parliament: Rory Stewart, Douglass Carswell, David Davis, Sarah Wollaston, Tom Watson, Margaret Hodge to name a few that I can respect. Unfortunately thoughtful MPs are rarely seen because they feel they should be loyal to their party or because they are rightfully afraid of being misunderstood. We need our MPs to be more heroic and put themselves out there and argue for their visions of the future of the country.

socialistnotnulabour -> TwigTheWonderKid 13 Mar 2015 13:01

You don't live in the real world if you think anyone just basing their arguments on evidence.

I make my arguments based on evidence but I'm not so conceited to believe my beliefs don't have some effect on how I view the evidence.

Zealots seem to believe they are the ones with the only correct view of evidence and are inflexible to believe anything else despite being shown they have come to the wrong conclusion.

You should always be open to the fact that your conclusion from the evidence may actually be wrong.

Even in the scientific world, evidence and facts are not always used in a truthful way.


Bryced 13 Mar 2015 12:38

The Labour Party. A man of the stature of Nye Bevin to the likes of puppet Tony B-lair and his collaborators. Yikes. Times have certainly changed. Deep, no deeper than that, endless bloody sigh. Makes you want to weep.

HumanistLove 13 Mar 2015 12:17

Accountable, intelligent, promise keeper, not beholden to special interests, consensus oriented, domestic issues as priority, sensitive to the most vulnerable in society...a mensch for, by and of the people.

I believe a leader's personal life should be respected as private, as we all wish for ourselves.

kippers 13 Mar 2015 11:42

The Butler Report into the lack of WMD in Iraq criticised "sofa government". This was a polite way of criticising the way decisions were taken by Tony Blair and a small group of unelected advisors without the knowledge of Cabinet (and sometimes contrary to what had been decided in Cabinet). Jonathan Powell was one of those advisors. His response to that criticism was that this was the way things were done these days.

Few people want leaders to be heroes. They want accountable government. That would reduce the risk of small groups of people seizing the controls and making erroneous assumptions like "it is an established fact that Iraq has WMD" and "the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan will be short and sharp".

Krishnamoorthi 13 Mar 2015 11:20

This a typical syndrome affecting every aspect of capitalist society. Individuals have their limitations and it is the system of government and the state apparatus which makes or unmakes an individual! Even if Churchill was not there there would have been another one to replace him. Giving too much of credit to individuals is just flattery! Individuals like Mandela are products of a wider Picture! To reduce the achievements or failures on a single person is just a simpleminded argument!

stuartMilan 13 Mar 2015 11:07

and the Graun stands up for British decency again..?

Mr Powell kindly take my advice and fuck off, give your old china another award for his international legacy, shut up and be grateful you'll never face a criminal investigation for your part in the Iraq war.

Ricardo111 13 Mar 2015 10:50

Competent would be good. And honest. And principled.

Instead what we have is corrupt, two-faced snake-oil salesmen in posh style.

As for the "superhero" politicians of the past, they were no such thing: only the ignorant of history and weak of spirit would deify past leaders.

weematt 13 Mar 2015 10:36

We do not need leaders.It is silly to expect politicians to be leaders in the class struggle.

Politicians are elected to run capitalism in the interests of the business class 1-5%. In a representative democracy this is diametrically opposed to the interests of workers 95-99%.

All the economic clout is with the corporations and landowners, owned by a tiny minority of people, possibly around 5 percent. Owning the means of production allows them to cream off a profit or a surplus for themselves, and they do this by exploiting the rest of us. Their economic power is backed up by political power. The state is there to try and manage the status quo, and protect the interests of those with all the wealth. This doesn't mean that they have control over the economy, though. Market forces fluctuate between growth and slump regardless of what politicians and corporate strategists want.

This arrangement leads to massive inequalities in wealth, not just within this country, but across the globe. Goods and services only go to those who can afford them, not to those who need them. Those who can't afford the basics risk falling into a lifestyle of poverty it's hard to escape from. Living in an unequal world where everything is rationed creates divisions between us, leading to prejudice and discrimination. Even those of us with a reasonable standard of living never have enough real involvement or sense of ownership in where we work and live.

To solve the problems in society, we have to change the way society is structured. This means going from our world where the means to produce and distribute wealth are owned by a minority, to one where those resources and facilities are owned by everyone in common. Then, goods would be produced and services would be run directly for anyone who wants them, without the dictates of the economic market. Industries and services would be run just to satisfy people's needs and wants.

All this could only be achieved by fundamentally changing the way society is organised, a revolution. The kind of revolution we want is one which involves the vast majority of people across the world. Every country now is part of an integrated global economy and class structure. So, people across the world would have to want to change society. The only legitimate and practical way this could be achieved is by organising equally and democratically. This means voluntary, creative work, with decisions and responsibilities agreed through everyone having an equal say. This would mean a much broader and more inclusive use of democracy than we're used to today. Different democratic organisations or procedures would apply in different circumstances. This doesn't mean having leaders or groups with more authority than others.

"I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands." Eugene Debbs

mespilus 13 Mar 2015 10:14

If you are one of the 1%,
there have been several Supermen in the last 5 years;

George Osborne has lowered the upper rate of income tax, and given a bountiful tax break to hedge funds.

Andrew Lansley has made it much easier to divert public funds towards contracted out private health care providers.

Michael Gove has given away untold wealth by handing over school premises to Academy chains, and diverted local authority destined funds towards 'Free School's.
Vince Cable sold the Royal Mail for a song, and the share in Eurostar will soon join HS1 in private hands.

Supermen one & all.

I'm sure you can add a few more.

Matthew2012 13 Mar 2015 10:14

I think that our modern politicians read Nietzsche and decide that they are supermen (ubermensch) not men.

It matters little to them what we want - if they can get our vote.

The problem is that they don't think that they need to listen

ClericPreston 13 Mar 2015 10:09

Leaders are not leaders of much any more.

They don't have to be strong, they have to be fair, consistent and honest. The difficulty arises in the 2 dimensional thought that they have to do something big, stamp their mark, start some war or other to be the Big man (or woman in the case of Thatch).

Cameron will never appear strong because he's obviously a bought man, too many vested interests leaning on him. How can you look up to a person who can be "swayed" so readily for donations and has lied on so many occasions?

A lot of the day to day business of the country is now run by outsourcing companies, they don't answer to any elected leader, you would think this would allow a leader to develop in a more focused way, but this hasn't materialised, far from Cameron rolling up his sleeves at an appropriate time (rather than an opportunistic moment) and getting on with something for the people he seems to have spent his entire premiership publicising his party and raising funds to further drive that process not just for the last month or two but since the day he took office, 5 years! I don't think that even at the height of Thatcher's time can it be said that so much time has been spent on such things by a PM.

Our leader, imho, is a Publicity machine first, a Tory second and a PM last. To me that is the wrong way around.

Caroline Kennedy 13 Mar 2015 10:09

As we all know, Jonathan Powell is one of Tony Blair's most simpering apologists. He, like many other Blair sycophants, ended up on the board of Save the Children.

Hence the tainted "Global Legacy Award" for Blair, a man responsible for the deaths, injuries and long term disabilities of literally tens of thousands of children in Iraq, Afghanistan and across areas of the Middle East. Not to mention the number of orphans he has created.

To compare Tony Blair with any politician other than those we already despise for their despotic rule, such as Robert Mugabe, Emperor Bokassa, Ferdinand Marcos etc is to insult those we admire such as Roosevelt, Kennedy and Mandela.

Matthew2012 JayEnn 13 Mar 2015 10:09

or about Gordon Brown being ugly?

Media influence and vacuums in real substance.

In WWII no one really cared what Churchill looked like in comparison to his policies.

When we see so little integrity in our politicians, no accountability, ignoring expert advice and influence of vested interests? How do we judge the difference in our politicians?

We have issues such as climate change where we are being failed in the most fundamental respect by politicians everywhere. And rather then debate it - we are faced with a 3 party agreement not to discuss it.

The ideologies have become stale and the centre vote is all that is pursued. So whether you agree with issues or not it is no longer a matter of principles but about getting voted in.

The UK government is being treated like a middle manager job and we don't see a great deal of proven competence by any of them.

danielarnaut 13 Mar 2015 09:32

Quite ingenuously, or lack of knowledge, Churchill is described by most of you as a great war leader. I am surprised people don't remember the famine provoked in southern Asia, the threat of military heavy handed action against the miners, or simple his own declarations admitting adhering to fascism. Without a Furher, Britain could have easily slipped into a dictatorship. And we had all the ingredients such as inflicting fear, massacres, starvation, imposition of twisted rules, concentration camps built even in the north of England for the unemployed and wherever a country fell on the hands of the sacro saint british empire people were forced to change behaviour, culture, language... to embrace the new deal and be civilised. Human loss was considerable. Churchil could have continue this trend.

excathedra 13 Mar 2015 09:20

Thatcher wasn't a strong leader, she was a lunatic hell bent on destroying the working class and the social advantages the post war consensus had brought.

As for leaders I, and I suspect many others, just want honesty, decency and an end to the greed, hubris and vanity projects. If they want war then they ought to be in the front not organising and garnering contacts for future use.

Wishful thinking I know but the alternatives are not worth continuing with.

tobymoore 13 Mar 2015 08:57

Trapped in an economic system which is clearly no longer capable of providing the society that people want, or could have if it we were solely limited by human ingenuity, the main job of our so-called leaders is to "manage expectation", i.e. to tell us what we can't have.

There is no room left for visions of a better future. In any case, the obsession with leaders is infantile and leaves the door wide open for frauds and demagogues.

crinklyoldgit 13 Mar 2015 06:56

This article is hopeless. The issue here is that politicians and their appointees have become able to evade accountability by legal clever stepping . Blair is untouchable, legally speaking, but no one is under illusions about his abuse of privilege. All else is meaningless drivel until we can claw some meaningful accountability into the way affairs are managed, and make those who would abuse their powers think twice.

Jimcomment 13 Mar 2015 04:50

The difference with the Press shows the key difference here - international corporations have huge power these days. Politicians whose interests do not align with theirs find that media and funding strategies quickly go against them.

Right or wrong, previous leaders held firm convictions. Cameron shows very clearly that he has none - he is a PR man with no interest in working as a politician, let alone being PM. But this suits those who wield economic and media power, and so he is financially backed and applauded by much of the Press.

JonPurrtree 13 Mar 2015 04:23

I'm not sure Hollande ever was on a pedestal. And if it wasn't for those pesky americans, Strauss-Kahn would have been President, no questions asked about his wandering hands and worse.

But how on earth did we end up with the likes of Hollande and Milliband2 ?
I'd be happy with boring yet competant looking people like Darling or Major, but such people seem to have been culled.

[Mar 14, 2015] Russia warns US against supplying 'lethal defensive aid' to Ukraine

Mar 14, 2015 | RT News

Moscow has warned Washington a potential policy shift from supplying Kiev with "non-lethal aid" to "defensive lethal weapons", mulled as US Vice President visits Ukraine, would be a direct violation of all international agreements.

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that reports of possible deliveries of American "defensive weapons" to Ukraine would be viewed by Russia as a "very serious signal."

"We heard repeated confirmations from the [US] administration, that it only supplies non-lethal aid to Ukraine. If there is a change of this policy, then we are talking about a serious destabilizing factor which could seriously affect the balance of power in the region," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich cautioned.

His remarks follow US deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken Wednesday's statement at a hearing before the Senate Committee for Foreign Affairs, in which he said that Biden may offer the provision of "lethal defensive weapons" as he visits Ukraine. Lethal assistance "remains on the table. It's something that we're looking at," Blinken said.

"We paid attention not only to such statements, but also to the trip of representatives of Ukrainian volunteer battalions to Washington, who tried to muster support of the US administration," Lukashevich said.

The Ministry made it clear that such a move by Washington would violate a number of agreements.

"This is a very serious signal for several reasons. First of all, this is a direct violation of agreements, including the ones achieved in partnership with the United States. I mean the Geneva Declaration from 17 April," said the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko requested lethal aid from the US during a visit to Washington in September.

READ MORE: Obama declines to give Ukraine 'lethal aid' despite Poroshenko's plea

The American Vice President who has arrived in Kiev late Thursday has not yet made any official announcement, but Reuters' sources point to the possibility that US might increase a "non-lethal" aid package to Kiev instead of opting to supply arms.

Under the non-lethal aid package, the US could deliver to Ukraine first Humvee vehicles and radars but as officials pointed out such deliveries would unlikely alter the conflict. Previous non-lethal aid to Ukraine announced in September included military equipment such as counter-mortar detection units, body armor, binoculars and other gear worth $53 million.

At the same time the US diplomatic branch announced that it will continue to send advisers to Kiev and has allocated funds to Ukraine to battle what both the US and Ukraine see as a threat from Russia.

SOIC 2 hours ago
This Slavic, territorial 'domestic' conflict must be approached with extreme prudence.

The US interests (real or manifested) do not justify inciting unrestrained escalation of force in proxy.

Despite what social antagonisms are perpetrated and the 'trajectory' of global sentiment, the Russian Federation will stand united and abreast, not in opposition to Ukraine but to the United States.

War has an intoxicating effect on nonobjective and narrowly fixated policy makers in industrial military nation states!

Robin Bolt 5 hours ago

P.S. Mustafa Masi Nayyem is still breathing because??? I have no respect for men anywhere when people like this can cause thousands to die on both sides, and then he is given a high profile job in the new Ukrainian government, and continues to work the media? He should be charged with inciting a war, not given a free pass & citizenship, what is wrong with people????

Robin Bolt 5 hours ago

Manuel Garcia

God have mercy...The worst is yet to come. Prepare for the worst on both sides.

I think we are worrying for nothing.... the people of Russia & the USA are far greater than these foreign invaders who are inciting wars everywhere...

If people would set their "religions of peace" aside for a minute & stop feeding the animals, they'd see some of the main issues... Mustafa Masi Nayyem for instance.... How is this not a topic of interest????

Robin Bolt 5 hours ago

Unreal.... Complete ignorance. EU, UN & NATO should step-off, same with the US. It amazes me how so many ignore the plain truth. The people in change of Ukraine now, are no better than our own typical American street gangs & deserve 0 support, they caused 1000s of people on both sides of this issue to suffer a great deal, all so they could illegally take office & not have to pay what was owed to Russia. I am grateful for whoever got rid of Nemtsov, it kept them from trying to create the same ordeal they did in Ukraine, in Moscow.... 1 vs. 100s of 1000s, I'm all for it. I don't agree with certain things about Russia, but what happened in Ukraine is completely insane... I hold the EU, UN & Nato responsible for what happened, and the rest of the world is just as bad for staying silent or neutral. Ignorance isn't always bliss... As much as I don't like our current US President, I would never agree to illegal activity that overthrew the Government and replaced the Obama Administration with people who respect laws even less.... why then are people ignoring that this happened to the Pro-Russian leaders who were in office, and that crooks are running Ukraine now & would rather create more strife than pay their bills & act like men?

No matter what Russia does, US neo-cons will always go for Cold War

quote: I think that Der Spiegel article that you mention is accurate, I read it myself, and I think we need to place it within the overall context of the US global policy which is of course to launch these pressures around the world so as to maintain a hegemonic position. And to maintain a hegemonic position the concept is to sort of break-up or reduce the effectiveness of the BRICS countries, and of course to divide Russia from China, and to divide Russia from Europe. It's part of a global strategy and thus we have to discuss US-Russia relationship in the overall context of the US hegemonic global policy.

Thus the US launched the coup d'état in Ukraine.

RT Op-Edge

Dominant neo-conservatives in the US are pursuing a very anti-Russian policy and seem to be hysterical and delusional in it, Dr. Clifford A. Kiracofe, Jr., former Senior Professional Staff Member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told RT.

The US is going to send more non-lethal military aid to Ukraine US Vice President Joe Biden told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in a phone conversation.

RT: We've heard from Victoria Nuland and David Cameron last week, both of whom alluded to "keeping the pressure on Russia", including with more sanctions. Why do you think they keep blaming Russia for everything that's happening in Ukraine, and what is your forecast for the future of US-Russia relations?

Dr. Clifford A. Kiracofe:The tendency here in Washington is just to keep the so-called pressure which means economic sanctions which is a form of economic warfare of course, and also the propaganda this information warfare that's another aspect of the so-called pressure. So this information warfare, economic sanctions are part of the package of so-called tools. I mean we can also see NATO is kind of rattling sabers, etc. So a combination of this is coordinated through Washington, the White House, and State Department with allies in Europe. I think the Europeans appear to me to be getting a little bit tired of too much pressure and may not continue the so-called economic sanctions. I think the Europeans are divided. Some Europeans sort of slavishly want to follow Washington. But on the other hand there are some more sensible people in the EU who seek a more independent policy from Washington and therefore would try for bettering relations with Russia after we get through this crisis. So I think the Europeans are divided among themselves and also from Washington. In terms of Washington and the future of Russian relations, the US will certainly continue the Cold War if you wish…actually it's worse than the Cold War, because it was more stable during the Cold war… But I think Washington will continue along this anti-Russian line and you can see reactions in Congress and commentary from the White House that indicated a continuing hard-line toward Russia.

RT: Germany's Der Spiegel magazine goes as far as asking whether the Americans are trying to thwart the peace efforts promoted by Germany and its EU partners. What do you think?

CK: I think that Der Spiegel article that you mention is accurate, I read it myself, and I think we need to place it within the overall context of the US global policy which is of course to launch these pressures around the world so as to maintain a hegemonic position. And to maintain a hegemonic position the concept is to sort of break-up or reduce the effectiveness of the BRICS countries, and of course to divide Russia from China, and to divide Russia from Europe. It's part of a global strategy and thus we have to discuss US-Russia relationship in the overall context of the US hegemonic global policy.

Thus the US launched the coup d'état in Ukraine. President Obama has already admitted that he indeed was responsible for this so-called power transition. The coup d'état in Ukraine and the destabilization of Central Europe generally is part of this process to go on with the offensive against Russia, to try to block Russian-European relations. Obviously if we want to move to a new type of international system, a more modern type of international relations in terms of a multi-polar world, polycentric world or a pluralist world of course the NATO alliance is obsolete. But the intention of the US in to continue to promote the NATO alliance, to use it against other powers in the world and to impose hegemony. The opposite would be to have the NATO alliance dissolved… the Warsaw Pact of course has dissolved…and to have as Russian side put forward a Common European House, a project to have a common European space where Russians, the EU could cooperatively work together.

I think the main instrumentality for blocking Russia that Washington is trying to use is this obsolete NATO alliance which is increasingly being strengthened and expanded and aimed at Russia. We have to remember that that most Americans have no idea of the geography: "Ukraine border from Moscow? What are we talking about? 300 miles, something like that?" So these issues of Ukraine and the stability in Eastern and Central Europe are extremely sensitive matters for not only Russia but also for the West Europeans which I think is reflected in the Der Spiegel article, it's reflected in the sentiments of more sophisticated Germans and French and others who have a grasp of the historical context as well. I mean Russia has been a part of Europe for many centuries, how can you isolate Russia from Europe? Of course Russia has an Asian dimension too and an Asian destiny as well. But you cannot isolate Russia historically from Europe - it's a part of Europe. So the US policies, the neo-conservative point of view - which is dominant in Washington - is fundamentally anti-Russian, no matter what Russia will do the neo-cons will always go for a Cold War or worse with respect to Russia.

RT: Many in the West are calling on Russia to exert more pressure on the rebels in East Ukraine. Do you think the West will be doing the same to the Kiev government, to stop this conflict?

CK: Yes I do. As I said before more sophisticated thoughtful Europeans are concerned about the US perhaps manipulating NATO or the EU and we do have that call from Ms. Nuland about her attitude to the EU. What we have now in Washington… the psychology, the mindset at the moment is almost hysteria with respect to Russia and a very Cold War sentiment here in Washington. And this is being propelled by the very dominant neo-conservative thinking and advisors throughout the Congress and the executive branch. So in my own view while there are Europeans who would like to see a better relationship with Russia as well as with the US, a more equal relationship with the US… I think Europe is split. It's better for Europe to distance itself at the moment from the US particularly when Washington is so delusional; I've never seen it this delusional before, except for the instance of the Iraq war… It's just this delusion and hysteria in Congress and a very aggressive attitude in the State Department. One would think diplomats would be more diplomatic…

I believe that the Europeans are somewhat divided: more thoughtful ones are reflecting the dangers of the Ukrainian crisis potentially causing instability in Europe and moving out of Eastern and Central Europe into Western Europe. I think irrespective of some language of some leadership elements in Europe, I think there is well-known voices have been speaking out in favor of trying to get behind this crisis and repair relations with Russia.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

2ndiceberg yesterday at 18:13

Benoit ZuccarellI

You know, something stinks about this whole set up. China has been made wealthy by the West sending all manufacturing

more...

Not just neo-con but neo-liberal. Double whammy.

Enrique at 08:10 the day before yesterday

The NeoCon Mafia is the worst danger for World stability, worse than their ISIL puppets.

Remo Gutierrez at 00:26 the day before yesterday

The US is still trying to push TTIP trade deal with Europe. With Russia out of the picture US corporations figure it will pressure Europe into signing the deal.

Jonni H. 3 days ago 19:58

That last comment from "the Word of God" is an uneducated point of view from someone that has probably never been outside there precious USA. People in the US need to understand that there government lies just like every other government. To even make statements like this is totally delusional.

What's going on in Ukraine is just another bunch of lies from the US Government. I have been there and I have seen what's going on. The media in the US is totally filled with lies about what is really happening. I only feel for the people of Ukraine. They are the real losers in all of this. This is all about controlling the natural resources, nothing more. Civil Wars just make a good cover story!

The Word of God 3 days ago 19:28

Russians will always find someone prominent among 330 million Americans with an opinion they like and can use for propaganda. This is because there is every possible opinion about everything among them. Whatever the truth is, Russia's actions are aggressive, hostile, violate treaties it signed, are illegal, and are not acceptable to most Americans and many in Europe. They do warrant a new cold war, a war Russia will lose just the way it lost the last one. It was given a chance to become a civilized nation, a part of the world in the 21st century. Instead its government chose to behave like a 19th century imperial power. When it loses this time, it won't be given a second chance.

Benoit ZuccarellI 3 days ago 19:11

You know, something stinks about this whole set up. China has been made wealthy by the West sending all manufacturing jobs there, 70 million of them, so they are not going to double-cross the West. So with no problems with China, what does it matter about Russia.....?

Its starting to look as if this is all a big charade to induce world-wide 'austerity' on the 99% while the 1% gets rich and the 1% then tells the 99% all about the big bad boogeyman that doesn't even exist.

Enrique Ferro 3 days ago 18:41

If the US is thinking to drive a wedge between Russia and China, I think it is going to be a disappointment. Likewise isolating Russia from the BRICS looks like a hard die mission. As for Europe, there is a trend to repent. It has become even a fashion to go to Moscow for talks, the last pilgrim was, yesterday, the Spanish FM, who is not a Podemos Minister, but from the PP government, the same party which had Sr Aznar as its PM!!!

[Mar 14, 2015] Are 'Color Revolutions' A New Front In U.S.-Russia Tensions

It's all about control of resources.
Mar 14, 2015 | NPR

Moscow has been talking lately about "color revolutions" as a new form of warfare employed by the West. The name comes from the Orange and Rose Revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, respectively, but it's now being applied to popular rebellions such as those in Egypt and Syria. While Russia accuses the West of this kind of subversion, it seems to be following the same playbook in eastern Ukraine.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

U.S. relations with Russia are at their lowest point since the Cold War thanks to the crisis in Ukraine. Russian defense officials are talking about a new doctrine of subversive warfare between major world powers. They accuse the West of using popular uprisings to topple unfriendly governments. And some analysts say Moscow itself is employing that strategy in eastern Ukraine. More from NPR's Corey Flintoff.

COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Russia's defense establishment holds a conference each year to discuss the most pressing security issues that face the region. This year's conference was originally scheduled to focus on what would happen in Central Asia once the United States withdraws from Afghanistan. But Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu changed all that with an opening speech in which he said that major threats to peace today are the so-called color revolutions.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

SERGEI SHOIGU: (Through translator) More and more, color revolutions are turning into armed struggles that are devised in terms of military art, from information warfare to special forces.

FLINTOFF: In Russia, the term color revolution has come to mean popular uprisings, like the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Russian officials give it the negative connotation of a violent upheaval that overthrows the legitimate authorities and destabilizes the state. According to this view, color revolutions would include the Arab Spring revolts in Egypt, Libya and Syria, and, of course, the latest revolution in Ukraine. The Russian defense minister says it's all about control of resources.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

SHOIGU: (Through translator) The socioeconomic problems of some countries are used as an excuse to replace nationally-oriented governments with regimes controlled from abroad. Those regimes provide their patrons with unimpeded access to these countries' resources.

FLINTOFF: The main villain in this scenario would be the United States, aided by its Western allies. Analyst Dmitry Gorenburg attended the Moscow conference and says he wasn't sure if the statements about color revolutions were propaganda for Russian domestic consumption or whether the defense officials really believe them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DMITRY GORENBURG: If they really do believe that this is what Washington has been doing - well, we're going to do all the same things you do and see how you like it.

FLINTOFF: Gorenburg, with the research group CNA, says the uprisings in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk mirrored what had happened in Kiev a few months earlier. Pro-Russian separatists staged protests, then occupied government buildings. With the help of an intense campaign by Russian media, they held a hastily organized referendum and declared independence. There were even concerns that Russia might annex the area as it did with Crimea earlier this year. Dmitry Babich, a political analyst for the state-run Voice of Russia, says that was a misreading of Russia's intentions.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DMITRY BABICH: Russia's desires are actually pretty modest. I think the Russian elite wants security for itself. And it wants to trade with the West. And it wants to integrate itself into the Western elite.

... ... ...

[Mar 14, 2015] A Review of 'Frontline Ukraine' by Richard Sakwa

Mar 05, 2015 | hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk

You might have thought that a serious book on the Ukraine crisis, written by a distinguished academic in good clear English, and published by a reputable house, might have gained quite a bit of attention at a time when that country is at the centre of many people's concerns.

But some readers here now understand that publishing, and especially the reviewing of books, are not the simple marketplaces of ideas which we would all wish them to be.

And so, as far as I can discover, this book :

'Frontline Ukraine : Crisis in the Borderlands , by Richard Sakwa. Published by I.B.Tauris

…though it came out some months ago, has only been reviewed in one place in Britain, the Guardian newspaper, by Jonathan Steele, the first-rate foreign correspondent whose rigour and enterprise (when we were both stationed in Moscow) quite persuaded me to overlook his former sympathy for the left-wing cause (most notably expressed in a 1977 book 'Socialism with a German Face' about the old East Germany, which seemed to me at the time to be ah, excessively kind).

Mr Steele's review can be read here

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/19/frontline-ukraine-crisis-in-borderlands-richard-sakwa-review-account

I have said elsewhere that I would myself be happier if the book were more hostile to my position on this conflict. Sometimes I feel that it is almost too good to be true, to have my own conclusions confirmed so powerfully, and I would certainly like to see the book reviewed by a knowledgeable proponent of the NATO neo-conservative position. Why hasn't it been?

But even so I recommend it to any reader of mine who is remotely interested in disentangling the reality from the knotted nets of propaganda in which it is currently shrouded.

Like George Friedman's interesting interview in the Moscow newspaper 'Kommersant' ( you can read it here http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/01/20/2561 ) , the book has shifted my own view.

I have tended to see the *basic* dispute in Ukraine as being yet another outbreak of the old German push into the east, carried out under the new, nice flag of the EU, a liberal, federative empire in which the vassal states are tactfully allowed limited sovereignty as long as they don't challenge the fundamental politico-economic dominance of Germany. I still think this is a strong element in the EU's thrust in this direction.

But I have tended to neglect another feature of the new Europe, also set out in Adam Tooze's brilliant 'The Deluge' – the firm determination of the USA to mould Europe in its own image (a determination these days expressed mainly through the EU and NATO).

I should have paid more attention to the famous words 'F*** the EU!' spoken by the USA's Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, in a phone call publicised to the world by (presumably) Russian intelligence. The EU isn't half as enthusiastic about following the old eastern road as is the USA. Indeed, it's a bit of a foot-dragger.

The driving force in this crisis is the USA, with the EU being reluctantly tugged along behind. And if Mr Friedman is right (and I think he is), the roots of it lie in Russia's decision to obstruct the West's intervention in Syria.

Perhaps the key to the whole thing (rather dispiriting in that it shows the USA really hasn't learned anything important from the Iraq debacle) is the so-called 'Wolfowitz Doctrine' of 1992, named after the neo-con's neo-con, Paul Wolfowitz, and summed up by Professor Sakwa (p.211) thus: 'The doctrine asserted that the US should prevent "any country from dominating any region of the world that might be a springboard to threaten unipolar and exclusive US dominance"'.

Note how neatly this meshes with what George Friedman says in his interview.

Now, there are dozens of fascinating things in Professor Sakwa's book, and my copy is scored with annotations and references. I could spend a week summarising it for you. (By the way, the Professor himself is very familiar with this complex region, and might be expected, thanks to his Polish ancestry, to take a different line. His father was in the Polish Army in 1939, escaped to Hungary in the chaos of defeat, and ended up serving in Anders's Second Corps, fighting with the British Army at El Alamein, Benghazi, Tobruk and then through Italy via Monte Cassino. Then he was in exile during the years of Polish Communism. Like Vaclav Klaus, another critic of current western policy, Professor Sakwa can hardly be dismissed as a naif who doesn't understand about Russia, or accused of being a 'fellow-traveler' or 'useful idiot'.

He is now concerned at 'how we created yet another crisis' (p xiii) .

But I would much prefer that you read it for yourself, and so will have to limit my references quite sternly.

There are good explanations of the undoubted anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies of some strands in Ukrainian politics. Similar nastiness, by the way, is to be found loose in some of the Baltic States. I mention this n because it justified classifying the whole movement as 'Neo-Nazi', which is obviously false, but because it tells us something very interesting about the nature of nationalism and Russophobia in this part of the world. No serious or fair description of the crisis can ignore it. Yet, in the portrayal of Russia as Mordor, and the Ukraine as Utopia, western media simply leave out almost everything about Ukraine that doesn't appeal to their audiences, the economic near collapse, the Judophobia and Russophobia (the derogatory word 'Moskal', for instance, in common use), the worship of the dubious (this word is very generous, I think) Stepan Bandera by many of the Western ultra-nationalists, the violence against dissenters from the Maidan view ( see http://rt.com/news/ukraine-presidential-candidates-attacked-516/). The survival and continued power of Ukraine's oligarchs after a revolution supposedly aimed at cleaning up the country is also never mentioned. We all know about Viktor Yanukovych;s tasteless mansion, but the book provides some interesting details on President Poroshenko's residence (it looks rather like the White House) , which I have not seen elsewhere.

The detailed description of how and why the Association Agreement led to such trouble is excellent. I had not realised that, since the Lisbon Treaty, alignment with NATO is an essential part of EU membership (and association) – hence the unavoidable political and military clauses in the agreement.

So is the filleting of the excuse-making and apologetics of those who still pretend that Yanukovych was lawfully removed from office: the explicit threat of violence from the Maidan, the failure to muster the requisite vote, the presence of armed men during the vote, the failure to follow the constitutional rules (set beside the available lawful deal, overridden by the Maidan, under which Yanukovych would have faced early elections and been forced to make constitutional changes) .

Then here we have Ms Nuland again, boasting of the $5 billion (eat your heart out, the EU, with your paltry Ł300 million) http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2013/dec/218804.htm which the USA has 'invested in Ukraine. 'Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We've invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.

It's worth noting that in this speech, in December 2013, she still envisages the supposedly intolerable Yanukovych as a possible partner.

Other points well made are the strange effect of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, which has created the very tension against which it now seeks to reassure border nations, by encouraging them, too, to join, the non-binding nature of the much-trumpeted Budapest memorandum, the lack of coverage of the ghastly events in Odessa, the continuing lack of a proper independent investigation into the Kiev mass shootings in February 2014 .

Also examined is the Russian fear of losing Sevastopol, an entirely justified fear given that President Yushchenko had chosen to say in Georgia, during the war of August 2008, that Russia's basing rights in the city would end in 2017. The 'disappearance; of the 'Right Sector' and 'Svoboda' vote in recent elections is explained by their transfer to the radical Party led by Oleh Lyashko.

Professor Sakwa also explores Russia's behaviour in other border disputes , with Norway and China, in which it has been far from aggressive. And he points out that Ukraine's nationalists have made their country's life far more difficult by their rigid nationalist approach to the many citizens of that country who, while viewing themselves as Ukrainian, do not share the history or passions of the ultra-nationalists in the West.

Likewise he warns simple-minded analysts that the conflict in the East of Ukraine is not desired by Russia's elite, which does not wish to be drawn into another foreign entanglement (all Russian strategists recall the disastrous result of the Afghan intervention). But it may be desired by Russian ultra-nationalists, not necessarily controllable.

He points out that Russia has not, as it did in Crimea, intervened decisively in Eastern Ukraine to ensure secession. And he suggests that those Russian nationalists are acting in many cases independently of Moscow in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas. Putin seeks to control them and limit them, but fears them as well.

In general, the book is an intelligent, well-researched and thoughtful attempt to explain the major crisis of our time. Anybody, whatever he or she might think of the issue, would benefit from reading it. It is shocking that it is not better known, and I can only assume that its obscurity, so far is caused by the fact that it does not fit the crude propaganda narrative of the 'Putin is Hitler' viewpoint.

How odd that we should all have learned so little from the Iraq debacle. This time the 'WMD' are non-existent Russian plans to expand and/or attack the Baltic states. And of course the misrepresentation of both sides in the Ukrainian controversy is necessary for the portrayal of Putin as Hitler and his supporters as Nazis, and opponents of belligerence as Nazi fellow-travellers. The inconvenient fact , that if there are Nazis in this story , they tend to be on the 'good' side must be ignored. Let us hope the hysteria subsides before it carries us into another stupid war.

March 5, 2015 Comments (54) Categories: Cold War , History , New Cold War , Russia , Ukraine | Permalink

Comments

LornaJean | 10 March 2015 at 09:00 AM

There should be a proper inquiry into who really started this conflict I recall watching on TV as the boxer who was leading the Kiev mob came out of lengthy negotiations with the 3 EU ministers and the crowds booing and erupting The infamous Julia also appeared on the scene. this was of course after only a few hours previously that Obama announced that he had agreement with Putin to have a peaceful resolution and elections in 3 months.

As I watched the eruption of the mob I Thought this will end badly and at that point the EU should have withdrawn. However the subsequent violence and the removal of the elected leader followed. All interviews with the people in the East and Crimea showed their distrust of the Kiev crowd and it was clear that the oligarchs on the East who had many workers and controlled the manufacturing would not support the East. Putin is a nasty man but to suggest that he deliberately caused this situation is a travesty.Russia with refugees pouring over the border reacted to the situation and who can blame them.? Now a less belligerent and frankly dishonest approach needs to be taken by the EU I can not see that the Kiev regime can ever win the loyalty of the East after this bitter war.the only solution is some sort of autonomous regios that allows the Esst of Ukraine to rule themselves.

Bill Jones | 10 March 2015 at 01:28 AM

This made me smile:

" I would certainly like to see the book reviewed by a knowledgeable proponent of the NATO neo-conservative position. Why hasn't it been? "

Because to be knowledgeable is not to be a Neo-conservative.

Mr Rob | 09 March 2015 at 02:45 PM

@Mike B

"I haven't responded to your comments on McCain and Nuland because I thought that I had made it clear that I thought external interference from any quarter was undesirable and I accept that there has been such interference from both sides."

Oh really? You do not remember writing this then?

"It was Ukrainians, not the EU, who ousted Yanukovych. They should be allowed to deal with their internal disputes and decide their future alliances and associations."

or this?

"However, the EU, whatever its faults (and, believe me, it is not my "beloved" EU) did not organise his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an internal matter and, whatever the faults on either side, should have been left at that."

And on this thread you had not even mentioned the USA involvement. You have been consistently dishonest by omission. Well, at least you're consistent.

And now you manage the immortal words

"I do maintain, though, that the interference of the EU and USA" [well done for mentioning them at last],"which cannot be denied" [but can, it seems, be ignored...] "and which was reflected in Russia's own behaviour cannot be compared with Russia's subsequent blatant military involvement in a sovereign country's internal conflict."

So on the one hand the EU and the USA have interfered, but on the other it is an "internal conflict".

Priceless.

Roy Robinson | 08 March 2015 at 05:48 PM

@Alan Thomas By my reading of certain facts I deduce there is a de facto alliance between Russia and China. These facts being that Russia trades arms to China but the USA will not trade arms to either. On May 8th Xi Jingping will attend the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow accompanied by his junk yard dog Kim Jong Un of North Korea. No Western leaders as far as I know will be in attendance. De facto alliances such as the one Britain had with France in 1914 are always hard to call because unlike formal ones such as Nato there is nothing in writing. I also suspect that one reason China has not tried to match America in nuclear weapons so far is because Russia already does so. North Korea is also very useful in that it can be used to threaten Japan without China appearing to be the aggressor.

Mr Rob | 08 March 2015 at 11:16 AM

@ Mike B

I see you have ignored my request to answer the questions I posed to Hector (who has also yet to respond) about the US presence at the Maidan. Perhaps you needed to ignore my request in order to write this drivel with a straight face:

Re Yanukovych: "However, the EU, whatever its faults (and, believe me, it is not my "beloved" EU) did not organise his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an internal matter and, whatever the faults on either side, should have been left at that."

Some Ukrainians carried out the WW2 massacre at Khatyn (not Katyn) - does that mean that all Ukrainians are responsible for it, approved of it, or that it was carried out on behalf of Ukrainians? Of course not.

You have also studiously avoided mention of the presence at the Maidan of US Senator McCain and US Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, and the latter's meetings with the Maidan leaders, co-ordinated with US Ambassador Pyatt.

You have also somehow omitted to mention Yatseniuk's ("Yats") lightning visit to Washington days after the overthrow of Yanukovych, or the visit of CIA Director Brennan to Kiev.

And just for the record, I have first-hand oral evidence of people in Minsk, Belarus, being offered money to go to the Maidan - so even that the Maidan crowd was completely Ukrainian is probably untrue.

You accuse Mr Klimenko of bias, and yet you yourself give and repeat a dishonest account of what is known to have happened at the Maidan.

Such behaviour has no place in proper debate.

Ian | 08 March 2015 at 11:04 AM

To Mike B and others...

It's all very well to agonize about what Ukrainians may or may not want. We could all weep huge quantities of crocodile tears over Ukraine's thwarted "self determination", but the essential fact is that Ukrainians are not agreed about what they want. Some appear to want closer ties with the EU, some appear to want to maintain the status quo and some appear to want closer ties with the Russian Federation.

All of which is "interesting" until different factions within Ukraine start calling on their preferred partners to back them up. It seems to me that the US and the EU have contributed more than one would reasonably expect to the discord in Ukraine and silly expectations in a great many Ukrainians. To describe this as "irresponsible" is something of an understatement.

We are now in a situation where the "preferred partners" might come to blows over the confused and discordant expectations of Ukraine. In such a situation. it would be hard for me to care less about what Ukrainians want especially when some of Ukraine's politicians sound as though they would happily see the world burn if only it ensures "territorial Integrity" for Ukraine.

It's a very old trick for which "socialists" should be famous. Describe a group as deserving, noble and disadvantaged... and use this supposed circumstance to justify the most ridiculous, regressive and destructive policy the human mind can invent. Of course, with our own "socialists", the all important thing is that they are not only well rewarded with a reputation for being "caring sharing human beings"... but also very well paid for the disasters they inflict on us.

Edward Klimenko | 08 March 2015 at 10:50 AM

@MikeB

'did not organise his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an internal matter'

What the EU did was the equivalent of persuading one party in a Mexican stand-off to lower his weapon so that the other can shoot him safely. Yes, the EU most certainly organized Yanukovich's removal - the EU normally takes a dim view of governments established by putsch, but recognized this particular band of putschists almost immediately.

And why was it not an internal matter when Ukrainian police were attempting to clear Maidan of the lawless occupying mob, but instead a human rights crisis demanding sanctions against everyone from the Prosecutor-General to Yanukovich's barber?

'You should note, however, that he fled his country on the same day that he announced an agreement with his opponents.'

You are mistaken, he did not flee the country the day the agreement was made. He left the city of Kiev for Kharkov, his motorcade coming under fire as he did so. As the putsch developed, he called a conference in Kharkov of regional governors still loyal to the rightful president, the participants agreeing to administer their own regions until lawful authority could be reestablished in the rest of the country.

Two factors brought about the failure of this effort: the first was the success of Valentin Nalivaichenko's takeover of the SBU, and the second was the cowardly betrayal by Kharkov regional governor Mikhail Dobkin and Kharkov city mayor Gennady Kernes, who panicked and fled when they heard that the SBU was after them (both would later cut deals with the Maidan regime for their own survival). Fearing capture by the SBU and feeling unable to trust anybody, Yanukovich then departed for the Crimea.

You might think this would be safe place for him to make his stand. You would be wrong - the mood in Crimea at the time was one of utter disgust for Yanukovich and the Regions Party on account of their utter failure to defend the state and the people, which only grew after it came to light that the scum Yanukovich had appointed as mayor of Sevastopol had been conspiring to surrender the city to the Right Sector. Crimea wanted out of the Ukraine, and had no interest in helping Yanukovich get his seat back. Out of options, he finally fled to the Russian mainland on or about February 26.

As for the rest, I'll say it again: the 'Holodomor' is a fiction, an attempt to portray a famine that affected a vast swathe of the USSR as campaign against Ukrainians specifically, when in truth it most heavily affected the non-Ukrainian Donbass region. It is invoked by western Ukrainians whose ancestors did not experience it to justify their racial hatred for eastern Ukrainians whose ancestors did. You ought to be ashamed of spreading such rot, and you should stop trying to frame your own biases as 'objectivity'.

Grant | 07 March 2015 at 08:32 PM

I listened to that.

Everything Peter said was spot on. That other bloke who was challenging you is a dangerous idiot. You pointed out to him that we do not call Chinese regime tyrants, or the Saudis, yet he immediately replies calling Putin a vile tyrant. Totally obvious to what you just told him like he is a brainwashed stuck record.

NATO is now the armed wing of EU expansion. They intentionally sent Russia that message during the Kosovo war by including the Luftwaffe bombing in previous Russia spheres of influence.

mikebarnes | 07 March 2015 at 07:13 PM

@ Edward Klimenko

If nothing else I like your style . Many contributors here think they know. And a few think you know more than them. I think on this subject you certainly know more than I . Whether your correct is unknown at least by me . But.

Oh that our snot brained, could have need for the dentistry they so deserve.

No matter whose in the right here , and I suspect neither are. Its their business and that of the federation they once belonged . Just as northern Island was our business . But Clinton poked his snout in .

The compromise, killers and bombers running the country might well be repeated with a split country just like the many created since the chaos following WWII.

Roy Robinson | 07 March 2015 at 05:42 PM

@Alan Thomas The Eurasian hard men such as Putin, Erdogan , Modi and XI Jinping all seem to understand one another and are doing business together.

They all lead countries which have been on the receiving of Western aggression over the last few centuries Modern Westerners with their naive PC outlook like to overlook this but the people in those countries have not forgotten from which direction the threat to them has usually come from and the past losses and humiliations which resulted.

When someone sees themselves as a benefactor to mankind but others see as a thief with a violent history there is always going to be room for a big understanding.

Alan Thomas | 07 March 2015 at 03:44 PM

Roy Robinson

Perhaps, when it comes to China, the 'west' cannot see a solution, in which case hurling - or even simply registering - criticism might be seen as a waste of time and effort. In any case, since when did it make sense to ignore lesser villains simply because one can't take on the bigger ones?

Steve Jones | 07 March 2015 at 03:11 PM

I suspect the neocons are now looking at the General Patton play of outsourcing a war against Russia to Germany.

Germany should leave the EU together with France and the PIGS using the euro as an excuse. Their departure might shake out a few others like Croatia, Hungary and Austria plus a few more. Let the banks fail then go in with Russia and the other BRICS.

Edward Klimenko | 07 March 2015 at 02:04 PM

@MikeB

' Are you so sure that Ukrainians wanted their now ex-president?'

Almost twelve and a half million Ukrainians voted for him in 2010, and that is a far better indicator of what Ukrainians wanted than the actions of around ten thousand Nazi terrorists in February 2014.

' It was Ukrainians, not the EU, who ousted Yanukovych'

What a nonsensical and disingenuous remark. Yanukovich was the democratically -elected president(most likely the last that the Ukraine will ever have). EuroMaidan was an assembly of Nazi terrorists and their apologists. Europe used threats and blackmail to prevent Yanukovich from doing his duty and protecting the country from this violent mob. Europe then tricked him into signing a 'peace agreement' and pulling back the police from their positions, allowing the terrorist mob and its sponsors to rampage freely through Kiev and seize the institutions of the state.

You will probably cite the lack of an immediate militant response to the putsch as proof that Ukrainians wanted this abomination of a government. Well, there we have democracy according to Mike! No need for elections, might makes right and proves the existence of an underlying consensus! Brilliant.

Let's take your logic a bit further. The rebellion now rules in Donbass, and no armed movement has arisen there to demand the return of the region to Ukrainian rule. Do you accept this as evidence of the people's wish not to be ruled by the Maidan regime? If the rebels break the Ukrainian lines, and take control of the rest of the country, will you shrug and conclude that Ukrainians wanted to be with Russia after all?

' , I would prefer people to be aggressive with me by throwing money in my direction, rather than launching rockets,

Throwing money at the Ukraine enables the Maidan regime to throw rockets at Ukrainian citizens. Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk have no legal authority to rule over anybody, yet your beloved EU insists that these putsch-installed thugs are the government of the Ukraine, and that all Ukrainians must obey them or die.

' Nothing the EU has done, though, justifies Russian military intervention in Ukraine'

Everything the EU has done justifies everything Russia has done, and would justify a good deal more. The European officials who formulated European policy toward the Ukraine in the past year are responsible for the war and for all the crimes of the Maidan regime, and they should all face the death penalty - starting with Ashton.

Think on this: if not for the Crimea operation, all the depravity that the Ukraine has heaped upon Donetsk would have been visited upon Crimea. You think that Crimeans would have been better off being shelled, shot, raped and tortured by the Ukrainian military? Go and tell them so!

Just make sure that your health insurance covers reconstructive dentistry first.

Paul Taylor | 07 March 2015 at 12:00 PM

Hector. You clearly have no idea about Hitler and Germany in the late 1930s.Germany was just taking back land that was stolen in June 1919. Hitler had mass support from the Germanic people in those parts and in some areas such as parts of Austria he was even more popular than he was in Germany itself.

It was madness that we went to war against Germany,we should have remained neutral like Spain or Switzerland and let Hitler defeat Stalin on his own.

Paulus M | 07 March 2015 at 10:46 AM

@ kevin 1

"Personally, I have difficulty with this quote because I don't think facts do change, that's why they are called facts. New information may come to light but the facts though temporarily hidden from view remain constant. But that's just my opinion."

It all depends on whether the facts/evidence supports the hypothesis. If they don't then no matter how erudite it appears - it's wrong. What our media don't want you to question or look at is who started this conflict. From day one, I've never been in doubt that Washington is the main driver and the EU the junior partner. The Nato alliance acts as a bind and a figleaf. Time and again the facts sindicates that the "west" is an aggressor bloc which tramples over sovereignty and makes a mockery of supposed international law.

Mr Rob | 07 March 2015 at 10:08 AM

Are you claiming that prior to the "removal" of Yanukovych

US Senator McCain did not appear at the Maidan,

and that US Assistant Secretary of State Nuland did not appear at the Maidan,

and that she did not hold a series of meetings with its leaders,

and that she and US Ambassador Pyatt did not co-ordinate these efforts with a clear aim as to who they wanted to see in power (our man "Yats"),

and that only days after Yanukovych fled,

Yatseniuk was not shaking hands with US President Obama at the White House

and that US Director of the CIA Brennan was not in Kiev?

Do you claim that the US was leaving Ukraine to "sort out it's [sic] own issues"?

Please do respond rather than lapse into silence, I'd be fascinated to see how you have reached your conclusions in the face of the known facts.

Kevin 1 | 07 March 2015 at 09:27 AM

@ Ronnie

I think you'll find that, in circumstances such as those you describe, PH tends to quote the famous retort attributed to Keynes, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" I'm just surprised that he hasn't done so (yet) in this instance.

Personally, I have difficulty with this quote because I don't think facts do change, that's why they are called facts. New information may come to light but the facts though temporarily hidden from view remain constant. But that's just my opinion.

N.Belcher | 07 March 2015 at 01:28 AM

Dear Mr Hitchens

In December 2011 The U.S Federal Reserve bailed out European banks to the
tune of Billions of Dollars.
It is reported that they tried to keep this bailout a secret at the time.

Do you think that this , and the latest E.U initiative to have The Ukraine
are linked ? i.e that it was a condition of the U.S bailout or expected of The
E.U that they continue to expand into The Ukraine in return for these U.S Dollars?
Yours N.Belcher.

Roy Robinson | 07 March 2015 at 01:04 AM

While the West obsesses about the supposed threat from Putin it seems totally oblivious to the rise of Xi Jinping a Chinese leader who looks like being of the magnitude of Mao.

He has described himself as the leader of a party wedded to the ideology of Lenin, Stalin and Mao and is concentrating all the power in his own hands.

There is no Western propaganda campaign against him yet although think about it, ten years ago there wasn't one against Putin.

Xi has stated that he gets on well with Putin as they have similar personalities.

Edward Klimenko | 06 March 2015 at 08:44 PM

'Might there be the slightest chance of Ukrainians' wishes being given some consideration?'

Capital idea. But you know what the Ukrainians wanted? They wanted Viktor Yanukovich as President and they wanted the Parliament they elected in 2012. What scant regard America and Europe gave their wishes!

Bob | 06 March 2015 at 06:42 PM

Ronnie that purported paper was presented in early Feb 2014 well after Maidan was underway, not exactly planned from day one. It was also Kiev at the behest of the US who started the ATO, resorting to violence away from the Franco-German and Russian negotiations.
I might add the anti Russian propaganda in the media had started well before Sochi started. This was all planned a while back and not by Russia.

Ian | 06 March 2015 at 03:49 PM

It does not seem to me there is a "change of mind" or any inconsistency implied in Mr Hitchens's recommendation of Richard Sakwa's book. There may be a slight change of emphasis but it was always understood and mentioned that the US of A was an additional driving force to events in eastern Europe. It does not alter the validity of the view that the EU is "Germany by other means" and that the EU/Germany covets "lebensraum" in the east. So far as I can see, it can only be of academic interest whether the developing crisis is primarily EU or US led.

Nor has Mr Hitchens ever attempted to exonerate President Putin or Russia, giving more than sufficient emphasis to "Russian interests" and "Russia's perceived sphere of influence" ... to crudely paraphrase. It does not matter if Russia is or is not entitled to these perceptions. That the perceptions exist should be a major consideration in the policy of any other "player" who would prefer a continued, peaceful existence.

What is important is whether either side can afford to "back down" and which side is "most guilty" with regards creating this crisis. It seems fairly obvious that it is the US and the EU who can best afford to "back off"... and it is the US and the EU whose posturing and behavior have contributed most to the current situation.

For those who adhere to the "bad Putin"/"Naughty Russia" model, rest assured that the US and the EU are unlikely to give up on this one. They are determined to give the big bad bear a spanking.

I fear that they have got it badly wrong, seriously misjudged Russia's president and relied to heavily on dated intelligence about Russian capabilities.

Posted by: Incognito | 06 March 2015 at 12:41 PM

John,

I think it's an oversight on PH's part (we're all human, right?) to have placed so much emphasis on Germany in his analysis of the the crisis, and, in so doing to have tacitly downplayed the role of the US. Plainly put Germany-although it is the de facto seat of power in the EU- doesn't have the brass to so flagrantly antagonise Russia without back-up.

Moreover, if anyone doesn't think the EU is 'briefed' on foreign policy by the US state department, they are living in an alternate reality. America is a continuation of the British Empire by other means.

Grant | 06 March 2015 at 12:23 PM

Pat Davers "Indeed, I think that European leaders acted naively in aligning with the US, and were genuinely dismayed at the outcome of their tacit support for the coup in Ukraine"

I do wish people would study the comments made by the EU leaders when initial proposals for third way consultations with the Russians was proposed, they said things like "the last people we would speak to over this would be the Russians".

The EU leaders detest everything Russia stands for, as they are enlightened supra nationalists. It was precisely their arrogant and dismissive attitude that led to armed conflict and only after thousands had died did they come to meet Putin in Russia to seek a peace.

Pat Davers | 06 March 2015 at 11:46 AM

"Are we witnessing a Hitchens change of mind?"

I think we are seeing a shift of opinion as to who has the been the main driver behind the Ukraine conflict; it was not so much EU (ie German-led) expansionism as NATO (ie US-led) imperialism that brought us where we are now, as of course many people have been saying all along.

Indeed, I think that European leaders acted naively in aligning with the US, and were genuinely dismayed at the outcome of their tacit support for the coup in Ukraine, and are probably now regretting their actions. The fact that is was Merkel and Hollande who brokered the Minsk agreement without US involvement would seem to support this.

Bob | 06 March 2015 at 10:51 AM

Ronnie you have clearly have never done any scenario planning or read position papers, obviously the Kremlin would have several plans of action for the breakdown of the Ukraine. Regardless of the document's validity, the title is invalid. "Direct interstate relations" cannot exist between Moscow and regions annexed to Russia, the plan is obviously talking about a political breakup of Ukraine, not annexation. Even then though, i dont entirely believe it.

If Russia's plan was to break up Ukraine into statelets, I see no reason why it still hasn't recognized the independence of LPR and DPR and instead continues to treat them, in both language and action, as regions of Ukraine seeking federalization. A federal and perhaps confederate Ukraine would obviously be to Russia's interest. Complete breakup of Ukraine -maybe but it's difficult to see how.

Weak.

Daniel | 06 March 2015 at 07:25 AM

Dear Peter,

Thank you for another thought-provoking article. It's nice to have some measured thinking amongst the media-mob's clamour.

A little off the current topic but I was expecting to see a comment on the recent ACMD report in which the scientist's covering letter states: 'international evidence suggests many popular types of prevention activity are ineffective at changing behaviour, and a small number may even increase the risks for drug use' . Paradoxically, thought not unexpectedly, the report ends up stating the that the solution is more drugs education in schools.. Just thought it may be worth flagging as it reminded me of your previous posts regarding sex education and its supposed 'benefits'.

S. Coleman | 05 March 2015 at 09:36 PM

I would not be alone here in welcoming PH's recognition of the importance of the role of the US. I think Brian Meredith also expressed this view.

Michael Hudson (the American economist) expresses it up pithily: the US is saying to Europe, 'Let's you and Russia fight' and Europe in going along with this invitation is damaging her own vital interests.

Edward Klimenko | 05 March 2015 at 08:31 PM

The Ukrainian Parliament has already moved 'Defender of the Fatherland Day' to October 14th - the official founding date of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. If anybody thinks that this is a coincidence, they haven't been paying attention.

This very Thursday the Parliament of Ukraine reached a milestone - honoring with a minute's silence the memory of UPA genocidaire Roman Shukhevich. I won't bother listing in detail the depravities that Shukhevich organised in his capacity as a UPA commander - suffice it to say that women and children were favourite targets, and blades were generally preferred to bullets - but those not familiar with the subject are encouraged to look it up. In particular, search the name 'Zygmunt Rumel' to find out what comes of trying to negotiate with Ukrainian nationalists.

The only consolation is that the Maidan project is less a political movement than organised mental illness, and that failure is written in its DNA.

[Mar 14, 2015] The Damage to U.S. Interests Abroad of Domestic Political Intemperance

A nation does not represent itself as a viable interlocutor, whose execution of policy can be trusted by other nations, if passionate internal divisions supersede sober pursuit of the nation's interests. ...A pattern that is similar in some respects has, tragically, come to prevail in the United States.
Notable quotes:
"... A nation does not represent itself as a viable interlocutor, whose execution of policy can be trusted by other nations, if passionate internal divisions supersede sober pursuit of the nations interests. ..."
"... A pattern that is similar in some respects has, tragically, come to prevail in the United States. ..."
"... instead the prevention of a second term for the incumbent U.S. president. ..."
Mar 11, 2015 | The National Interest Blog

The connection between the sort of behavior we are talking about and the standing of the United States overseas, however, is even broader than that and extends to the handling of domestic policy. Foreigners and foreign governments observe how the United States, the superpower with the world's largest economy, handles its own affairs, and they draw conclusions about how viable and reliable an interlocutor the United States would be on international matters. The foreigners are looking to see whether there is consistency and rationality in how the U.S. political system pursues U.S. national interests. If they do see those things, then the United States is someone they can do business with, whether as a rival or as an ally, even if U.S. interests differ from their own. If they do not see those things, then opportunities are lost for doing business that would benefit both the United States and the foreign state.

A nation does not represent itself as a viable interlocutor, whose execution of policy can be trusted by other nations, if passionate internal divisions supersede sober pursuit of the nation's interests. As an outsider we encounter such situations in, say, Iraq, where sectarian loyalties and hatreds make it impossible to rely on a government in Baghdad consistently pursuing an Iraqi national interest. We also see it in Bangladesh, where the personal animosity between the "two begums" who head each of the major political parties there have made Bangladeshi politics so dysfunctional that in the recent past the military has had to step in.

A pattern that is similar in some respects has, tragically, come to prevail in the United States. Foreigners could hear the then minority (now majority) leader of the United States Senate state a few years ago that his number one priority was not any particular U.S. national interest in either domestic or foreign affairs but instead the prevention of a second term for the incumbent U.S. president.

Foreigners then were able to see the senator's party act along the same lines, using extortionate legislative methods to push a partisan agenda even at the expense of damaging the country's credit rating and causing disruptive interruptions to government operations. Once the same party achieved a majority in both houses of Congress there was much talk about how this would lead to newly responsible behavior, but the opening gavel of the new Congress had hardly fallen when once again there was the tactic of holding the operations of a government department hostage to press a specific partisan demand (this time on immigration) in opposition to the president's policies.

[Mar 13, 2015] The Most Outlandish Empire Semantics

Looks like the US elite decided that it's time for regime change in Venezuela
Mar 13, 2015 | moonofalabama.org

The government of the Unites States (GDP US$ 16,768,100 million) declares that the situation in Venezuela (GDP US$ 371,339 million):

... constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States

This, the White House says, requires to:

... declare a national emergency to deal with that threat

"Why," ask the Venezuelans, including the U.S. sponsored opposition, "do you think we are an unusual and extraordinary threat which requires you to declare a national emergency?

"We do not believe for a moment that you are an unusual and extraordinary threat which requires us to declare a national emergency", is the answer:

Officials in Washington said that declaring Venezuela a national security threat was largely a formality.

"A formality?" ask Venezuelans. "Why is it a formality to see us as an unusual and extraordinary threat to your national security? That does not make sense. What's next? Will it be a simply a formality to kill us?"

"It is formality needed to be able to sanction some of your government officials," an anonymous U.S. senior official explains. "To do so the law requires that we declare you to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security which requires us to declare a national emergency."

"But we ain't no such threat. You yourself says so. So why would you sanction our officials when you yourself say that there is no real basis for this? On what legal grounds are you acting? Why these sanctions?"

"Because the the situation in Venezuela ... constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States which requires us to declare a national emergency to deal with that threat."

"That is like declaring war on us. That does not make sense".

"Well, it's just a formality."

---

On might have hoped that the above would be the "most outlandish" nonsense the U.S. government could produce. But that is not yet the case.

The Venezuelan President Maduro responded in the National Assembly:

"The aggression and the threat of the government of the United States is the greatest threat that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, our country, has ever received," he said to applause, [...] "Let's close ranks like a single fist of men and women. We want peace."

He spoke of past American military interventions in Latin America and warned that the United States was preparing an invasion and a naval blockade of Venezuela.

"For human rights, they are preparing to invade us," he said, ...

During the last 125 years the U.S. intervened in South America at least 56 times through military or intelligence operations. This ever intervening country is the same country that just declared Venezuela to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States that requires to declare a national emergency.

It is certainly not outlandish for Maduro to believe that such a declaration will be followed by one of those continued interventions. Especially not when disguised U.S. officials travel around Venezuela and distribute money to opposition parties. Maduro is not alone in seeing the threat of another U.S. intervention. All South American nations have condemned the U.S. declaration and even pro-American opposition politicians in Venezuela were outraged about it.

But for the ever anonymous U.S. officials it is the victim of their outlandish exaggerations that doth protest too much:

"It's remarkable that the [Venezuelan] government can say the most outlandish things about the U.S. government - what is this, the 16th or 17th coup attempt that we're doing? And now we're invading?" the official said. "The shelf life of all of these accusations is what, a day or two? Even the dullest of media consumers is going to see that there is no invasion."

Noting the U.S. doublespeak in this whole affair it advise to be very careful in believing that "there is no invasion" claim.

Posted by b on March 12, 2015 at 11:01 AM | Permalink

nmb | Mar 12, 2015 11:31:02 AM | 1

Venezuela: A plan for coup d'état and assassination of Maduro

Wayoutwest | Mar 12, 2015 12:09:23 PM | 2

I doubt the US is going to be invading or blockading Venezuela any time soon. This asinine proclamation was necessary for the increased sanctions the US has imposed and it is definitely a ratcheting-up of pressure and intimidation. It also appears to be designed to cause the Maduro government to overreact and institute decisions that can be demonized as harsh and undemocratic.

I hope the people of Venezuela and the other progressive countries of SA are ready and willing to really confront these aggressive US moves.

Dan | Mar 12, 2015 12:20:15 PM | 3

The current government of Venezuela is a clear threat to the financial interests of the oligarchs who control the US government.

Wayoutwest | Mar 12, 2015 1:26:51 PM | 11

For me the most interesting part of the US proclamation was not the National Security threat but the claim of a threat to US Foreign Policy. This illustrates the power of the Bolivarian Revolution to sever much of SA from US dominance and the level of US Ruling Class fear because of their diminishing power and influence worldwide.

Some Guy | Mar 12, 2015 3:02:11 PM | 16

Ah yes. The old tried and true "making the economy scream" in preparation for a coup ploy. Venezuela has held out so far but I have confidence in The Empire®. Their psychopathic persistence should be able to turn that country into what Guatemala, El Salvador and Colombia are--a chamber of fucking horrors.
Piotr Berman | Mar 12, 2015 3:50:30 PM | 17
As a geography Nazi, I would insists that the list that was linked showed only four cases of interventions in South America. Indeed, interventions in Central America and Caribbean are dime a dozen, and probably the count was partial, South America is more distant and the countries are a bit too large for open interventions. Diplomacy was almost always friendly to non-leftist military regimes or death squads, but a direct engagement like coordination of the attempt to depose Chavez by military means were rare.

For some reason, it is almost 15 years that Jihad was declared in USA against Venezuela, and formal fatwa proclaimed on TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DykgMyTjWU4 (this video was from 2009, when Rev. Robertson wonder why Chavez was not assassinated yet). Since USA is a democracy, and the people are Christian, it is a duty of the government to follow the will of the Christian folks and at least attempt to execute fatwas of Christian clerics. However, I do not know enough about Robertson's Christianity to figure out how the fatwa came about.

diogenes | Mar 12, 2015 4:04:41 PM | 19
According to a link from the website of TeleSUR, a Venezuelan television station, on Feb. 28, 2015 an employee of NED (ie American agent) travelled to Venezuela for a secret meeting with opposition figures (ie bought and paid for greedy foreign stooges) to settle an argument about the distribution of millions of dollars previously contributed by NED.

The agent used a forged or stolen passport in a false name, and disguised her appearance to match with the photo in the passport; and travelled to the meeting in a vehicle with forged or stolen plates.

This agent, whose real name is Sarah Kornblith, a few months previously had written an article in NED's "scholarly journal" denouncing the Chavez and Maduro regimes and also:

"lauding the political arrangement that existed in Venezuela before Chavez. Known as the Punto Fijo Pact, under that system, two traditional parties would alternate in power, deliberately excluding the voices of Venezuela's poor majority."

You mean like Democrats and Republicans? You can't make this stuff up!

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/NED-Official-Meets-With-Venezuelan-Opposition-Figures-20150312-0007.html

lysias | Mar 12, 2015 5:43:03 PM | 22

I'm just now reading a book about Gen. Vernon Walters, Der Drahtzieher: Vernon Walters -- Ein Geheimdienstgeneral des Kalten Krieges, by Klaus Eichner and Ernst Langrock, which details all the coups and secret chicanery that general was involved in, both in Latin America and in Europe.

Posted by: ToivoS | Mar 12, 2015 11:40:14 PM | 29

In 2002 I thought Chavez was toast. Given the last century of US intervention in South America it seemed obvious that Chavez would be over thrown by the US. But then the war in Iraq went very badly. The US was was distracted and had to focus its energy on the Iraq war. Chavez was spared the focus of US imperialism. For some time I thought the silver lining in the failed US war in Iraq was that it distracted our interests away from South America. This permitted a number of Latin American countries to drift away from US influence, not just Venezuela but also Bolivia and Nicaragua and some of the other countries elected left wing governments.

The US has spent the last century trying to prevent governments arising that actually represent all of the people and not just the upper middle classes that are eager to please US corporations. I think what we are seeing today is that the US is now refocusing on South America and are willing to devote resources towards removing those governments that have arisen that attempt to represent the poor and not just the bourgeois elements. This has been happening over the last few years. In Obama's first few years he threw his support (behind the scenes as it developed) behind the Honduran upper classes that removed the popularly elected government of Manunel Zelaya.

In any case, I think the Manuela government in Venezuela is going to be deposed through US intervention and next will be the government in Bolivia. And there is little that the rest of world can do to stop it. After all, the Monroe Doctrine has given the US that right and there is no outside force that can stop us unless they are willing to engage in nuclear war.

However, the more the US flexes its muscle in Latin America, the less effective it will be in pushing its policies in Ukraine and towards the 'pivot to Asia' that was supposed to be one of Obama's signature policies. And this is not to mention Obama's efforts for more war in Iraq and Syria. So to the extent that Venezuela might suffer today other parts of the world will be provided some respite from US attention. The US is thoroughly over committed.

[Mar 12, 2015] Eurosceptics playing into Vladimir Putin's hands, says Labour

Mar 12, 2015 | The Guardian

ID5868758 12 Mar 2015 00:49

I often wonder what the Middle East would look like today had the advice of that "evil Putin" been followed by the "exceptional Americans" and their allies. He was opposed to the war in Iraq. He was opposed to the attacks on Ghaddafi and Liibya, but overruled by Medvedev, who was president at the time. And of course he was against the US and their obsessive campaign against secular Assad and Syria.

But somehow we are supposed to believe that this man is the danger in the world, that everything would be fine and dandy if we could just get rid of Putin? Please.

Me109BfG6 11 Mar 2015 19:58

Stop better the mad house of s.c. "Ukraine". Until you can't find it on a map, you can't argue anything. I personally know a brigade of house constructors of 6 persons, of which 2 are Ukrainians and who have procured their passports somewhere is the Baltics for money. Now, do realize how you would once have to notice those 45 M Ukrainians standing on all street crossings in the UK and in the EU as well while beggaring. Yes, do realize that instead of any abstract demagogy and propaganda insulting Russia and Putin along with all the Russians in the s.c. "Ukraine". Stop the Nazis over there instead. The West Ukraine will elong to the Poland. The East Ukraine will belong to Russia or remain independent in order to speak freely Russian instead of that South Russian dialect called "Ukrainian" which is spoken - to the Forbes - by some 17% of the whole population in Ukraine only.

T_Wallet 11 Mar 2015 18:46

This article is nonsense. If there was no such thing as NATO then maybe it would have a credible point.

The EU is about as Democratic as Russia. Both want, like US and China, to extend their spheres of influence. Empires by other names.

JoseArmando0 -> psygone 11 Mar 2015 01:24

Money money money only thing yanks understand cant take it with you in the end anyway poetic justice

HARPhilby -> jezzam 11 Mar 2015 16:04

Rockefeller and JP Morgan financed hitler in 1929, 1931 and 1933. Read free pamphlet HITLER'S SECRET BACKERS by Sidney Warberg which came out in Holland in 1933 and was suppressed after 4 days.

http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/Warburg_Hitler's%20Secret%20Backers.pdf

vr13vr -> Damocles59 11 Mar 2015 14:31

UN chapter or not, but not everything in life is done according to legal interpretations. It's shouldn't be about bunch of lawyers arguing about legalese, it's about 10 million people. Why does UN chapter give more rights to 1.5 million people in Lithuania than to 10 million people in Donbass and South Ukraine?

It's about principles, not about legalese.

irishmand -> psygone 11 Mar 2015 11:11

The largest trading partners of both China and India: the EU and the US.

But not the exclusive partners. India and China will continue to trade with everybody. They are making honest money and don't care about US ambitions for world domination and its bad habit of toppling governments.

Don't take me wrong, I don't hate americans. The most of you are just brain washed regular citizens. It is not your fault, except for what you allowed your government to do with your school system. But I also see the extremism is growing in american society and that is the result of people being told about how exceptional they are comparing to the rest of the world. Germans started the same way in 30's...

anewdawn 11 Mar 2015 10:19

Listen to the Victoria Nuland tapes.
Other evidence that the Ukraine is a US military coup

And more from the Guardian.

Russian aggression from the Blairites is about as believeable as Iraqs weapons of mass distraction.
I am a Labour supporter - I feel ashamed of them. They should be kicked out just like militant was - and for much better reasons - lies and war criminality. The Libdems and Tories are no better.

Ross Vassilev -> jezzam 11 Mar 2015 09:56

Jezzam, you're either an idiot or a liar. NO ONE in the US wants a war with Russia except the neo-cons in Washington. And the dismembering of Serbia is proof that not all countries are entitled to territorial integrity, including Ukraine.

Ross Vassilev jezzam 11 Mar 2015 09:52

At least Russia is only invading neighboring countries. There's hardly a country in the world the US hasn't bombed or invaded.


Калинин Юрий Bosula 11 Mar 2015 09:22

The guys there always need somebody to blame. They have to justify their existence by pointing their fingers to an enemy. The enemy unites the nation and you can sell to this nation all kind of junk as a needed stuff to fight this enemy.

People love to believe is some mystic junk - invisible Russian threat, coup theory of communists in Moscow against Washington DC, etc.


igoraki Sceptical Walker 11 Mar 2015 08:14

Would like to recommend you a book to read, "L'Europe est morte ŕ Pristina" by Jacques Hogard.You can learn a lot about all the good West and NATO did on Kosova and also you will see how the Albanians treated Serbs once our army retreated from Kosova.


madeiranlotuseater jezzam 11 Mar 2015 08:03

I am NOT a Kremlin supporter. The corruption sponsored by the state at home in Russia is appalling.
That is not my point. The USA has intervened in countless countries since the end of WW2. The problems in Ukraine are of the USA's making. It hasn't gone well for you. Europe (apart from Desperate Dave) doesn't want to use your hawkish methods to achieve a solution. How lovely of you to believe that you can have a war in our back yard. People such as Merkel and Hollande almost certainly did not get it okayed by your lot. More probably they told you how is was going to be, so get used to it.

America believes that killing people is the answer to find peace. It isn't.


Babeouf 11 Mar 2015 07:26

Well who would have guessed it the the Labour Party doesn't recognize US imperialism anywhere on planet earth. And if Labour form a government and the US/Iran negotiations fail they will happily join the next US coalition of the Shilling. On the substantive point apparently the I.MF won't loan Ukraine the billions of Euros unless the truce holds together. Now that really does help Vlad'the West is led by US sycophants and outright morons' Putin. But so has the entire US coup in Ukraine. There certainly is some Russian agent helping to formulate US State Department policy.


Orangutango 11 Mar 2015 07:14

It is utterly incoherent for our prime minister to call for tougher European action against President Putin in one breath and then threaten to leave the EU in the next. Security is the unspoken dimension of this European debate.

"This is no time for democratic nations to consider breaking from their allies. While Eurosceptics crave the breaking of ties to the EU, the security situation demands common action and resolve."


The Origin of the 'New Cold War'


http://rinf.com/alt-news/featured/origin-new-cold-war/

Eric Zuesse


decaston 11 Mar 2015 04:57

Euroscepticism (sometimes Euroscepticism or Anti-EUism) is the body of criticism of the European Union (EU), and opposition to the process of political European integration, existing throughout the political spectrum.
A survey in 2012, conducted by TNS Opinion and Social on behalf of the European Commission, showed that, for the European Union overall, those who think that their country's interests are looked after well in the EU are now in a minority (42%) About 31% of EU citizens tend to trust the European Union as an institution, and about 60% do not tend to trust it. Trust in the EU has fallen from a high of 57% in 2007 to 31% in 2012, while trust in national governments has fallen from 43% in 2007 to 28% in 2012.
Trust in the EU is lowest in the United Kingdom (16% trust, 75% distrust)

Spain is ranked the second most distrustful of the European Union, making it one of the three most Eurosceptic countries in the EU, along with the UK and Greece. 72 per cent of the Spanish people do not trust the EU, comparing to only 23% that trust this Union.
Portugal is the 8th most eurosceptic country in the European Union (not counting with Croatia) as shown by the "The Continent-wide rise of Euroscepticism", with 58% of the people tending not to trust the EU, behind Greece (81%), Spain (72%), UK (75%), Cyprus (64%), Sweden (62%), Czech Republic (60%) and Germany (59%).[57] The Eurosceptic parties currently hold 24 out of 230 seats in the parliament. The Euroscepticism of the left wing prevails in Portugal.
The Irish people voted no to initial referendums on both the Nice and Lisbon Treaties. There were second referendums held on both of these issues, and it was then, following renegotiations that the votes were swayed in favour of the respective 'Yes' campaigns.
In relation to both the Nice and Lisbon treaties, the decision to force second referendums has been the subject of much scrutiny and widespread criticism. It is claimed that rejection of the Irish peoples decision to vote no stands testament to the European Union's lack of regard for democracy and lack of regard for the right of people of nation states to decide their futures.
In Italy The Five Star Movement (M5S), an 25.5% of vote in the 2013 general election, becoming the largest anti-establishment and Eurosceptic party in Europe. The party also in 2013 the party was particularly strong in Sicily, Liguria and Marche, where it gained more than 30% of the vote.
In France in the European Parliament election, 2014, the National Front won the elections with 24.85% of the vote, a swing of 18.55%, winning 24 seats, up from 3 previously.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroscepticism


Ilja NB Tom20000 11 Mar 2015 03:32

You can't even clean up your own mess ( Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, former Yougoslavia ).


Parangaricurimicuaro PlatonKuzin 11 Mar 2015 03:28

Victoria Nuland is looking for a way out for her and her politics (save face). She realizes that Europe is not happy with the way that the State Department hijacked the whole Ukrainian crisis


Budanevey 11 Mar 2015 03:22

The emergence of Redneck Labour is one of the genuine mysteries of our politics that historians will one day ponder, a Party that adopted American Sub Prime finance, State Department Foreign Policy, neo-liberal corporatism, neo-con wars, NSA total surveillance, waterboarding, secret prisons, secret justice, indefinite detention, Anglophobia, TTIP and a de facto Eurodollar, and now the fear tactics of Commies and Terrorists everywhere to keep us servile to the interests of Washington and their agenda for an expanding US empire via a cloned United States of Europe, fears that were similarly misused during the Cold War when the American umbrella was first being used to envelop us.

Didn't Labour learn anything from WW2 when we went to war to protect Polish independence, only to have Washington give it to Stalin, along with the rest of Eastern Europe, and then surrender our own commonwealth and independence to Washington's creature in Brussels? Who is pulling the strings when we see demands for the UK to subordinate its interests to EU expansion in the East, just as we see northern Eurozone interests being compromised to keep hold of southern Europe - Washington.

The largest country on Earth, Russia, has long been a sub prime performer because of its own extreme history of imperialism and arbitrary government, which makes it an investors' nightmare and a paradise for corporate, criminal and political gangsterism preying on its long-suffering people and their unfortunate neighbours. The Yeltsin Privatisation era following the White Revolution compounded the problem by making new oligarchies and dubious billionaires, leading to the latest twist in Putinism.

The answer to these differing examples and extremes of imperialism is not to join in new imperialisms, but to re-assert the value of honesty and accountability in business, government, the rule of law, and international relations. Redneck Labour has completely lost the plot.

madeiranlotuseater 11 Mar 2015 03:21

Soap Box Dave really believes he can hold onto power by scaring Europe into believing there is a threat from Russia. Past UK Premiers have done well with wars, Maggie, John and Tony all got re-elected. But Dave pitched for free flights on Air Force One and sucking up to POTUS whilst many of us felt that the whole game plan in Ukraine was of the CIA making. Poke the Bear enough and you will get a response. Germany and France saw through this and quickly side lined Davy and Kerry. Result: Dave, at a stroke, has reduced Britain's influence in the world to little more than not a lot.

elias_ 11 Mar 2015 02:19

All organisations are judged on the results of their actions. In the court of world opinion we can apply this logic to states. So let's see:
1. Iraq. We lied, killed a million people and now it is haven for Isis.
2. Libya. Far far worse now than under gadafi.
3. Syria. We wanted war but putin stopped it.
4. Egypt. Worse now than when we intervened.
5. Ukraine. Supporting neocon Victoria f*** the EU nuland doing violent regime change on Russia's borders and expecting Russia to sit idly by. Yes the protests were about oligarchy but then got hijacked by hired goons without which power would have transitioned peacefully.

Q. Is it any wonder we are losing credibility outside the west? Especially as many of these actions went without UN approval.


Peter Schmidt UncleSam404 11 Mar 2015 02:14

There is no British 'foreign policy'. They do as the US says.


irishmand jezzam 11 Mar 2015 02:13

Proof that Putin planned to annex Crimea and invade E Ukraine before Yanukovych was deposed.

Who said it is truth, it is propaganda, I don't believe a word of this bull.... The western media lied so many times, there is no credibility.


irishmand SystemD 11 Mar 2015 02:10

One might ask you for proof of CIA plots, except that there is none. Are you prepared to provide the same standard of proof of your allegations that you demand of others?

One might. We got Crimea, that's right. And Russia is helping the rebels. Well, US is helping the nazies in Kiev, so to make the chances equal...
Now, CIA What was CIA director doing when he was secretly visiting Ukraine? A vacation... And those CIA operatives in Kiev Speigel wrote about? A vacation...


Калинин Юрий jezzam 11 Mar 2015 01:48

Putin sending his troops to Ukraine? Then you know way much more then CIA, MI-5, Mossad, etc all together. Finally all these countries do not have to spent billions on the intelligence since you alone do all the job and have all the possible evidences to present to the world.

By the way yesterday the Russian troops used secret space waves on the drivers in Ukraine so 2 of British old APC's are out of service and in a ditch outside the road. This is the proof of the Russian regular army and thousands of dead Russian soldiers as well as billions of wounded in the Russian hospitals. Russia sends trains to Donetsk to take out all of them and OSCE at the border crossing station inspect them together with the Ukranian customs. Those, that have no chances to escape are captured by the Ukranian army and been exchanged for the Ukranian soldiers in front of hundreds of journalists. Anyway, Russian army is the most invisible army in the world.


Goodthanx 11 Mar 2015 01:20

According to McFadden, are we to presume that like NATO, one of the EU functions was/is the 'containment' of Russia?

A sign of EU immaturity is that member countries cant voice independent views and questions of sovereignty, without the scaremongers reducing their arguments to todays bogey man, Putin.


irishmand jezzam 10 Mar 2015 23:43

What you say is entirely true, To Kremlin supporters though, facts don't have any objective reality. They believe that facts are simply tools in the propaganda campaign. Thus in their eyes inventing "facts" is perfectly OK. They believe that the West does it as well - the depth of cynicism in Russia is hard to fathom.

What facts were invented?
ultra right coup in Kiev supported by US
bombardments of Donbass civilians by Kiev
relentless russophobic campaign in US and EU
Nuland saying F...the EU
Nazi elements in the Ukranian government
Crime voting to join Russia


BorninUkraine irishmand 10 Mar 2015 23:36

The objective of current US propaganda campaign is to prevent EU and Russia from cooperating to the point of creating a credible US competitor. As you could have noticed, this BS for European consumption works admirably: Europe just lost its last chance of becoming something of consequence.


irishmand MentalToo 10 Mar 2015 22:50

It is only an expense to Russia preventing other urgent investments to improve living conditions of the people in Russia. Russian leaders urgently needs to realize cooperation based on mutual respect of both sovereignty of nations as well as civil rights of individuals is the only way to improve relations to Europeans countries. Trying to use military force either directly or by coercion harms Russia more than anything. Russia is not in a competition to win over it neighbor states. Russia's mission is to win over it's own past through gaining trust of it's neighbors by peaceful cooperation.

It is a declaration of good will, which, unfortunately, is not supported by any actions in reality.
What have US/EU did recently:

  • organized a coup in Ukraine,
  • imposed sanctions,
  • unleashed shameless wild russophobic propaganda campaign in the media,
  • issued countless insults about Russians and their President.

Where is the mutual respect you are talking so much about? Where is your freedom of speech?
How can Russians trust you when you behave like bunch of liars and bullies, threatening to destroy Russia and celebrating every time something bad happens in Russia?
To get respect from Russia you have to show your respect too.
What saved Russia from american/NATO invasion? The very same army and the nuclear weapons. If it wouldn't be for them, americans would attack 6-8 months ago.
So, before you start teaching Russia manners turn around and look in the mirror of your society. You are not a democracy anymore. You became a bunch of power drunk, profit greedy warmongers who only understand "I want" and ready to sacrifice other people's lives in other countries for your personal well being.

[Mar 12, 2015] This Is a Declaration of War by Bruce K. Gagnon

March 12, 2015 | informationclearinghouse

At times I feel completely overwhelmed by the current US-NATO military operations aimed at Russia. It's growing rapidly - one can't help but wonder if the recent 'victory' of the self-defensive forces in eastern Ukraine wasn't allowed by Washington and Kiev as a way to get public opinion behind the already well established plans for even more NATO escalation.

It's all just far too neat and tidy to be seen otherwise. This is not a conspiracy but a well designed military plan to take down Moscow. They are playing with fire. In some respects the 'project' is now impossible to stop. The question for the moment is how long will this attack on Russia go on and what level of conflict will result? Will it go nuclear? If so the world is fucked.

The Pentagon role now is to send legions of NATO trainers into Ukraine to "push Kiev's [reluctant] troops forward" in order to "deter Russian aggression." It's a long term military operation that is going to be exceedingly expensive. It's got to be sold to the American people and folks throughout Europe. In order to make this public relations campaign successful the perpetrators have to flip the switch - turn the story ass backwards - blame the other side for doing what US-NATO are in fact doing.

The source of the aggression is quite clear to me. US-NATO are all over Russia's border. I learned today that the current right-wing Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves grew up in New Jersey and went to Columbia University. It's funny how the US is able to continually put their agents into office in key nations around the world.

Go back to post WW II and note how fascist Syngman Rhee lived in the US and was then put in power in South Korea to ensure Washington's control. Recall the many fascist dictators that the US repeatedly put in place in Vietnam, Iran, Indonesia and throughout Latin America and the African continent. It's called good corporate planning.

More recently in 2008 we saw Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (also trained in the US at George Washington University) launch an attack on Russian speaking republics South Ossetia and Abkhazia along Russia's border. Russia responded to the Georgian military strike against the people there by counter-attacking Georgia. The fighting took place in the strategically important Transcaucasia region which borders the Middle East.

I'll never forget watching the first US politician to arrive in Georgia after the 2008 shooting war subsided. It was then Sen. Joe Biden who made that visit, just months before being selected as Obama's running mate. Biden came back slinging much anti-Russian rhetoric and most importantly threatened Russia with dire consequences if it did not do as instructed by Washington and Brussels. Biden of course also led the effort in the Senate to send more weapons and US military 'trainers' to Georgia. So this is all a familiar story.

Just this morning NPR (National Public Radio) had an interview with a Russian woman who 'fingered' Putin as the one who called for the killing of Boris Nemtsov this past weekend in Moscow. It's all so damn convenient - the pieces just keep tumbling into place as the case is made for war with Russia in order to contain the 'evil Putin'. Can you see Manuel Noriega (Panama), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), and Muammar Qaddafi (Libya) all over again? It's a tried and true twisting of the truth in order to set up supposed 'obstacles' for take down. It's always sold though as the mighty super-moral US swooping in to protect 'freedom and democracy'. Walt Disney couldn't have done this any better.

The US-NATO expansion of the conflict in Ukraine is indeed a declaration of war against Russia. And from what I can make out the Russian people see the writing on the wall - they can hear the train coming. Sadly the American people have no clue what is going on nor do most of those in Europe.

This project has been set up with criminal precision. After all the CIA and the Pentagon have had alot of practice over the years. This is what Washington does best.

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire. http://space4peace.blogspot.ca/

[Mar 12, 2015] Victoria Nuland Knowingly Deceives Senate, Displays Ardent Support For Fascist Junta by Andrew W. Griffin

In Robert Parry words "Nuland offered not a single word of self-criticism about how she contributed to these violent events by encouraging last year's coup, "
Mar 12, 2015 | themillenniumreport.com

Neocon Nuland spins wild tales for Senate Foreign Relations Committee; plays into fascist hands

OKLAHOMA CITY – Neoconservative warmonger Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland, America's Assistant Secretary of State, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – with a straight face – that Crimeans are "suffering a reign of terror" under the control of the Russians.

Nuland, who makes a living deceiving lawmakers and anyone else who crosses her path, told the committee this week: "Today Crimea remains under illegal occupation and human-rights abuses are the norm, not the exception, for many at-risk groups there."

The "at-risk groups," Nuland said, included Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians who refuse to surrender their passports, gays and lesbians, journalists and "others," according to an AFP report.

Additionally, Nuland, an apologist for the pro-Nazi Svoboda and Right Sector fascists who are the actual ones leading a reign of terror against innocents in eastern Ukraine, said pro-Russian separatists in the those areas of Lugansk and Donetsk "unleashed unspeakable violence and pillage."

However, the exact opposite is true.

Sputnik News, a Russian news outlet, offered a tongue-in-cheek article today headlined "Life 'Under a Reign of Terror': What Nuland Doesn't Want You To See," countered each statement from Nuland with recent photographs of the beautiful Black Sea coast, including a fantastic photo of a "sand sculpture" celebrating the 70th anniversary of the February 1945 Yalta Conference (aka Crimea or Argonaut Conference) with the Big Three – Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt – there in Crimea, which was a part of the Soviet Union, and a traditional vacation spot for the czars and later for other Russian leaders and workers. (As historian Webster Griffin Tarpley has reported, Roosevelt was assassinated shortly after the conference and Truman – who replaced pro-Soviet, peace-seeking VP Henry Wallace – leading to the kick off of the Cold War).

A year after Crimea became part of Russia once again, "82-percent of those polled said they fully supported Crimea's inclusion in Russia, and another 11 percent expressed partial support. Only four-percent spoke out against it," reports Sputnik News.

Additionally, despite Nuland's denunciations, 51-percent of Crimeans "reported that their well-being had improved in the past year" and that Crimean retirees "have started receiving much higher Russian pensions."

And believe it or not, as Nuland claims that Moscow is salting the earth of Ukraine, Sputnik News reports that the Crimean peninsula will "receive 47 billion rubles (equivalent to $705 million in US dollars), or 75 percent of its budget, from Russia." The news report notes that when Crimea was under Ukrainian control they never financed Crimea at anything near that level.

And yet the US/Kiev axis continues to deny they are behind the crimes in the Donbass region, while claiming those aforementioned thuggish Ukrainian Nazis (friends of John McCain's, of course) are liberating democrats. And it certainly doesn't help that the Obama administration is infested with Nuland-esque neocons and raving Russophobes, particularly as NATO ramps up military maneuvers in the Black Sea and the US sends 600 paratroopers to Ukraine to train that country's fascist army. Russia, meanwhile, has flatly stated that any efforts to threaten Russia's security, bad things will start to happen. Are we seeing a new Cold War or are we rapidly heading to a hot war?

And let's not forget, Ms. Nuland, that your Ukrainian "freedom fighters" – namely one crazed Ukrainian MP named Yuriy Bereza brazenly promised – on Ukrainian national television – to "burn down Crimea, with all of its residents if needed." It starts to make sense that the Crimeans are far happier under Russian rule.

And as Webster Griffin Tarpley stated on World Crisis Radio this week, Victoria Nuland is an "embarrassment" to the United States and our anti-fascist traditions. He added that Nuland is "crude, scurrilous, ignorant and boiling over with venom." #ImpeachNuland.

German Historian Tells Poroshenko 'Be Careful of American Support'

Sputnik International

German professor of history Michael Pesek wrote an open letter to Petro Poroshenko, in which he advised the Ukrainian President not to expect a long-lasting friendship with the United States, as the White House could change its attitude towards him in the blink of an eye when political trends shift Washington.

German historian Michael Pesek wrote an open letter to Petro Poroshenko, in which he told the Ukrainian president not to get too cozy with the White House, warning him that being a close ally of the United States might not be the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.

"You should be warned that this might not be the beginning of a long-living love affair that inevitably ends with an account full of dollars, an army equipped with the finest stuff ever produced to kill your enemies," said Pesek, who teaches courses in history and political science at the University of Hamburg and Free University of Berlin.

Pesek went on to compare Poroshenko with other dictators, who were puppets of the United States in the past, but then became the enemies of the White House after the tides shifted in Washington.

In particular, the historian reminded Poroshenko of Saddam Hussein, who was Washington's close ally in the Middle East during the 1980s. However, after Cold War ended and the Americans changed their views on the Middle East, Hussein was useful as an enemy rather than as a friend. The rest is history: the former dictator was captured sitting in a hole and soon hanged in the dark of the night.

Pesek also talked about Mobuto Sese Seko, the long-standing former ruler of the Congo, and Manuel Noriega of Panama who were both initially supported by the United States when its interests were at stake, but were quickly disposed of when US political trends changed their direction.

"Lesson learned? You can kill as much as enemies of the US as possible, you can sell your natural resources, but it will not shield you, when the storm from Washington takes another direction," Pesek said.

On a final note, the German historian told Poroshenko that at the end of the day he will always be an outsider in the United States, "a useful idiot in your best days" and a "burden" when the White House changes its priorities or loses its interest.

"As a former apparatchik you will never know if your conversion to a democrat and capitalist is taken seriously by your American allies. You will be under suspicion as all the other converted ex-terrorists, ex-Marxists, ex-dictators, who bow to the American flag." – concluded Pesek.

See also:

[Mar 12, 2015] US to send Ukraine small drones and armoured Humvees

Mar 11, 2015 | The Guardian
BloodOnTheWattle -> psygone 11 Mar 2015 23:39

Does that history include the army of the Taliban by the USA..try to see some of the pics in which bonsay Bush was hosting the murderers...you may continue dancing on the head of a pin, precious and defend the indefensible all you want

irishmand ShanghaiGuy 11 Mar 2015 23:22

And vice versa remember komrade... Putin likes to remind the world not to mess with a nuclear state... indeed very good advice, some that paranoid sociopath to also consider

Don't call me comrade, I am not your friend. Paranoid sociopaths are in US government and they are not going anywhere.

BloodOnTheWattle psygone 11 Mar 2015 23:13

oh dear...now I have seen revisionism but you take the cake psy you really do...you come here and spout all this bullshit and, like your country does with the world you expect people to believe you...not many do any more...

irishmand BloodOnTheWattle 11 Mar 2015 23:12

I was just looking at BBC news... it is interesting, apparently the Iran/Iraq coalition are pushing back ISIS from Tikrit. The people in the liberated suburbs are coming on the streets to welcome these fighters. Conversely I never witnessed that when it came to the US's invasions...or for that matter the welcoming of Ukrainian soldiers in East Ukraine.

It is a good news indeed. The danger now US may pump more money into ISIS.

BorninUkraine SirHenryRawlins 11 Mar 2015 22:59

You are mistaken, censor.net.ua is not a conspiracy site. It is the Ukrainian site best known for ludicrously inaccurate claims (less polite word is "lies"), like the use of Russia of nuclear weapons in the battle for Lugansk airport. Most Russians say that it's much funnier than Comedy Club.

BloodOnTheWattle BlackStork 11 Mar 2015 22:56

What awaits you? is to make peace with the East and whatever the results are to live with them as brothers and sisters and to give them a saying in their fate as citizens, lest you want generations of hatred and wars

BloodOnTheWattle BlackStork 11 Mar 2015 22:54

Just a comment from a citizen, I also notice that you omitted 8 million citizens, that says a lot. Be that as it may:

"I, as a native of Feodosia will answer you:

I remember 1992 very well, 1st Crimean referendum, when Crimea revolted and wanted to sail to Russia and how a state of emergency was introduced, and Berkut was brought from Western Ukraine on armored personnel carriers. As they stood at each intersection with Kalashnikov's and put anyone face first in the dust, whom they didn't like. How they pulled over cars and threw on the pavement all the contents of the trunks, tore the covers from doors and ripped the seats. Why? Just because. For fun.

How they dispersed the march to Simferopol in defense of the First President of Crimea, Meshkov, firing from automatic weapons above the heads. How the Russian officers left with tears in their eyes, who did not want to live under Ukraine. Remember how they forced to wear [Ukrainian national shirts] on the first day of school, and forced our children to learn [Ukrainian language]. How they shut off Russian TV channels and planted their corrupt appointees. How they cut a hundred year-old rosary in the Botanical garden and built villas for Kiev bozos, and made gates to the garden to walk their dogs.

And how did we suddenly become traitors? How can you betray the occupiers? From occupiers one can only be freed. And about God and Karma, this is what's happening now. My ancestors who shed blood for Crimea and Sevastopol, would not allow for the treacherous Ukry to sell my native Crimea to pin doses [Americans] for their base.

WE WILL STARVE, AS LONG AS WE ARE WITHOUT YOU!!!"

BorninUkraine moncur 11 Mar 2015 22:45

Donbass people are defending their land, the troops Kiev sent are intruders, and they suffer typical fate of intruders: inglorious defeat or death, both deserved for mass slaughter of Donbass civilians.
That's exactly why Donbass people fight willingly, unlike forcibly conscripted Ukrainian solders looking for any opportunity to run away.

I have first-hand knowledge of that, as I grew up in Lugansk and have friends and relatives in Donbass.

irishmand -> GreatMountainEagle 11 Mar 2015 22:43

Russians love coke and McDonalds

Not everybody and not everything. I don't like McDonalds, but I like coke. Some people don't like either of them. There are a lot of local food chains and drinks in Russia now. No need to drink coke and eat McDonalds all the time.

irishmand -> ContraryToDogma 11 Mar 2015 22:40

If the risk was understood everyone would be shaking from fear. This is not a game.

Exactly, but US and UK don't care. They just want to sell weapons and make money. Business as usual...

irishmand Trader -> SeerStrategy 11 Mar 2015 22:38

"Take over the world" - naive communistic talk, US just supporting new democracy and market capitalism that finally has a chance to be build in Ukraine instead of state managed economy...

Like Iraq, Libya and Afganistan. Yea, smashing success...

BloodOnTheWattle -> GreatMountainEagle 11 Mar 2015 22:34

Actually, yes these drones could do that and demonstrate how your heroes have bombarded their own citizens and secondly they can send some proof of a russian invasion something which thus far have failed to do...As per usual your contributions are based on insults and try to blanket humiliate Russians and or ethnic Russians who are federalists who are fighting against the coup aided and abetted by the west...now go back and stick your head under the pillow or whatever you do.

ShanghaiGuy irishmand 11 Mar 2015 22:30

and vice versa remember komrade... Putin likes to remind the world not to mess with a nuclear state... indeed very good advice, some that paranoid sociopath to also consider

ShanghaiGuy ContraryToDogma 11 Mar 2015 22:17

if it walks like a putinbot, talks like a putinbot then maybe it is a putinbot...
we do tend to be up to our arses here with Pro kremlinites and apologists.
at laest the early shills with their Anglo sounding names have either pissed off or become more sophisticated.

BloodOnTheWattle psygone 11 Mar 2015 22:13

Well you would say that wouldn't you but you must remember that your "exceptional; force for good nation" has spent 93% of its existence in wars... To go to Afghanistan the Russians did not use any false flags as the US did with the Tonkin Bay. Incidentally you lot are slow learners the same guys you armed to fight Russia are fighting you today, similar to Libya, and Syria. Essentially the poster is right you are comedy hour and ameteur hour at that.

BloodOnTheWattle paiduputinbot 11 Mar 2015 22:02

That is such an inane comment. There is a cease fire and it appears to be working. Frankly although I am anti US I dont see any issues with Humvees and drones on the contrary. See? apparently they have sent drones before and even these have no discovered columns of Russian tanks.

Ukraine is an Independent country and thy can purchase weapons from whomever they want. Then again, they can complain if the Russians put 100,000 close to the border?

BloodOnTheWattle Trader SeerStrategy 11 Mar 2015 21:57

"market capitalism" ? you mean like Lyibia or what happened in latin america for 40 years? you mean a market based on bail outs to pay fund managers while people live in austerity compounded by a 34.5 % inflation rate in Feb 2015 and an implied inflation of 272% the highest in the world? You mean a market economy in which budgets are passed without readings and when VH's members want to discuss said budgt are essentially barred from commenting of punched in the face? is this what you want for this wonderful country?

ContraryToDogma Trader SeerStrategy 11 Mar 2015 21:53

Pardon me but the US has a very well developed state managed economy of its own and market capitalism is just a myth. Oligarchs run all these countries and they would never risk a true free market subject to catastrophic economic crashes. It's not as simple or as black and white as you believe.

ContraryToDogma 11 Mar 2015 21:38

A kid's cap gun in an Old West Six Gun revolver style will be awarded to the first loony commenter to use the "Putinbot" moniker. Any takers?

ContraryToDogma 11 Mar 2015 21:31

Putin denies arming rebels, Obama denies arming and fomenting fake revolutions pushed by corporate & arms dealer interests. Tit for tat. Would the US enjoy Russian meddling in Mexico or Canada? Not likely. Let's grow up about who is provoking whom and stop trying to take over the world. The days of empire and war are obsolete except for armchair warriors and lunatics who lust for nuclear war and nuclear winters who dream of bomb shelters with shelves of canned food and bottled water.

Bud Peart 11 Mar 2015 21:26

US vice-president Joe Biden told Ukraine's president on Wednesday the US will send more aid to the country, which US officials said will include small drones and armored Humvees.

Are these for protecting Hunter Biden's gas interests in Ukraine?

Either way any weapons the US send Russia will send more to the separatists, the only result will be more deaths and instability. But I guess that was the aim for the state department the whole time.

How is Ukraine paying for this? IMF loans for weapons? Great way to spend money.

irishmand kolf 11 Mar 2015 21:25

As I'm sure you're aware that is a very long way from even approaching an answer to the question. Both sides in this conflict have claimed a great many things on their respective TV outlets without sufficient evidence, made claims that have never been independently verified or which have later turned out to be completely false.

Great points. I am just enjoying how the roles have switched after the rebels started presenting the evidence of the west supplying arms to the Ukis army. Now the west is signing the song "do you have any evidence?". I am glad to see the west demonstrating once more the lack of honesty and readiness to lie. I don't ask you to believe me, but for myself, I've seen enough to believe ukies used NATO weapons.

1) Has anyone backed up this claim, apart from the separatists and their Russian backers?
2) For example, did they submit this to any international monitoring body (eg OSCE in the area - which contains Russian as well as western observers so they should have no problem with that) for independent assessment?

No, I couldn't find any OSCE reports. OSCE is leaning towards Ukrainian side in this conflict. They may or may not be reporting 100% honestly.

3) Are the weapons in question merely of a type used by NATO but also used by others or available on the arms market (as the wording of the claim"typical NATO firearms" suggests), or of a type used exclusively by NATO (which has not actually been claimed, as far as I can tell)? This is very important, if the claim is of direct NATO supply or involvement.
4) Would it be possible for Russia be able to source such items and supply them to the separatists for the purposes of a propagandist press conference? Is there evidence of where they were collected, again is this verifiable by people not connected to the separatists themselves? The coincidence of timing with Putin's claim that NATO were involved is quite significant here.

They are just standard NATO weapons, not the weapons exclusively used by NATO. Ukies themselves could have sold the weapons to rebels or the weapons could have been captured.

irishmand toadvine 11 Mar 2015 21:05

Even when peace agreement WAS achieved and largely held, Americans still send arms to UKR. The only goal of that?? If you have brains it's easy to see it

Americans just need to get rid of obsolete weapons.

irishmand moncur 11 Mar 2015 21:01

"DPR" + "LPR" = Russian forces. Easy.

That's just trolling. Do you have any thoughts?
Reply | Pick

kolf nnedjo 11 Mar 2015 20:37

For this I have no comment because I do not have access to the details of the investigation. Let's wait until the investigation is completed, and then, if it would be even a trial, to comment on it.

Link to the ongoing UK public inquiry is here. Most details of the investigation are already in the public domai, so you do have access to them:
https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/

Obviously there isn't going to be a trial because the chief suspect Andrey Lugovoi is immune from extradition and has been rewarded for his, ahem, business trip to London with a seat in the State Duma. It's a strange condition you're attaching - that it can only be discussed after a trial has taken place, i.e. never?

[Mar 11, 2015] Testimony on Ukraine Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Victoria Nuland

March 10, 2015 | http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2015/mar/238722.htm

Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs

Statement Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, DC

...the situation in the country remains precarious. Ukraine's leaders, in the executive branch and the parliament, know they are in a race against time to clean up the country and enact the difficult and socially painful reforms required to kick start the economy, and meet their commitments to their people, the IMF and the international community. The package of reforms already put forward by the government, and enacted by the Rada, is impressive in its scope and political courage.

Just last week:

  • They passed budget reform expected to slash the deficit this year, and strengthen decentralization by giving more fiscal control to local communities;
  • They made tough choices to reduce and cap pension benefits, increase work requirements and phase in a higher retirement age;
  • They created a new banking provision to stiffen penalties for financiers for stripping assets from banks at the public's expense, a common practice among oligarchs;
  • And, they passed laws cutting wasteful gas subsidies and closing the space for corrupt middlemen that buy low, sell high and rip off the Ukrainian people. These laws will also enhance corporate efficiency, incentivize domestic production, and use $400 million in increased revenue from state-owned gas companies to help care for the poor including some of the 1.7 million people driven from their homes by the conflict.

With U.S. support-including a $1 billion loan guarantee last year and $355 million in foreign assistance and technical advisors-the Ukrainian government is:

  • helping insulate vulnerable Ukrainians from the impact of necessary economic reforms;
  • improving energy efficiency in homes and factories with metering, consumer incentives and infrastructure improvement;
  • building e-governance platforms to make procurement transparent and basic government services cleaner and publicly accessible;
  • putting a newly trained force of beat cops on the streets of Kyiv who will protect, not shake down, the citizens;
  • reforming the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) - supported by U.S. law enforcement and criminal justice advisors - and helping energize law enforcement and just prosecutions;
  • moving to bring economic activity out of the shadows;
  • supporting new agriculture laws-with the help of USAID experts-to deregulate the sector and allow family farms to sell their produce in local, regional and wholesale markets; and
  • helping those forced to flee Donetsk and Luhansk with USAID jobs and skills training programs in places like Kharkiv.

And there's more support on the way. The President's budget includes an FY16 request of $513.5 million-almost six times more than our FY14 request-to build on these efforts.

To turn the page, Ukraine's hard work must continue. Between now and the summer, we must see budget discipline maintained and tax collection enforced across the country-notably including on some of Ukraine's richest citizens who have enjoyed impunity for too long. We need to see continued reforms at Naftogaz and across the energy sector; final passage of agriculture legislation; full and impartial implementation of anti-corruption measures, including a commitment to break the oligarchic, kleptocratic culture have has decimated the country.

... ... ...

Throughout this conflict, the United States and the EU have worked in lock-step to impose successive rounds of tough sanctions-including sectoral sanctions-on Russia and its separatist cronies as the costs for their actions. In Crimea, we have shown through our investment sanctions that if you bite off a piece of another country, it will dry up in your mouth. Our unity with Europe remains the cornerstone of our policy toward this crisis.

And it is in that spirit that we salute the efforts of German Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande in Minsk on February 12th to try again to end the fighting in Ukraine's East. The Minsk Package of Agreements-September 5th, September 19th and the February 12th implementing agreement-offer a real opportunity for peace, disarmament, political normalization and decentralization in eastern Ukraine, and the return of Ukrainian state sovereignty and control of its territory and borders. Russia agreed to it; Ukraine agreed to it; the separatists agreed to it. And the international community stands behind it.

For some eastern Ukrainians, conditions have begun to improve. Along long areas of the line of contact, particularly in Luhansk Oblast, the cease-fire has taken hold; the guns have quieted in some towns and villages; some weapons have been withdrawn; some hostages have been released.

But the picture is very mixed. Since the February 15th cease-fire, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission has recorded hundreds of violations. Debaltseve, a key rail hub beyond the cease-fire lines, fell to the separatists and Russian forces six days after Minsk was signed and three days after the cease-fire was to come into effect. In Shchastya, in villages near the Donetsk Airport, in Shyrokyne and other towns around Mariupol the shelling continues, as verified by OSCE Special Monitor Authority.

In the coming days, not weeks or months-here is what we need to see:

  • A complete cease-fire in all parts of eastern Ukraine;
  • Full, unfettered access to the whole conflict zone including all separatist-held territory, for OSCE monitors; and
  • A full pull-back of all heavy weapons-Ukrainian, Russian and separatist-as stipulated in the agreements, under OSCE monitoring and verification.

... ... ...

[Mar 10, 2015] The Disintegrating Empire Of Controlled Chaos by Dmitry Orlov

Mar 10, 2015 | Zero Hedge via Club Orlovb blog,
The term "chaos" has been popping up a lot lately in the increasingly collapse-prone world in which we find ourselves. Pepe Escobar has even published a book on it. Titled Empire of Chaos, it describes a scenario "where an American] plutocracy progressively projects its own internal disintegration upon the whole world." Escobar's chaos is tailor-made; its purpose is "to prevent an economic integration of Eurasia that would leave the U.S. a non-hegemon, or worse still, an outsider."

Escobar is not the only one thinking along these lines; here is Vladimir Putin speaking at the Valdai Conference in 2014:

A unilateral diktat and imposing one's own models produces the opposite result. Instead of settling conflicts it leads to their escalation, instead of sovereign and stable states we see the growing spread of chaos, and instead of democracy there is support for a very dubious public ranging from open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.

Why do they support such people? They do this because they decide to use them as instruments along the way in achieving their goals but then burn their fingers and recoil. I never cease to be amazed by the way that our partners just keep stepping on the same rake, as we say here in Russia, that is to say, make the same mistake over and over.

Indeed, Escobar's chaos doesn't seem to be working too well. Eurasian integration is very much on track, with China and Russia now acting as an economic, military and political unit, and with other Eurasian states eager to play a role. The European Union is, for the moment, being excluded from Eurasia because it is effectively under American occupation, but this state of affairs is unlikely to last due to budgetary problems. (To be precise, we have to say that it is under NATO occupation, but if we dig just a little, we find that NATO is really just the US military with a European façade hammered onto it Potemkin village-style.)

And so the term "empire" seems rather misplaced. Empires are ambitious undertakings that seek to exert control over their domain, and what sort of an empire is it if its main activity is stepping on the same rake over and over again? A silly one? Then why not just call it "The Silly Empire"? Indeed, there are lots of fun silly imperial activities to choose from. For example: arm and train moderate opposition to a regime you want to overthrow; find out that it isn't moderate at all; try to bomb them into submission and fail at that too.

Some people raise the criticism that the empire does in fact function because somebody somewhere is profiting from all this chaos. Indeed they are, but taking this as a sign of imperial success is tantamount to regarding getting mugged on the way to the supermarket as a sign of economic success. Success has nothing to do with it, but Escobar's "internal disintegration" does seem apt: the disintegrating empire's internal chaos is leaking out and causing chaos everywhere.

Still, the US makes every effort to exert control, mainly by exerting pressure on friends and enemies alike, and by demanding unquestioning obedience. Some might call this "controlled chaos."

But what is "controlled chaos"? How does one control chaos, and is it even possible? Let's delve.

Chaos Theory

There is a branch of mathematics called chaos theory. It deals with dynamic systems that exhibit a certain set of behaviors:

  • For any causal relationship that can be observed, tiny differences in initial conditions cause large differences in outcome. The hackneyed example is the "butterfly effect" where the hypothetical flapping of the wings of a butterfly influences the course of a hurricane some weeks later. Or, to pick a more meaningful example, if the stock market were a chaotic system, then investing a million dollars in an index fund might result in a portfolio of about a million dollars a few months later; whereas investing a million and one dollars might result in a portfolio of minus a trillion dollars and change.
  • Unpredictability beyond a short time-period: given finite initial information about a system, its behavior beyond a short period of time becomes impossible to predict. Since information about a real-world system is always finite, being limited by what can be observed and measured, chaotic systems are by their nature unpredictable.
  • Topological mixing: any given region of a chaotic system's phase space will eventually overlap with every other region. Chaotic systems can have several distinct states, but eventually these states will mix. For example, if a certain bank were a chaotic system, with two distinct states-solvent and bankrupt-then these states would eventually mix.

Mathematicians like to play with models of chaos, which are deterministic and time-invariant: they can run a simulation over and over again with slightly different inputs, and observe the result. But real-world chaotic systems are non-deterministic and non-time-invariant: not only do they produce wildly different outputs based on very slightly different inputs, but they produce different outputs every time. What's more, even if deterministic chaotic systems did exist in nature, they would be indistinguishable from so-called "stochastic" systems-ones that exhibit randomness.

Control Theory

Another branch of mathematics deals with ways of controlling dynamic processes. A typical example is a thermostat: it maintains constant temperature by turning a heat source on if the temperature drops below a certain threshold, and off again if it rises above a certain other threshold. (The difference between the two thresholds is called "hysteresis.") Another typical example is the autopilot: it is a device that computes the difference between the programmed course and the actual course (called an "error signal" and applies that error signal to a control mechanism to keep the boat or the plane on course. There are many variations on this theme, but the overall scheme is always the same: measure system output, compare to reference, compute error signal, and apply it as negative feedback to the system.

In order to apply control theory to a system, that system must obey certain principles. One is the superposition principle: output must be proportional to the input. Left rudder always causes the boat to turn left; more left rudder causes it to boat to turn left faster. Another is time-invariance: the boat reacts to changes in rudder angle the same way every time. These are necessities; but most applications of control theory make an additional assumption of linearity: that changes in system behavior are linearly proportional to changes in control input. Since all real-world systems are non-linear, an effort is usually made to endow them with a relatively linear flat spot in the middle of their useful range. Turn a boat's rudder a little bit, and the boat turns as expected; turn it too far, and it stalls and no longer works.

Applying control theory to chaotic systems is tricky, because of the issue of "controllability": is it possible to put a system in a particular state by applying particular control signals? In a chaotic system, very small error signals can produce very large differences in system output. Therefore, a chaotic system cannot be controlled. However, an uncontrollable system can sometimes be stabilized and made to cycle around within a particular, useful, or at least non-lethal, part of its phase space. Generally, to stabilize the system, it must be observable: it must be possible to measure the output of the system and use it to issue corrections. However, even an an unobservable system can still be stabilized, by detecting its state periodically and applying a control signal to push it incrementally in the right direction.

Here is a real-world example. Suppose you are hurtling along a slush-covered highway in a subcompact car with bald summer tires. At some point a very minor perturbation of some sort will transform this controllable system into an uncontrollable one: the car will start spinning. Since it can no longer be steered, it will slide toward the barrier on one side of the highway or the other. It will also become unobservable: with the driver spinning along with the car, it will become impossible to observe the car's trajectory based on short glimpses of the roadway spinning past. Can this situation be stabilized?

Yes, it turns out that it can be. This is a trick I learned from a jet fighter pilot, which I was then able to apply to the exact scenario I just described. If a jet starts tumbling out of control, the pilot's job is to get it to stop tumbling and to get it back to level flight. This is done by twisting one's head back and forth in rhythm with the spin, catching glimpses of the horizon, and working the yoke, also in rhythm to the spin, to slow it down, and to make the horizon go horizontal.

In a car, the driver's job is to get the car to stop spinning without hitting the barrier on either side of the highway. This is done by twisting one's head in rhythm to the spin, catching glimpses of the barriers on each side of the road, and working the steering wheel, also in rhythm to get the car to stop spinning while keeping it away from either barrier. If the car is spinning clockwise, then a clockwise twist to the steering wheel will move it forward, a counterclockwise twist will move it backward, and a stomp on the brakes will slow down its forward or backward motion somewhat.

This is typically the best that can be done in controlling chaos: using small perturbations to keep the system within a certain range of safe, useful states, keeping it out of any number of useless or dangerous ones. But there is one more caveat: such applications of control theory to chaotic systems require finding out the properties of the chaotic system ahead of time. That's rather tricky to do if a system evolves continuously in response to these small perturbations. In situations that involve politics or military matters, applying the same control measure twice is about as effective as telling the same joke twice to the same audience: you become the joke.

* * *

The moral of this story should be obvious by now: as with the car on a slush-covered highway, any fool can get it to spin out, but that same fool is then unlikely to have the presence of mind, the skill and the steel nerves to keep it from hitting one of the barriers. Same goes for the would-be builders of an "empire of controlled chaos": sure, they can generate chaos, but controlling it in a manner that allows them to derive some benefit from it is rather out of the question, and even their ability to stabilize it, so that they are not themselves hurt by it, is in grave doubt.

[Mar 10, 2015] Vladimir Putin describes secret meeting when Russia decided to seize Crimea by Agence France-Presse

Mar 09, 2015 | theguardian.com

NotRevJimJones

I should have read the comments before posting mine. The extent of russophobia is mad, like when the pot was being stirred for the invasion of Iraq.

But then, Putin is the new Hitler, just like Saddam was.

As my maternal grandmother would have stated, all youse antiputinistas are feckin eejits...

normankirk -> NotRevJimJones 1h ago

Apparently you can fool most of the people most of the time
You'd think theyd learn!

TOR2000
A total of 82% of the population of the Crimea fully support Russia's annexation of the peninsula, according to a poll carried out by the GfK Group research institute in Ukraine, Ukrainian online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported on Wednesday. Another 11% of respondents said that they rather support the annexation of Crimea, while 4% were against it.
The poll was conducted on January 16-22, 2015
http://www.unian.info/politics/1040281-poll-82-of-crimeans-support-annexation.html

NotRevJimJones -> TOR2000

Begorrah! Yis talking sense, so the eejits are sure to ignore yer... TOR2000

Has someone hoped that sanctions would change Russia's behavior? Fire your advisers, Russia's anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era's: More than 80 percent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States, according to the independent Levada Center, a number that has more than doubled over the past year and that is by far the highest negative rating since the center started tracking those views in 1988.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russias-anti-us-sentiment-now-is-even-worse-than-it-was-in-soviet-union/2015/03/08/b7d534c4-c357-11e4-a188-8e4971d37a8d_story.html
The anger seems different from the fast-receding jolts of the past, observers say, having spread faster and wider.

The years of perceived humiliations have "led to anti-Americanism at the grass-roots level, which did not exist before," said Vladimir Pozner, a journalist who for decades was a prominent voice of the Soviet Union in the United States. More recently, he has to explain the United States inside Russia. "We don't like the Americans, and it's because they're pushy, they think they're unique and they have had no regard for anyone else."

NotRevJimJones -> TOR2000, 46m ago

Justified antiamericanism, no?

NotRevJimJones, 2h ago

The military operation was initially kept secret and despite the increasingly obvious actions of unmarked Russian forces on the ground, Moscow insisted that only locals were involved in the upheaval. Later, the Kremlin conceded that it had been behind the power grab.

This is false. Repeatedly, translations from Russian to English are manipulated to imply emphasis that is not apparent in the original Russian.
Crimean opolchenie blockaded Ukrainian military installations, with Russian forces ensuring there was no conflagration, and once Crimeans voted for secession, 70% of Ukrainian armed forces in Crimea chose to transfer to Russian authority. All the Kremlin admitted to was the deployment of forces to ensure the peaceful transfer of authority from rejected Kiev, first to Simferopol, and then by referendum, to Moscow.
Of course this accorded with the wishes of the Kremlin, but to puncture the conspiracy theorists' wild accusations, this transfer of authority happened to concur with the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the citizens of Crimea.

So, ultimately, we have a populace, Crimeans, who are overwhelmingly Russian, who overwhelmingly want to be part of Russia, who have by plebiscite become part of Russia, and have avoided the carnage of Donbass because, unlike in Donbass, Russian forces were in situ to stop Kiev's punitive attacks.

And this is a bad thing?

normankirk -> NotRevJimJones, 1h ago

Well said.
NotRevJimJones -> normankirk, 49m ago
Yet no matter how frequently the obvious is stated, it feels like pissing in the wind...

luc001, 2h ago

Ukrainian commies did not take a vote to Annex Crimea from Russia, so none is required to Re-Unite Crimea with Russia.

Kaiama, 7h ago

The other side's point of view...via yandex machine translation superior to google.

According to the Russian President, "the ultimate goal was to give people the opportunity to Express their opinion about how they want to live". "We are the results of the referendum know", - said Vladimir Putin.

MOSCOW, 9 Mar RIA Novosti. Russian President Vladimir Putin told the details of the events of March last year, when the result of the referendum Crimea was joined to Russia. In the documentary "the Crimea. The way Home", a fragment of which showed the channel "Russia 1", he told me that shortly before the referendum conducted a sociological survey to find out how the idea of returning to the Russian Federation are Crimeans themselves.

"It turned out that those wishing to join Russia there 75% of the total composition. You understand, was held closed poll, outside the context of a possible accession. It became evident to me that if we get to it, the level or amount of those who would like to this historic event has occurred, will be much higher," said the Russian President.

"The ultimate goal was to give people the opportunity to Express their opinion about how they want to live.... I thought to myself, if people want, then so be it. It means that they will be there with greater autonomy, with some rights, but as part of the Ukrainian state. So let it be. But if they choose differently, then we can't leave them! We are the results of the referendum know. And we did as you were obliged to do," said Putin.

Crimea and Sevastopol became the Russian regions after held there in March 2014 referendum in which the majority of residents were in favour of joining the Federation. According to the Treaty of accession, all residents of Crimea are recognized as citizens of Russia, wrote a statement that I want to leave the citizenship of Ukraine. According to the FMS, the disclaimer from Russian citizenship filed only 3 427 people. Just Crimea is home to about 2 million people. Kiev, despite the results of the referendum, still considers the Crimea territory.

Crimea did not recognize the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian authorities decided to hold a referendum on the future of the region. The vote was held on 16 March 2014. In the Bulletin were made to two questions: "are You for the reunification of the Crimea with Russia on the rights of the subject of the Russian Federation?" and "are You for the restoration of the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea in 1992 and over the status of Crimea as part of Ukraine?"

The majority of voters (96,77%) when appearing in 83.1% of voted for reunification with Russia. The corresponding agreement was signed on 18 March, he was subsequently approved by the state Duma and the Federation Council. They also took the Federal constitutional law on the formation of two new subjects of the Russian Federation - Republic of Crimea and city of Sevastopol. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed both documents. Previously, Putin said that the referendum in Crimea is consistent with international law and the UN Charter.

[Mar 10, 2015] A Europe-U.S. Divorce Over Ukraine

Mar 10, 2015 | moonofalabama.org

The German government finally wakes up, a little bit at least, and recognizes the obvious fact that U.S. neocons want to drag Europe into a war. It is now openly blaming certain circles within the U.S. government and NATO of sabotaging the Minsk ceasefire agreement. Especially offensive is the fantasy talk of U.S. and NATO commander General Breedlove:

For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda." Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove's comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

But Breedlove hasn't been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

Indeed, US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his support behind Merkel's diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine. Sources in Washington say that Breedlove's bellicose comments are first cleared with the White House and the Pentagon. The general, they say, has the role of the "super hawk," whose role is that of increasing the pressure on America's more reserved trans-Atlantic partners.

The U.S., including Obama, wants to strengthen the U.S. run NATO and thereby its influence in Europe. And Europe, by losing business with Russia and risking war, is supposed to pay for it.

The German public, despite tons of transatlantic propaganda, has well understood the game and the government can not escape that fact. It has to come back to some decent course and if that means trouble with Washington so be it. The foreign ministers of Germany, France and the U.S. are currently meeting in Paris and Secretary of State Kerry will not like what he will hear:

In Berlin, top politicians have always considered a common position vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but the dispute is a fundamental one -- and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action. Additionally, the trans-Atlantic partners also have differing goals.

Whereas the aim of the Franco-German initiative is to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, it is Russia that concerns hawks within the US administration. They want to drive back Moscow's influence in the region and destabilize Putin's power. For them, the dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow.

Europe has no interest in regime change in Russia. The result would likely be a much worse government and leader then the largely liberal Putin.

The U.S., the empire of chaos, does not care what happens after a regime change. In the view of U.S. politicians trouble and unrest in the "rest of the world" can only better the (relative) position of the United States. If production capabilities in Europe get destroyed through war the U.S. could revive its export industries.

It seems that at least some European leaders now understand that they got played by Washington and they are pushing back. A Eurasian economic sphere is in Europe's interest. Will Obama accept their view and turn off the hawks or will he escalate and risk the alliance with Europe? A first sign looks positive. The U.S. called off, on short notice, a plan to train Ukrainian National Guard (i.e. Nazi) forces:

[O]n Friday, a spokesman for US forces in Europe, confirmed the delay in a statement and said: "The US government would like to see the Minsk agreement fulfilled."

"The training mission is currently on hold but Army Europe is prepared to carry out the mission if and when our government decides to move forward," the statement said.

Some Europeans, like the writers in the piece above, still see Obama as a reluctant warrior pushed to war by the hawks in his own government and the Republicans in Congress. But the surge in Afghanistan, the destruction of Libya, the war on Syria and the trouble in Ukraine have all been run by the same propaganda scheme: Obama does not want war, gets pushed and then reluctantly agrees to it. It is a false view. The buck stops at his desk and Nuland as well as General Breedlove and other official hawks concerned about their precious bodily fluids are under Obama's direct command. He can make them shut up or get them fired with a simple 30 second phone call. As he does not do so it is clear that he wants them to talk exactly as they do talk. Obama is the one driving the neocon lane.

The Europeans should finally get this and distance themselves from that destructive path.

Posted by b on March 7, 2015 at 01:09 PM | Permalink

Selected Skeptical Comments

Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 7, 2015 2:05:22 PM | 1

Great analysis b.
Loved this bit...

The general, they say, has the role of the "super hawk," whose role is that of increasing the pressure on America's more reserved trans-Atlantic partners.

It's rather insulting to the EU that the dumbass, gutless, Yankees would appoint a war-mongering chicken-hawk called Breedlove to lecture them about The Importance Of Being Ernest - about hating Putin.

jayc | Mar 7, 2015 2:47:21 PM | 2

"the dispute is a fundamental one -- and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action."

Insisting that the "threat of military action" always be present during the practice of international diplomacy is a fundamental repudiation of international law as proscribed by the United Nations at the end of WW2. In the current Orwellian situation, the foreign policy hawks (in particularly the Anglo 5 Eyes countries) articulate policy informed by this repudiation while on the other hand insisting that they are motivated by upholding mid-century international law. Here is John Boehner speaking for a bi-partisan Congressional committee quoted today in the Washington Times:

"It is even more than simply a component of a revisionist Russian strategy to redraw international borders and impose its will on its neighbors,it is a grotesque violation of international law, a challenge to the west and an assault on the international order established at such great cost in the wake of World War II."

ToivoS | Mar 7, 2015 2:59:09 PM | 3

When this crisis in Ukraine first broke out last year it made no sense at all for Obama to have let Nuland carry on as she was doing. He could have defused the whole thing simply by firing Nuland or I thought. However, his actions over the past year seem to show that this was his policy as b says here.

It is hard to understand why He and Kerry have pursued this policy. For sure, as was predictable one year ago it has turned their widely touted 'pivot to asia' into irrelevancy. It has directly forced China and Russia into a stronger alliance. Those are some big prices to pay for our provocations against Russia.

So why did we do it? I will guess. Putin's 2010 speech proposing a common economic union from Vladivostok to Lisbon must have been seen as a very serious threat by some powerful forces in the US. Fear of losing or at least lessening US hegemony over Europe was probably a major factor in deciding to 'pivot back to Europe'. Our influence there must have seemed much more important than Asia or even the ME. Ukraine provided an opportunity to drive a wedge between Russia and Europe or so US power brokers thought. As a secondary reason, at least one that brought the US military on board with the new policy, is that a new cold war with Russia provided an opportunity to reinvigorate NATO, that has always been a favorite play thing the army and airforce. After the collapse of the Soviet Union it was very difficult to justify NATO's existence.

It would be ironies of ironies if this crisis now forces Germany to declare its independence and work harder to rebuild relations with Russia and in the process become a major player in the Eurasian Union. This is what Pepe Escobar just suggested this last week is a possibility.

Laurence | Mar 7, 2015 3:04:18 PM | 4

Some Europeans, like the writers in the piece above, still see Obama as a reluctant warrior pushed to war by the hawks in his own government and the Republicans in Congress. But ...

You may be correct. But:

You haven't established that the evident appearance of `reluctance' is a "false view". In theory, "The buck stops at his desk". The obvious fact that it hasn't, however, is -- at best -- by no means creditable.

I can hardly wait 'til the `progressive' Twittercrats start calling for Obama to "go nuclear" with Putin. ...

Colinjames | Mar 7, 2015 3:05:26 PM | 5

#2, I guess he's taking his cues from Noodles, here's some highlights from her Match 4 address to Foreign Affairs Committee, lifted from Stephen Lendman
  • calledd murdered US-funded, Boris Nemtsov a "freedom fighter, Russian patriot and friend."
  • ...called Ukraine "central to our 25 year Transatlantic quest for a 'Europe whole, free and at peace.'
  • Nuland called US planned and implements year ago Maidan violence using well-trained Nazi thugs "peaceful protest(s) by ordinary Ukrainians."
  • "They braved frigid temperatures, brutal beatings and sniper bullets…Ukraine began to forge a new nation…holding free and fair election…and undertaking deep and comprehensive economic and political reforms."

Claims-

  • "enhance(d) (Ukrainian) transparency in public procurement, reduce(d) government inefficiency and corruption, (laws) making the banking system more transparent, and measures to improve the climate for business"
  • "it's "building a peaceful, democratic, independent" nation
  • ... Crimea "under illegal occupation"
  • in Eastern Ukraine, Russia and its separatist puppets unleashed unspeakable violence and pillage."
  • "MH17 was shot down. Hundreds of Russian heavy weapons and troops poured across the border, fueling the conflict."
  • "Sixteen Russian uninspected 'humanitarian convoys' entered Ukraine in violation of agreements with the Ukrainian government, the ICRC and the international community."
  • "Donetsk airport was obliterated…Debaltseve, a key rail hub beyond the ceasefire lines, fell to separatist and Russian forces six days after Minsk was signed…"
  • "This is a manufactured conflict controlled by the Kremlin, fueled by Russian tanks and heavy weapons; financed at Russian taxpayers' expense and costing the lives of young Russians…"

Bizzaro world. Completely upside down from reality. And no I'm not trying to one up you #2! It's just crazy stuff coming out of the mouths of every politician and official and media whore, I've never seen anything like it.

Wayoutwest | Mar 7, 2015 3:07:24 PM | 6

Good report, b especially including the fact that this is a bipartisan project led by the Liberal Democrats.

The European actions especially Germanys may be more or less than they appear to be. I doubt that Germany would or could stand in the way of US demands but they may be facilitating an escape path for the US to use to avoid a more dangerous confrontation with Russia.

james | Mar 7, 2015 3:25:46 PM | 7

thanks b.. some good points in your post which i strongly share, this one in particular - The U.S., the empire of chaos, does not care what happens after a regime change. In the view of U.S. politicians trouble and unrest in the "rest of the world" can only better the (relative) position of the United States.

when does this nightmare called us foreign policy die?

Piotr Berman | Mar 7, 2015 4:47:47 PM | 8

"Europe has no interest in regime change in Russia. The result would likely be a much worse government and leader then the largely liberal Putin."

What is wrong with those two sentences? First, "Europe", a landmass in western Eurasia usually demarcated by the crests of Ural and Caucasus mountain chains and Ural river. The text refers mostly to the governments of France and Germany. Who are "NATO hawks"? Danes and Norwegians, latter day Varangians? Or Latvians and Estonians who would like to have a re-match of Battle on Ice? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_on_the_Ice_(Lake_Peipus)

Second, "The result …" This has to be a joke. "Europe" has many headaches with the governments of Greece and Hungary, but can they change them? Actually, in the case of Greece, this sentence could make sense, because in Greece they have a real opportunity of causing a government crisis and getting a more extreme government. But in the case of Russia, it is only a question of having a long-term gain in mutually assured economic destruction, or not.

Double-talk is bread and butter of diplomacy, but we simple folk can afford to express ourselves more directly. The real problem in arming Ukraine is that the government there is untrustworthy and it would probably use the aid to further neglect the economy and concentrate even more on futile military endeavor, and it could also commit some atrocities as it would be at it. Being "a little bit Nazi" is perfectly fine with Baltic governments and Croatia, plus USA and Canada, could be fine with Hungary but the leader there is constantly on the prowl for good deals and just now got one from Putin, and causes mixed feeling elsewhere.

So the trillion dollar question for most responsible European leaders is if US is more trustworthy than Poroshenko crew?

jfl | Mar 7, 2015 5:09:32 PM | 11

Yes, good analysis. Especially the Empire of Chaos' goal of reimplementing the aftermath of WWII : everyone outside North America flat on their backs and the US the colossus by virtue of still standing. But ...

' Will Obama accept their view and turn off the hawks or will he escalate and risk the alliance with Europe? ... Obama is the one driving the neocon lane. '

Whether it's the neocon line or in the neocon lane, Obama's not driving. Never has been. He was hired to sit behind the wheel of the neoliberal, neocon drone of state, operated by 'pilots' from Langley, the Pentagon, Wall Street - seemingly by all three, via rapid context switch in pseudo-parallel.

The reason US policy seems to lurch ever more violently toward disaster is because none of the actors actually implementing it by turn are identified. The Nihilist Nobel Peace Prize Laureate gets dunked everytime, hauls himself out of the tank, climbs back up on the stool, makes faces and jeers at the crowd throwing balls at the trip target ... all absurdly trying to effect a change in policy.

It's just a job ... 2,236 days down, 686 days till payday.

Mar 7, 2015 5:21:18 PM | 12

@8,9,10

Thanks for the analysis with Russia at the center rather than the USA. Catchy restatement of the difference between 'the chicken then the egg' vs 'the egg then the chicken'.

I'm rooting for Russia, and Putin's been in charge there. Of course, I'm really rooting for my USA, but for my USA to survive the present oligarchy must be defeated : the Chicken's neck must be wrung and its carcasse flung into the stew pot.

dan of steele | Mar 7, 2015 6:31:13 PM | 13

it is my opinion that the German government led by Mrs Merkel is a lot more involved in the crisis that is Ukraine than is being discussed in this forum. There was quite a lot of support for Tymoshenko from Merkel including her drive to boycott the Ukraine when Tymoshenko had been imprisoned for embezzlement.

she was also promoting Vitaly Klitschko for the longest time abruptly ending when Vickie Nuland let it be known that he was not accceptable as a leader of Ukraine.

The German government has been a very willing stooge of the US in causing or continuing the unrest in Ukraine. That many people in Germany have suffered due to this behavior from sanctions and embargoes on both the European side as well as the Russian side might be a consequence that the German elite decided they could live with rather than simply something forced upon them from the US.

As far as I can tell, the fecal matter hit the air moving device right after Yanukovich decided to maintain close economic ties with Russia rather than throw in with the EU. EU for all intents and purposes Germany.

just a thought. ymmv

JohnH | Mar 7, 2015 7:16:23 PM | 19

"The U.S., the empire of chaos, does not care what happens after a regime change. In the view of U.S. politicians trouble and unrest in the "rest of the world" can only better the (relative) position of the United States."

And it does not appear that the US cares what happens to Europe, either. If sanctions on Iran hurt European business, meh. If sanctions on Russia push Europe back into recession...meh.

Maybe someday Europe will get a clue...

Benu | Mar 7, 2015 8:02:30 PM | 20

I felt like I was reading the lyin-ass New York Times. (How do these so-called journalists get ANY work done with all that CIA/StateDept/JSOC cock in their mouth? Inquiring minds want to know. Anyway…)

Germany is presented like an old grandma, wringing her hands and saying, "Oh, mercy me! Can't we all just get along?" … If it wasn't for that dang Gen. Breedlove…except, well, he's actually right, don't you know, except, OK, he exaggerates a bit. There's LOTS of Russia aggression, and we have proof we won't show you…but not as much as he says. I mean, credibility, and all, right?…And that Vicki Nuland, well, she's bitch we all agree, but she gets things done and sometimes you need to get tough, don't ya know. She "loves Russia" (yeah, I bet…like I love a nice rare steak….sliced sooooo thin.) So…come on, dial it back a little won't you guys over in Langley…?

This seemed to me like CIA drizzle from Der Spigot!

A few carefully breaded pieces of True served with a piquant sauce of Lies and a side of Dissembling and Disinformation. One of those articles that is structured like, "yeah, true…BUT!"

ToivoS @ | 3

Putin's 2010 speech proposing a common economic union from Vladivostok to Lisbon must have been seen as a very serious threat by some powerful forces in the US.

So says Mike Whitney in an important post re Nemtsov's assassination over at Counterpunch. I agree with you and him. I wonder what Uncle Ruslan thinks? He must have some ideas, having lived with Graham Fuller for all this those years.

Colinjames @ 5

Those excerpts really infuriated me. I have the most terrible desire to bitch slap Vicki Nudelman until she falls down and begs me to stop. I see her face and my hand itches. I need to stop watching Jess Franco movies.

Wayoutwest @ 6

The European actions especially Germanys may be more or less than they appear to be. I doubt that Germany would or could stand in the way of US demands but they may be facilitating an escape path for the US to use to avoid a more dangerous confrontation with Russia.

Ayuh. I agree, with you (see above) --and dan of steele's very excellent and needful post at 13. Germany's in this shit up to their eyeballs. I recall reading in "The Brothers" that after WW2 the CIA just basically took over (and presumably still owns) German intelligence. Took their Nazis in and kept all the spy lines and assets. Gladio was an outgrowth of that, I guess.

But I don't think the blood-thirsty vampires in the US can dial it back. They are all up in that snatch (to slightly paraphrase a vulgar version of the Petraeus bio's title that actually got shown on US news.)

Piotr Berman's delightful rants at 18 @ 19

What interesting ideas and insights you bring to the discussion. If you don't mind saying, are you German? If I was a German citizen I would be very upset and I have read that, like here in the States, this Ukraine shit combined with NSA spying combined with that book about how all the media are CIA assets has caused a crisis of confidence between reasonably-informed citizens and dissembling government, media, military, etc.


I agree with all the posters here saying that Obama has never had hold of the levers of power. A few, yes. But what with the "tunneling" of political appointees transformed into civil servants at the end of the Bush admin…yeah, no. And that's not the only reason…just one.

jfl | Mar 7, 2015 8:11:20 PM | 21

@13

Certainly Germany is covetous of Russia/the Ukraine. And Merkel, like Obama, knows how to get along by going along with the ones who brung her. Used to be the Russians in East Germany, are now the Americans in West/Unified Germany.

Both are puppets, 'loyal' to the their puppeteers. The rest of the EU apparat are in the pocket of the US, and dance to the same tune piped to Obama.

Germany on its own is not capable of subduing Russia, yet hopes to be in position to reap the benefits of the US' destruction of same.

They're all losers, betting on making a killing, benefiting from their neighbors' collapse. Their neighbors have other ideas ... must have to survive. TIAA.

Benu | Mar 7, 2015 8:33:21 PM | 22

jfl @ 21

Love your vampires and vultures scenario. Tolstoy's Vourdalak or the folkloric Russian
Волколак or Volkolak is what I've been thinking of late, because I am a Mario Bava kind of gal.

You know, Russia is one of the few countries NOT 110% indebted to German/London/Wall Street/Brussels banks. Seems to me that definitely has something to do with all this. They've got something to plunder. (Lotta gold. yum!) I bet there's some truth to the assertion that the flaming tire of blame for global economic collapse is being readied for Russia's neck...just in case. We're very close.

NotTimothyGeithner | Mar 7, 2015 9:02:57 PM | 25

Demian @ 23

WTF did Germany THINK was going to come of this?

But perhaps there is no one Germany. I can only suppose that it must be like it is here in the US...different factions with their own power bases pulling their own levers.

Benu | Mar 7, 2015 8:48:57 PM | 24

@24 I think the plan was for a rapid victory in Ukraine and Putin just stomping his feet. Keeping Crimea, the uprisings, and the general thuggery/incompetence in Kiev weren't in the plans. The Chinese didn't defend Russia against accusations about flight #mh17, the Chinese openly scoffed at the West not even giving fools like Kerry the time of day.

German firms were supposed to win contracts replacing Russian firms not see the SCO grow and face losses from self-imposed sanctions. Merkel and people in her sphere overdid the rhetoric. Voters won't forget a major propaganda change, and Merkel and her ilk know this but can't see how to get out of the mess especially with Kiev in need of European cash.

PBenu | Mar 7, 2015 9:19:53 PM | 26

NotTimmeh @ 25

So, you seem to be saying that this is rather like what WoW maintains...an offering of an exit ramp to the US...because Germany really, really wants off this highway to hell.

Hideous to think they were all for it when it looked like easy rapings and little to no consequences.

International finance needs to be dismantled. That's what's behind all this shit. Bankster's wars.

Helena Cobban | Mar 7, 2015 9:31:25 PM | 27

The practices of Ms. Nuland (taking cookies out to support the demonstrators during the "Maidan" actions) echoed exactly those of Amb. Robert Ford in Syria. In both cases it was a strange perversion and repudiation of traditional standards of diplomatic practice. It was not just a Nuland aberration.

And we've seen the outcome, a few years later, in both these war-ravaged countries. God help the people of both countries.

Pluto | Mar 7, 2015 9:52:56 PM | 28

@3 ToivoS

Interesting points you make. I believe what we have here IS the pivot to Asia, - through the backdoor. The US is haunted by the inevitable rise of Eurasia as a superpower. And, the fact is, the "pivot" was unrealistic and a rather silly strategy. China's New Silk Road Economic Belt, both rail and maritime - stretching from Beijing through Russia and across Europe to Madrid (with spurs to India, Iran, the ME and down the African continent) - was a preemptive strike that neutered US aspirations. Even worse, it's already funded.

Picture the US on the globe: Isolated and alone, separated from the lively Eastern Hemisphere by two vast oceans. Adrift, stewing in its own juices, in desperate need of a world war to elevate it once again out of its economic doom and into super-stardom.

This is further evidenced by the US desperation over the TPP and TTIF. It has reached a fever pitch, with endless negotiations inside the super-secret US "cone of silence." For the US, these corporate-ruled trade agreements are their last hope for hegemony over global trade, especially now that the Petrodollar is dead. (Another consequence of the Ukraine stupidity.) But, both trade treaties seem to be failing badly (there are anti-TTIF demonstrations throughout Germany today). In any event, China rendered them both irrelevant with APEC and the New Silk Road, which popped into existence the very instant that the US stepped into the Ukraine tar pit. For China, they are done deals. Even Australia and New Zealand have come to their senses and seem to be climbing on board.

Surely, Europe already knows this. They've seen many empires decline. I suppose its only prudent to string the US along and contain the chaos....

Demian | Mar 7, 2015 9:58:02 PM | 29

@Helena Cobban #27:

God help the people of both countries.

Well, no one knows whether either one of them will continue to exist, do they? The Kremlin's intention is clearly to keep Ukraine's territory as it is (sans Crimea; that question is closed), but Ukraine is increasingly entering into full-spectrum social collapse, so wha the outcome will be is unpredictable, especially since the Ukraine was an artificial country to begin with, patched together from the territories of other countries.

As for Syria, I am all for secular states in the Islamic world, like Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya before the US destroyed them. Our fan of the Islamic State Wayoutwest can say much more about this than I can, but it is possible that states created by Sykes-Picot will disappear, to be replaced by a caliphate. In the larger scheme of things, that would be a good thing because

(1) even though the caliphate would initially have a regressive form of Islam, once Arabs are in control of their own destiny, they will not fear engaging in reforms;

(2) a caliphate would create one more pole for the emerging multipolar world.

NotTimothyGeithner | Mar 7, 2015 10:13:03 PM | 30

@26 They are giving Obama an out and blame can be heaped on Nuland and Breedlove. Rasmussen didn't make the Der Spiegel article, and he is completely deranged as anyone outside of GOP politics.

IMHO Obama only responds to extreme embarrassment. Offering him an out won't work without tying Obama and Nuland at the hip.

It's overlooked, but in 2012 when Obama came out for gay marriage, he cloaked his support in nonsense about state rights but only after his campaign machine had worked against an effort in North Carolina to defeat anti-gay/woman/child referendum. There were political reasons, but there was a growing anger. Biden saw this and just randomly announced Obama's pro gay marriage views. It took three days, but Obama got around to tepidly endorsing a form of gay marriage. Obama only acted because Biden forced his hand. It took almost two weeks after everyone in the U.S. knew Shinseki from the Veteran Affairs Department for Obama to dismiss him when Shinseki should have been fired right away, but Obama only acts when faced with total embarrassment.

fast freddy | Mar 7, 2015 10:14:08 PM | 31

Obama is a puppet. Cheney, Kissinger, Negroponte, GHWBush and friends, CIA, Brzezinski, Rockefeller, etc. Deep State pulls his strings. Obama was himself a CIA protege at BIC. There are no pesky principles to contend with.

And he is not allowed to fire Nuland or any other neocon warmonger.

Did you see what they did to JFK for stepping out of line?

@ jfl | 11

But exactly!

Obama's not driving. Never has been. He was hired to sit behind the wheel of the neoliberal, neocon drone of state, operated by 'pilots' from Langley, the Pentagon, Wall Street - seemingly by all three, via rapid context switch in pseudo-parallel.

The reason US policy seems to lurch ever more violently toward disaster is because none of the actors actually implementing it by turn are identified.

Pluto | Mar 7, 2015 10:45:33 PM | 34

Although it seems there are two schools of thought about that around here, this has been my assumption from the beginning.


@3 ToivoS

Forgot to mention,: You spoke of consequences. That is of particular interest, I believe, and speaks to the destiny of the US as it stumbles about on the world stage, without future awareness.

It is hard to understand why He and Kerry have pursued this policy. For sure, as was predictable one year ago it has turned their widely touted 'pivot to asia' into irrelevancy. It has directly forced China and Russia into a stronger alliance. Those are some big prices to pay for our provocations against Russia.

There are more than a few significant unintended consequences that have come in short order as a result of the Ukraine blunder. For example:

  • Certainly killing the Petrodollar is a big one, which was the natural result of pushing China and Russia into the biggest oil/gas deal in world history, specifically written to bypass the dollar.
  • Compelling Gazprom to divert the destination of the South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea from Bulgaria to Turkey, with the distribution hub ending in Greece. So now Turkey and Greece control the fuel coming into West and South Europe. That's quite the geopolitical accomplishment.
  • Pushing Iran into the BRICS. Russian allies are pulling together in many interesting ways these days. US sanctions have become toothless.
  • The oil pricing scheme backfiring on the US economy. I'm of the school that oil overproduction was a direct attack on Russia and the usual suspects: Syria, Iran, and Venezuela. I'm also of the opinion that the US has lost control of OPEC.

The US is paying a mighty high price for its neocon folly.

Piotr Berman | Mar 7, 2015 10:55:20 PM | 35

In response to questions, I used my real name, I am Polish citizen living in USA.

European elite, including Germany and France, are almost instinctively aligning themselves with American elite, but they take exception to a favorite American trick: penciling a grandiose plan to be paid by EU.

Russian counter-sanctions fall on Europeans, and it is pointless to quibble if "dollar is dead" -- it is not, but USA will not pay to integrate Turkey and Ukraine with EU, to cite some of the grandiose ideas. German conservatives in particular are notorious bean counters, they generously paid to integrate Eastern Germany, but are much less enthusiastic to have foreign beneficiaries. (In Poland, the consensus is that it is OK to help Ukrainians, provided that it will not cost anything. There is also a minority that hates Ukrainians more than Russians, and younger folks seem not to care at all.)

As it is, EU duly enacted sanctions on Iran, Syria and Russia, and Merkel is resolute at sending mixed signals, so to some extend there is no "divorce". If anything, they are on the same wavelength as Obama. Recall how Europe resisted joining Bush jr. war in Iraq. "New Europe", including Poland, provided a bunch of little contingents, and that proved to be quite unpopular domestically. Even so, regime change in Libya was accomplished mostly by Europeans, and this is perhaps one of the unique successes in history that has a dearth of claimants. On the heals of that feat, even ever supine Brits rebelled when they had a chance to repeat the success in Syria. The belief that "Americans surely know what they are doing" is eroding even as we scribble. But so far, there is hardly any "European alternative".

I guess Putin will graciously lift sanctions on Hungarian and Greek produce, Ukraine will get some weapons and training, but not a hell lot -- seriously, what scale of military aid would truly make a difference?

TikTok | Mar 7, 2015 11:42:48 PM | 36

Harper has given citizenship to Yatsenyuk in case 'something goes wrong'. Fcuk. http://www.pravda.ru/news/world/formerussr/ukraine/06-03-2015/1251452-yacenyk-0/

james | Mar 8, 2015 12:02:59 AM | 37

@35 piotr.. thanks for pointing out euro's role in libya and how nothing is going to change, as i personally believe just like the usa is bought and paid for, so is germany and france.. to suggest there will be much of a fracture is to suggest the international banker mafia don't have these politicians on the same page. i think they do.. whether they get elected again, or the required politicians to do the job of the bankers do - i think they do..

as for obama being anything other then a rubber stamp - i agree with @31 fast freddy.. step out of line and look what you will get.. it is hard not to be cynical..

@36 tiktok.. what a pathetic pos we have for a leader here in canada, but like i say about most of these western leaders and to which i include harper - they are all beholden to the same narrow interests that have nothing to do with the common people's interest.. they continue to think we are stupid or worse..

Demian | Mar 8, 2015 12:04:56 AM | 38

@Piotr Berman #35:

so far, there is hardly any "European alternative".

There does not need to be any European alternative. And the EU is dominated by Germany, the intelligence services of which, as someone here observed recently, are infiltrated by the CIA (although there was a report that Germany is now setting up a branch of its intelligence service independent of USG). The alternative is Russia. It is too late for Europeans to come up with alternatives. (They did that first with Hegel and then with Marx, but neither attempt held.) Europeans just need to realize that since the world is becoming multipolar, they belong in the Eurasian pole, not a contrived Atlanticist one.

Russia has grave flaws, an Europeans can help Russians fix those, if Europeans make a break with the predatory and anti-human Anglosphere.

Nana2007 | Mar 8, 2015 12:16:52 AM | 40

The push back is far too late. The gorgon Nuland and Dr Strangelove himself Zed Breszinski testifying before the mouth breathers of the foreign affairs committee this week continued to ratchet up the rhetoric:
"I wonder how many people in this room or this very important senatorial committee really anticipated that one day Putin would land military personnel in Crimea and seize it. I think if anybody said that's what he is going to do, he or she would be labeled as a warmonger. He did it. And he got away with it. I think he's also drawing lessons from that. And I'll tell you what my horror, night-dream, is: that one day, I literally mean one day, he just seizes Riga, and Talinn. Latvia and Estonia. It would literally take him one day. There is no way they could resist. And then we will say, how horrible, how shocking, how outrageous, but of course we can't do anything about it. It's happened. We aren't going to assemble a fleet in the Baltic, and then engage in amphibious landings, and then storm ashore, like in Normandy, to take it back. We have to respond in some larger fashion perhaps, but then there will be voices that this will plunge us into a nuclear war

I'll tell you what Brezinski's real horror night dream is dying before the US attempts a full on takeover of Russia. Whether Germany likes it or not they'll continue to be a pawn in the dark lords 8 dimensional chess game. It's a little late to be thinking twice now that the breadbasket of Europe is a basket case. The hope is that the whooping that's coming to the USSA shakes out the aristocracy that brought it about and sends them fleeing with nothing but their assholes.

Harold | Mar 8, 2015 3:48:14 AM | 43

Oddly, Brzezinski himself not too long ago recommended the "Finlandization" of Ukraine. The neo-cons and armaments industry have adopted a cartoonish version of his theories -- which, in any case, hark back to the Geographical Pivot theory dating to 1904! It's become a crude dogma that doesn't even rise to the level of ideology.

Prosperous Peace | Mar 8, 2015 5:20:41 AM | 44

Decent analysis but misses two important points:

1) "Special British-US relationship" - US has been a British colony for at least last 100 years, ie. a muscle-man for the Rothschildes-Jewish-Zionist cabal with its HQ in the City of London, Israel plays a "mad dog" role for them, Canada, Australia, and many other in the Commonwealth have their parts to play too. Because Obama since the evening of his reelection turned against the Crow Corporation, they have been forced to increasingly rely on themselves and other subjects - notice rapidly intensifying British military presence in the Central (Poland, which is situated at the very heart of the continent) and Eastern Europe (Baltic republics), as well as in the ME - Bahrain, police force now on the Turkish-Syrian border. Also British lying propaganda has been very intense, by far the worst in the EU. The neocons, McCain, Soros et al respond to the Rothschildes, always have. The British have been leading the charge recently and you will see more and more of this soon.

2) Obama's team has been under the threats form the global criminal cabal many times itself. Security breaches at the White House, warnings of assassination, "third force" trying to start a civil war in the US by abusing the police powers and killing the police officers, fake social movements menacing the White House with "marches" like the one of Jewish Adam Kokesh...

Summing up - it's been the City of London pulling the strings all along and Obama have been in danger of a violent overthrow already for some time.

somebody | Mar 8, 2015 5:40:49 AM | 45

RE: Piotr Berman | Mar 7, 2015 10:55:20 PM | 35

You are right about the issue of paying for grandiose plans.

Seems though that Europeans are really pissed off.

Jean Claude Juncker calls for European Army with headquarters in Brussels

Key sentence

Juncker wies zugleich auf die organisatorischen und finanziellen Vorteile des Vorhabens hin. So würde es zu einer intensiven Zusammenarbeit bei Entwicklung und Kauf von militärischem Gerät führen und erhebliche Einsparungen bringen.

Brief translation: Juncker highlighted the organizatorial and financial advantages. Cooperation in the development and procurement of military equipment could be shared and save considerable amounts.

jfl | Mar 8, 2015 8:13:07 AM | 46

German official says Saudi Arabia top 'terror exporter' in Mideast
[Vice President of the German Parliament (Bundestag) Claudia] Roth called Riyadh "the top terror exporter in the Middle East," adding that "a large portion" of extremist militants in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq hail from Saudi Arabia.

Germany's guidelines on weapons exports make it "crystal clear that deliveries cannot be made to such countries," she stressed.

"Besides the weapons deals, Germany is also discussing other trade ties with Saudi Arabia," she said. "Pressure could certainly be brought to bear using these."

The results of a recent survey conducted for German daily Bild have shown that 78 percent of Germans believe Berlin should stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, while a further 60 percent favor breaking off trade relations all together with the Persian Gulf monarchy due to its human rights violations.

Great place for the crack to open up/spread from/to Ukraine.

ǝn⇂ɔ | Mar 8, 2015 10:42:49 AM | 49

I would note that Merkel working with Timoshenko was more likely a tactical move - one in which Germany would get some leverage vs. Russia regarding natural gas moving through Ukraine as well as benefits within Ukraine.

This is very different than the American tactic of exaggerating ethnic tensions on order to create a failed state a la Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, ad nauseam. American doesn't necessarily intend to create a failed state - the correct view is that the goal is a puppet regime, but a failed state in someone else's backyard is almost as good...or good enough.

I'd also note that this is different than the British Empire tactic - the British would also arm "their" rebels, but they would put skin in the game (soldiers on the ground) in order to ensure that they wound up with the correct puppet regime.

It is still unclear to me whether the American abridgement of Byzantine/Ottoman/British Empire tactics is an evolution or a devolution.

dh | Mar 8, 2015 11:02:42 AM | 50

@49 I think America has always attempted to maintain the 'good guy' facade. Since 911 it's been more like 'no more Mr. Niceguy'.

guest77 | Mar 8, 2015 11:05:10 AM | 51

If the EU and Russia can edge the United States out of the situation, it is a win/win for everyone except the US, who will have seen $5B and an old Cold War dream go up in smoke.

If the US can be ejected, it will be the EU and especially the Germans who have gained the most mightily by the Maidan. The partition of Ukraine - getting rid of those parts that did vote more heavily for the Party of Regions and the Communists, leaves the EU with a "Orange", oligarchical Ukraine forever. A Ukrainian horse that the EU can hitch their currently broken cart to, a huge area for Germany to dominate in the heart of Europe - (one of Germany's oldest dreams). It's not something I'd personally wish on the Ukrainian population, but Ukraine becoming a proper EU member would require the suppression of the Nazis who, if they are not, would at least be loud, violent, internal opposition allied with the trouble-making USA, or at worst would try and wage a disruptive terrorist war over Crimea and the East.

Would this situation be acceptable to Russia? Wins there would be the retention of Crimea with no question as to its return to the rump Ukraine, plus the advantage of having the US out of the Ukraine completely and having caused an EU/US fissure. The status of the East would have to be determined, but it would seem that independence or becoming part of Russia would be the best bets there now that they'd no longer be able to offset the vote of the far west.

Anyway, that's all details. The real good thing here - for people all over the globe - would be that the war-making US elite would have been ejected from another region where they've been making trouble.

chalo | Mar 8, 2015 11:26:00 AM | 52

Ah, the utopian dreams of the unwashable internet junky. Germany will never reject the US. You heard it hear first. LOL

Scott | Mar 8, 2015 11:42:29 AM | 53

So far when it comes to any "divide" all I've seen is rhetoric and posturing. Considering the Fourth Reich and it's vassals are owned and controlled by the same puppet-masters I don't see any actual schism happening. Small European countries that actively resist will find a "color" revolution brewing. Large nations who actually push back will be hit with economic warfare. The courage to stand up for their people and stop the lunatics in D.C. doesn't exist in the currant political actors in Europe. I truly hope I'm wrong, but until we see DEEDS instead of mere WORDS...the steady slide toward war will continue.

rufus magister | Mar 8, 2015 11:43:22 AM | 54

...To get back on topic, Russia Insider considers the broader question of the regime's attitudes; the open fascism of the junta is I think at root of much of European unease. Kiev's Drive to Dehumanize East Ukrainians is certainly a key component of that mentality.

purple | Mar 8, 2015 11:59:18 AM | 55

All the European leaders are compromised in some way, the NSA probably has everything they have written, said, or done in a database. Merkel looks to have been involved in some shady activities in East Germany if you look closely enough. Don't expect Europe to break from Pax Americana.

Wayoutwest | Mar 8, 2015 12:24:05 PM | 56

RM@54

I think that the unease in Europe about the rise of open fascism is superficial and more a PR concern than true opposition at least among the Ruling Class. So long as fascism serve their purposes and feeds their true agendas but remains obscured it is supported and protected.

OT again, many of us Oldies experienced music somewhat differently than today where albums or sides of albums were how we enjoyed the performances. Even radio DJs were judged by the way they programmed their shows and we were always in search of the perfect segway.

Anonymous | Mar 8, 2015 12:40:07 PM | 57

Divorce? Hardly. EU want an EU army, http://rt.com/news/238797-eu-joint-army-threat/

Another US puppet idea.

rufus magister | Mar 8, 2015 12:53:42 PM | 58

...On topic -- the fascism by itself is not too great a worry. That they're incompetent and it will cost someone lots of money to fix things more so. Events may not break up "the Allies" now, but with the proper moves and missteps by the varied parties involved.... Someone's planning a few moves ahead, and I don't think it's DC. Sadly, we can't overlook the power of short-sighted deviousness.

diogenes | Mar 8, 2015 1:20:48 PM | 60

It looks to me as if the differences between Obama and Merkel on Ukraine are tactical not strategic, viz:

Merkel doesn't have to deal with the infamous American "bottom line" every 90 days, and this gives her leisure to actually think about what she is doing.

German voters have a mind of their own and are not compliant stooges like American voters, who only require a few weeks of cheap propaganda to go along with the most crackpot of schemes. The saying "the burned child fears the fire" does not apply in their case.

The goal from Merkels point of view must be the neoliberal exploitation of Russia - not bringing Ukraine into NATO, which is only useful in an aggressive war against Russia; or for use as a provocation resulting in the removal of Putin.

Therefore Merkel has no qualms about putting the Western project against Russia on hold until a more opportune time.

Outraged | Mar 8, 2015 1:25:48 PM | 61

Hm, excellent article b, as always, though my first thoughts were, 'overly optimistic' ...

However, upon some reflection and reconsideration, there does seem to be a confluence/pattern of events occurring recently, which may signal that a real 'Newer Great Game' may be afoot, in our currently Unipolar, sole superpower, Empire dominated world.

The Minsk agreement was done without US involvement, in fact explicitly excluded US involvement, and the subsequent events of the EU players give every indication of having continued in that vein ... ie. Germany and France clearly acting independent of the Empire ... Poroschenko exposed as a powerless puppet, purely a pawn, a mere agent of influence of the US.

Now there are firm calls for no new sanctions by the EU, 'give Minsk a chance' ...

The reports re Breedlove/NATO and German governments new 'perspective' re Ukraine/Russia in this thread ... effectively denouncing the Empires warmongering, baseless propaganda, and willingness to have the EU 'go fuck itself' re Russia/Ukraine for no-ones benefit except the US. History, and US geopolitical strategy repeats ...

Now the EU (President Junckers) calling for the creation of an EU Integrated Army ... with only the UK and France so far having expressed concerns. France has always had a firm view to an independent military, regardless of NATO. UK view is irrelevant as they are merely viewed as the US suborned 'spoiler' in the EU, so again no surprise and no leverage/clout. Reports are Germany support the EU/Junckers proposal ... claims an integrated EU army would be far more effective and significantly less costly, as well as utilizing EU resources for the EU's benefit, not that of the US. Which would be quite true if micro and macro duplication at all levels was reduced by allocating specific functions and roles to relevant EU nations militaries within such a 'truly integrated' force ... for example, German Armored Corps, French Naval/Marine forces, Spanish Airborne/Airmobile, Italian Air Defence, a smaller member state to speciliaze as MPs, etc. The very proposal implicitly and explicitly would result in the dissolution of NATO, which has only ever been a US political-military agency within Europe serving exclusively the US interest. Such a proposal is NOT for the Empires benefit and very far from a trivial event. The Empire appears to have completely missed this coming ...

Reports the German government has created a new 'independent' offshoot of the BND, ie. a true German Intelligence service (or the seeds of ?) actually serving German National interests, as opposed to the US created and ever since suborned BND since the end of WWII ... is this also happening 'under the radar' in other EU states ?

Escalation of explicit diplomatic rhetoric calling out the prime US ally and Empire linchpin in the ME, Saudi Arabia, as the major source of terrorism, in the War on Terra ...

The extensive Snowden revelations, and fallout (latest blatant example - GEMALTO sims), re AUSCANUKUSNZ (Five-Eyes), could probably have led to the actual realization that there is the US and its four privileged 'Vassals', Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and New Zealand, first and foremost actually comprising the 'West' as far as the Empire is concerned, and only then so called 'third tier' pseudo allies, such as Germany, France, etc (which are treated as actual 'potential hostiles' by the five eyes), and then lastly all the rest of the 'Barbarians' in the world ... all the Empires sweet words and false comforts/assurances over the years may have finally come home to roost.

China and Russia, are clearly progressively entering ever closer into an integrated Political/economic/defence anti Empire bloc at multiple levels ... significant overtures between Egypt and Russia, Russia and Iran ... the BRICS economic and South American economic 'exit' from the domination of the Empires Petrodollar and previous economic/political exploitation/dominance.

Perhaps the Empire and the five eyes have been so busy attempting to 'collect it all' and endlessly pivot from here to there and back again, whilst playing divide and rule from one nation state to the other, filled to the brim with their own exceptionalism, that they have missed the bigger picture, missed seeing the new 'forest' emerging, having paid far to close attention to their brushfires and all those individual trees ...

OTOH, however, there would appear to be enough concurrent events occurring quickly enough to envisage the ground moving from under the feet of the Empire and the five eyes ... and in plain view ...

Peace. Salaam. Shalom.

Noirette | Mar 8, 2015 2:13:07 PM | 63

.. it is my opinion that the German government led by Mrs Merkel is a lot more involved in the crisis that is Ukraine than is being discussed in this forum. -- dan of steele at 13.

You bet. Merkel is an unexamined mover in these stories. (Germany has paid penance and is so cool…not.) Recall the break-up of Yugoslavia, under the radar Germany was the no 1 champion and mover, with the US.

Merkel has been meddling in Ukraine since forever, due to for a large part to up EU expansionism (Germany is the only country that benefits from the Eurozone, not in an evil or illegit way, all the other countries agreed..), to stretch out again, for more territory, cheap labor, factories run at low labor costs, the well-off in 'satellite' countries and elsewhere buying German products, finance ad loans, and so on. See Poland.

German expansionism! (Not that France is any better but they have less clout so are wimpy followers.) The Eurozone works like that: lend, give, money to poor 'southern' countries so that they buy your goods, when they stop buying or believing, you cut them off, and look for new markets. Or downscale etc.

Re. Ukraine, the fantasy was it could join the EU (not considered realistic by any reasoned analysts or actors unless talking about 20 years down the road without war) and Merkel pushed that.

Cuddled up to the US who had other aims, to make it short, provoke Russia, the whole thing was to be wrapped up with a lot of love-handshakes, as the Coup-Kiev Gvmt. was expected to maintain it's hold on a 'unitary' country which would be, it goes without stating, open to new 'industrialism', 'farming', 'reforms' (open up for foreign capital to make huge profits), and/or from the Nuland-type side, attack Russia by cutting ties, banning trade with Russia (see sanctions), forbidding Russian influence, media, commerce, and pushing for war, etc.

Donbass ppl objected, rose up, and it turned out that the Ukr. Gvmt could not deliver, - no army that could perform, no will, incompetence, also thieves...

These completely contradictory aims, of the EU and the US, are now public.

- one pov there are many others

Outraged | Mar 8, 2015 2:40:02 PM | 64

@ Okie Farmer

Many 'perhaps's and certainly not clear yet what the EU Army proposal truly indicates yet, but Germany is clearly behind and for it ... Ultimately the EU is Germany-France and there are many new possibilities emerging.

The geopolitical consequences of the reality of the Snowden revelations re the five-eyes conduct/actions/objectives and falsity of supposed alliances for 'mutual' as opposed to exclusive benefit of the Empire at every level may well have triggered recalculations amongst the 'pseudo allies' governments, this may well be the case with Germany, at least.

Usually very pessimistic, in this instance 'overly optimistic', or momentarily envisioning an alternate possible ?

Is it really in the EU interests to take a hit for the Empires benefit re Cold War 2.0 or the possibility of WW3 or move towards a less Atlanticist future ?

ǝn⇂ɔ | Mar 8, 2015 3:21:11 PM | 65

@dh #50
With the single exception of the Romans - because they literally ruled everything - every other empire always tries very hard to present the best front.

The British had their "White Man's Burden", the US had the "American Dream" but which has since been switched with the "War on Terror".

No doubt because only the least informed believe that old lie anymore.

Ed Lozano | Mar 8, 2015 3:25:29 PM | 66

Anonymous #57

An European Army would be the final act of the divorce from US, since it would be a de facto ending of NATO. No wonder why both US and their major "European" puppet UK radically oppose the idea. NATO's purpose was not only to counter Soviet military, but also to make sure Germany would never "rise again". That purpose is still biding and Germans know it. But under NATO umbrella, there's not much they can do to restore even a glimpse of the military power they had in the past. They "voluntarily" abdicate from developing nuclear weapons and most of their military spending is restricted to defensive air/ground capabilities, instead of means of projecting power such as naval vessels and long-range missiles. However, in an European unified defense system most of these restrictions should be lifted so to allow Germany to fulfill its obligations to the European allies. Most of American military bases would be rendered futile, and it's almost certain that NATO's nuclear silos stationed in Europe would have to be redeployed elsewhere, since an European defense agreement would demand full control of all military assets in European territory. Finally, Eastern Europe would turn to Germany and France instead of US when dealing with Russia, thus bringing more political stability to the region (violent "Maidans" would be less likely in the presence of foreign troops who, unlike Americans, have to answer for their actions when they come back home).

Needless to say, all these events would be catastrophic for US global domination strategy, since they would lose not only military control over strategic assets in Western Europe, but also major influence in the only part of the European Union they are actually welcome today. But one should remember none of this is new: since its creation European Union was conceived to have its own unified defense system, but this part of the European pact was sabotaged by British and Americans from the beginning. Even French nationalist leader De Gaulle became fond of the idea, but his efforts would be futile while Germany was not reunified and European Union was still a project. And one should notice an unified Europe is still a project today. Eurozone is crumbling, resentment among the periphery is running high and both Germans and French know it. One of the necessary solutions for preserving European Union is a unified defense system, for it would lift the minor associates defense spending burden while allowing the major ones to exert much more effective political influence among them, so to prevent that every economic crisis in those countries become a threat to the stability of the entire bloc itself.

Noirette #63

Undoubtedly Germany played a role in Maidan and there's enough evidence of that, but I don't think their objective was to produce a violent divorce between Ukraine and Russia. As far as I know German ambassadors were the major force in bringing to the negotiating table both President Yanukovitch and the opposition groups, who then signed the 21st of February agreement for Constitutional reform and anticipated elections. This agreement was also supported by Russia, and since Germany is the natural interlocutor for Moscow in "European" affairs, I assume the whole thing was arranged by Berlin. Problem is, no one really expected what happened the day after - except of course the Americans who had already decided to sabotage the deal and take it all for themselves, bypassing both Europe and Ukrainian "moderates" (like Yulia Timoshenko) through bribing the major oligarchs and former members of Yanukovitch's cabinet and the use of Right Sector thugs to attack Government buildings and seize power at once.

Germany won absolutely nothing with this outcome. Sure, Ukraine turned to West, but at what price? Now it's a devastated and bankrupted country with no control over a large portion of its own territory. And guess who will have to pay for their reconstruction? Yes, Germany. Merkel is anything but stupid. She knew from the beginning how Russia would react if threatened in her most sensitive interests. Georgia is not a far off memory for them. So yes, Germans would sure act to topple Yanukovicth if they had the chance, but only in a way "negotiated" with Russia. And that's exactly what they thought they had achieved in February 21st, 2014. Yanukovicth would be turned into a powerless President; there was to be new elections and Merkel's favorite Timoshenko would certainly win; Ukraine would join EU soon; and Russia would have to be satisfied with her Crimea's bases, and nothing more than that. The German plan was going too well, until Vic Nuland decided to f.. the EU once again. And here we are now.

Anonymous | Mar 8, 2015 3:26:40 PM | 67

Outraged

Did you miss that the EU mentioned Russia as the reason why EU wanted a EU army? Again, nothing but a US puppet proposal.

@63,64

jfl | Mar 8, 2015 4:20:37 PM | 68

It seems obvious to me that the EU - Germany - is much better off with Russia, the junior partner, than it is with the USA, the dominant partner.

Ok... but that's the way Germany sees itself vis a vis Russia and the way the US sees itself vis a vis Germany.

I guess the only question is on the downside of the switch ... how much pain can the US inflict on Germany thereafter?

And that's relative to how much pain the US' vicious, one-sided schemes can elicit for Germany (the EU) from the Russians. And that seems, everyday in every way, to be increasing.

I imagine that if the US does get a real war going with Russia they will have tipped the balance ... everything will then get unfrozen and move really quickly.

The reality will be apparent before news of it reaches our ears. Supersonically.

Outraged | Mar 8, 2015 4:25:08 PM | 69

@ Anonymous

If the intent is to replace NATO would you declare it or justify it 'falsely' by using the Empires propaganda justifications as a false cover ?

Again with the US puppet proposal crap, and why would the US want to create such a force when it would undermine nay invalidate NATOs very reason for existence for the last 60 plus years. NATO has been a political-military Trojan within Europe effectively controlled and literally commanded by the US, serving US interests for all that time.

Respectively, and reluctantly your 'point' suggests you are either naive, a fool or trollish, perhaps. Ed Lozano #66 touches on some relevant history and context if you are not aware of it ...

Ultimately nations only have and act on thier 'interests'.

okie farmer | Mar 8, 2015 4:53:54 PM | 70

Too much optimism in this thread. Heads of NATO, both European and US, have been urging NATO countries to "spend more on defense" - also many US politicians. There is a faction in Germany that have 'dreams' of their own MIC. Ukraine offers the chance to fulfill those dreams, they're pushing hard while they see the chance.

All but two of NATO members are headed by neoliberal scumbags, Greece and Hungary are the exceptions. France and Germany lead the way. Merkel has always been a neoliberal, Hollande has come to it only slightly reluctantly.

Neoliberalism is what US and EU have most in common - politically/economically. Very important. I don't think Germany has given up on buying up and privatizing as much of Ukraine as they can; and certainly the US based multinational corps are already buying Ukraine's assets - probably those corps in Europe too.

Perhaps the Spiegel article is a kind of false flag - or not; nonetheless it airs out what I see as a false resistance meme. Merkel, like Thatcher before her, is a committed neoliberal. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE!

Ed Lozano | Mar 8, 2015 5:15:02 PM | 73

@Anonymous #71

The fact that the main "cause" for EU Army is the need containing Russia changes nothing on the discussion about EU-US "divorce". Containing Russia has always been the issue of any Western alliance. Problem is, US and EU have major divergences about how to do it. US favors a far more provocative and offensive approach, by positioning military bases, missile shields and naval fleets around Russian border, and encouraging Russia's neighbors to cut their ties with Moscow and join Western partnerships. Europe on the other hand advocate a strictly defensive pact, that respects Russia's interests and influence over its near abroad.

The main reason for this divergence is quite easy to understand. European leaders know that in the event of war with Russia, the battlefield will be in their own lands. US on the other hand has nothing to risk and much to gain with a conflict between Russia and Europe, unless of course Russia decides to end the World (but for some odd reason that possibility never comes into account for neocons). But again, the divorce between US and EU is quite clear in this case. And I believe it's needless to say Russia would strongly support an European Army proposal, even if it's main purpose was to counter Russian military. For threats should be perceived not by one's alleged purposes, but by the means one employs to achieve those purposes.

lysias | Mar 8, 2015 5:16:45 PM | 74

Yes, the powers that be did that to JFK when he stepped out of line. But they must know that, if they did the same thing to Obama, there would be riots all over the country. So Obama has power that JFK never had, but he's too cowardly or opportunistic to use that power.

Outraged | Mar 8, 2015 5:23:09 PM | 75

@ jfl

Agreed, though the US has always been cowardly, has always avoided risking open conflict with first world countries. It far prefers to have others fight it out between or amongst themselves and benefit from picking up the spoils at little cost afterwards. Everyone else is weaker thier economies damaged and the US relevant power enhanced.

See the Iran-Iraq war, see the US conduct in WWI, profiting handsomely throughout and only entering the conflict at the last moment once Germany was already on her knees and France and UK were crippled. Rinse and repeat in WwII letting the Nazis and Japanese Empire do their worst and handsomely profiting from all sides until they were dragged in on Dec 07 41. The cost exacted from 'helping' the UK was a takeover of their former empire and relegation to junior poodle vassal status. The UK was required to pay every single last dollar owed including interest accrued for Lend Lease during WWII and they only cleared the debt a few years ago.

The US doesn't want actual war with Russia, however, ongoing conflict both economic and low-medium military in Europe weakens all the europeans at no cost to and for the further benefit of the Five-eyes.

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) works, unless miscalculations happen ...

It would seem the economic cost to Germany and to a lesser extent the rest of the EU regarding Russia is more than acceptable to the US, which ultimately has little skin in the game, for the US its a win-win, though apparently Germany and the EU? may be developing an entire different perspective, again all comes back to national 'interests'. And there appears to be no upside for Europe's interests re 'fuck the EU' ... even the somewhat rabid Poles are questioning the economic cost of Russia baiting re sanctions which are only hurting Russia and EU, US cost/pain=nil.

Anonymous | Mar 8, 2015 5:28:06 PM | 76

okie farmer

You are right, too much naive folks here suddenly. When people say that the EU army will somehow be "defensive" and will go against America's policies its just get too much to even comment further.

Outraged | Mar 8, 2015 7:21:58 PM | 78

@ Okie Farmer

The Military Commander of NATO (Supreme Allied Commander Europe - *barf*) is always a US General Officer and says publicly exactly what he is instructed to say by DC (ie. Breedlove), his counterpart the NATO Secretary-General supposedly speaks for all NATO members however due to the US largely rigging the appointments has most often been little more than a rabid Atlanticist warmonger also receiving his talking points from DC, former Anders Fogh Rasmussen having been one of the worst, and the current Jens Stoltenberg is no better (he's a champion for NATO getting its very own Nukes, yay), hence there isn't much room for other individual members of NATO to even get airtime re issues relative NATO.

Yes, the US Commander of NATO and the effectively US appointed Secretary-General sockpuppet and lots of US politicians want the Europeans to spend a lot more of their Euros on an expanded NATO military that the US commands, especially if its US armaments, and even more so if that caused the Russians to have to waste more money to further counter/offset a NATO expansion, for the benefit of US interests. Cost/pain to US=nil.

However, there has been little discernable success because of sustained resistance to this call for some time now by NATO member countries, regardless of the over-the-top US propaganda re Russia and Ukraine, as NATO members have better things to do with those Euros given the state of the EU economy (austerity - public antipathy to military expenditure) since the GFC and the only beneficiary would be the US including indirectly by further weakening the EU economy to further US economic advantage globally. The indications are that even the UK poodle intends to further cutback, not expand, its military budget after the upcoming election.

The selling points of this possible EU Army apparently being put forward by Junckers/Germany are an EU Commander (ie. Not a US officer, rotating national appointment ?), under EU command serving EU interests, supposedly greater effectiveness/efficiency/reduced duplication, and therefore purportedly costing less Euros overall re current military expenditure (compared to US controlled NATO ?).

Nah, can't for the life of me see why the UK and US would be adamantly opposed ... *cough*

ǝn⇂ɔ | Mar 8, 2015 10:07:10 PM | 80

I would separate German policies in the rest of the EU/world with German policies within their own borders.
A strong proxy for the presence of neoliberal economic policies is property prices. Nations which undergo a property bubble - are almost always neoliberal. Germany in this respect had pretty much the lowest property price growth of any EU nation.

Debs is dead | Mar 8, 2015 10:08:00 PM | 81

If American foreign policy can engineer a war based around the Ukraine where European troops fight russian troops at the same time as a major schism develops in Europe between the 'new Europeans' of the Baltic states, Poland and the Czech republic and the old Europeans of France germany italy and spain, the amerikan empire will have killed two birds with one stone.

I reckon the European schism won't be splintering along such neat and tidy fault lines if it splinters at all, however.

While the old school euro politicians may be reluctant to go to war, I am unsure their military leadership shares that view.

For too long Nato command structures have been trained with an American ethos and a value set likely to see war as being 'a good thing'. The alacrity with which Nato tossed its European defense goal aside to jump into Afghanistan and then encouraged Nato members to deploy to then, despite both deployments being at odds with the wishes of their fellow citizens, ably illustrates the fault line between political and military leadership which successive euro pols have desperately tried to conceal from their voters

In the immediate post war period the euro governments had little say in the matter but with the occasional exception of france the bulk of european pols have been content to let amerika pick up the training tab for staff officers. With the short term goal orientation typical of elected leaders, most euro pols chose to believe they were getting 'free' training for their military commanders, rather than the truth - that europe was paying vast sums for a military whose commanders would dance the washington jig.

The short-sightedness of europe's pols has them choking their Greek brothers and sisters while the euro continues to decline yet the US$ arcs ever upwards, and never asking themselves "why are we working so hard to help amerika at the expense of fellow europeans?"

I have no doubt however much Merkel and co claim to oppose a full on war with Ukraine; instigated at least in part by their own military leaders whose patriotism must be open to question, that in the end they will acquiese to Nuland's strategy.

Not to do so would rquire vision and personal courage both of these in short supply among euro neo-liberals.

Especially for Merkel there is an easy out. All she needs to do is to tap into the just below the surface and rarely enunciated beliefs of a substantial number of her fellow citizens - that Germany has the 'right' to expand its influence further east.

whack | Mar 9, 2015 5:15:16 AM | 85

@Outraged 78

What a relief to see finally somebody who gets it. Bravo!

(Some hasbara trolls here pretend not to, in order to spread fear and disnfo).

Prosperous Peace | Mar 9, 2015 2:25:19 AM | 84

I think you give Obongo way too much credit.

He is "President" yes, but is he really? Or is he just a token face for the McCain´s and the other white House plantation owners to hold up for the 99%, a mere House n*gger?

Everytime the man open his mouth accompanied as always by his Telepromter or advisors, even then puerile stupidities ansd ridicolous threats comes out. I think he is doing a better characterization of himself than the North Koreans possibly could imagine...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-27/north-korea-trolls-obama-compares-us-president-monkey-tropical-jungle

Anonymous | Mar 9, 2015 6:17:16 AM | 87

@ Debs is Dead

The whole purpose of NATO from inception was to undermine and suborn the military command of the NATO members military forces to US control for the benefit of the Empire. To have leverage of those militaries and direct command influence outside of their 'sovereign' governments. To keep Germany 'down'. Many Non-US-UK NATO officers are very aware indeed of what NATO really is, US provided 'training' or not. De Gaulle was well aware of the threat and gave NATO 'the finger' many times.

Five-eyes military officers are routinely utilized by their intelligence agencies to actively and aggressively cultivate and suborn any military officer who is not Five-eyes. The same process is aggressively pursued by the intelligence agencies against their counterparts amongst their tier three and four pseudo-allies such as Germany, France, Italy, etc. This has been going on for many decades.

The Chinese learnt this lesson during WWII and under no circumstances allow any officer with Operational/Line command in the PLA to have direct contact with US military counterparts except under very strict circumstances. The PLA has a dedicated corps of officers to conduct such interaction and liasion who will never be given PLA Operational/Line commands in their career as a result. To say the least, this really pisses the US off no end. A PR/Liaison officer in the PLA is of no use as an agent or future agent of influence given such policies, bummer.

These 'harmless' military-military and intelligence-intelligence interactions have been the very basis/foundation stone of the vast majority of the coups and destabilization operations the US has conducted on every continent since WWII.

There is the Five-eyes and then every other country on the planet, who are merely given different ratings of 'hostile' or 'enemy' and treated accordingly, regardless of any public utterings re so called 'alliances' and 'partnerships'.

'Old Europe' has dragged its feet and more many times despite dictats from the US. Latin America provides many examples of where the US polices/actions are ultimately counter-productive, compare its current state to the 60's-70's-80's absolute US dominance.

Regardless of US Neoliberal politics/virus the serving militaries of NATO as a whole would be bound more tightly to their own communities and individual national interests, should push come to shove, me thinks, given histories lessons.

IF the EU is to get out from under US domination/control/influence which is more and more counter to its own and europes interests (and many of its individual nations interests), it has to create separation of its intelligence services from the Five-eyes and take back control of its own military commands and agencies. A very big IF indeed ...

Outraged | Mar 9, 2015 5:38:28 AM | 86

More proof for the naive folks here:
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/03/09/400990/Russia-MP-calls-EU-army-idea-provocative

[Mar 09, 2015] Boris Nemtsov ally: Islamist speculation over murder 'useful for Kremlin' by Shawn Walker

They still want to play the war propaganda game. Here we go. Shawn Walker writings. Foreign Office talking points. What not this Illya Yashin (not sure if he was co-leader of Nemtsov's opposition party then), involved with distribution to protesters several millions in West-supplied cash that were discovered at Ksenia Sobchak apartment during Russian color revolution of 2012 ?
Mar 09, 2015 | The Guardian

founderchurch

The NEW Cold War is back with a vengeance. Similar lineup but very different ideologies in conflict. Before you had atheistic communism against religious capitalism, now the roles are reversed. America and England are now resembling the old socialist USSR and Red China, while Russia and China are now increasingly coming to resemble the formerly religious and capitalistic America and England. What irony... OMG one thing is the same, eminent Nuclear War...

richiep40 -> Jose C. Sandoval

We will never know who started the fire in Odessa, The Guardian.

What happened to the open and transparent investigations into the shootings in Maidan, the fire in Odessa and the downing of the Malaysian aircraft I wonder ?

VladimirM

"Putin has said he has taken "personal control" of the investigation"

The phrase has sparked a sort of controversy here, some people are even using it as a proof of conspiracy. It's mainly because they are not aware of what this expression actually means.
The phrase "взять под личный контроль" in Russian does not mean that Putin is personally in charge of the team of investigators giving orders which line to follow or not, who to charge or arrest or not.

It simply means that police and security service are informing him regularly about the progress in the investigation, meetings or briefings may be held, reports are being made, etc., etc. The importance of the case is unprecedented, so the people, resources, etc. must be involved, engaged in the same unprecedented scale. The highest level of control is just facilitating all this as well as cooperation and coordination of law-enforcement agencies.
That's what this eye-catching phrase means.

Laudig, 2015-03-10,00:16:54

This is what a political assassination looks like American-style. "After two years of guerrilla warfare, leading Péralte to declare a provisional government in the north of Haiti, Charlemagne Péralte was betrayed by one of his officers, Jean-Baptiste Conzé, who led disguised US Marines Sergeant Herman H. Hanneken (later meritoriously promoted to Second Lieutenant for his exploits) and Corporal William Button into the rebels camp, near Grand-Rivičre Du Nord.[1]:215-217" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne_P%C3%A9ralte

Solongmariane 9 Mar 2015 14:41

Contrary to JFK & Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Isaac Rabin .!!!! .we get a lot of arrested suspects. It's a conjuration, and with so much complices it will possible to get informations. Objectivily, I don't see why Putin will need to eliminate physically Nemtsov, because he didn't exist before his assassination.

It was so easy to destroy him politically, with the kind of life he has ( too much women). It's the west who created a anti-Putin heros, for his propaganda..

Andrew -> Oldtruster

I think Ramzan Kadyrov said the truth. He illustrated the motivation of the killer. The killer seems a simple-minded person. It was easy to convince him that Nemtsov had outraged the prophet. This have nothing to do with real motives of the murder but we will never get to know them as a man who convinced the killer has died. Investigators are off the trail, case closed.

susandbs12 9 Mar 2015 14:38

Rather than speculation we should wait for the results of the investigation to be published.

The Russia haters are too quick to expect instantaneous results, and jump to preposterous conclusions based on nothing.

Wait for the investigation to be completed. This constant sniping will not have a positive effect on those who are doubtlessly working very hard to find out what happened and why.

seaspan -> Standupwoman 9 Mar 2015 15:13

Nemtsov's allies, the US/CIA, and Kiev.

Or Muslims...

The list was rather short for Sherlock, and you cant convict them all. Muslims are the perfect patsie and the crazy fundies can and are indirectly connected to any number of third "western" parties already. So all in all, a good choice. I can just see the conspiracy loons at RT and elsewhere busy connecting the dots, to defend their main man Putin.

Ciarán Here 9 Mar 2015 14:38

Boris Nemtsov ALLY and the guardian make fine cocktail Islamist speculation over murder 'useful for Kremlin' ....but not useful for the USA UK EU....

Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves

Ciarán Here -> tjmars 9 Mar 2015 14:34

Yes you spotted it, it is called pointing the finger away from oneself - look over there! No not there in Detroit or Greece for example but there in Russia we need to demonize a enemy to distract the plebs from our mistreatment of them...and to justify our wars against those who simply say no and that we are a sovereign state not a vassal of your greed ...


aucontraire2 MasonInNY 9 Mar 2015 14:19

You are not naive if you are from NY. You know that the Putin saga is all a made up story to hide the failures of the west on the international scene.

The US is a failed leader now because it has failed the world in not providing justice to Palestinians. The world needs a moral leader. Obviously the Chinese aren't interested at becoming the world's moral leader, Russia can't become a moral leader for obvious reasons, Canada was on its way to take the leadership, but the US republicans saw to it by forcing a nutcase called Harper who hides in a closet at the first sound of firecrackers.

tjmars 9 Mar 2015 14:18

The Guardian Trusts's new way of keeping privileged access to governmental news is to promote propaganda pieces for the government. The Guardian had to do a 180 after Snowden, so we'll forever more get the likes of subjective opinions of young idealists from a Russian political party that couldn't afford a security detail for its leader.

I guess with the ceasefire in Ukraine and the arrests of two conspirators so far from Chechnya, they are running out of angles to spread the BS around with.

How about switching over to the not-so breaking news that globalization is devastating currencies and economies, politics and human rights and resources and environmernts; the monetising and marketing on everything worldwide.

Why report on the failure of politics and economics in one lousy country, when there's a "failure du jour" everyday caused by globalization.

Why not cover the wars resulting from it on a daily rotation?

Who could have predicted that World War 3 would be a protracted economic war that would plunge the world into a neo-Dark Age for hundreds of years?

The real wars are now suicides where people, who can't stand the stifling boredom of repititous consumer product variations, sign up to commit suicide en mass in a foreign country. That, adversely, is video gaming creating its own reality...

Standupwoman 9 Mar 2015 14:12

A predictable approach, but it misses something rather important. If the murder is indeed brought home to the Chechens, then that is very convenient for all the other and much more likely suspects - Nemtsov's allies, the US/CIA, and Kiev. Putin had no motive, but each of those three had much to gain from a Nemtsov assassination, and have been gleefully cashing in ever since.

If Putin wanted to deflect blame onto someone else, why on earth wouldn't he choose one of those? If Russia is the gangland state so many seem to think, then it would be simple to 'do a Kiev' and stage a 'confession' implicating the CIA, Poroshenko, or anyone it wanted. So why hasn't it?

Unless of course the investigation is genuine and the Chechens did it after all...

irishmand -> seaspan 9 Mar 2015 15:06

It is my understanding that his area of influence and political activity was limited to Moscow, the place Stalin over defended as he correctly surmised it was the brain of the USSR. Yeltsin also understood Moscow as the place to agitate to shake up the national leadership.

If you want to start a coup, you have to do it in Moscow. Nemtsov was losing his influence in Moscow. He was an member of the local duma in Yaroslavl'.

therealbillythefish 9 Mar 2015 15:05

Unfortunately for those on the West and their agents in Russia, the killers have been caught fairly quickly and at least one has already confessed.

So, better go find something else to scream and shout about.

irishmand McStep 9 Mar 2015 15:03

I have no shame. Sorry, I lost it somewhere on my way... Maybe, after reading the western press for a while, I started mimicking them.

But, in my defense, I only troll the trolls. If somebody wants to have a meaningful discussion I am ready to have it too..

artdeco McStep 9 Mar 2015 15:02

Yeah, suspected so (Not that there's anything wrong with being Russian!, to paraphrase Seinfeld) - the frequent absence of the little word the in sentences is a quite reliable "tell"...
;)

seaspan -> 1waldo1 9 Mar 2015 15:00

Why would he have to be in the "western press" to be considered important by the Kremlin? He was involved in Moscow and was assassinated for his political activity there, not in Chechnya or London. Doesn't Russia have its own independent domestic political dynamic?

No one else outside that venue should have given a damn about him.

rodney9 -> UBX525AEZ 9 Mar 2015 14:58

They even had a snow removal truck come by there to obstruct any potential witnesses at that exact moment of the murder.The snow truck seemed to be slowed down at the point of the murder to provide the killer or killers cover

You clearly belong to the Gary Kasparov school of en passant criminologists.

McStep -> crystaltips2 9 Mar 2015 14:55

mate, there are so many apparatchik trolls on this and other related threads, it's a joke. the laughable thing about them is that most Russians know their media system is woefully centrally controlled and censored, but they actually agree with this because they think the function of news media is to tell the people want they want to hear in order to maintain solidarity in times of trouble.

in essence, they know, or a part of them knows, that they're talking utter **** but i guess like some poor domestically abused partner it's a case, of, " SHUT UP, WHAT DO YOU KNOW??? HE LOVES ME!!!!!"

but it's understandable. if your leader is perpetuating generations of the indoctrinated notion that the tsar has every right to pillage the state, murder its people and incite conflict on a whim, then its probably is very difficult to come to terms with the abject sense of shame they should be feeling.

therealbillythefish

Unfortunately for those on the West and their agents in Russia, the killers have been caught fairly quickly and at least one has already confessed.

So, better go find something else to scream and shout about.

Fromrussia1976 -> therealbillythefish

Or you'd better to investigate who has downed that plane in the Ukraine... Half a year has left, but no result!

vr13vr

We don't know yet all the details and we are not sure what is behind this Chechen link. But no matter what the working hypothesis are and what the results are, this opposition is going to criticize it. That's why he is in anti-government opposition. There is no need to put his doubts into a front page article.

SonnyTuckson

Scripted by the Kremlin. Again. Nothing new here. Getting rid of one opponent by blaming another.

irishmand -> SonnyTuckson

Scripted by CIA Again. Nothing new here. Stage a murder, blame on somebody else.

rodney9

Perhaps it would be more to the point, and better journalism, to elaborate and contexualise the comments made by Nemtsov on Charlie Hebdo, or the German cartoon he published on his facebook side, as well as Nemtsov's personal attack on Kadyrov, rather than blanket denials that it has anything to do with insulting the prophet Mohammed. Fortunately, following a few links here in the comment section makes that all possible. That they are ignored here in the article is evidence once again of poor journalism, it's almost like being told don't bother to go there, it's not worth it, just keep on believing it was Putin. The Guardian published an editorial not so very long ago about " a cynical post-modern media strategy" all those Kremlin controlled channels manipulating the truth for daring to suggest 5 (sic) lines of enquiry, and how truth itself was "vanishing" in a flurry of what they called "weaponised relativism". CCTV cameras were conspicuously inoperative, some bigots speculated that a snow plough had been strategically sent in (Gary Kasparov) to mask the actual footage of the moment of the killing.

We realise that this must be very disppointing for all those who wanted this to be a sure fire mafia hit in a "mafia state" carried out by a mafia boss, rather than an act of Islamic terrorism from fanatics that we have recently seen elsewhere in Paris and Copenhagen.

We shouldn't forget that hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Chechnya against Charlie Hebdo, finding it all very provocative. I will probably watch France 24, that news channel might not be so hostile to looking at the real connections and Nemtsov's comments in depth rather than denials by an English newspaper.

Simon311 -> rodney9

Well the Guardian and others who have spent months telling us that the Russian media is not worth reading and watching, now quotes the Russian media when it agrees with thier view.

This is almost mental illness in its inconsistency.

Ludicrous - the Russian media is always wrong, until it says someting we like, then it is completely right.

MentalToo

Saw this headline at TASS:

First suspects in Nemtsov murder identified - Federal Security Service

Surprisingly it turned out the suspects was not FSB after all, but some of Kadyrov's lunatics arrested by FSB. Who could have guessed that.

It seems they have found some, who are even more crazy than he is.

daltonbernard

...some of Nemtsov's associates ... do not believe fanatics acting alone could have shot someone dead so close to the Kremlin.

I mean, that's just dumb. It's not hard to shoot somebody. I don't see how the proximity to the Kremlin makes it any more difficult. You just ... do it. It takes all of a second or two to pull a trigger a few times. Unless the Russians have installed some kind of electromagnetic field around the Kremlin that magically stops guns from firing. But the article doesn't say they have, so I'm at a loss as to how "some of Nemtsov's associates" could be so irrational.

seaspan -> daltonbernard

Rumour's are flying in Moscow, and lazy journalists will report whatever they hear without putting it into a more understandable context or making better sense of it. What I've heard that makes more sense is that a Chechen fanatic muslim "motive" doesn't make any sense, even though someone from there could have been hired to kill Nemtsov -- the important point is that the motive remains open and officially obscured...

Simon311 -> Havingalavrov

Howd o you know

a) He was a "complete professional"?

b) Criminals make mistakes all the time

c) You appear to be beleieving Russian media which you have said is full of lies.

So self contradictory pompous rubbish.

Yes you do not like Putin - got it.

BunglyPete

Make of this what you will but this seems to be the official line so don't expect much else

In 2007 Boris Nemtsov gave an interview to the magazine "Expert", in which he stated that all the measures of President Vladimir Putin are aimed at increasing the birth rate, primarily in the regions populated by Muslims, and it is "extremely dangerous for the future of Russia". After that Nemtsov was accused by well-known representatives of the Muslim world of Islamophobia.

In January 2015, the year after the execution of cartoonists from the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, the politician in his blog on the website of "Echo of Moscow" had justified the actions of the cartoonists, and wrote that "Islam is stuck in the middle ages", and called recent events the "Islamic Inquisition".

A few days later, Nemtsov said that "Everyone is tired of Kadyrov's threats", and "it is time to arrest him". This happened after the head of Chechnya said very unflattering things about the opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky and journalist Alexey Venediktov because of their support for the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo.

Zaur Dadaev decided that Boris Nemtsov offended Muslims, and out of a false sense of patriotism and defense of religion decided to punish the politician

http://www.rosbalt.ru/moscow/2015/03/08/1375743.html

Simon311 -> BunglyPete

The US, Russia and Germany - you can't beat any of them for producing weird types.

Simon311 -> RedTelecaster

Whatever a "Putinbot" may be. SOunds like a new word for "commie" as it was used 40 years ago.

Renfrow

Reading the posts here it is clear to me that people that blamed Putin for this will continue to do so regardless of what evidence to the contrary is presented simply because it suits their agenda.

FrancesSmith -> RedTelecaster

go on help the neocons destroy eastern europe. do nuland and breedlove pay you are or do you do it for free?

but in truth you just reveal the ugliness that lies at the heart of the demonisation of putin, and repel people. keep it up..................

midnightschild10

It's the silly season again. The Obama administration is demanding a thorough investigation of Nemtsov' s death. They don't want a whitewash. The US certainly knows a whitewash when it sees one. Our Justicell Department looked high and low in the White House and couldn't find one banker or CEO to hold responsible for the housing crises. ( They all hang out on Wall Street.) Given a second chance to do their job, they couldn't find any military/industrial contractor who committed fraud in either not building incinerators on US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan or built them but they could not be used because of shoddy workmanship. ( Should have asked soldiers returning home with respiratory problems due to trash pits.) And finally the DOJ was unable to find anyone responsible for the torture and rendition programs ( could have found Cheyney on Fox News continuing to do interviews.)

So it shouldn't be too difficult for Russia to do a better job investigating the death of Nemtsov, since the US has set the bar so low.

irgun777

Shaun Walker writes about " Islamic speculation convenient for Kremlin '

One of the suspects blow himself in traditional Islamic suicide tradition, others were charged in court hiding their faces from reporters. This is where Mr Walker, the speculation stops.

[Mar 08, 2015] US Hawks Undermine Berlin's Peace Efforts in Ukraine - German Newspaper

Mar 08, 2015 | Sputnik International

The civil war in Ukraine has exposed a fundamental rift between the US and Europe in terms of vision and goals for the region, as powerful US hardliners are working tirelessly to escalate the crisis with a broader agenda in mind, Der Spiegel news magazine said.

US hawks, including the likes of Victoria Nuland, the head of European affairs at the US State Department, and General Philip Breedlove, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, are seeking to destabilize Russia and undermine its influence. To that end they are trying to heighten tensions between the West and Russia over Ukraine, undermining peace efforts led by Germany and France. Although the US president currently supports the European initiative, he has "done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine," Der Spiegel said.

A relatively calm situation in Ukraine's eastern regions following the latest Minsk agreements does not play into the hands of US hawks. So instead of being cautiously optimistic that the ceasefire holds, General Breedlove warned in late February that the situation "is getting worse every day."

These and many other remarks made by the top NATO European commander with regard to Russia's alleged involvement in the Ukrainian crisis "stunned" and "alarmed" German leaders, since these claims are often not supported by the data provided by Germany's foreign intelligence agency BND, the news magazine said.

General Breedlove "repeatedly made inexact, contradictory or even flat-out inaccurate statements," Der Spiegel pointed out. However, he refused to revise them telling the media outlet that "it is normal that not everyone agrees with the assessments that I provide."

Berlin is concerned that Breedlove's stance "could harm the West's credibility," Der Spiegel said. Consequently, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is determined to discuss the issue with his American counterpart John Kerry to rule out any possible misinterpretations in the future. However, on Saturday, Steinmeier downplayed the US-German differences highlighted in Der Spiegel's article by emphasizing that German officials "have no interest in any dispute emerging from this."

Indeed, German authorities "have always considered a common position vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but the dispute [between Germany and the US] is a fundamental one - and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action," Der Spiegel said.

Moreover, while Germany and France seek to stabilize situation in Ukraine, US hardliners seem to have a different goal in mind. "For them, the dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow," the magazine said.

See also:

[Mar 07, 2015] Washington's Cloned Female Warmongers By Finian Cunningham

What is it about America's women diplomats? They seem so hard and cloned - bereft of any humanity or intelligence. Smear Campaigns, Bullying, Flattery ... All set of tricks of female sociopaths...
February 09, 2014 | Information Clearing House

What is it about America's women diplomats? They seem so hard and cloned - bereft of any humanity or intelligence. Presumably, these women are supposed to represent social advance for the female gender. But, far from displaying female independence, they are just a pathetic copy of the worst traits in American male politicians - aggressive, arrogant and completely arrant in their views.

Take Victoria Nuland - the US Assistant Secretary of State - who was caught using obscene language in a phone call about the European Union and the political affairs of Ukraine. In her previous posting as a spokeswoman for the US State Department, Nuland had the demeanor of a robotic matron with a swivel eye.

Now in her new role of covertly rallying anti-government protesters in Ukraine, Nuland has emerged to sound like a bubblegum-chewing Mafia doll. In her leaked private conversation with the US ambassador to Kiev, the American female diplomat is heard laying down in imperious tones how a new government in Ukraine should be constituted. Nuland talks about "gluing together" a sovereign country as if it is a mere plaything, and she stipulates which members of the US-backed street rabble in Kiev should or should not be included in any Washington-approved new government in the former Soviet republic.

We don't know who actually tapped and leaked Nuland's private call to the US ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt. It could have been the Ukrainian or Russian secret services, but, regardless, it was an inspired move to reveal it. For the disclosure, which has been posted on the internet, lays bare the subversive meddling agenda of Washington in Ukrainian internal affairs. Up to now, the Americans have been piously pretending that their involvement is one of a bystander supporting democracy from afar.

But, thanks to the Nuland's foul-mouthed indiscretion, the truth is out. Washington, from her own admission, is acting like an agent provocateur in Ukraine's political turmoil. That is an illegal breach of international rules of sovereignty. Nuland finishes her phone call like a gangster ordering a hit on a rival, referring to incompetent European interference in Ukraine with disdain - "F...k the EU."

What we are witnessing here is the real, ugly face of American government and its uncouth contempt for international law and norms.

Next up is Wendy Sherman, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, who is also Washington's top negotiator in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran. Sherman is another flinty-eyed female specimen of the American political class, who, like Nuland, seems to have a block of ice for a heart and a frozen Popsicle for a brain.

Again, like Nuland, Sherman aims to excel in her political career by sounding even more macho, morose and moronic than her male American peers.

Last week, Sherman was giving testimony before the US Senate foreign affairs committee on the upcoming negotiations with Iran over the interim nuclear agreement. The panel was chaired by the warmongering Democrat Senator Robert Menendez, who wants to immediately ramp up more sanctions on Iran, as well as back the Israeli regime in any preemptive military strike on the Islamic Republic.

Sherman's performance was a craven display of someone who has been brainwashed to mouth a mantra of falsehoods with no apparent ability to think for herself. It's scary that such people comprise the government of the most nuclear-armed-and-dangerous state in the world.

Programmed Sherman accused Iran of harboring ambitions to build nuclear weapons. "We share the same goal [as the warmonger Menendez] to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." And she went on to repeat threadbare, risible allegations that Iran is supporting international terrorism. That is a disturbing indication of the low level of political intelligence possessed by the US chief negotiator.

"Iran also continues to arm and train militants in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Bahrain. And Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah continue," asserted Sherman without citing an iota of proof and instead relying on a stale-old propaganda narrative.

The number three in the US State Department went on to say of the interim nuclear deal with Iran: "What is also important to understand is that we remain in control over whether to accept the terms of a final deal or not. We have made it clear to Iran that, if it fails to live up to its commitments, or if we are unable to reach agreement on a comprehensive solution, we would ask the Congress to ramp up new sanctions."

Remember that Sherman and her State Department boss John Kerry are considered "soft on Iran" by the likes of Menendez, John McCain, Lyndsey Graham, Mark Kirk, and the other political psychopaths in Washington. So, we can tell from Sherman's callous words and mean-minded logic that the scope for genuine rapprochement between the US and Iran is extremely limited.

Sherman finished her performance before the Senate panel with the obligatory illegal threat of war that Washington continually issues against Iran: "We retain all options to ensure that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon."

In the goldfish-bowl environment of Washington politics, perhaps such female officials are to be even more feared. The uniform monopoly of America's political class is dictated by militarism – weapons manufacturers, oil companies and Zionist lobbyists. The only way to "succeed" in this cesspool is to be even more aggressive and imperialist than your peers.

Nuland and Sherman illustrate the cold-hearted logic at work in American robotic politics: it's a system programmed for imperialism and war, and it doesn't matter whether the officials are Democrat, Republic, male or female. They are all clones of a war criminal state.

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism.

This article was originally published at Press TV

[Mar 07, 2015] Germany Has Had Enough With US Neocons: Berlin "Stunned" At US Desire For War In Ukraine

Nuland somewhat reminds Madeleine Albright. Both are so fund of bulling their opponents, that probably might be classified as female psychopaths... As one commenters noted "I take it that "hard-charging" is an American euphemism for foul of mouth and coarse of temperament?"
Mar 07, 2015 | zerohedge.com

While Russia's envoy to NATO notes that statements by the deputy head of NATO testify to the fact that the leaders of the bloc want to intervene in Russia's internal politics, and are "dreaming of Russian Maidan," Washington has a bigger problem... Germany. As Der Spiegel reports, while US President Obama 'supports' Chancellor Merkel's efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin's approach. And NATO's top commander in Europe hasn't been helping either with sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda."

... ... ...

And as Der Spiegel reports, The Germans are not happy.

... ... ...

Nuland Diplomacy

Nuland, who is seen as a possible secretary of state should the Republicans win back the White House in next year's presidential election, is an important voice in US policy concerning Ukraine and Russia. She has never sought to hide her emotional bond to Russia, even saying "I love Russia." Her grandparents immigrated to the US from Bessarabia, which belonged to the Russian empire at the time. Nuland speaks Russian fluently.

She is also very direct. She can be very keen and entertaining, but has been known to take on an undiplomatic tone -- and has not always been wrong to do so. Mykola Asarov, who was prime minister under toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, recalls that Nuland basically blackmailed Yanukovych in order to prevent greater bloodshed in Kiev during the Maidan protests. "No violence against the protesters or you'll fall," Nuland told him according to Asarov. She also, he said, threatened tough economic and political sanctions against both Ukraine and the country's leaders. According to Asarov, Nuland said that, were violence used against the protesters on Maidan Square, information about the money he and his cronies had taken out of the country would be made public.

Nuland has also been open -- at least internally -- about her contempt for European weakness and is famous for having said "Fuck the EU" during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014. Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus.

When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to discuss their strategy for breaking Europe's resistance to arming Ukraine.

On the seventh floor of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in the heart of Munich, it was Nuland who began coaching. "While talking to the Europeans this weekend, you need to make the case that Russia is putting in more and more offensive stuff while we want to help the Ukrainians defend against these systems," Nuland said. "It is defensive in nature although some of it has lethality."

Jurassic

general Breedwar or Breedhatred? Hes war maniac!

cossack55

Typical wingnut general. Notice you don't hear the grunts talkin' shit. Gotta go. Dr. Strangelove is about to start.

XqWretch

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

bania

Breedlove? Heading up an army? Can't make this stuff up!!!

Took Red Pill

"Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine." We all are!

chunga

Hmmm...Nudelman and Kagan aren't from Mars or Venus are they?

Urban Redneck

Frau Ferkel is just a muppet cocktease, and so is the "concern". It's nothing but political cover for the political whores. If they were seriously alarmed, they would simply revoke General Ripper's diplomatic credentials and issue an arrest warrant for the psychopath.

Lumberjack

Read this:

The Obscenely Easy Exile of Idi Amin

https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/164/28440.html

On a reporting trip to Saudi Arabia seven years ago, I went to Idi Amin's house. I had heard that Mr. Amin, the former Ugandan dictator who died last weekend at the age of 78, was living in Jidda, the Red Sea port, and I wanted to see for myself. Was it possible that a man who, in the 1970's, had ordered the deaths of 300,000 of his countrymen, raped and robbed his nation into endless misery and admitted to having eaten human flesh was whiling away his time as a guest of the Saudi government?

It was. There, in a spacious villa behind a white gate, Mr. Amin made his home with a half-dozen of his 30 or so children. He was not there the day I rang (a son said he was out of town), but locals said he could often be seen pushing his cart along the frozen food section of the supermarket, being massaged at the health club, praying at the mosque. He had long ago abandoned his British-style military uniform for the white robe of the Saudi man, but as an African measuring 6-foot-3 and nearly 300 pounds, he did not exactly blend in.

A former Sudanese colonel who worked as a manager at the local supermarket said, "People greet him and say, `Hello, Mr. President.' " Why? Wasn't he a savage dictator?

"Oh yes" he used to eat people," the manager replied, laughing. "But this is our nature. We forget."

But what would prompt the Saudi government to play host to such a man?

The answer, when the question was posed to Saudi officials, was an excursion into the desert habits of hospitality, and Mr. Amin's conversion to Islam. His support for the Arab boycott of Israel in the 1970's certainly also endeared him to his hosts.

During the nearly quarter-century of his soft exile, no nation tried to bring Mr. Amin to justice. A few years ago, after Spain's government went after Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, Human Rights Watch did bring up Mr. Amin's case to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, but to no avail. Under international law, any nation, including Saudi Arabia, could have and should have prosecuted Mr. Amin.

But, as Reed Brody, special counsel for prosecutions at Human Rights Watch, says, "If you kill one person, you go to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the insane; if you kill 20,000, you get political asylum." Mr. Brody keeps a melancholy map on his wall of other tyrants gone free: Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay, lives in Brazil; Haiti's Raoúl Cedras is in Panama; Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia is in Zimbabwe; Hissí¨ne Habré of Chad lives in Senegal. Today there is the International Criminal Court, which can bring a future Amin to justice, although the United States is among 100 countries that have shortsightedly declined to participate in the court.

I was sorry not to have had a chance to talk to Mr. Amin directly. But those who did speak with him suggest that I missed little. An Italian journalist, Riccardo Orizio, asked him in 1999 whether he felt remorse. No, Mr. Amin replied, only nostalgia. Six years earlier, a British writer, Tom Stacey, saw him. At one point, Mr. Amin pulled from his pocket a paraphrase of Psalm 22 and commented: "Remember we are special to God. He sees a beauty in us few see."

Harbanger

"The term "neoconservative" refers to those who made the ideological journey from the anti-Stalinist LEFT to the camp of American conservatism."

-Straight from the definition for the morons that don't know how to do research..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

August

I continue to believe that the US goal in the Ukraine is to distract and bedevil Russia merely by expending a few billion zio-dollars, and thousands of Ukrainian lives, both of which are truly dirt cheap in Washington's calculus. This is to be followed by the USA's ultimately just walking away, leaving a broken Ukraine for its neighbors, chiefly Russia, to reconstruct.

Every now and then, though, some US spokes-toady makes statements that imply that the USA actually wants a major war... with Russia. I hope and pray that this is merely Grand Chessboard Theatre, but I am starting to have doubts. For a taste of the motivational fare now offered to US "conservatives", you might want to take a look at the recently posted anit-Russia piece posted at National Review, which openly calls for regime change in Moscow. It's a well-written polemic which makes some sense... provided that you accept that Washington and Brussels are citadels of freedom and human rights, Russians are ignorant, drunken blockheads, and Putin is evil incarnate.

sunaJ

"I continue to believe that the US goal in the Ukraine is to distract and bedevil Russia merely by expending a few billion zio-dollars,"

In your estimation is the second part of this Kansas City Shuffle being Syria and pipelines to Europe, or are they also symptoms of some greater neocon fear, ie. Russian oil dominance in a petrodollar world?

Jack Burton

Breedlove is talking his book. His glory and promotions would increase and his power would expand the more he can talk the NATO into war. Breedlove will be secure in the command bunker, and like the Iraq war command, be fully secure while his men faced possible death and mutilation.

The text book for this is Yugoslavia. Europe had brokered a few peace deals, but the USA stepped in and undercut them all with lies and flase intelligence, leading to several bloody wars. Right now Washington seeks the Yugoslavia solution, a long bloody war.

Ignatius

"According to Asarov, Nuland said that, were violence used against the protesters on Maidan Square, information about the money he and his cronies had taken out of the country would be made public."

Did Nuland also say that about Occupy to the Obummer administation?

Escrava Isaura

Ohh Boy.

The US military industrial complex doesn't care about European press, or America press, for that matter. US military industrial complex doesn't' even care who the President is.

Do you think the US military complex cares if the US government bails out lots of big lemons-banks, insurance, auto makers, airlines, and food stamps to the working poor? No, they could care less, because US military industrial complex is immune to budget constraints and they are the biggest supporters of failing industries and projects.

Do you think that the US military complex cares for what industries the analysts and brokers at an investment firms such as JP Morgan, Goldman, or Rothschild's picks as winners for government contracts or a stock market bubble? Hell no, because they are the biggest winners.

So, the Germans are stunned about NATO? Are you kidding me?

Germany and NATO are branches of the US military industrial complex.

johngaltfla

Obama is a Neocon?

Who'dathunkit!??!!?

In reality, the world is sick of this bullshit. I'm sick of it. Rand Paul's approach is 1000% correct; quit meddling!

Germany is correct to object to this because if we get involved in the Ukraine with Poland then Russia will be outside of Berlin with several brigades of tanks in days. The US nor NATO are ready for a major multi-front conflict unless they use nukes.

Which wouldn't be all that bad because some of the US cities we would lose are a major part of the economic drag and societal/political problems we have at this time....

Never mind. Fire away boys.

krage_man

The instutute of US presidency is shockingly weak.

Basically, very little can Obama do if all career burocrats continue doing what they always doing.

Obama is not able to get control of the goverment staff which demonstrate how weak leader he is and how unimportant any political office change is for foregn policy.

Dems or Reps - no matter who is there will always be criminal actions on the world scine.

sunaJ

Germany needs to wake up NOW to the fact that this country is commanded by psychopathic, warmongering neocons, mitigated only by a willfully cluless and gutless president. NATO will prove a deathtrap for Germany.

max2205

Don't expect a lot of help from the old axis countries, Germany Italy Japan......neutered

Questan1913

Good point...but let's elaborate further: The US wrote the constitutions of Japan and Germany after the end of WWll. It also continues to occupy, militarily, both countries with approximately 50,000 military personnel in each and a huge naval presence in Japan.

Neither conquered country has been able to recover a shred of its former sovereignty for 70 years! They are vassal states subject to the most ruthless hegemonic power since the Roman empire.

ebworthen

If Germany were really concerned about NATO they'd kick the U.S. Armed Forces out.

This is political banter; the Germans need Russian NatGas and are playing both sides.

They have guilt over the death of 20+ million Russians in WWII, but Russia is en export market - and they don't want their Eastern flank open.

Just like Greece; they feel bad about WWII, but they want a downtrodden island to vacation on too.

And Neocons? Both the Left and the Right are war happy pumpers of the M.I.C. here in the U.S.A.

nope-1004

Dude.... it's US hegemony at risk here. Pipelines and what not. Read up, pull your head out of the sand, and watch US foreign policy implode on itself. After all, WTF is the US meddling in Europe for anyway? Why are they there? What does the Ukraine have that the US or Russia needs?

It's all about energy and how it flows to customers. The US has the most to lose, which is why they created the coup to overthrow the previously elected government in Ukraine.

They are, without question, the most hypocritical government to ever grace God's green earth. They say one thing publicly and do the opposite in practice. And it appears they've got you sucked in too.

malek

Two points:

1. The headline to me seems to indicate the path for the usual whitewash towards the "Democrats": currently a few US Neocons came to head the "Democratic" party like wolves in sheep clothing, but overall the leftists still hold the moral highground!

2. It is curious German magazine Der Spiegel doesn't mention it's own role in this, posting a headline STOP PUTIN NOW on it's frontpage after MH-17 had been shot down.

JustObserving

The Nobel Prize Winner and the Neocons have always wanted to put Russia in its place and the destabilization of Ukraine was the starting point. It was payback for Putin protecting Assad and granting asylum to Snowden. USA wants Russia on its knees and complete full spectrum domination with no one to question US hegemony and infinite spying. Unfortunately Putin stands in the way and he must be demonized and destroyed.
Victoria Nuland Lied to US Congress about Phantom Russian Hoards in Ukraine

On March 4, Nuland addressed House Foreign Affairs Committee members.

She called murdered US-funded, Boris Nemtsov a "freedom fighter, Russian patriot and friend."

She absurdly called Ukraine "central to our 25 year Transatlantic quest for a 'Europe whole, free and at peace.' "

Fact: Washington wants Ukraine used as a dagger against Russia's heartland – with menacing US bases on its borders threatening is sovereign independence.

Nuland called US planned and implements year ago Maidan violence using well-trained Nazi thugs "peaceful protest(s) by ordinary Ukrainians."

"They braved frigid temperatures, brutal beatings and sniper bullets…Ukraine began to forge a new nation…holding free and fair election…and undertaking deep and comprehensive economic and political reforms."

Fact: US-deposed President Viktor Yanukovych's police showed remarkable restraint.

Fact: Washington-supported Nazi thugs bore full responsibility for beatings, sniper killings and other violence.

Fact: Ukrainian parliamentary and presidential elections were farcical – with no legitimacy whatever.

Fact: So-called economic reforms involve crushing hardships on already impoverished Ukrainians in return for loan-shark-of-last-resort IMF blood money.

Fact: No responsible political reforms exist. None are planned. It bears repeating. Ukraine is a US-installed fascist dictatorship.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/victoria-nuland-lied-to-us-congress-about-p...

The Neocons have killed millions in Iraq and got away scot-free:


US Sponsored Genocide Against Iraq 1990-2012. Killed 3.3 Million, Including 750,000 Children

http://www.globalresearch.ca/victoria-nuland-lied-to-us-congress-about-p...

Ignatius

The basis of neocon philosophy is a LIE, that if you don't have a real enemy just make shit up.

How then can one "debate" a neocon with anything other than a baseball bat?

Their starting point is that neocons will lie if they have to and probably also just for the fun of it.

Psychopaths.

JustObserving

The Nobel Prize Winner has bombed 7 Muslim countries, destabilized Ukraine, attempted a coup in Venezuela, lied about sarin use in Syria to almost start a war, assassinated US citizens without a trial, regularly drones women and children and wedding parties and yet is the most admired man in the world in a Gallup poll in 2014. I would cry at humanity's stupidity, cruelty and corruption but I prefer to laugh. You love your lying war criminals then you will get lot more war.

yogibear

Meet Neocon "Doughnut Dolly" Victoria Nuland

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/12/18/meet-neocon-doughnut-do...

Nuland's career has been one of ensuring that the underpinnings of the Cold War never completely died out in Europe. Her State Department career began as the chief of staff to President Bill Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State and close friend, Strobe Talbott. It was under Talbott that Nuland helped completely fracture Yugoslavia and ensured that the U.S. slanted against the interests of Russia's ally, Serbia.

markar

Angie needs to end her triangulating charade and choose sides. Keeping a foot in the Russian door while appeasing her Neocon masters in the West won't work much longer. She knows Obama is a spineless puppet who won't back her and Ukraine is a failed state run riot by neo Nazi thugs and oligarchs.

What's it going to be Angie, an act of heroism or taking Germany down with the Western ship?

lesterbegood

Angie like Obama, Nuland, et al, is another political puppet/spokesperson for the power behind the money.

Winston Churchill

Which means her puppet masters are changing horses mid race.

No honor amongst thieves and/or psychopaths.

HowdyDoody

I wonder what on earth the CIA/NSA has on her that keeps her putting the interests of the US above her own country.

Wile-E-Coyote

Come on Germany tell the USA to fuck right off............................. won't happen.

css1971

35 US military bases in Germany say you are absolutely correct.

Son of Loki

Simply look at the quality of our State dept -- Nuland, etc -- The average IQ and emotional intelligence there has to be at an all-time low.

Gone are the days when you had brillant statespeople in the state dept who were thoroughly versed in history, politics, economics and debate.

yogibear

"Gone are the days when you had brillant statespeople in the state dept who were thorougly versed in history, politics, economics and debate."

People are used to dumb and dumber DC. It matches the rest of the country.

Stumpy4516

The statespeople may have been more intelligent at one time but their actions (covert murders, regime change, wars, etc.) have always been the same.

[Mar 07, 2015] Meet the Big Wallets Pushing Obama Towards a New Cold War By Christian Stork

February 25, 2015 | Alternet
As for those in the K Street elite pushing Uncle Sam to confront the bear, it isn't hard to see what they have to gain. There's a familiar ring to the U.S. calls to arm Ukraine's post-coup government. That's because the same big-money players who stand to benefit from belligerent relations with Russia haven't forgotten a favorite Cold War tune.

President Obama has said that he won't rule out arming Ukraine if a recent truce, which has all but evaporated, fails like its predecessor. His comments echoed the advice of a report issued a week prior by three prominent U.S. think tanks: the Brookings Institute, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Atlantic Council. The report advocated sending $1 billion worth of "defensive" military assistance to Kiev's pro-Western government.

If followed, those recommendations would bring the U.S. and Russia the closest to conflict since the heyday of the Cold War. Russia has said that it would "respond asymmetrically against Washington or its allies on other fronts" if the U.S. supplies weapons to Kiev.

The powers with the most skin in the game -- France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine -- struck a deal on Feb. 12, which outlines the terms for a ceasefire between Kiev and the pro-Russian, breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine. It envisages a withdrawal of heavy weaponry followed by local elections and constitutional reform by the end of 2015, granting more autonomy to the eastern regions.

But not all is quiet on the eastern front. The truce appears to be headed the route of a nearly identical compromise in September, which broke down immediately afterward.

Moscow's national security interests are clear. Washington's are less so, unless you look at the bottom lines of defense contractors.

As for those in the K Street elite pushing Uncle Sam to confront the bear, it isn't hard to see what they have to gain. Just take a look below at the blow-by-blow history of their Beltway-bandit benefactors:

No Reds Means Seeing Red

Following the end of the Cold War, defense cuts had presented bottom-line problems for America's military producers. The weapons dealers were told that they had to massively restructure or go bust.

Luckily, carrots were offered. Norm Augustine, a former undersecretary of the Army, advised Defense Secretary William Perry to cover the costs of the industry mergers. Augustine was then the CEO of Martin Marietta -- soon to become the head of Lockheed Martin, thanks to the subsidies.

Augustine was also chairman of a Pentagon advisory council on arms-export policy. In that capacity, he was able to secure yet more subsidy guarantees for NATO-compatible weapons sales to former Warsaw Pact countries.

But in order to buy the types of expensive weapons that would stabilize the industry's books, those countries had to enter into an alliance with the U.S. And some members of Congress were still wary of shelling out money to expand a military alliance that had, on its face, no rationale to exist.

Enter the NATO Expansion Squad

Enter the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. Formed in 1996, the Committee wined and dined elected officials to secure their support for NATO enlargement. Meanwhile, Lockheed buttressed its efforts by spending $1.58 million in federal contributions for the 1996 campaign cycle.

The Committee's founder and neocon chairman, Bruce Jackson, was so principled in his desire to see freedom around the globe that he didn't even take a salary. He didn't have to; he was a vice president at Lockheed Martin.

By Clinton's second term, everyone was on board. Ron Asmus, a former RAND Corporation analyst and the "intellectual progenitor" of NATO expansion (who would later co-chair the Committee to Expand NATO), ended what was left of the policy debate in the State Department. He worked with Clinton's diplomatic point man on Eastern Europe, Strobe Talbott.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were all in NATO come 1999. The Baltic States would soon follow. By 2003, those initial inductees had arranged deals to buy just short of $5 billion in fighter jets from Lockheed.

Bruce Jackson began running a new outfit in 2002. It was called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

(36 F-16s are currently slated for delivery to Iraq at an estimated $3 billion.)

Rivers of Cash

Brookings is Washington's oldest think tank. For most of its existence, its research was funded by a large endowment and no-strings-attached grants. But all of that changed when Strobe Talbott took the reins.

Strobe Talbott, President

Talbott sought to bolster Brookings' coffers with aggressive corporate fundraising. He took it from annual revenues of $32 million in 2003 to $100 million by 2013. Though always corporate-friendly, Brookings has become little more than a pay-to-play research hub under Talbott's reign.

Among the many corporate donors to Brookings are Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and cyber-defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

David M. Rubenstein, Co-Chairman of Board of Trustees

Rubenstein is co-founder and co-CEO at the Carlyle Group, a massive private equity firm. Among the companies in which Carlyle has a controlling stake in is Booz Allen Hamilton -- a military and intelligence IT firm that is currently active in Ukraine.

Booz, which both sells to and operates within the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, counts four former Carlyle executives among its directors. Ronald Sanders, a vice president at Booz, serves on the faculty of Brookings.

Atlanticists

The Atlantic Council was formed in 1961 as a "consolidation of the U.S. citizen groups supporting" NATO, according to its website.

Stephen Hadley, Director

A former national security advisor for George W. Bush, Hadley doubles as a director for Raytheon. He was also the driving force behind the creation of the U.S. Committee on NATO, on whose board he sat, and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

Prior to joining the Bush White House, Hadley was a lawyer for Shea & Gardner, whose clients included Lockheed Martin.

James Cartwright, Director

A retired general and former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, James Cartwright has an active work life. He's "an advisor to defense and intelligence contractor TASC, defense consulting firm Accenture, and Enlightenment Capital, a private equity firm with defense investments," according to the Public Accountability Initiative. He's also on the board of Raytheon, which earned him $124,000 in 2012.

Other notables include:

Nicholas Burns – former diplomat and current senior counselor at The Cohen Group, which advises Lockheed Martin, among other defense companies

James A. Baker III – Bush 41 Secretary of State and partner at law firm Baker Botts. Clients include a slew of defense companies

Thomas R. Pickering – former senior vice president for Boeing

Chi-town Chickenhawks

Founded in 1922, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has since served as the premier voice of Midwest business leaders in American foreign policy. Jeb Bush recently made his "I am my own man" speech, outlining his foreign policy priorities, to the council:

Lester Crown, Chairman

The chair of Henry Crown & Co., the investment firm that handles the fortune started by his father, Henry Crown. Henry put the "dynamic" in General Dynamics, helping to turn it into the world's largest weapons manufacturer by the time Lester became its chairman in 1986. The defense behemoth remains the single largest source of the family's treasure; they're currently the 35th richest clan in America. General Dynamics produces all of the equipment types proposed for transfer to Ukraine in the think-tank report.

Ivo Daalder, President

A co-author of the report, Daalder is a former diplomat and staffer on Clinton's National Security Council. He later served on the Hart-Rudman Commission from 1998-2001. It was chartered by Defense Secretary William Cohen -- later to become a Lockheed consultant -- and tasked with outlining the major shifts in national security strategy for the 21st century. Among its commissioners was none other than Norm Augustine.

The commission concluded that the Department of Defense and intelligence community should drastically reduce their infrastructure costs by outsourcing and privatizing key functions, especially in the field of information technology.

The main beneficiaries have been America's major defense contractors: Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton and Lester Crown's outfit, General Dynamics.

General Dynamics' revenue tripled between 2000 and 2010 as it acquired at least 11 smaller firms that specialized in exactly the sort of services recommended for outsourcing. Roughly one-third of GD's overall revenue in 2013, the same year that Daalder was appointed president of the Council by Crown, came from its Information Systems and Technology division.

So even without a Cold War Bear to fuel spending, the re-imagining of that old foe is oiling the revolving door between the government and defense contractors.

[Mar 07, 2015] The killing of my friend Boris Nemtsov must signal the death of appeasement by Garry Kasparov

This man can do anything for money. What a low-lifer. Looks like talent in chess does not extend to other human qualities. Of cause NED/IRI money does not smell, and that means its quite natural for Gary Kasparov to become a buddy of neocons. From comments: "The constant attacks on Putin from the MSM, are an indicator of just how desperate the elite are to instigate some form of rebellion against him in Russia -- hence the Nemtsov assassination. "

March 6, 2015 | The Guardian

ID4534229

Kasparov, you should be ashamed of yourself. A shill of the west, much like Klitchko. Are you really complaining about Russia when you share a platform with Saakashvili ? A man who is wanted back home for corruption? You are a useful idiot, like Klitchko and like Saakashvili. The only difference between you and the criminal and corrupt billionaires expelled from Russia is that you don't have the money.

Why do these "Russian" dissenters, once they leave their country, immediately end up in US Senate hearings and with US politicians who would love to see Russia reduced to a mess? Have you no shame?

caotama 6 Mar 2015 17:47

"Yesterday I was in Washington DC, speaking to a US Senate subcommittee about how and why the Russian dictator must be stopped". So you are buddies with the neocons? Case closed.

"Nearly every head in the room nodded in agreement as I and other invitees – such as the former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili..." Isn't that discredited IMF puppet on some wanted list?

"Russian forces nearly reached Tbilisi before they turned back". Why did they turn back, Gaz?

irishmand -> Treabhar Mac Oireabaird 6 Mar 2015 17:31

If you don't like the West, why are you staying here?

I don't like what americans did to the west. The democracy we heard so much about is being dismantled quickly. The school education is ruined. University education is becoming less and less affordable. Medical system in US is almost the genocide of poor. The media are lying on industrial basis. The moods in the society are pro war, people want blood. I am trying to fight it explaining that the west is walking towards abyss but you don't want to listen. Many people call me a Kremlyn troll. I don't care, but it demonstrates the points I just made.

BMWAlbert

Meanwhile in Odessa, far from the front lines, all is tranquil...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HacQe4GYIY#t=138

MarVas

The "More than 100,000 people rallied to mourn Boris in Moscow" line links to a page that says "Police put numbers at 7,000, while those involved said the protest drew 50,000."

After the event police adjusted their numbers to 21,000 but apparently it is not worth mentioning.
Even if provided by promoters' numbers are correct, it's still less than 0.5% of Moscow population.
Is it a good reason to openly lie?

HollyOldDog -> MarVas

Strange how foreign newspapers always try to clutch at invisable straws. Protestors usually overestimate their numbers but the police on viewing airborne video have the advantage when estimating crowd numbers.

There was supposed to be a protest march in a city in Siberia where the protestors informed the police that thousands would turn up but only 12 were present on the day. The Police could be still searching for someone to pay for the extra police overtime for the non event.

PlatonKuzin

"Boris Nemtsov's whole career was not aimed at helping Russia, but at the interests of foreign states," said Nikolai Starikov, one of Anti-Maidan's leaders. "Boris Nemtsov is the first victim of the Maidan in Russia… He was killed by his American curators."

I also think so.

Obfusgator

Anti-negotiator Kasparov sounds like your proto-typical war and conflict addicted general, always ready to sacrifice millions of chess piece lives. He should stick to what he does best (playing games) and let his anger at Putin's Russia subside.

We're all seeing bloody red at the moment Garry, but aren't you sick of war? You could have mentioned in your article the US funded coup in the Ukraine that led to Russia moving to protect assets there and you omitted important details regarding the increasing encirclement of Russia by US/NATO forces.

In case you haven't noticed, when the US sticks its nose into rival countries' business (sanctions first closely followed by militarily assistance) things get out of control.

We don't need that playing out again, now do we?

Russia's problems are hers to sort out.

notEvenNibling -> Obfusgator

Ukraines problems are "hers" to sort out.

Obfusgator -> notEvenNibling

Ukraine's US coup problem.

Parangaricurimicuaro

Do you remember Iraks Ahmed Chalabi? The guy that pushed for the war? Kasparov is the 2015 version

Russia will always be my country, but it is difficult to imagine returning while Putin is still in the Kremlin.

EugeneGur

No, it aren't, my friend. Russia isn't you country - you betrayed it, you are openly inviting foreign powers to attack it. Just because you say "Putin" instead of "Russia", you think it makes a difference? Assuming the policy of "isolation and condemnation" is successful, do you think Putin will suffer or do you even suspect that ordinary Russians will feel the pain? Do you care?

This is a good article showing very clearly what kind of "opposition" this is. For the life of me, I cannot imaging an opposition of any kind, say, in the US or any European country, inviting foreign countries to start a war against the homeland and surviving. But it's perfectly fine in Russia. He is downright pleading with the West: don't be afraid, you won't have to defeat the entire Russian army or start WWIII. Just "inflict enough damage". The man is disgusting. He is also lying. It would be necessary to defeat the entire Russia, if it comes to that. Russia is not populated only by Karparovs.

The opposition movement that Boris and I believed in, and that Boris died for, should be openly supported, the way the west once championed the Soviet dissidents.

So, the "opposition" is a Western-paid performer, a.k.a. a whore.

Ronald Reagan told those of us behind the iron curtain that he knew it was our leaders, not us, who were his adversaries.

I do believe that. Personally, Garry did very well as did Nemtsov. But the rest of Russia did turn out to be Reagan's adversary, at least, it was treated as such.

I do hope you Westerners understand now and believe us when we say that this 'opposition" has absolutely no influence in Russia, and most people have nothing but contempt for them. You are wasting your money paying them.

PeregrineSlim

"Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts…The United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way….And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this - no one feels safe." Vladimir Putin, Munich 2007

willpodmore

The Minsk peace agreement's terms included 'Withdrawal of all foreign armed groups, weapons and mercenaries from Ukrainian territory'. In direct violation of the agreement, the US government announced in late February that it would send 300 troops to Ukraine to help train Ukraine's forces, and Prime Minister David Cameron announced on 24 February that 75 British troops would also be sent to help train Ukraine's forces.

AlexUspen

Kasparov: "More than 100,000 people rallied to mourn Boris in Moscow last Sunday, a number that gives the lie..."

Well, it really does.

The link gets you to a Guardian story, putting the number of rally participants somewhere between 7,000 and 50,000. The 100K figure is repeated in the picture caption… This is some very strange math.

PeregrineSlim

The opposition in Russia will go nowhere as long as they function as errand boys for the american empire.

MyDogLikesPorridge

With Nemtsov gone, Kasparov and his ilk will be again trying to sell Navalny as the next saviour of Russia. Below is an excerpt from an article published in May/2011. It is both frighteningly relevant and prescient of events to come.

"But the following interview was much more interesting. It's with The New Times, a Russian magazine... Navalny says "I think that the power in Russia will change not by an election process; they can elect whoever they like in March of 2012, but everything will be finished by April", and then clarifies – "by something like a Tunis scenario". Answering the question "Do you expect the wave from the bottom", he says – "No, I don't wait for it, I'm organizing it. We don't know when it will happen, but it's within our power to bring it closer. The current Russian authorities are thieves and swindlers. We must fight against them, exert pressure on them, create problems for them, and involve more and more people in creating problems. This pressure can be of different kinds – from simple negotiations to mobs on the streets that drag civil servants from their cabinets and hang them. And the faster authorities realize that and start negotiating, the less plausible the violent scenario becomes. I don't think that any political technologies or twitter can make people come out on the streets and chase away thieves and swindlers, so normal people could take over." (emphasis mine) .

Well… first of all, let's just recall that every state has the right to defend its constitutional system by force, and such citadels of democracy as the UK and the US have no qualms about invoking it. Secondly, the Russian criminal code has the article "Violent takeover of power or violent retention of power", punishable by from 12 to 20 years in prison. And I don't remember anything in the Constitution that says that hanging of government officials is a legitimized feature of a democratic process. The code also has the article "Calls to extremist actions". But let's leave that aside for a moment.

Navalny clearly states that he's working towards a typical colour revolution. First, I don't know what can be more undemocratic than a handful of raucous people changing power by riots and violence, simply because they don't like the government, the outcome of some election or any other quality. The opinion of the rest of the people is commonly ignored. It's also usually accompanied by tens or hundreds of corpses. Second, a common misconception is that power is transferred from bad authoritarian groups to "the people". That's a brazen lie; power simply gets transferred from one group to another, and the benefactor is well-known beforehand. Did anyone doubt that Yuschenko would become president when the Orange revolution succeeded? Or Saakashvili in Georgia? Third, and this is the most important point – there have been plenty of such revolutions. Has a single country benefited from it? Saakashvili's more and more authoritarian rule and the unleashed war are something that the Georgians dreamed of in 2003? Yuschenko's rating lying in the gutter is what the Ukranians stood in Maidan Square for? The deposing of Bakiev in 2010 by yet another revolution was worth launching the first one in 2005? Navalny suggests that "normal people will take over". Needless to say, that one statement will inspire laughter in any politologist worth his salt. Will these "normal people" spontaneously inherit another law framework and its institutions? Obviously, no. Then we have to take their word that after they come into power, these mysteriously benevolent "normal people" will start to limit their own authoritiy in favour of common people. Please remind me; how often has that happened in history? But OK, let's be believers for a while, so let's assume that they really are that incorruptible. In order to improve governance, the state should have better institutions and laws, so after the coup someone will have to write them. But what's stopping "normal people" from drafting them now, even promoting them? Maybe the current power will adopt them, so there will be no need for a revolution! And finally, who will determine the suitability of these people? Navalny?

I sincerely hope that this whole interview is just idle thoughts, and Navalny doesn't vest any serious meaning in them. But alas, evidence suggests the contrary. All the traditional components are present – branding authorities as hopelessly corrupt and despotic, the government's consummate demonization and alienation; praise from abroad of one group, presenting them as progressives; the preparing of key people in the West. It's also useful to attach to the big picture the recent interview of Kasparov, in which he repeats Vice-President Joe Biden's threat that if Putin should be reelected in 2012, the US will topple him with a colour revolution.

PeregrineSlim

The Washington War Party is shipping off its troops to the Ukraine in the coming week in defiance of the Minsk agreement.

sensitivepirate

It is not about right or wrong, because in this case there are wrongs on both sides.

Here we see the United States located on the other side of the world, standing up for its interests and investments in owning and controlling Ukrainian oil, gas, coal, manufacturing, transportation, strategic location, and agricultural resources in a country without any Americans.

Here we see Russia standing up for Russians.

Be careful what you wish for. With Russia, your ideals may never be realized.

henrihenri -> sensitivepirate

We live in world deprived of ideals. Money!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q&feature=player_detailpage

therealbillythefish

"with the belief that the days of changing Europe's borders by force"

The Serbs of Kosovo were disabused of that belief by NATO.

therealbillythefish Sceptical Walker

The KLA started a campaign of murder and were suppressed with much less brutality than the yanks showed in places like Fallujah.

NATO handed Kosovo to the human organ traffickers of the KLA with the result that non-Albanians have been driven out and the economy is a basket case with thoussnds of Kosovans attempting to claim asylum in the EU every month.

johnbonn

Sanctions are not appeasement, so what is he talking about. Kiev has already done its best to destroy the east where ethnic Russians live.

If he wants something stronger, don't worry. The UK and the US are preparing for the invasion by restarting the civil war.
The Guardian does not report that the largest oil companies in the west have paid large amounts of money to Ukraine for the rights to drill off the Crimean coast.

These companies can't get their money back, so the west must invade.

McCain and Kerry and Cameron will insure that he and Europe will soon get their war with Russia. Sadly this will bring a major realignment of the middle east to this major war.

frombrussels

....Elephants NEVER forget, they say ......People however are the worst "forgetters"!.....

The Ukraine mess and all its horrible consequences started when Nuland b*tch and CIA decided to orchestrate a coup against a democratically elected, yet pro russian president, as a consequence of which Putin took back HIS Crimea and people in E Ukraine decided they wanted to belong to Russia ......

It s as easy as that....let s make it complicated though, to justify deliverance of lethal weapons to Ukraine by "godfather" USA !

amcalabrese2

Or maybe we (the US in particular and the West in general) needs to realize that this is not our war. Is Russia really a threat to the us? Russia is not the Soviet Union. Unlike the days of the USSR, there are no armies of people in the west willing to do the party's bidding. Those days the Soviets were a deep threat to us. Had the Soviets won, freedom would have been extinguished. And the Soviets could have won. The Russians are having trouble paying their state employees.

nnedjo

Given that we are talking about a chess genius, and with regard to this very eloquent text that he wrote now, Garry Kasparov, without a doubt, is an extremely capable man. That is why it is a very pity that such a man has not found the right way to help his country. As I already said, this text of Kasparov is really very eloquently written, but besides that, it's full of nonsense. That a man of such intelligence can write so many things contrary to common sense, can only be explained by his blind hatred against Putin's Russia.

But, for now, I will mention only one of the nonsense that Garry Kasparov wrote here.
He says, "police state is very good at keeping the monopoly of violence for themselves, and given that prominent opposition politician was killed in the immediate vicinity of the Kremlin, the chances that this occurred without any involvement of Russian security services is vanishingly small."

So, if the goal was to remove a vocal critic of the Kremlin, why was it necessary to do so near the very Kremlin? Does the state that holds the monopoly of violence could not do it in any other, less significant place. I do not see any sense in it, that the security services killed prominent opposition leaders at also prominent places, and not in some other places.

Especially those security services who are trying to maintain a monopoly of violence, as they are also trying to maintain the illusion of safety in the country, even when it is not like that. So, for Kasparov probably would not look anything absurd, even that Boris Nemtsov was killed at the same time when Putin and his entourage crossed the Red Square, and that the bullets that are missed Nemtsov whizzed around Putin's head. Or, perhaps Putin's involvement in the murder would be even more apparent for Kasparov that Nemtsov was killed in the lobby of Putin's office, and there would be no wonder that the Russian security services have not thought of it first.

I will repeat once again. In addition to being the chess genius Garry Kasparov is obviously a very talented writer. However, if he intends to devote to such a profession even more, I would recommend him not to write crime stories, but of another type, or from some other genre.

SalmanShaheen

It seems unlikely Putin had Nemtsov killed. What would he have to gain?

dropthemchammer -> SalmanShaheen

It would send a message to other around him.
If the sanctions are starting to bite and people close to Putin muttering then this action would get them to hold their tongues.

Oskar Jaeger -> SalmanShaheen

No man, no problem (J V Stalin).

henrihenri -> Oskar Jaeger

There was a man, true, but there wasn`t a problem.

FrancesSmith

I'm wondering. Here in the UK we could do with a better opposition, and we could also do with a better electoral system, and the ownership of the press is a serious issue, and the current government has appointed its close associates to run the BBC. And what about the way our political parties are funded, corrupt or what?

But what if there was some rich UK chess player went to the USA and started writing articles in the foreign press asking them to intervene and remove our elected government.

ok, we haven't invaded anywhere recently, and we haven't had an opposition leader shot dead, no need really they can't get past the tory press.

But just imagine how you would feel, putin demonisers, if there was someone from the UK talking about our government like this, and asking for intervention, and trying to impose a new government on us that has minimal support in the country.

ApfelD

The opposition movement that Boris and I believed in, and that Boris died for, should be openly supported

Kasparov makes me laugh
He is asking for the open support from the US
It's like Alex Salmond will ask Putin about the missile strike on London

PSmd

For all Kasparov's ideals for liberal transparency and a capitalist economy, what our press seems to not emphasise is that the Communists are the big opposition in Russia. They are the ones kept out possibly by United Russia, certainly by Yeltsin. They are big in towns and cities, among pensioners. In fact, theire following is a bit like UKIP, they recognise the grimmer past, but the certainties that came before the deracinatiing effects of globalisation.

BunglyPete

Its worrying just how easily history can be rewritten.

This BBC report titled Georgia 'started unjustifiable war' says

The shelling of Tskhinvali (the South Ossetian capital) by the Georgian armed forces during the night of 7 to 8 August 2008 marked the beginning of the large-scale armed conflict in Georgia," the report says.
It adds later: "There is the question of whether [this] use of force... was justifiable under international law. It was not."
It also says Georgia's claim that there had been a large-scale Russian military incursion into South Ossetia before the outbreak of war could not be "sufficiently substantiated", though it said there was evidence of a lower-level military build-up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8281990.stm

Now it does go on to say that Russia's response was over the top and illegal too, but the key point is it began with Saakashvili, Kasparov's ally, shelling a city.

Now we are told the conflict was provoked by Putin, is proof of his imperialistic plans, and that Saakashvili is a person we should take seriously.

If you want to do so I won't stop you, but to do so is foolish given the evidence against the Georgian regime from 2008.

Renfrow

Wow. Gary had turned into quite a radical. This article is definitely designed for the far right western audience. No wonder his support in Russia is close to 0.

aprescoup

Navalny is the first Russian opposition figure of any stature. Kasparov lost his credibility amongst Russians by becoming an obvious lackey of the West. Nemtsov never had any credibility amongst Russians because he could never clean himself of the tarnish of being associated with the Yeltsin years.

Navalny has an altogether different stature, and does have credibility with Russians, but probably only in the Moscow region. Navalny does not lick Western arses as much as Kasparov and Nemtsov because he knows what arse-licking of Westerners will do to his credibility amongst Russians.

In an October 2014 interview with Ekho Moskvy, Navalny said that he would not return Crimea to Ukraine if he were to become the President of Russia but that a "normal referendum" should be held in Crimea to decide what country the peninsula belongs to. Interestingly the West does not listen to the only Russian opposition figure with any proven credibility amongst Russians, hence Western policy-making towards Russia is becoming ad-hoc and ineffective.

MacCosham -> aprescoup

No, Zyuganov is the first opposition figure in Russia. The fact that he is not a US government stooge does not change this.

FrancesSmith -> MacCosham

But he's a communist! I just have a feeling, though I may be wrong, that these right wing neocons in the US wouldn't want to see Zyuganov replace Putin.

Though they should perhaps be a little careful what they wish for as according to wikipedia Boris Nemstov and others said after the 1996 election that the communists should have won.

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2107565,00.html

geedeesee -> Germaan

"The fact is that Putin unleashed war against Ukraine..."

Except it was Kiev regime which sent tanks over to Donbass to attack the separatists, and we saw the people come out and plead with the tank crews not to attack them. Then the Kiev regime sent aircraft to bomb the civilians - bombing their own people! Putin didn't tell the Kiev regime to send tanks and military aircraft to deal with civilians. The Kiev regime called it an anti-terror operation.

elias_ -> richard1

AFAIK the ruskies didn't invade georgia in 2008. Georgians attacked and killed numerous russian soldiers operating under UN mandate. In response russians gave the georgian military (partly trained by nato) a jolly good spanking before going back to where they were before.

aprescoup

Mexico's human rights crisis is even worse than Russia's, but no one in the West cares. The real reason Putin is so disliked by the West is not because Russians suffer under Putin, but because Russia under Putin (unlike Russia under Yeltsin) no longer takes orders from Washington. China's human rights crisis is also worse than Russia's, and again no one in the West cares, because everyone in the West knows that China is more powerful than the US, and that China will never take its orders from Washington. What particularly upsets Washington is that the US is losing its soft-power: the US has no soft power over China, no soft power over Russia under Putin, and no soft power over Israel under Netanyahu.

ID5868758

Is Kasparov's support in Russia 5%, or.5%?

MacCosham -> ID5868758

0.05%

JohnMc2015

I respect Mr Kasparov as an outstanding chess master very much, but his biting a cop in 2012 tells me that a chess player's skill has nothing to do with a serious opposition leader's decent behaviour who really could lead people. Even if such leader finds appropriate words, there appears to be some doubts concerning his adequacy in a critical situation. An opposition leader is supposed to be a cool cucumber.

PeregrineSlim

Kasparov seems to have lost sight of the fact that the chess board is in Ukraine and he is a long way from being able to move any pieces.

BloodOnTheWattle -> PeregrineSlim

he is still upset at Deep Blue...he cried rivers over the loss. so you must forgive him.

ID5868758

What the hell is the matter with the US Senate, hosting such a fringe politician from Russia, and one calling for the overthrow of the elected leader of a sovereign nation? Despicable behavior from the "land of the free", apparently you're "free" only if your opinion is in line with that of the US, otherwise we will make sure we help you change your mind.

StatusFoe ID5868758

What the hell is the matter with the US Senate

What do you mean? He's the US establishment's man in Russia, a Carrier of the Flame and honoured Bilderberger.

ApfelD Magyar2lips

let us nuke Hungary and Russia and that's all
wait a minute
and Azerbaijan
and Iran
and Ukraine (the most corrupted country according to Graun)
and Saudi Arabia (for gay rights)
and North Korea
and Switzerland+Lichtenstein (for the tax avoidance schemes)
and France (Madonna said that they looks like Nazis)
and Germany (they don't speak English)

BloodOnTheWattle ApfelD

and Germany (they don't speak English)

most germans do..but lets nuke 'em all the same...the bastards tried to talk to Putin about peace...peace imagine that Merkel escaped our firewall..

geedeesee

Russians are questioning events:

"Since the current US ambassador arrived in Russia, they killed Nemtsov, while he was in Georgia they killed Zhvaniya, and in Ukraine-Gongadze. Coincidence?"

Each of the three was a prominent opposition figure, and in each case his death had led to political upheaval. To quote Ian Fleming, "once is a happenstance, twice--a coincidence, three times--enemy action."

dmitryfrommoscow

Garri, why didn't you address the U.S. Congress with philippics in the 1990's when the oligarchs who propped up Yeltsin were pumping tens of billions of dollars out of Russia every month? When millions of your fellow-countrymen had to live from hand to mouth because the economy was totally divested of funds and lay dysfunctional? When people were dying at hospitals because there was nothing except aspirin there? When selling a bunch of homegrown dill or parsley at a local market was a matter of life and death for innumerable babushkas on a vast space from Vladivostok to the Baltic shores? Give us an answer...

aprescoup

As long as Russian opposition figures are arse-lickers of the West, cosying up with MPs, MEPs and Congress members, they will not mobilise Russians against Sistema Putin. The struggle between the West and Russia is between the West's idea of a Post-Westphalian order and Russia's (and China's and Israel's) preference for staying put with the Westphalian order that has been around since 1648. Anyone who does not understand the difference between a political Westphalian order (based around nation-States) and a technocratic Post-Westphalian order (based around technocratic organizations, eg Swift for finance payments, BIS for banking regulation, ICANN for Internet), and the consequences of the West's attempt to change its imperial control over the world from a Westphalian Empire to a Post-Westphalian Empire, is a fool. Ironically, it may have been the USSR that launched Post-Westphalianism with Comintern (Third International, 1919-1943).

willpodmore

Kasparov is another warmonger. NATO continues its march to the east. NATO aims to seize control of Ukraine, to complete the hostile glacis to Russia's west. The US government considered it had exclusive rights to run Ukraine: senior US diplomat Richard Holbrooke absurdly declared that Ukraine was part of 'our core zone of security'.

The US government is pursuing Zbigniew Brzezinski's strategy of trying to draw Russia into a 'prolonged and costly' war in Ukraine. Brzezinski had used this strategy in the 1980s, when he armed Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan as part of a proxy war against the Soviet Union. The US government aimed to do to Russia via Ukraine what it did to the Soviet Union via Afghanistan. Ukraine would become another wasteland of death and destruction, with the constant risk of a wider war, and Russia would descend into chaos.

US Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, the head of both the US European Command and NATO in Europe, insisted that we could not 'preclude out of hand the possibility of the military option' in Ukraine. At the Munich Security Conference, Republican senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham poured scorn on European negotiations with President Vladimir Putin. McCain summed up Merkel's speech at Munich, which included a statement of opposition to arming Ukraine, with one word: 'foolishness'. He added, "I can assure you that [Putin] will not stop until he has to pay a much higher price."

Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine's Deputy Foreign Minister, has called for 'full scale war' with Russia. Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko stated, "there is no ceasefire, and so there is no precondition for a pull-back of heavy weapons." Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh announced that his private army and the Azov Battalion would ignore the agreement and fight on.

PeregrineSlim

As Milne points out, the West is already in the process of violating the Minsk agreement:

But it's certainly grist to the mill of those pushing military confrontation with Russia. Hundreds of US troops are arriving in Ukraine this week to bolster the Kiev regime's war with Russian-backed rebels in the east. Not to be outdone, Britain is sending 75 military advisers of its own. As 20th-century history shows, the dispatch of military advisers is often how disastrous escalations start. They are also a direct violation of last month's Minsk agreement, negotiated with France and Germany, that has at least achieved a temporary ceasefire and some pull-back of heavy weapons. Article 10 requires the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Ukraine.

ApfelD -> StatusFoe

it's difficult to understand why Russians don't like Kasparov

StatusFoe -> ApfelD

He certainly can come accross as an arrogant prick.

MacCosham -> richard1

What bollocks. Putin is not coming close to anyone. What is happening is that anti-establishment parties in Europe, whether left-wing (Die Linke, Podemos, Syriza), centrist (Five Stars) or right wing (FN, Fidesz) are following public opinion which sees that the establishment parties (socialists and conservatives) are puppets of US-based big money.

guster86

"I will continue to do whatever I can to draw support to the cause of returning Russia to the path of democracy."

Possibly sacrifice a few pawns.

dropthemchammer -> guster86

You say this after Putin had his opposition assassinated lol

Simon311 -> dropthemchammer

Did he? You have certain knowledge of this? Cause Global warming too did he.

jonno61

Kasparov has absolutely not credibility on this matter. Why the Guardian choose to publish his propaganda is beyond me ?

RobHardy -> jonno61

Fits into a general pattern of propaganda propagation by the Guardian in the last few years, probably much longer. no shortage of fellow travelers for the US management of Vichy Britain.

altergeist

"But we must cease to be surprised by the violence and hatred emanating from Russia today if we are to combat it successfully."

I am ceaselessly amazed by the near-complete unity in the chorous of anti-Russia/Putin propaganda.

" prominent critic of the regime,"

With roughly 5% popular support, and quite widely reviled for his part in the Yeltsin era pillage of Russia, when male life expectancy fell about 10 years in just 10 years - a spectacular collapse in living standards. 'Prominent' indeed. And certainly hardly a plausible electoral threat, his prominence and influence is largely hyped to western audiences. One could easily argue he was worth more to western sponsors dead than alive, while Putin had very little to gain from his murder, since it would be eagerly and predictably be blamed upon him... as we have seen: Many western media outlets were ready with their accusations.

"such as the former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili - discussed the global danger presented by Putin's increasingly belligerent regime."

Says the belligerent in the recent, if brief, South Ossetian military adventure.

" cite the official statements of a dictatorship "

An elected dictator. Whatever next!?

Look I'm not saying Putin didn't do it, nor that I don't think he's capable of murdering his opponents, nor that I don't think he has murdered any in the past, but even the Russian opposition has quite broadly said it doesn't think he's responsible, that this is a 'provocation.' But shall we wait for some evidence to be in this time? It's all starting to smack a bit of MH17, Assad's chemical weapons, Iraq's WMDs, 45 minutes etc... Accusations without evidence, or bare-faced lies. It certainly does fit with a pattern of CIA led destabilization but then again, maybe Putin has used that plausibility as a cover. Who knows!?

What I do know is that this wholly unnecessary, largely western provoked West-East showdown is easily and singularly the most potentially dangerous geopolitical situation of my lifetime. Fascinating, but terrifying. Can't the US and Russian leadership just realise that they have a lot in common (democratic deficit, corrupted oligarchic rule, surveillance state, a long history of brutality) and get along?!

Socraticus

How much credence can be given to any of Kasparov's claims when he grossly exaggerates that "more than 100,00 people rallied to mourn Boris in Moscow last Sunday"?

According to the Guardian, the "Police put numbers at 7,000, while those involved said the protest drew 50,000".

Meanwhile, in other international publications the figure has been cited to be closer to 21,000 and "not tens of thousands as reported by some media outlets", further elaborating that "The reason why official estimates are closer to the real numbers is because all demonstrators had to pass through metal detectors before joining the march and were registered by computers".

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/mar/01/boris-nemtsov-marchers-moscow-honour-murdered-opposition-politician-live-updates)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/mar/01/boris-nemtsov-marchers-moscow-honour-murdered-opposition-politician-live-updates#block-54f305cde4b011581586e731

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/simple-murder-boris-nemtsov-150302081839658.html

uracan

Kasparov really is an idiot.

If Putin for whatever reason is deposed, does he really think the traitorous liberals will get into power.

It is the communists with their 20% of the vote that will gain the most.

It will take decades for the liberals to regain any credibility amongst the Russian general population.

CharlesBradlaugh

I'm on the left of politics and view the USA's imperialism with disdain and fear, but I agree 100% with this article, you have to be blind not to see that Putin is a dangerous adventurer who will undertake any aggression that will bolster his position.

SirHenryRawlins -> CharlesBradlaugh

I don't believe for one second you are on the left. You view the USA's imperialism with disdain and fear, US meddling in Ukraine, the backing of government that took power after the coup, and then say Putin is the adventurer and the aggressor.

Gooddoggy -> CharlesBradlaugh

Absolutely true, I am still sickened by Milnes atrocious view that Putin Imperialism is somehow acceptable whereas US Imperialism is not....clearly any sane and decent human being knows that both are unacceptable and need to be fought against with the tools of liberal social justice and liberal left democratic values.

johhnybgood

More propaganda. The constant attacks on Putin from the MSM, are an indicator of just how desperate the elite are to instigate some form of rebellion against him in Russia - hence the Nemtsov assassination. However, my reading of the situation is, that the general public across Europe are not buying the rhetoric. It seems that people are becoming far more discerning in their analysis of the propaganda headlines -such as "Russian forces invade Ukraine", with no supporting evidence. The PTB are losing the information war; the genie is out of the bottle, and cannot be put back. At last people's BS meters are now on full alert.

Time for the MSM to start some independent reporting, especially where Russia is concerned.

aprescoup

Kasparov, you completely overestimate the influence that the West, even with its all-powerful dollar refinancing sanctions and quasi-monopolies on advanced technologies, can have on nudging Russians, both oligarchs and ordinary voters, into overthrowing Sistema Putin. If pathetically weak North Korea can continue to defy the West in the ways it does, then don't you think it more likely that a Russia isolated by further sanctions will become more like North Korea? Get real: Putin will not be pushed out of power by sanctions.

It is time for the West to ignore the Russian opposition: not because the opposition is wrong to condemn Putin as a dictator, but because the Russian opposition completely underestimates the total power that Sistema Putin already has, and the absolute impotence of the West to undermine that total power. The likes of Kasparov, Nemtsov and Navalny are fools: they have underestimated what they are up against, and they are paying for that underestimation with their lives, alternatively with exile or house arrest and an accompanying fear of assassination.

henrihenri

Garry Kasparov was afraid of attending Nemtsov`s funeral under the pretext of being killed in Russia. As he explained he was nit ready to buy one-way ticket! Wow! Now every single leader of opposition says, I`m next! It is so ridiculous that even `The Ekho Moskvy`, their radio, laughed at this trend of theirs for a while. The matter, however, is none needs them. It`s just their coquetry. As to Mr. Kasparov none remembers him in his fatherland. Too many new, much younger and more handsome male stars!

ID5868758

Same propaganda, different mouthpiece. And don't you find it ironic, Kasparov complaining about "Putin's oligarchs", when he himself is in league with the all the oligarchs who escaped Russia with their stolen billions, and now fight from places like London and Tel Aviv for a return of Russia to the "good old days" of Boris Yeltsin, when the assets and resources of the Russian people were being sold off to the banks and the multinational corporations for pennies on the dollar.

Junkets

For a start, the assumption that Putin was behind Nemtsov's murder still remains to be proved. Jumping to conclusions based on political agendas is not the way a good investigator would go about things. After a bit of light from Seumas, didn't you just know that the Guardian would revert to type.

Appeasement suggests Nazis. Are there concentration camps in Russia? Is Putin engaged in a process of mass-extermination? I remember when Saddam Hussein was compared to Hitler and Tony Blair was praised for his 'Churchillian' qualities. The hyperbole is all getting a bit too transparent.

Keep on banging the war-drums, Graun, you might just get what you are looking for.

FOHP46

Mr Kasparov and Mr Saakashvili..wow! what a tandem, poor sods! Was it not Mr Saakashvili who started a war with Russia in 2008 when his army killed some Russian peace keepers? Is he not wanted for crimes in his country of origin Georgia? Nevertheless, he now lives in Boston, USA, the land of the free. Unbelievable.

underbussen

What a terrible article. Sorry but what the hell has happened to journalism these days? Why is "Putins Russia" responsible of this murder? This is like saying "Obamas America" is responsible for all the police shootings in the USA - clearly ridiculous. This article has Putin tried, drawn and quartered before the investigations even get really started. This is NOT journalism, this is propaganda. Shame on you Guardian.

dropthemchammer Evgeny Petrov

its quite easy to outsiders but the RUssian people have little access to free media

Simon311 dropthemchammer

You mean Rupert Murdoch? Lucky them

Continent

Yesterday I was in Washington DC, speaking to a US Senate subcommittee about how and why the Russian dictator must be stopped. Nearly every head in the room nodded in agreement as I and other invitees – such as the former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili – discussed the global danger presented by Putin's increasingly belligerent regime.

global danger ... how shocking. I haven't realized it. I has been thinking that ISIL and its terror acts, the violant instability in Afghanistan and North Africa (especially in Lybia), the wars in Iraq and Syria, the atrocities in Nigeria and Sudan, Ebola and the aftermath left on the economic and society of Liberia were the global dangers we would have to deal with.

Rialbynot

Kasparov: "Yesterday I was in Washington DC, speaking to a US Senate subcommittee about how and why the Russian dictator must be stopped. Nearly every head in the room nodded in agreement as I and other invitees – such as the former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili – discussed the global danger presented by Putin's increasingly belligerent regime."

Groupthink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

RobHardy richard1

Has Britain ever been substantially different? We have Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind happily willing to sell their access to Chinese businesses. Media almost entirely controlled by corporate influences. Parliament and Civil Service increasingly manned by corporate lobbyists and loan staff. Our defence policy just a subdepartment of Pentagon policy making, GCHQ an outstation of the NSA.

Yes, we are different, there is the possibility of democracy in Russia, but nothing but a empty sham illusion of democracy in this country.

UnclePatsy -> dropthemchammer

Let's first agree on a definition for "invade". Possible definitions may include:
1. To enter by force in order to conquer
2. To move into
3. To infest or overrun.
4. To attack; to infringe; to encroach on; to violate.

I see civil internal strife within Novorussia and Kievan Ukraine aggravated by external forces, but not an outright invasion by NATO or Russia. Crimea was ceded to Ukraine SSR as a province along with Novorussia only in 1954 by Nikita Khrushchev.

uracan -> jezzam

Don't you realize that what Putin is doing will consign Russia to poverty for a decade at least.

This is just wishful thinking.

Moreover Putin has destroyed any respect for Russia in the world

If your world consist of US/UK and assorted lackeys.

There is a bigger world out there than just the West and now that Russia has used the sanctions as an opportunity to do its own pivot to the cash , growing economies of the East, the future of Russia looks a whole lot better than the debt overburdened, decaying economies of the West.

cherryredguitar

The problem with the way that America has continually meddled in countries around the world for at least the last century is that every opposition leader in every country that America doesn't like starts looking like a neocon stooge. Because that's how the neocons work. It's their fault, not mine, that I think that way.

Ilja NB

Kasparov is a worthless peace of trash, he traveled all around the world on expense of Russian state, and then he suddenly decided he wanted to become a big shot politician, but instead of coming with some idea's that would benefit the country he only was bashing Mr. Putin while Mr. Putin was putting Russia on it's feet.

Pedro Garcia

That seems to be a law of life: you are good for one thing, you are bad for another. Kasparov is a despicable man, however a genius in chess. Just reading what he wrote, make me despise him. You don't like Putin, fine, but do you have to run into the US, too?

Nemtsov as a Politician was null for many years, Putin didn't need to do anything to him, because he didn't represented any threat: his popularity was less than 1%. Nobody, even in Russia, knew who he was till he was shot dead. Politkovskaya was shot dead on Putin's birthday, Nemtsov shot dead aside the Kremlim, don't you see it? The killer is desperately trying to point out Putin. This are not bread crumbs this are the whole chain of bakeries pointing at Putin.

This has happened before: Nisman in Argentina, to get rid of President Kirchner Party just before the elections, the killing of Hariri in Lebanon to blame Syria.

Look who is profiting from it and you'll find who's to blame.

Johhny Efex

With the end of the USSR the 'free west' had a golden opportunity to disband NATO. This would have given breathing-space for other democratic forms to develop naturally in all sorts of places, including Russia. But instead the USA thought they would go for broke with Full Spectrum Dominance and other ridiculous utopian plans like PNAC to 'install' democracy around the world. Too paranoid and power-hungry to relax their suffocating grip one tiny bit. This is one of the unfortunate consequences.

dropthemchammer Johhny Efex

"Full Spectrum Dominance"? NATO is a defense organisation. why disband it when USSR died. there were and are other threats around the world.

cherryredguitar dropthemchammer

NATO is a defense organisation


So why are Nato military generals continually making aggressive comments about Ukraine, which is not a member of Nato? Why is Nato defending non-member states? Because it is an expansionist organisation.

The original poster is right - Nato should have been disbanded at the end of cold war.


SASOVIET Johhny Efex

The North American Terrorist Organisation (NATO) has a new role since fall of USSR:
1. Terrorize Russians by annoying presence in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland
2. Gang up against third world countries to remove leaders that doesn't support US foreign policy like Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc...

Old_Donkey

Mr Kasparov's views can be compared to the open letter which descendants of the white emigration published in France.

The white emigres declare their "Solidarity with Russia during the Ukrainian Crisis". They also object to the way in which "Russia has been accused of every kind of crime, without any proof, it is judged to be guilty a priori, whereas other countries benefit from a particularly disgusting leniency, in particular, where human rights are concerned."

The emigres go on to protest against "the calumnies which day after day are heaped on modern-day Russia, its leaders and its President, who have been subjected to sanctions and vilified in defiance of all common sense."

The descendants of the white emigration are prepared to give a KGB Colonel the benefit of the doubt. So why can't Garry Kasparov? At this point, no one can prove whether Boris Nemtsov died for the Russian opposition movement or not. The law is no respecter of persons and everyone should be treated as innocent until proven guilty, even the President of the Russian Federation.

http://www.russkymost.net/spip.php?article70&lang=fr
http://stanislavs.org/descendants-of-the-white-emigration-against-russophobia-in-western-msm/

Standupwoman

This is very sad. We must make allowances for the fact that Kasparov was brought up in the old USSR and is clearly unable to shake off that way of thinking, but he must have had a good mind once, and it's hard not to wonder if he mightn't be ill.

His arguments are frighteningly bad. First he claims Putin is a murderer on the sole ground that a lot of US senators and a discredited war criminal (Saakashvili) agree with him - the kind of argument we would expect from the lowest CiF troll. It's absolutely true that there have been politically-motivated and gangland style murders in Russia, but I have no idea if Putin was responsible for any of them - and neither can Mr Kasparov. What we do know is that if the West had even the slightest shred of evidence against him they'd have plastered it over the media long ago.

Then he starts rewriting history. After the initial rush of 'blame Putin' in 2008, even the EU was forced to admit that Georgia was not only the aggressor but also responsible for serious war crimes. A good piece in the Guardian gives links to much of this, including some excellent reporting by the BBC. Kasparov is basing his entire argument on a history of 'Russian aggression' which never happened.

Then worst of all, he sweeps away any concept of fairness and justice. Putin has no motive for killing Nemtsov, he had every motive for not doing so, and there is not the slightest evidence against him - but to even mention these things (as the BBC does) is to be Putin's 'defence lawyer'. There is no need for the presumption of innocence, no need for evidence and a trial, and finally no need even for 'investigation'. Putin is guilty because Kasparov says so, and anyone who disagrees is a Kremlin troll.

This is frightening on many levels, but not least for where it leads. The sub-headline echoes the hate-filled argument that the only thing that matters now is making Putin look like a loser - and it is precisely for that argument that people are dying. The conflict in Ukraine could stop tomorrow, but the US can't allow anything that suggests Putin has 'won'. Crimea could be resolved instantly by a second, properly monitored referendum, but (as the Lords Report pointed out) this would imply we were 'condoning' Putin. People must go on suffering and dying for as long as it takes - just to ensure the US doesn't lose face.

That's chilling. In a world where people care about both Russians and Ukrainians, it isn't even sane. So yes, to hear someone like Kasparov come out with this dribbling hate-rant is very sad indeed.

BunglyPete -> Standupwoman

Very well written as usual sir/m'am :)

I don't get why its such a big deal if Putin 'wins' either. If the case against him is so strong, even if pulling out the UAF leaves swathes of Ukraine in Russian control, you can sort it out through the UN later.

The primary goal has to be the end of violence, not the removal of Putin.

VladimirM

It has never occured to me how aggressive [neo]liberals may be, how radical and prone to violence they are. Peacemongering efforts of hawks of peace, whose hatred is so blind that they are not fussy about the means to pursue their agenda, will lead to chaos rather than to prosperity of Russia. They are ready to attack BBC presenters if they are on their way, they are close to calling names when it comes to the EU leaders not living up to liberal expectations when dealing with Russia.


"I will continue to do whatever I can to draw support to the cause of returning Russia to the path of democracy. "

You are too agressive, tov. Kasparov. I don't like it. Please, make revolutions somewhere else. For example somewhere you live in, there are problems over there no doubt.

If you really want to do something, start a charity to help children of Donbass instead of begging for weapons. That would be a decent move.

SHappens

Despite all attempts by Kasparov to revive Nemtsov through mouthpiece for the US/NATO, it will not change the fact that on a political point of view Nemtsov was a nobody. Sure he didnt deserve to die but we must ask whom this crime profits.

It is obvious that Putin has been the target of this attack, together with all of Russia and, being the target, it is highly unlikely that he has been the author of this assassination.

So now we have Kasparov going for his propaganda by calling Putin a dictator, and Russia a dictatorship, and advocating a full war to defeat the Russian army. Seems that Kasparov didn't learn anything during in glory years as a chess player because that is not a good strategy, this is a loosing strategy for him and the West, Europe in particular, and Ukraine with certainty.

Nemtsov's death will fall in oblivion in a few months, that is, he will return where he came from. Nobody at least in the West knew this guy before the media rant. He was not even popular in Russia except for the 3%. Nothing to worry the Kremlin.

ElmerFuddJr

Astoundingly poor quality commentary in this thread. Y'all sound like American Republicans, or Bibi defenders...utterly incapable of dealing with complex subjects which, given that blood is being shed, require a modicum of understanding of world history these last 40 years (at least) and a bit of nuance here and there...

Viktor Gofman ElmerFuddJr

Serious commentary is for a serious article. Kasparov's article is a circus... So there is a circus in the thread as a result.

PeregrineSlim

Engagement with Russia has never been tried.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union the policy has been to drive NATO tanks to the Russian border.

American democracy is in a death spiral due to its militarism.

And America is hindering the peaceful and democratic development of other countries due to its interference in their domestic politics.

MacCosham

It is telling how Putin, who has got where he is by competitive elections is described as a "dictator" while president Mikheil Saakashvili who:

  • -Got his presidency by overthrowing the previous, democratically elected, government.
  • -Ran a sham election where he got 95% of the vote (no joke)
  • -Killed his main political opponent ("gas poisoning")
  • -Got kicked out as soon as real elections were held

is described as a former "president"

[Mar 07, 2015] Russia detains two men in Boris Nemtsov murder inquiry by Chis Johnston

Note: Guardian did not risked to open comments for this article. Should somebody put a tattoo on Chis Johnston right arm with the words "Cue Bono", the classic Roman approach to such crimes. Why Putin on peak of his popularity would decided to eliminate political cadaver by converting him into real, much more dangerous cadaver. But there are two parties who can benefit from this killing. As the guy who with Chubais and his friends from Harvard sold Russia assets, he incite such level of hate in Russia that even 1% of votes (that means strictly Moscow fifth column of neoliberal globalization) are way too much for him. Why Chris Johnson is so shy to name them is understandable and despicable. Even presstitutes should sometimes behave... Also analogies with Politkovskaya killing and Litvinenko killing are way to obvious to ignore. The USA now try to fight off the challenge that Putin version of state capitalism and Chinese version of "neoliberalism within communist dogma" present and rising tide of nationalism in Europe, which threatens the fundamental postulates of neoliberalism and the USA role as Kremlin of neoliberalism (if we consider this neoliberal globalization as replay of Communist International ideas on a new level). Ukrainian nationalists, while reasonably good at destruction of the economy, proved to be incapable to rule the country and face financial default. They can resort to desperate means to postpone the day of reckoning. Russian newspaper Vzglyad noted that version of the involvement of Chechens fighting in the Ukraine was one of the most plausible. "Izvestia" citing law enforcement sources reported that the organizer of the assassination could be the Ukrainian security services, and assassins - Chechen militants from the so-called battalion named Dzhokhar Dudayev, which fights in Ukraine against DND and LNR.
.
By the way, the commander of this detachment Adam Osmayev was previous held as defendant in the case of the preparation of the assassination of President Vladimir Putin. Perhaps the plan was to discredit the Russian government and destabilize the political situation in the country.
Mar 07, 2015 | The Guardian

Russian authorities have detained two men in connection with the murder of the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

The pair were named as Anzor Gubashev and Zaur Dadayev, both from the North Caucasus, a volatile region of southern Russia plagued by insurgency.

Nemtsov was deputy prime minister in the 1990s in the government of Boris Yeltsin.

... ... ...

Putin has called the killing a "provocation", vowing that everything would be done to convict those who committed a "vile and cynical murder".

[Mar 05, 2015] The demonisation of Russia risks paving the way for war by Seumas Milne

Lebensraum was the ideology behind Drang Nach Ost. This EU expension is just more modern version of the same. This describes what EU/Nato is currently up to.
Mar 05, 2015 | The Guardian

yoron_ -> AlanC 5 Mar 2015 18:36

"The U.S. and Russia keep hundreds of missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads on high-alert, ready to launch with only a few minutes warning. High-alert status permits the launch a retaliatory nuclear strike before the arrival of a perceived nuclear attack.

Early Warning Systems (EWS), high-alert nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, and nuclear command and control systems, all working together, provide the U.S. and Russia the capability to Launch-on-Warning.

When Early Warning Systems warn of an impending nuclear attack, then decisions have to be made very quickly because the flight times of the missiles are very short. 30 minutes or less are required for a nuclear-armed land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) to travel between the U.S. and Russia and vice versa; 15 minutes or less for a Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) to reach its target.

Thus, once the attack is detected, evaluated and passed up the chain of command, the U.S. and Russian president would have at most 12 minutes to make the decision to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike before the arrival of the perceived attack.

In the event an attack is believed to be real, the president must decide whether or not to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike before the arrival of the perceived attack is confirmed by nuclear detonations. To launch a retaliatory nuclear strike based only upon electronic information derived from Early Warning Systems is to Launch-on-Warning. If the perceived warning turns out to be false but a retaliatory nuclear strike has already been launched, then accidental nuclear war will have occurred.

The US and Russia are the only two nations believed to have the capacity to carry out Launch-on-Warning (they both have nuclear C3I systems connected to their nuclear weapon systems which enable them to carry out LoW). "

Arthur_Pendragon 5 Mar 2015 18:46

There isn't any invasion of Ukraine. There hasn't been an invasion. And there never will be an invasion.

The Crimea incident wasn't an invasion or annexation at all. It was the will of the people - a popular uprising just like the one in Kiev. Self-determination is a right according to the UN. Well, that right was upheld on March 16th 2014.

The problems in East Ukraine, also, are connected with a popular uprising of the peoples who live there. They have been attacked by their own government and many civilians have died because Kiev and its western backers did not have the balls to give those people what they initially and peacefully requested - a referendum.

The people of Crimea have acted in the true spirit of democracy. The people of Donetsk and Lugansk have acted within the true spirit of democracy. The only party that didnt act within this spirit was Kiev. There was no vote to remove Yanakovych. There was no vote to join Europe.

The west has turned black into white again.

codeinesunrise -> Skalla 5 Mar 2015 18:41

Your arrogance betrays your historical ignorance. These 'old powers' that you refer to largely have the Marshall Plan to thank for their economic prosperity - an injection of money that dwarfs current EU investment (and that's what it is, investment - many European companies benefit from these contracts) in Eastern Europe.

It is important to also remember that a lot of the 'wealth' these countries created often came at the expense of its colonies, which it raped mercilessly. At least our 'poor little' Eastern European countries don't have this shameful legacy upon our conscience.

You would also do well to remember that Britain itself was bailed out by the IMF in 1976 when it was little better than a failed state. Have a little humility, nothing is more embarrassing than misplaced, fatuous triumphalism.

str8shtr -> Dzomba 5 Mar 2015 20:00

1. And of course NATO couldn't say "Sorry, we already have an important agreement, we can not include countries from Warsaw pact"? And wasn't it told to Hungary and others that joining NATO is the shortest way to become a part of EU and west?

I wonder about complains of Russian invasion after WWII. So u preferred to be under Nazi Germans and soviet solders paid their lives in vain? Or Russian troops had to go home leaving everything for US? Yes, you suffered from soviet framework and communist system, but it wasn't only Russian framework, it was soviet. You couldn't choose any other ideology except communist? So nobody in Ussr could. Everyone was equal in that)) In soviet Russia the regime was much more strict then in Warsaw pact countries. In east European countries national languages were taught, they had their own party (communist, of course), their own leaders (communist of course), constitution (communist) etc and the union invested a lot in recovering after the war and developing it economies. It doesn't look like a devastating invasion.

2. Everything is on the contrary. The problem was that Russia did not give a damn about Ukraine after the fall of communism, coz it had it's own huge problems till 2001. Meanwhile Ukrainian nationalism was rising. Communists invented country "Ukraine" in the beginning of the 20th century and started nationalism there, but during USSR existed it was under control. Also US started to invest in changing Ukrainian loyalty to anti-Russian in early 90s, same as in east Europe ("red invasion", "you were their slaves", "they used you", "you suffered enough" and so on), it was a bit more difficult then in east Europe but time and nationalism of west Ukraine helped them much.

3. Yanukovich was a weak president. He was trying to balance between EU/US, Russia and ukranian billioners interests trying to trade the best conditions for his country (for his family first of all). He played to much in that game.

4. I didnt read the text of the Minsk agreement, but if the advisers have ranks and are a part of military forces don't they are a military help?..

gnorblitz 5 Mar 2015 19:58

This is the ultimate fantasy for these threads. The Right and the Left actually spilling blood over ideology instead of the typers here on Guardian Commentary spitting bile at one another. No matter what camp you're in or who you think is the good guy, war is always murder. And the people in this region are the ones suffering. The rest of you are just ghouls, looking on and stroking your political peckers.

BloodOnTheWattle Strangest 5 Mar 2015 19:56

I am not sure actually, you make it sound like President Obama is more than a match for President Putin. I mean, he has sanctioned the killing of 5000 people by killer drones during the last 4 years, created havoc in Ukraine, cheerlead and assisted NATO in what is today a cauldron of terrorism in Lybia, picked the wrong guys (yet again in Syria), institutionalized, torture and kidnapping and arm twisting of nations by not acting on the perpetrators of these criminal acts.

So there you have it apparently Obama makes Putin look like a choir boy.


irishmand sikaniska 5 Mar 2015 19:42

The demonization of Russia risks paving way for a credible military defence capability in Europe.

Which will be a waist of money and will only help to US MIC. Russia is not going to attack any of the european countries. It doesn't need it.

geedeesee psygone 5 Mar 2015 19:50

It speaks volumes when you keep dodging these opportunities to show the Russian Army invaded Ukraine. :-)

irishmand LesiaUkrainka 5 Mar 2015 19:37

Moscow's ambitions are an obvious threat to the whole world because the Kremlin's aggressive tactics may not be limited to just Ukraine. If the EU and NATO fail to stand up to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, later Russia will very possibly turn against the Baltic states and/or Moldova.

Why are you not working hard to bring the Ukrainian economy back from ruins? You should be doing that instead of trying to create more hatred and fear in people. Or you only good at jumping?

geedeesee LiamIrl 5 Mar 2015 19:47

Ha ha - the protesters were nowhere that many. The Guardian said about 30,000. The more thuggish the protestors became, the smaller the crowd. The ultra-nationalist thugs appeared to number about 5000. But as I said, it's called a Coup when a government is overthrown violently by a small group. The democratic way is through elections, which were scheduled for later in the year.

irishmand LesiaUkrainka 5 Mar 2015 19:45

The Russian plan is clear. They will seize more of Ukraine and depose the government in Kiev if not checked in time. Only the swift and immediate action of the West to train and equip the Ukrainian army can stop Putin's strategy to deconstruct the trans-Atlantic architecture, to deconstruct the post-cold war order. Like a cancer, Putin and his elites, must be cut out.

1. How are you going "check" Russia?
2. Russia already had a chance to take over Ukraine and didn't do it. I don't see why it will decide to do it in the future.
3. Train ukis so they could kill more people and more efficiently?You want more blood? More dead bodies?


geedeesee -> Kamil Piwko 5 Mar 2015 19:16

Of course, we watched many reports of Ukraine Army defecting and joining separatists. Kiev lost many military barracks, depots and arsenals. We know Ukraine Armed Forces totalled around 220,000 men (and maybe some women). The head of the Ukraine Navy went over. Elite forces went over. We read the reports; we saw the TV. Over and over again it happened. We know all this. Just type "Ukraine Army defects" into Google or your search engine. Also type in "Ukraine Army defectors" for more. This is why anti-democratic Kiev Regime of ultra-nationalists passed new draconian law to shoot soldiers who do not obey orders

BUT - you have replied to a call for evidence showing and proving this huge Russian Army has invaded Ukraine, and yet you don't take the opportunity to reply with the evidence. Instead you tell us what is already known.

Rossiya 5 Mar 2015 16:25

What a wonderful and truthful article. Surprised it was published in so anti-Russia country/times/hysteria.

Every evening the meteorologists remind us how the bad weather always comes from Siberia, it never comes from Scandinavia or North Pole for instance...

Simply the Anglo-Saxons are born with 'hate Russia' genes unfortunately.
Perhaps it is right time to press Reset button and return to the Stone Age (?!)

yoron_ -> AXWE08 5 Mar 2015 17:15

AXWE. There are no clean hands in this. It's about geopolitical power and who will exploit what. Putins Russia is definitely no cleaner than USA, both though are superpowers, both have nuclear missiles, some of them modernised recently, directed at Stockholm some minutes away, with one of those superpowers calling itself democratic, making its moves at another continent.

No clean hands, and those that will lose to this stupidity are firstly Europeans, secondly Americans.

Pavel Prokofiev -> Roguing 5 Mar 2015 17:13

Ukraine was a colony of Russia?? What?? So, Russia was ruled by Georgian Stalin, by Ukraininan Khrushev and Brezhnev from Moldau, i.e. people from colonies?

We will discuss you question once a person of indian origin will become a king of the UK.

ID1439675 -> Evgeny Skorobogatko 5 Mar 2015 17:12

But yeah, the few instructors of another country is a major violation.

Although it's hard to disagree with much of what you have to say, you are incorrect on this point. The presence of British and US instructors does not violate the Minsk2 package of measures for two reasons. First, by virtue of the Budapest memorandum the US and the UK are both guarantors of Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty. That means, amongst other things, they are obliged to provide whatever support is deemed necessary to restore Ukrainian territorial integrity when it is adjudged to have been breached. Although not parties to the Minsk2 agreement it could be argued that by sending instructors the US and British are violating the UNSC resolutuon which amongst other things urged all parties to observe the Minsk2 package. However, a UNSC resolution cannot override an existing treaty obligation or agreement unless the resolution specifically allows for that. Secondly, were this matter taken before a court for adjudication the most likely judgement would be that the Minsk2 reference to the removal of foreign troops relates primarily to the disputed area and to Ukraine's demand during the agreement's formulation that Russian troops leave Ukrainian territory. It was never intended to refer to instructors from other countries invited in by the Ukrainian government to train its troops in areas well away from the line of contact and the disputed area.

Of course all this a moot point since neither the Russian Federation nor its proxies have fulfilled their obligations since the agreement was signed. Minsk2 is a convenient fiction for all but those who are still being killed, maimed and made homeless by the fighting. Those who believe otherwise should consult the OSCE sitreps and the Ukrainian casualty announcements (which are anyway widely believe to be understating the true figure). The hardcore fighting will resume when the Russian proxy army has reorganised its forces in preparation for the next part of its offensive - the capture of Mariupol, further territorial gains in the Donbas region and the capture of Kharkiv.

Evgeny Skorobogatko -> Pavel Prokofiev 5 Mar 2015 17:12

1) You changed topic from neo-nazis to something else. You lost.
To your other topic of anti-Russia rhetoric - what kind of rhetoric would you expect vis-a-vis an invading nation? Pro-invasion? The rest is unclear and unsubstantiated narrative that I can hardly understand. Can you try to first at least make a statement before you try to prove it?
2) Agreed, and Putin is one of those enemies, he's a dictator.
3) If only were you able to quote an article from the Minsk-2 agreement that allowed killing the army inside the self-defined encirclement past the start date.
4) both statements flat out lies. Prove them. Some of the many politicians participating in Maidan (incl. Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk) got a lot of popular vote in the coming general elections. Also, no one is forcing Ukraine into NATO (even if Ukraine wholeheartedly wanted that, it's like a ~10-year journey)
4') Another lie, no one is marching into any cities which haven't been invaded by the Russian army, special forces and paramilitary fighters.
5) See 4'. Didn't get the rest of the post re. population growth, not relevant to Russian invasion
6) Thanks for sharing your dreams.

wheresmewashboard -> Smileyosborne12 5 Mar 2015 17:05

Russians generally have such confidence in Putin that they believe that however difficult the problems may be that their president will find a way to overcome them.

I don't doubt that this is true, but the point that I was making is that if the Russian economy ends up suffering terribly due to the sanctions, both as they are now and how they may increase, then it is inconceivable that over time the Russian people wouldn't start to think that there are other options.

The admiration for Putin is mostly as a result of the fact that he brought stability to Russia. The force of his personality is not to be taken for granted I admit, but it is relatively superficial compared to the stability he and Medvedev have brought. If, however, this stability is lost, and Russia enters a protracted period of economic slump, or potentially worse, then his approval ratings, over time will surely begin to collapse. This has happened in every example of economic calamity within a democracy in history. Admittedly, it may take longer in Russia than in most Western countries, but to think that the Russian people will continue to support Putin regardless of the depths of economic hardship and for how long it goes on for is naive, to say the least. Russian people may well be stoical, but they are not masochists.

The potential problem from Putin's point of view, is that his actions in Ukraine are isolating him and therefore his country. The SEC rules the world of financial regulation, like it or not. No foreign banks / financial institutions will deal with Russian banks or businesses whilst they remain persona non grata with the SEC. Russia's reserves will see them right for a while longer but not forever. The new structure of the world financial system places a lot of power in the hands of American regulators, and this will cause all manner of problems for those who are blacklisted. Russia cannot hope to win in an economic battle with America.

Ukraine is a regional dispute in America's eyes. They are probably not likely to get involved in a proxy war with Russia. The damage they can do to Putin economically is enough.

Pavel Prokofiev -> Evgeny Skorobogatko 5 Mar 2015 16:48

To 1) What for Svoboda is needed, if Yatzenyk and Poroshenko have taken its role with "Heil Ukraine!" and full anti-Russian rhetoric. Who would vote for Tyagnibok if they see that he is not tolerated by the Europe and U? If Europe and US would make clear that they do not support violence of nazi on Maidan - there would be no nazi coup. If Europe and US would not support killings of civilians there would be civil war. Even Venediktov warned Ukrainians that "tituschkas" and "policemen" are also citizens and have rights and own views, but very well educated journalists ignored and ignore this. One can got an impression that such journalists represent the common view, but the truth is that they are in a minority. The truth is that the durty work including fighting with Kalashnikovs is done by other type of people. It is possible to ignore the reality for some time, but one day there will be a hard confrontation with it.

2) Murder of Nemtsov benefits only enemies of Russia.

3) Debaltsevo is just one of the cases of confrontation with reality. Poroshenko believed that there was no encirclement - reality proved to be different.

4) NATO expansion is ok, but why to use nationalistic minority (who could not get even 5% of votes) to make a coup and force a country into NATO?

4') Poroshenko promised that there would be no civil war and any fighting would end within hour after his election - same lies as all stories and policy itself in the current Ukraine. Uncontrolled bataillons are marching into your city - your action? This what people in Eastern Ukraine were doing. Trying to protect themselves from uncontrolled Nazi battalions.

5) Military solution?? Russia will pay high price? But it is the population in Eastern Ukraine, who disagree with Kyiw policy - they are the driving force. If do not want that some Nazi battalions are marching on their streets, you want to force them at any price? The question is, what price will then pay the Ukrainian people on both sides of the conflict, to make Russia to pay high price? This is the main question. The result will be the following: by birthrates Ukraine with 40 million people is now on the same level as Somalia with population of 10 million. During Soviet times each year almost one million people were born in Ukraine, now it is about 400 thousand. 60 years ago population of Ukraine was equal to population of Nigeria or Pakistan (was 1 to 1). Today in Nigeria or Parkistan each year are born 10 to 20 times more children. In Nigeria alone are born more children than in entire EU+Ukraine. At the end of the day we have now Ukraine and Russian and Europe with 30% population of pensioners, and in other countries we see for 40 years now non-stop demographic revolution. Western values against family values? Do you see, who will be the winner? Certainly not Russians, Ukrainians or Europeans.

6) Neutrality? No Neutrality but united and mutualy beneficial block from Roca to Dezhnev.

MysticMegsy -> Tonterias 5 Mar 2015 16:33

US bases are a relic of the cold war - they are of absolutely no strategic importance now - how could they be without tanks?

Both the US and Russia will have a large number of SLBMs parked off the coast of the other's country, so whining about bases and NATO encroachment in Europe is irrelevant. NATO and Russia could wipe out each other's cities regardless of how many bases they have, no matter how close to the other's border.
This argument that Putin 'feels threatened' by Ukraine joining the EU is a total smokescreen to justify his own expansionist agenda (to secure power at home), when the real danger lurks under the Barents Sea regardless.

nnedjo -> richard1 5 Mar 2015 16:28

Ukraine didn't want to be a part of Putin's Eurasian Union which triggered Russian invasion Russian Eurasian Union is a non starter without Ukraine, and Putin knows it.

Read what former Ukrainian prime minister says on this subject:

Top EU officials, rather than Russia, threatened Ukraine with a coup d'état if Kiev refused to sign an association agreement in 2013, Nikolay Azarov, Ukraine's former prime minister, said.

"I've never heard neither Putin nor Medvedev saying that if you sign an agreement with the EU, you'll have a different government. But I've heard [EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy, Stefan] Fule, repeatedly saying that if you don't sign then the other government will sign it," Azarov said at the presentation of his book 'Ukraine at a crossroads. Prime Minister's notes' in Moscow.

EugeneGur 5 Mar 2015 16:27

The great writer Anton Chekhov wrote a short story "A letter to a learned neighbor ". The story has a personage whose favorite argument was: "It cannot be because it can never be". A lot of people commenting here strongly remind me of that personage. No amount of evidence or logic can possibly convince them of anything they prefer not to see.
Example:
Crimea referendum was under the gunpoint. You can point them to multiple perfectly anti-Russian sources showing that Crimeans voted not only willingly but happily - not, it was annexation, referendum illegal (because we say so), Crimea is occupied, and so on.

One question. If Crimea is occupied, and the population was forced to vote to join Russia, how come the West sanctions Crimea? Just recently the US said Crimea will be under sanctions until it returns to Ukraine. Does it make any sense to punish occupied people for something they had no control over?

I don't think even the US is that stupid. I think they know perfectly well that Crimea is heavily pro-Russian; they knew it before the referendum, after the referendum, and they know it now. They are punishing Crimeans precisely for that: for their desire to reunite with Russia, a.k.a. self-determination. A round of applause for our "democratic leader of the free world", please.


OldStickie Wolfsz 5 Mar 2015 16:16

Lebensraum was a component of Drang Nach Ost which describes what Nato is currently up to.

BorninUkraine -> richard1 5 Mar 2015 16:14

Because it's not Russians, it's the people of Donbass fighting for their freedom.

Before you ask, I grew up in Lugansk, I have lots of friends and relatives in Donbass. Every one of them knows that their cities are shelled and women and children are routinely killed by Kiev Nazis.

BunglyPete

A letter published from a NATO representative in the Guardian today disputes this articles assertions about NATO expansion

In an interview published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on 15 October 2014, former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev said: "The topic of 'Nato expansion' was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years." As the man to whom the promise is said to have been given, his words carry weight.

This conviently misses out the rest of the interview

Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO's military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker's statement, mentioned in your question, was made in that context. Kohl and Genscher talked about it.

"Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled. The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. ...

"The decision for the US and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed."

http://m.rbth.co.uk/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_am_against_all_walls_40673.html

While there was no written agreement the implication was that the US wouldnt take advantage,

Matlock recalled that Baker began his argument saying something like, "Assuming there is no expansion of NATO jurisdiction to the East, not one inch, what would you prefer, a Germany embedded in NATO, or one that can go independently in any direction it chooses." [emphasis added]

The implication was that Germany might just opt to acquire nuclear weapons, were it not anchored in NATO. Gorbachev answered that he took Baker's argument seriously, and wasted little time in agreeing to the deal.

Ambassador Matlock, one of the most widely respected experts on Russia, told me "the language used was absolute, and the entire negotiation was in the framework of a general agreement that there would be no use of force by the Soviets and no 'taking advantage' by the U.S."

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/15/how-nato-jabs-russia-on-ukraine/

Barry Klinger

I agree that there's been a lot of knee-jerk propaganda against Russia, and that NATO should not have expanded into the former USSR, and that arming Ukraine is probably a bad idea. But...

Last spring President Putin said that the "green men" in unmarked green uniforms were not Russian soldiers. Then a few weeks later he admitted that they were. Now he says Russia is not helping Ukraine... except for some volunteers going on their own initiative. Press reports of Russian hardware rolling into Ukraine, circumstantial evidence of war-fighting capability surprising for a revolt that just started months ago... Balance of forces have consistently looked to be in rebels favor, especially if they have Russia literally at their back. So who is more likely to be breaking the cease-fire, the ones who stand to gain or the ones who stand to lose?

To me, all this points to Russian aggression to shrink the independence of neighboring countries, independence that the US foolishly encouraged to be too aggressive. It looks like Russia started and continues to stoke the war in Eastern Ukraine, which is not a minor offense compared to any complicity US had in unrest in Kiev last year.

PlatonKuzin -> Barry Klinger

I guess that the most appropriate answer to all the questions you have raised in your post are the words said more than 130 years ago by genious German politician Otto von Bismarck. They refer to the economic relations with Russia but the general principles stated there are universal and absolutely every word in it is of great significance. Please, read carefully what he said:

Do not expect that once taken advantage of Russia's weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russians always come for their money. And when they come – they will not rely on the Jesuit agreement you signed, that supposedly justify your actions. They are not worth the paper it is written. Therefore, with the Russians you should use fair play or no play.

Erik Lyng

Thank you. Is about time someone actually talked about this.

BorninUkraine -> Erik Lyng

Yes, it's the first sensible and balanced comment from the Guardian staff in a long time. It shows that not everyone in the media is blind (or paid enough to play blind). Thank you, Seumas Milne!

PlatonKuzin

I hope that shifting to a more balanced coverage of developments in Ukraine and Russia is caused both by the author's commitment to truth and change of the editorial policy in favor of truth.

PlatonKuzin

This is the first article written by a Western author in which he bona fide tries to provide the audience with a balanced and unbiased view on what happens in Ukraine, Russia and relations between Russia and the West. Bravo, Mr. Milne. For the first time ever I personally agree with major author's conclusions and ideas. A rare case for me with respect to the Guardian publications.

EugeneGur

Russia had been compliant with the West for far too long. And look where it got it? The fault line was, of course, the bombing of Yugoslavia. That was the first time Yeltsin opened his mouth and objected to anything the West did. Overnight he was transformed in the Western press from the glorious Russian leader into incompetent drunkard, which he undoubtedly was. Russians have been weary of NATO ever since.

That NATO operation is justified by many that it stopped genocide. Pardon me, but NATO killed people in Belgrade that weren't engaged in any genocide. It's like targeting civilians in a war or killing hostages. Both could be quite effective in a military or terrorist operation. But we wouldn't condone them, would we?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I can't recall a single defensive operation by NATO, although plenty of offensive ones. Beauty is as beauty does, isn't it?

Demi Boone

Putin is merely reacting to NATO expansionism that began with the Administration of Bill Clinton in 1993. He broke the promise of George Bush (I) who said he would not encroach on the boarders of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union by bringing Poland into NATO and arming them with missiles.

Then Clinton began talking about bringing in other countries as well as Ukraine. This was all done seeking little or no advice from experienced High ranking US Foreign Policy advisers and after it was done he received much criticism for doing it because it infuriated and alienated Russia's Western oriented politicians.

if NATO pushes into Ukraine then Putin will push back

this is what has been occurring (simmering) since the time of Clinton what the US is trying to tell the world is

if Putin pushes into Ukraine then NATO will push back

they are two completely different arguments......research the topic historically.

irishmand -> richard1

He's alienated Ukraine, EU and USA and strengthened NATO, meanwhile unleashing strong nationalist forces in Russia. He cannot win in Ukraine and if he's seen to loose Ukraine, in the Russian mind, (inevitable) these forces are going to "come for him" and his billions.

US/EU alienated Russia by sponsoring a nazi driven coup in Kiev and unleashing a wild russophobic propaganda campaign.

bokhar

Peace in Russia (see Nemtsov murder on the Kremlin steps), Ukraine and its neighbouring countries will only occur when the zombies who enable Putin and his cronies are woken from their slumber and realize how much Putin has stolen from the Russian state and how many innocent people he has killed (including many Russians - see Donbass, Moscow apartment bombings, Georgia).

SEUMUS WAKE UP! If you care about Russia and its future you should recognize that Putin is bad for Russia - he has done nothing but suppress and kill political opposition, independent media, all the while maintaining an ever tightening noose around the necks of ordinary Russian citizens.

EugeneGur -> bokhar

Somehow, ordinary Russia citizens disagree with this appraisal - but, of course, you know better, being an enlightened European as opposed to them zombies. Do you people even read what you've written before you post or does it come straight from the heart?

irishmand -> bokhar

Peace in Russia (see Nemtsov murder on the Kremlin steps), Ukraine and its neighbouring countries will only occur when the zombies who enable Putin and his cronies are woken from their slumber and realize how much Putin has stolen from the Russian state and how many innocent people he has killed (including many Russians - see Donbass, Moscow apartment bombings, Georgia).

How much? Give us numbers and maybe we will believe you. Or maybe we won't. Look how many people US/EU killed, are they sorry?

NaMorris

But we want war. It's our not so secret desire. We want to live, not watch, our favorite action and war movies. In war everyone can be a hero. In war there are only good and evil, nothing in between, no middle men. War is blissful simplicity. This is why we pave the way for war.

Eaglesson

Victoria Nuland just few days ago smiling shaking hands with Andriy Parubiy the same founder of Ukrainian Social National Party and also the founder of Joseph Goebbels Institute. The white supremacist was invited in US and he came back with promises that Pentagon will supply them with weapons very soon (as he declared)
Some people have no shame!!

SirHenryRawlins -> Eaglesson

Nuland is a neoconservative. Birds of a feather Parubiy and Nuland.

Danish5666 -> Hucker

"have a right as independent countries to choose who they see as their friends"

Russia is rank dilettantes when compared to the US. Covert United States foreign regime
change actions:

1949 Syrian coup d'état
1953 Iranian coup d'état
1954 Guatemalan coup d'état
1959 Tibetan uprising
1961 Cuba, Bay of Pigs Invasion
1963 South Vietnamese coup
1964 Brazilian coup d'état
1973 Chilean coup d'état
1976 Argentine coup d'état
1979–89 Afghanistan, Operation Cyclone
1980 Turkish coup d'état
1981–87 Nicaragua, Contras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions

Smileyosborne12

Come ON the red arrows! I am an unashamed supporter of Vladimir Putin.

When one realises the severe problems,financial,military,politically,ecumenically and territorially the man faced when he took over I have a lot of time for him.Firstly he was preceded by a succession of Premiers who generally in succession just served to weaken the country.

Lenin,Stalin,Khruschev,Pavlov, Kosygin and the drunken megalomaniac Yeltsin, left Russia as weak as at any time in its modern history. Putin gave up the Muslim states which had weakened Russia since the days of Stalin and finally came to an understanding with Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya the most militant of them all. In spite of the best attempts of the UN,Nato, President Obama,Angela Merkel,David Cameron and Francois Hollande to ruffle and destabilise him he has almost twice the approval rating of any of them and survived a litany of attempts to tie him to murders of his "opponents" without any concrete evidence brought against him. Pretty good record I would suggest.

willpodmore

Matthew Parris wrote in The Times ('It's time we washed our hands of Ukraine', 28 February, p. 21) "Ukraine? With an inward groan, I write again what I wrote about Saddam's Iraq, about Gaddafi's Libya and about Assad's Syria. Intervention almost always makes things worse."

adoeli -> no_ref

Gas disputes are resolved in an international court of arbitration. Head of the Energy Commission of the European Union recognized the guilt of Ukraine in non-payment of supplies. Kiev just doesn't it, till won't come the Z-day. Russia itself depends on the supply of gas through Ukraine. The pipe goes through Ukraine to Europe. Moscow concerns about the reputation of the honest supplier. Moscow's role as an unscrupulous suppliers is profitable for US. Ukraine, that had become a puppet of the United States, is capable for any provocation. Moscow was glad to be rid of such an intermediary that it did in fact, has planned a new gas pipeline project with Turkey. Now are you happy? Neither Ukraine nor Bulgaria nor the other will depend on Russian gas supplies. What are the problems?

SHappens -> jezzam

Russia did not make a fuss on all those Eastern countries joining NATO even if, of course, it might not pleased them. The red line was passed with Ukraine. Crimea in particular.

In the past deals were made, promises were made, tacit agreements if you will and everybody was coping. But when the US decided to come and play in Russia's backyard with the intend to literally rob Ukraine to threat Russia, well Putin said stop. Now the US dont want to listen thus the assault on everything Russian through the conciliatory mass media.

If you think about it all objectively you can only agree that without the US meddling, Ukraine would have sorted its differences already.

ToddPalant -> Andrew Baldwin

Fight for reform? With the dissolution of the USSR Yeltsin had a tabula rasa. They could start from the beginning by founding a truly democratic Russia. Unfortunately Mr. Nemtsov presided, along with other western proteges, over the looting of the Russian public wealth, virtually delivering it in the hands of the "chosen" few. Nemtsov although pro western, was no reformer. In his later years he was, to put it simplistically, a repeater of Mrs. Nuland's and her husband's aggressive narrative (the "f**k soft politics, bring in the troops" kinna thingy )

jezzam -> SHappens

No. I still don't get it. If Russia did not make a fuss about all the other countries joining NATO, why make a fuss about Ukraine?

What does your statement that the US "intend to literally rob Ukraine to threat Russia," mean? In what way were the US intending to rob Ukraine? In what way would this have threatened Russia?

"without the US meddling, Ukraine would have sorted its differences already". I find it hard to agree with this statement as it is again difficult to understand. Do you mean that by now Putin would have imposed his will?

SHappens -> jezzam

I'll try to make it short, you know I can be prolific.

Crimea base lease, Fuck the EU coup using Maiden revolt, installation of a government chosen by her in Kiev.

Rob resources, gas Biden, cereals Monsanto, install NATO, control Russia and why not annihilate it + cheap human labour flooding in Germany and the EU for a more low leverage of EU wages.

By now there would have been the regular vote as planned in May 2014.

gnorblitz

This is Kiev and Moscow using centuries old blood feuds and nationalist fervor in a struggle over territory and its concomitant resources, infrastructure, tax revenue and political power. Washington is fueling it in order to widen its sphere of influence in the region, sell arms, entrench political back home and further contain Russia politically and economically. All three governments have the blood of the people in the region on their hands.

gnorblitz -> gnorblitz

That should read entrenching political support back home. Since the Second World War, standing up to Russia is guaranteed political currency in the U.S.

ToddPalant -> gnorblitz

If it were simply an isolated power play on the part of the US, although atrocious, it would not be as threatening as it is now. It seems like a culmination of a plan hatched in the late 40's.

It also looks like an act of desperation as the US having lost its economic "power house" status relies solely on its still impressive war machine, certainly a policy that has an expiry date.

When the dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US will have reached the point of no return. All three have blood on their hands, true. But the instigator, the accessory before the fact, is draped in stars and stripes

EugeneGur

A reasonable article in the Guardian? Sounds like an oxymoron. Someone must be sick on the editorial board to allow this.

The alternative is a negotiated settlement which guarantees Ukraine's neutrality, pluralism and regional autonomy. It may well be too late for that.

This was an alternative more than a year ago but it is no longer on the table. Under no circumstances Donbass will be a part of the present day Ukraine no matter how many sanctions are applied to Russia. Besides, the US wants a conflict with Russia, which means Kiev will fight on. What the US will do when Kiev gets its ass kicked for the third time, which will undoubtedly happen, I don't know. But everything they've done so far is bringing us all closer to the real possibility of a war.

jezzam -> EugeneGur

If what you say is true, it is obvious what will happen. E. Ukraine will effectively become part of Russia. Russia and its ill-gotten gains will be isolated culturally and economically and left to stew in their own juice. Is it worth it just to grab a useless piece of devastated territory?

EugeneGur -> jezzam

What I always admire is the "humanitarian" zeal of out western friends. They lecture us relentlessly on human right, European values, etc, but when it come to opposing Russia, all humanitarian concerns disappear like the smoke they really are.

This "useless piece of devastated territory" is populated by 8 millions of human beings, and it wasn't devastated by itself but by our Ukrainian brothers that claimed for some mysterious reason that land for itself. Russia didn't grab anything - Russia is helping these people to survive. Got something against it?

StanislavCh -> jezzam

Russia and its ill-gotten gains will be isolated culturally and economically

It's the most amazing part of Western narrative. Isolated from whom ? The whole world wants to cooperate with Russia , does it and will continue. If US and EU do not - fine, nobody cares , just piss off, but it's so ridiculous to call it isolation!

bananasandsocks

There was no democratic outcome ebcause there was no democratic vote.

There was a vote. And objective evidence from polling indicates that Crimeans overwhelmingly consider it free and fair. So there is democratic confirmation of its validity.

No option to vote for the status quo.

According to objective data, Crimeans don't care.

No independent oversight of vote counting.

According to objective data, Crimeans don't care.

No campaigning allowed for the Ukrainian side.

According to objective data, Crimeans don't care.

Voters intimidated by masked armed thugs.

Nonsense. But according to objective data, Crimeans don't care.

Roguing -> bananasandsocks

Do non-Russian populations currently living in Russia have the right to transfer sovereignty of their territory from Moscow to another state?

[Mar 05, 2015] Nuland ensconced in neocon camp who believes in noble lie

From comments: "Neo-con" is a polite term for "Neo-Nazi". They are all Nazi sympathizers - Nueland, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Kagan, Kristol, Abrams, Woolsey, Armitage, Zoellick, Bennett, as well as the Bush family - and all should be tried, convicted and hung as such for their crimes against humanity. But even they take their orders from the central bankers who own the Federal Reserve, IMF, and ECB.
Mar 05, 2015 | rt.com

Victoria Nuland's anti-Russian rhetoric comes from the neocon camp of US politics, seeking to stir the Ukraine crisis, thrilled by the prospect of defense industry expansion and more arms sales, Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Peace Institute told RT.

RT: World leaders and international monitors agree the situation in Ukraine is generally improving. Why are we still witnessing aggressive rhetoric from some US officials?

Daniel McAdams: Because the US does not want peace to break out. The US is determined to see its project through. But unfortunately like all of its regime change projects this one is failing miserably. Victoria Nuland completely disregards the role of the US in starting the conflict in Ukraine. She completely glosses over the fact that the army supported by Kiev has been bombarding Eastern Ukraine, as if these independent fighters in the east are killing themselves and their own people. Victoria Nuland was an aid to Dick Cheney; she is firmly ensconced in the neocon camp. The neocons believe very strongly in lying, the noble lie… They lied us into the war in Iraq; they are lying now about Ukraine. Lying is what the neocons do.

RT: Nuland listed a lot of hostile actions by Russia without providing any reliable proof. Do you think she can she be challenged on these topics?

DM: Maybe she is right but the US hasn't provided one piece of proof, except for Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt's Rorschach tests he passes off as a satellite photo. Maybe they are true but we have to present some evidence because we've seen now the neocons have lied us into the war. This is much more serious than the attack on small Iraq. This has the potential for a global nuclear war. So I think they should be held to a higher level of scrutiny. Thus far they have not provided any. We do know however that the US is providing military aid. As the matter of fact this week hundreds of American troops are arriving in Ukraine. Why is that not an escalation? Why is it only an escalation when the opponents of the US government are involved?

RT: How probable is that the Western nations ship lethal aid to Ukraine?

DM: It is interesting because Victoria Nuland this week spent some time with Andriy Parubiy, one of the founders of the fascist party in Ukraine and I believe one of the founders of the Joseph Goebbels Institute. She met with him this week and had a photo taken with him. He came back to Ukraine and assured his comrades that the US will provide additional, non-lethal weapons - whatever that means - and felt pretty strongly that they would provide lethal weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey has been urging the US government to provide lethal weapons as has the new US defense secretary [Ashton Carter], both of whom come from the military industrial complex which is thrilled by prospect of a lot more arms to be sold.

RT: Nuland has said the State Department is in talks with EU leaders for another round of sanctions on Russia. Do you think the EU will agree?

DM: I think they will be pressured into agreeing. It is interesting that Nuland said that the new Rada, the new Ukrainian parliament, in this first four months has been a hive of activity. I was just watching some videos from the fights in the Ukrainian parliament. So that was one bit of unintentional humor probably in her speech. It looks like a fight club over there.

Daniel McAdams is Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He served as foreign affairs advisor to US Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) for 12 years.

Frank Wolstencroft

Victoria Nuland was appointed as an assistant US Secretary of State by none other than Killary Klinton.

Armand Geddon

Tony Blair

May be europe should start financing mexico to retrieve its stolen land from the us. Texas , california & new mexico.more...

There no need. Obama and our corrupt Congress have already opened the border for the illegals to just walk right in and take it!

"Neo-con" is a polite term for "Neo-Nazi". They are all Nazi sympathizers - Nueland, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Kagan, Kristol, Abrams, Woolsey, Armitage, Zoellick, Bennett, as well as the Bush family - and all should be tried, convicted and hung as such for their crimes against humanity. But even they take their orders from the central bankers who own the Federal Reserve, IMF, and ECB.

ifigeniaa

She is responsible for the thousands of death in eastern Ukraine.

Tony Blair

May be europe should start financing mexico to retrieve its stolen land from the us.Texas , california & new mexico. These jews in the white house like victoria newlandberg, john kerrberg & the rest of them look like ugly vultures sitting on the branches of a dead tree.

Brigitte Meier

Nulands lies are only a very complicated way of saying that the US policy in Ukraine failed. It was based on the assumption that the Ukraine army would make short shrift with the rebels. When that didn't work there really wasn't any plan B. That all what Nuland says is lies is already confirmed with the false photos Kiev sent to the US Congress of Russian tanks - which turned out to have been photographed in Georgia. "Who cares, its the only picture we've got of them Russian tanks". Good enough to admit under cover that Kiev lost the war and with it the US lost its policy goal. Russia isn't faltering despite the sanctions. Putin has a 86% positive rating. And Kiev is bankrupt and really can't move anymore. Time for the US to think of getting Ukraine's riches and split until more neo-Nazis can be trained in Poland to destabilize both the EU and Ukraine which hopefully will then be enough to throw Russia into turmoil too.

Nuland was funny: the destruction caused by the rebels in Donbas - not the destruction caused by the Ukraine army who attacked Donbas! The rebels destroyed the airport - but the Ukraine army did most of the destruction to make the airport unusable for the rebels. Now they have to go fight for Mariupol - I'm sure the Ukraine army wants to destroy the port there too so as not to leave it for use by the rebels. And Nuland can then describe it all again in inversions. What she was really saying is that the Ukraine army caused abhorrent devastation, specifically of residential areas - in the winter - to prevent the population of Donbas from staying in the Donbas. Clearly, an action of ethnic cleansing as the Israelis do in Palestine. it is also clear that the Congress understood that and is dismayed. It destroys the image of the US as the great bringer of democracy and freedom - especially with the bankruptcy, the cut in payments on all levels and hyperinflation of 272%. Genuine freedom to starve. And Kerry still wants to believe that the problem is just that the US isn't spending enough on PR! Does he really think that the Russians will look at US PR rather than at the reality in Donbas and Kiev? Why would any Russian still believe in the positive intentions and influence of the US? At best, people will make fun of the US ingenuity to invent PR.

[Mar 05, 2015] We are guilty by the mere fact that they want to eat by Anatoly Wasserman

This article written before Russian Presidential election of 2012 proved to be prophetic...
Feb 20, 2012 | smena.ru

Legendary scholar telling our readers why for the USA is very profitable to destabilize the situation in Russia

The famous scholar Anatoly Wasserman, considered by many to be the most intelligent person in Russia. When the great Onotole, as he was nicknamed Internet users, involved in intellectual games, it seems that he knows everything. The Wasserman - diploma in physics, for many years he worked as a programmer, but now he defines his occupation as "political consultant". However, he stated that he does not advise individuals for a long time, now he just publicly expresses his views on Russian politics.

The opposition showed its incompetence

Q: Anatoly Alexandrovich whether Russia today faces the threat of the "orange revolution"? Is it possible we have a repetition of what happened in Ukraine or in Georgia?

A: Possible. And for a very simple reason. Because the Russian government is quite democratic. The technology of color revolutions was described in the quite popular book "From dictatorship to democracy". by an Evangelist of "color revolutions" Gene Sharp. Although in reality, the recipes contained in this book are, on the contrary, directly on conversion of the country from democracy to dictatorship. Because the dictatorship simply will not allow to use these recipes. But for the authorities who respond to the opinion of the people, it is easy to convince that the people wants "regime change". We all know that, for example, the recent attempt in Belarus attempt to carry out a coup using color revolution templates failed. But now this is a new situation when those strategies became well known and, in my opinion, it does not indicate the non-democratic nature of the Lukashenka regime, but simply the fact that Belarusian authorities were well aware of the template and possible price Belarussian people will pay in case of success... Hope that the Russian government is not only democratic, but also sensible. It is important not to confuse the artificial paid protestors created using Sharp's recipes e and the real will of the people...

Q: If they are artificial paid protestors created using recipes by Sharp, why our so called non-systemic opposition, managed to conduct large meetings - such as the meeting on Bolotnaya square and Sakharov Avenue in Moscow?

A: Yes, paradoxically, they were able to. Paradoxically because our opposition is led by former Yeltsin functionaries, people, who already convincingly had proven their incompetence during those days, when they were in power. By the way, the main players in the "orange" color revolution in Ukraine, too, belong to this category. They try to mobilize supporters to overthrow the current regime, as the backdoor path to power, which they can not get by legitimate, democratic means via elections. And they can rely of Western financial and organizational support. That's why such a practice has become quite popular and reasonably successful. Western support is the key.

Q: You said "I do not exclude high-profile crimes". Will we have a new wave of protests or, on the contrary, it will gradually fade? Does the opposition, in your opinion, prepared any surprises?

A: After the March 4 presidential election the meeting activity will probably rise. I do not exclude that at this time there could be the high-profile crimes - like the murder on 7 October 2006 journalist Anna Stepanovna Mazepa, better known by the name of the husband as Politkovskaya. She was killed on the birthday of Putin, as a kind of hidden message, a "birthday present" so to speak. Today in the opposition movement there a lot of people whose death will provide the anti-state movement powerful advertising. I would name, for example, Boris Nemtsov. And I would seriously recommend to him either to go abroad or to seek shelter in one of the domestic prison several days before the elections. Better a few days to spend in prison, than to be in the grave... There are a lot of "spent" politicians in the opposition, people who as dead are more useful for the opposition then alive... But even if high-profile crimes will not materialize, I think the organizers of rallies will still try to find some new moves for the mobilization of the masses, even acting outside the recipes be Gene Sharp. There are some "very creative" people in opposition, no doubt about that.

But at the same time, the opposition is so heterogeneous, its leaders so much hate each other that I wonder how they still manage to meet on the same square...

Yes, the leaders of the protest movement are bitterly fighting among themselves and in the near future will not discontinue those internal fights. But this is the usual state of our (and not only our) opposition movement. Nothing new here. and that will not suppress the protest activity of ordinary citizens. Mass consciousness rarely see apparent contradictions in the behavior of their idols. There are General laws of mass psychology: the crowd at the meeting is behaving stupider than the stupidest person among the participants of the meeting.

[Mar 04, 2015] Russia's actions in Ukraine conflict an 'invasion', says US official US news by Alan Yuhas

The United States elite no longer bothers about limiting the conflict after color revolution and avioding civil war. It puts its cards on the table without fear and doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critics inside or outside the country, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a leash, the pathetic and supine Great Britain. (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html.)
Quote: "Let's be clear; "US interests" aren't the interests of the American people, either. They're the interests of military careerists and contractors hoping to profit from yet another conflict. "
Mar 04, 2015 | The Guardian

Comment by Victoria Nusland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, might be the first time a senior official has used the term publicly

piper909 -> Bud Peart 4 Mar 2015 22:08

Mineral resources, industrial development, lots of fertile cropland, and proximity to the Black Sea and Near East are all reasons enough for the Ukraine to be a prize for any conqueror, from the days when it was the breadbasket of the Athenian Empire to the Second World War when Hitler's lust for it caused him to overreach his armies' capacities in 1941 and 1942 (and probably saved Moscow and/or Leningrad from capture).

Now it's the Americans and NATO who want to control this territory, and complete the encirclement of Russia.

piper909 4 Mar 2015 22:00

This woman is an utter fraud. She's been actively promoting an agenda to orchestrate and control the entire Ukrainian revolution and aftermath. She is a paid tool of the not-so-secret US neo-con policy of encircling Russia with NATO puppets and doing anything possible to weaken Russia's ability to block American hegemonic interests or to court European allies. She has absolutely no credibility in this matter as any kind of spokesperson except as a known agent of the US state dept. and CIA if her tongue were any more forked it could be laid on the table next to a knife and spoon.

irishmand 4 Mar 2015 21:55

This is what Russians feel about all this (english subtitles available):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T65SwzHAbes

AlexPeace 4 Mar 2015 21:52

Russia set troops, Russia sent troops... Where are then Russian POWs? Ukraine failed to produce a single one for the entire year! All proofs of Russian involvement are coming from Facebook and other similar sources.

US claimed that they have proofs, but would not show them because they are secret... How good is that? But still repeating their mantras-good only for complete f..wits

Chirographer -> Bob Vavich 4 Mar 2015 21:51

What about the Israeli PM speaking against Obama's policy in the US Congress? Should he have been arrested too?

annamarinja -> irgun777 4 Mar 2015 21:30

Would not it be better for humanity if Mrs. Nuland-Kagan were a bartender? Unfortunately for many, she pretends to be a diplomat, a person of knowledge and wisdom, whereas she is just a bad-mouth and a half-wit with poor manners and aggressive personality.

Aris Tsihlis -> greven 4 Mar 2015 21:19

Greven That's an extremely far stretch comparing Putin to Hitler! Me personally I haven't forgotten how things played out it started with a coup d'état sponsored by the US government!

And if I look at the map NATO is on Putin doorstep not the other way around! Stop trying to spin the facts I heard the conversations the witch above was having on who they were going to place in charge! Sell it to somebody else I ain't buying your narrative of the story!

BorninUkraine -> Metronome151 4 Mar 2015 21:18

Ukrainian joke.
Russians asks:
- If you believe that Russia annexed Crimea, why don't you fight for it?
- We aren't that stupid, there is Russian army there.
- But you say there is Russian army in Donbass?
- That's what we say, but in Crimea there really is Russian army.

BorninUkraine -> DoyleSaylor 4 Mar 2015 21:08

You are wrong, this was a success, although incomplete (NATO won't have a naval base in Crimea). The US stirred up s..t in Ukraine to force Europe to act against its interests and join the "sanctions". So, the US hit two birds, Russia and EU competitors, with one stone. If anyone was and still is dumb, it's Europeans following US orders.

bagart -> Old_Donkey 4 Mar 2015 20:57

Angela Merkel and this joker Hollande brokered only increased bloodletting and for a year opened Ukrainian border for Russia, like declaring inability of Ukraine to govern.

This was scam not peace brokering. For what purpose border was left to be controlled by Russia, if Russia is officially not engaged in conflict?

Aris Tsihlis -> bagart 4 Mar 2015 20:52

The Russians are not in the Ukraine! Russia volunteers probably but there are a lot of other volunteers from other countries also! Serbs, Greeks of Ukrainian origin etc.etc.

And do me a favor stop being a Neo-con apologist!

Bud Peart 4 Mar 2015 20:46

Yes Russia has sent troops and militias into Ukraine to support Eastern Ukrainians. I don't think many realistically deny this. Does it constitute and invasion? Probably yes.

Does the Ukrainian government's 'anti terror' operation constitute ethnic cleansing and war crimes? Probably yes.

Does Nuland's direct material support for the overthrow of an elected government in Ukraine constitute a coup? Probably Yes.

Does the Ukrainian government use Neo Nazi militias including foreign fighters from Poland and Croatia in its ethnic cleansing. Probably yes.

It would be nice if the 'liberal left' trendies at the Guardian could for once quit their pro establishment dribble and start providing objective analysis. This crisis has the potential to ignite a nuclear war and we need to start analyzing it without emoting Luke Harding style hysteria.


Cynndara -> Aris Tsihlis 4 Mar 2015 20:36

Let's be clear; "US interests" aren't the interests of the American people, either. They're the interests of military careerists and contractors hoping to profit from yet another conflict.

Playing nuclear chicken is in nobody's interests, and people like Nuland who think they can continuously poke at Putin WITHOUT raising the possibility of nuclear war are arrogant idiots, the kind who always think they're too smart to make a mistake until they do. And people die from it.

The NSA can add this comment to my copious file. Let me know when you're coming over, boys in black, and I'll bake a Devil's Food cake.

[Feb 28, 2015] Putin Spokesman Says Nemtsov Murder Was 100% Provocation

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the Nemtsov murder was "100% provocation... It looks like a contract killing."
Feb 28, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Just a few short hours after the terrible murder of Russian opposition politician and outspoken Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, US' John Kerry was quick to condemn the actions of the "reformer" and demand Russia's "expeditious investigation," and President Obama has since issued a statement "admiring [Nemtsov's] struggle against corruption." The undertone was clear - 'Putin did it'. Furthermore, President Poroshenko has claimed that Nemtsov was on the verge of "exposing direct Russian links to the Ukraine conflict." As many realise the futility of trying to determine whether it is a Russian act, a CIA act meant to look like a Russian act, or a Russian act meant to look like a CIA act, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the Nemtsov murder was "100% provocation... It looks like a contract killing."

As RT reports,

Opposition politician Boris Nemtsov died in the center of Moscow after he was shot at four times. A number of leading figures from all sides of political spectrum called his murder a "provocation".

Boris Nemtsov, a veteran opposition figure in Russia, was gunned down in a drive-by attack in central Moscow on Friday night. The murder triggered worldwide condemnation and calls to bring the killers to justice.

Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov explains...

....

As The Telegraph reports, President Poroshenko has stated that Nemtsov planned to reveal Russian links to the Ukraine conflict...

Iryna Baliacheva, a Russian political migrant living in Ukraine told reporters Putin was to blame for the murder.

"Putin opened Pandora's box and released dangerous powers: non-acceptance of a different opinion (from his), representatives of the opposition were called traitors, while we (Ukrainians) are considered US Department of State agents.

"And now people who believed in Russia's television lies may also believe that some robbers killed him, but I think that this was organised by Putin in order for him to stay in power."

The gathering in Kiev came as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, said on Saturday Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was murdered because he planned to disclose evidence of Russia's involvement in Ukraine's separatist conflict.

Poroshenko paid tribute to Nemtsov, who was shot dead late on Friday, and said the fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin had told him a couple of weeks ago that he had proof of Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis and would reveal it.

"Boris Nemtsov, a big friend of Ukraine and big patriot of Russia has been killed. He was like a bridge connecting Ukraine and Russia, he built the kind of relations between our countries that I would like to see," said Poroshenko.

"To me Nemtsov is a symbol of a Russian citizen that connects (Ukraine and Russia) and sincerely respects Ukraine."

"Boris had declared that he would provide the clear evidence of Russian Armed forces' participation in (the war) in Ukraine.

"Somebody was afraid of this, Boris wasn't afraid. Killers and executors were afraid."

* * *

Secretary Kerry: February 2015 " Murder of Boris Nemtsov

I am shocked and saddened to learn of the brutal murder of former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov in central Moscow. Boris Nemtsov committed his life to a more democratic, prosperous, open Russia, and to strong relationships between Russia and its neighbors and partners, including the United States. He served his country in many roles – in the federal government, in the parliament, as Governor of Nizhniy Novgorod, and as a political leader and activist. In every post, he sought to reform and open Russia, and to empower the Russian people to have a greater say in the life of their country. His absence will be deeply felt in Russia and around the world. The United States urges the Russian authorities to act expeditiously to investigate and bring to justice those responsible. Our thoughts are with the Russian people and with Mr. Nemtsov's family and friends as we mourn his loss.

Statement by the President on the Murder of Boris Nemtsov

The United States condemns the brutal murder of Boris Nemtsov, and we call upon the Russian government to conduct a prompt, impartial, and transparent investigation into the circumstances of his murder and ensure that those responsible for this vicious killing are brought to justice. Nemtsov was a tireless advocate for his country, seeking for his fellow Russian citizens the rights to which all people are entitled. I admired Nemtsov's courageous dedication to the struggle against corruption in Russia and appreciated his willingness to share his candid views with me when we met in Moscow in 2009. We offer our sincere condolences to Boris Efimovich's family, and to the Russian people, who have lost one of the most dedicated and eloquent defenders of their rights.

It appears - no matter who or what was responsible - we're back at near-Cold War levels of hostility between the USA and Russia.

Donatan

Putin 2012 - Opposition is looking to turn someone into "involuntary martyr"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Qwju5nJ-w&feature=youtu.be

Abitdodgie

If that had been in America it would of been ruled suicide.

nope-1004

John Kerry is "shocked". lmao. Eric Holder is this times 1,000.

I love how Boris' Wiki profile was updated within minutes of his death. Now if that's not a planned event by those "evil terrorists".

The west is salivating at the desperation to start war and the false flag attempts are predicatable.

Bunch of hyporcrites. The propaganda is immense.

COSMOS

Shootings like this did wonders in Maidan. We all know the CIA playbook. Folks in Moscow better be careful walking around the city. The CIA is funneling killers into Moscow via this guy

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/06/24/ukraine-jewish-billionaires-batalli...

Interesting that our friend was walking with a Ukrainian woman when he got killed. Maybe she brought him to a designated hit area.

Pinto Currency
Putin's popularity is running 80% in the polls.

You don't shoot your political opponent in that situation.

strannick

The danger of being a CIA asset is they eventually make you a martyr for their cause.

Manthong

"Putin Spokesman Says Nemtsov Murder Was "100% Provocation""

Latina Lover

This hit has the hallmarks of the typical CIA color revolution aka Gene Sharp tactics. Why, for example, does the USSA care about the murder of a Russian has been politician in Russia? Isn't this an internal matter of the Russian State?

Imagine Putin calling upon the US to investigate the murder of Paul Wellstone, Senator....as if Russia should care.

This provocation won't work in Russia because the Russians, unlike the Americans, better understand deep state politics. Unfortunately, it is another opportunity for the USSA controlled media to rubbish Putin.

This hit shows weakness, the smell of desperation and failure, since the Ukraine CIA coup is unravelling before our very eyes.

The USSA State Department and EU poodles must be insanely desperate to destabilize Putin by resorting to such an obvious false flag. I'll bet conditions are worse in the Ukraine, and EU than we are told. After all, wasn't it an EU president who said that when things get serious, you have to lie?

Crazed Weevil

"Poroshenko paid tribute to Nemtsov, who was shot dead late on Friday, and said the fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin had told him a couple of weeks ago that he had proof of Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis and would reveal it."

Huh? We live in an age of almost instantaneous communication to nearly everyone on Earth and he doesn't release his 'proof' despite having it for a couple of weeks?

Anusocracy

If I had to bet on it I would go with a Ukrainian op green lighted by the US.

disabledvet

"Oh, shoot. I left the computer in the car."

Russians have really hot police spokeswomen after you are murdered too.

Took Red Pill

FALSE FLAG IN MOSCOW

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.ca/2015/02/breaking-news-false-flag-in-mos...

jbvtme

is it true nemtsov and vickie nuland were seen taking a selfie moments before the shots were fired?

Thirst Mutilator

they were dancing on top of a van.

toys for tits

Isn't Putin's MO for dissidents to imprison them?

I seem to remember that billionaire oil guy. I think he likes to see them humbled.

CCanuck

Weevil,

Why does Porkoshenko need proof?

It is well known that Russia has invaded Ukraine five, six ,seven times already. There are satilite images, youtube videos, and the word of trolls to prove Putin shot down that Malaysian airliner and invaded Ukraine riding on the back of a bear, shirtless, shooting Madian women and children.

What more could this guy have shown?

Thirst Mutilator

he was about to release fotos of the mass graves of 6,000,000 puppies killed.

Anusocracy

Make it kittens and you've got a deal.

Max Steel

Let me enlighten you about Nemstov : https://www.facebook.com/anna.almarusa/posts/10200379181758271

look for both photos .

In 1998 Nemstov had a 8 year old girlfirend . Another rapist and child molester among politicians . His present gf who recently had an abortion in Switzerland (Nemtsov's child by the way) and came for a dinner with Nemtsov . Nemtsov had oficially 3 mothers of his children, why is there nothing about them in the press?

His private life is his own business, not ours though


Mr Nemtsov was a spent force – he had a real following in the 1990s, where he was briefly a major player. Unlike Navalny, who is opportunistic, smart and frankly dangerous, Nemtsov's following was largely limited to foreign journalists and a small group of Russian liberals.

Had the Kremlin wanted him out of the way there were other ways – especially in Moscow. A car crash. An (induced) heart attack. Poisons. Why do a public hit within sight of St. Basel's Cathedral on Red Square so as to provide a public feast for the foreign press picture editors?

The timing is equally suspicious. Perfectly timed to draw maximum attention to the upcoming opposition March which had risked falling flat. The March itself is no conceivable threat to Mr Putin – who now enjoys the sort of popularity common to wartime leaders in any country – but it is the best shot the West has, knowing thatany political murder in Moscow will be systematically attributed to the Kremlin by the tame Western press – whether of a Putin opponent (Politkovskaya) or a fervent supporter (Paul Klebnikov, Forbes). By some odd coincidence, several of these killings took place immediately before President Putin was to address some particularly high-profile international meeting.The fact that this horrific murder is most beneficial to the anti-Russian factions does not, of course, prove that Washington was in any way involved. It suggests it - which is a very different matter altogether…

There is another – less conspiratorial – theory. The Kiev regime – openly supported by Mr Nemtsov and his followers - is genuinely very unpopular in Russia. Live television coverage of the savage bombardment of Lugansk and Donetsk has evoked some strong passions.

There is a hardline, nationalist faction, and Russia can be a violent place. It is entirely possible that someone decided to take revenge for the people of Novorossiya, answering one barbaric crime with another.
There is only one certainty: this murder will be exploited by the Western press which will largely not even bother to formally attribute it to the Kremlin – but simply do a quick montage – Red Square, Putin opponent lying dead. It's an easy sell.

Lea

"Mr Nemtsov was a spent force"

Yes, and that's why he went. He ran 1% in the polls, not more, against a 86%-strong Putin. He was no-one in the Russian political scene anymore.


So he served America one last time.

Navalny is supposedly "smart" and "dangerous", but as it becomes harder and harder to hide he's a crook, he's on his way to become another spent force. If I were him, I'd take off to some place where America's alphabet soup agencies couldn't find me, to protect my skin.

Karaio

Obummer could destabilize Putin ....

In the USA!

Kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!

Putin has 85% approval of the Russian way, they think Putin is being "loose", which should have sent bullet in Ukraine.

Neither Lula in Brazil had so much support ....

Anyone out there ever read "Club-Orlov" ?:

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com.br/2015/01/peculiarities-of-russian-nation...

"You guys want a war, you will have a war ...."

Very interesting reading about how the Russians think and act.

You have 140 million people wanting to give change to the West abuses, only Putin has patience to endure the slaps in the face.

Get ready, the shit will grab soon.

hehe.

August

>>>I'll bet conditions are worse in the Ukraine, and EU than we are told.

For an update on the Ukrainian economy, the following article (Russian source, in English) is a pretty harrowing depiction:

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.nz/search/label/Ukrainian%20national%20...

gallistic

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is just a statistic"

-Misattributed to Josef Stalin

Paveway IV

"...The danger of being a CIA asset is they eventually make you a martyr for their cause..."

That's why those bastards murdered Spock! He knew too much.


Of course it was.

Unfortunately, one aspect of being in the psychopath murderer/facilitator/enabler class is that there is little to no conscience or empathy, so we will likely never know who really did the dirty deed.

Son of Loki

"People are often more shocked over the death of one person, as opposed to the murder of 1 million."

... or something like that.

COSMOS

Certainly the thousands of dead women and children shelled by Kiev in Donbass did not elicit such outrage from the western media and politicians.

gallistic

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is just a statistic"

-Misattributed to Josef Stalin

Paveway IV

"...The danger of being a CIA asset is they eventually make you a martyr for their cause..."

That's why those bastards murdered Spock! He knew too much.

LLAP [sniff]

nmewn

"I've never...felt...so...alive!" - William Shatner (Spocks CIA handler)

HowdyDoody

World leaders silent over mass murder and ethnic cleansing by Nazis in East Ukraine.

The value of the western leaders is clearly marked by these positions.


[Feb 28, 2015] World leaders condemn murder of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov by Shaun Walker & Chris Johnston

Why Guardian presstitutes are so afraid to ask "Cue Bono" question, the key question in any crime investigation? It might going to be the second MH17 shooting coverage.
Feb 28, 2015 | The Guardian

BenjamintheDonkey

Always, always ask yourself Cui Bono, to whose benefit-who benefits from this horrendous murder so close to the Kremlin. To those who think it is not the much maligned Vladimir Putin. For with all of the bad Western press that he has been getting lately, brought about by his opposition to the Western backed coup in the Ukraine, why would he have anyone killed in such a theatrical fashion ,a fashion designed to horrify right minded people and turn them even further against Russia and the Russian President.

If someone, in power, with any sense wished to have someone killed they would have it done surreptitious, quietly, without any fuss: perhaps a car crash in a tunnel, or a suicide as in the case of Dr David Kelly, a death that could not be associated with the powers that be- unless like me you are untrusting and cynical.

So again who benefits? It has been suggested that he had offended some Nationalists, another suggestion pointed to some Muslim group or other but to commit murder in a fashion that enables groups hostile to Russia to suggest that Putin may have been involved, nay to accuse him ,suggests to me that, unless lesser personal motives are involved, that we should look to the Ukraine and beyond for the perpetrators of this provocative outrage.

MoneyCircus -> tanyushka

Americans and British won't understand this.

I've seen the security around Putin and it's something to behold when he arrives. (I was at the Central Bank of Russia at the time).

But otherwise you feel free walking around the city in a way you never would in Washington or London.

Fact: I can walk up to the Duma and knock on the door. I can wander through the gates of the Kremlin, sidle up to a security guard and ask where I buy tickets. I have no gun shoved in my face and no fear of being wrestled to the ground.

Michael -> Bluth raffine

Actually. what you mean is it's not a theory if it's a fact. Which is quite true. But currently it's not a fact. Because there's no evidence. You have just jumped to a conclusion that fits in with your world view.

What am I? I'm a western guy who deplores the one-sided presentation of world events in the western media, and who has been galvanised from his usual depressive torpor to comment on the new spate of Russophobia out of a fear that this latest warmongering venture could get out of hand and spark a major global conflagration.

Canigou -> Theethou

Is America a former democratic society?

ILikePolls
Its not completely inconceivable that Nemtsov has made a few enemies over his views on Ukraine, and that a group has acted independently of Putin and killed him, but the CIA theory is just bonkers I think (on this occasion)..................

http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/why-does-putin-wage-war-on-ukraine-362884.html

he wrote that

robrabbit , link
In the video, the US Ambassador Mr.Tefft has called Nemtsov "a great Russian patriot" which is really far from truth.

In fact, Nemtsov was a pro-western political activist, a Moscow liberal type, acting on his own without wide public support in Russia.

Adabsiz1

You must admit that there has been an "orchestrated" and consistent attack on Russia's president for the past EIGHT or so months, even before the Crimea episode !

Amazingly, not to say ironic, GAZPROM is still the main sponsor of UEFA's Champions League despite the so-called "sanctions" ....

The UEFA message is "We like the colour of your money, thank you very much" !

Kaspersky is another story !!

When will the Western media stop using words like "Oligarch" and "Regime" etc. ??

We don't say "the Cameron regime" or call Gran Schapps an "oligarch" ...

We call OUR "oligarchs" CEOs instead !!

Farcical !

Albatros18 lynxruf

if he had proof he would have given to his comrades or to US embassy in Moscow. It is a clear CIA job, as the Americans sacrificed their boy for a greater cause. Snowden's existence in Russia still hurts Washington.

salexandra2014 djw215

I truly understand the laugh or never stop crying part even though our circumstances are different. I actually do not mind the cold here in Russia as long as it stays at -2 C or above. Colder than that and I as yet must learn to acclimate. It happens more quickly than I expected though. And most of the russians around me wish the ponds would stay frozen! We want to go ice skating which is possible everywhere here unlike in the west.

Esmerelda Kerr

So many possible reasons and people who would want to kill this man. RIP. You did your best.

However, the "condemnation" of the Western Elites is now even more meaningless than it may have been if the aggressive tactics used to alienate Putin had not become the preferred approach. The Chinese as an example of lack of PC and democracy has never been treated with the scorn and arrogance which Russia has reaped due to refusing the same two conditions. Western governments work with leaders of countries who have no respect for their populations but continue to try and encourage small advances. What has happened to the relations with Russia is a danger to world peace and will most probably encourage rogue behavior NOT discourage it.

Ro Ma -> LetsBeClear

There are problems all over the world. Russia is just one country. It just a country. The biggest problem is the US's World Dominance Mania.

The West applies its vested interests philosophy over the little people of the world within the western Empire and outside the Empire. Collateral damage, support of Nazis or extremist Islam, false flags, cannon fodder, divide and rule, and Orwellian speech are all allowed and practiced to fullest extent to further the interests of the Western Empire. The West Empire continues on its march to destroy the world in quest for World Dominance. The West is destroying millions of peoples lives throughout the world in the Empire and outside the Empire. Austerity is one example how it is destroying the little people in the Empire. Outside the Empire what I mentioned above.

What ever happened to the middle east? Destroying whole countries for the US's MIC world Dominance mania. Libya to Afghanistan has been destroyed in the past 23 years of the lone wolf World Dominance of the US's MIC. The middle east is destroyed completely, so the US's MIC looked around. Gee, the Ukraine. Divide and conquer. Another place to destroy and conquer. Sent the American singing group Biden, Nuland and McCain to sing about War and Misunderstanding. Poof, the magic Chaos Dragon appears and civil war. Hopefully Europeans will wake up and say NO. We will not allow this destruction pattern on our continent.

ID075732 28 Feb 2015 11:26

Strange how jingoism works.

80 plus innocent civilians are murdered in the Odessa Pogrom and virtually not a squeak from western MSM.

A old politician out with his young Ukrainian lover murdered in Moscow and the world leaders all react.

Jesus, something is wrong with western democracy.

Spiffey -> tanyushka 28 Feb 2015 11:26

Yes of course, putins Russia have never assassinated any opponents. Oh wait, what about litvinenko or Anna Politkovskaya?

One thing I notice about putin supporters - they love putin above all and every Russian opponent is a corrupt western traitor.

The rest of the democratic world has opposition parties, different leaders and different points of view, people with different loyalties.

But not putin fans, they would have you believe there can't be a credible Russian dissident ever, not a one, they are all corrupt.

dralion -> tanyushka 28 Feb 2015 11:26

And completely delusional.

The Americans probably could have Putin dead by now if they really wanted. Don't you know that the kremlin is filled with their "sleepy" agents who can be activated at anytime. On top of that the klingons are ready to invade mother russia with one phone call to the mothership.... OOPS still thinking about spock's world....

Lenthelurker -> mrbaker11 28 Feb 2015 11:26

Disagreeing with your President doesn't make you a traitor - it makes you a citizen of a free society...ahh, there we are then...

ucasavi -> Comrade666 28 Feb 2015 11:25

"he caused trouble for Putin"

You are kidding me, right?

ILikePolls 28 Feb 2015 11:25

I see the bacchanalia of conspiracy theories goes on. Who is winning CIA or FSB?

coldwarsubvet 28 Feb 2015 11:25

So now its the CIA who killed him? The Kremlin either needs to get better security or the Russian propaganda is 19th century

tanyushka -> Comrade666 28 Feb 2015 11:25

he didn't cause any problems to Putin, who has 85% approval rating in Russia, more than any other leaders in the world...

Putin even warned that something like this could happen...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Qwju5nJ-w

lynxruf 28 Feb 2015 11:24

With the time zone advantage, the disciplined disinformatchiks rise early and blow smoke in comment threads on every bit of news out of Russia. And so they blame the CIA, or Obama, or Islamic terrorists, or Maidan, or Fifth/Six/Seventh Column, or the mice in my cellar. They tell us to look everywhere but at Russia.

Sehome 28 Feb 2015 11:24

Putin would gain nothing from this crime ; he is riding high in polls, is supported with renewed patriotism by the Russian population, is admired for his achievement at Minsk 2 and his ability to outfox the USA.

Only the Americans stood to gain from this killing, to throw Putin off his stride, as the US tries to restore the level of War in Ukraine.

Of course, plenty of ordinary Russian politicals could have wanted Nemtsev to die, but the US Embassy, headed by a Russia-Hater and overseeing a mob of CIA apparatchiks and trained killers, could have pulled this off - just Murder-By -Hire. No American hand actually on the trigger.

outsiderwithinsight -> geedeesee 28 Feb 2015 11:24

Nope many were cynical with regards to WMD Russians believe the west was behind the assassination and that's all that matters to the kremlin of course the russian state also knows that people in the west will rush 2 put forward the conspiracy against Putin theory all in all a good days work from the kremlin's point of view

Solar Do Inglęs -> Despertaferro 28 Feb 2015 11:23

You still haven't actually responded to the, yes, verifiably true points about Iraq never being secular, Bush not reducing Iraq to rubble, the vast majority of deaths in Iraq being down to Islamists and or their proxies and that people in the Middle East have free will.

You state these are anything but plain,y true. Which ones are false and why?

davidncldl -> Alan Jones 28 Feb 2015 11:23

Alan Jones said of President Putin:

(I refuse to add a deferential arse licking Mr)
Tut-tut Mr Jones. The honorific "Mr" is simple British good manners, British Values really. It is never considered to be "arse licking". Perhaps you need to learn some good manners? Mr Putin is a great Russian leader and this is acknowledged by even those who betrayed the Russian people in the past. Take the kindly-but-bumbling Mikhail Gorbachev, for example, in his recent book he has to eat humble pie when he says

"...he had known and been impressed by Putin before the latter became president and that he Gorbachev had made many mistakes because he had operated on the assumption that he had everything under control..."

It seems that the push by the US/EU superpower for a "hot war" with Russia has started in earnest and that the anti-Russian agents operating inside Russian borders will kill to cause maximum confusion and to try to undermine the loyalty of the people.

MoneyCircus 28 Feb 2015 11:23

I'm sure a lot of you will laugh when I post from Infowars but this article by Tony Cartalucci is actually one of the most insightful that I've read -

Of course, it demands that you are honest with yourself about U.S. policy in places like Panama as well as Georgia and Ukraine. If your eye's aren't open, nothing's gonna make sense.

http://www.infowars.com/russia-us-backed-opposition-leader-gunned-down-in-moscow/

dannykeighobadi -> hatstan 28 Feb 2015 11:22

Why not? We live in such a confused and unexplainable world anyway. it could have easily been an agent, while everyone will be staring at Putin. Or at least, that's what the Western Media will portray it as. Nothing but weak propaganda.

midnightschild10 28 Feb 2015 11:22

It is unfortunate that Mr. Nemtsov lost his life. All violent deaths are tragic. I wonder if the world leaders condemn the over 30,000 Americans shot to death by fellow Americans each year. We reach the same number of those killed on 9/11 every six weeks throughout the year. Perhaps Holder could provide the names of those shot to death to the world news organizations, since all lives are precious to somebody. The same could be done for the Palestinians and Ukrainians and victims of Boko Harem and ISIS. African nations could also submit the names of warring tribesmen. Egypt could add the names of the Muslim Brotherhood as well. Perhaps the world leaders could meet to discuss this issue as well. For each victim, families and friends are left to grieve.

michealvernon -> tanyushka 28 Feb 2015 11:22

Putin is popular because Russians have been brainwashed by his propaganda machine. Not very different from North Koreans who are mesmerized by Kim junior and who consider him to be God incarnate.

Epivore -> Alexandra_Aleshina 28 Feb 2015 11:22

All of the opposition in Russia is weak. And he was walking alone in probably the most policed location in Moscow; when I went to see St Basil's years ago, there was a highly visible police presence in the entire area and CCTV cameras (visible ones) on every building, entrance and high point. I'm sure it's even more secure now, so why wouldn't he feel (relatively safe.)

Comrade666 -> geedeesee 28 Feb 2015 11:22

PutinBot answer? get lost

pointersAREpointless -> knight802 28 Feb 2015 11:22

race-hating, gay-bashing, bully-boy society

Where is your evidence for any of that.

In fact, only show me evidence of an event that has not also happened the USA.

Like the Winter Olympics that were held in Mormon country Salt Lake City. Because Mormons are very tolerant of gays aren't they.

WardwarkOwner -> EmperorTrejanus 28 Feb 2015 11:20

Yeah lets get it on!!! We are all in the right and Putin and Russia must be guilty. We don't need to base decisions that could lead to nuclear war on evidence!

Can't wait to see the world end in a nuclear in a global nuclear winter and snowball earth or die before from a nuclear blast or radiation sickness.

What a total idiot you are.

mrbaker11 -> knight802 28 Feb 2015 11:20

Yes, and the added fear factor, as reinforced quite clearly by Peskov's remarkably clear message, which is, quite frankly an incredible, blatant threat

UnsleepingMind 28 Feb 2015 11:20

'Moscow city authorities meanwhile have given permission to Russian opposition leaders to hold a march to commemorate Nemtsov after they canceled a planned protest rally due to the murder. The Sunday rally will cross the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge where the politician was shot dead.'

I say: God damn that vile, anti-democratic state known as Russia! How dare it allow people to march in the streets! This isn't the totalitarian image of Russia that I'm used to (thanks to the 24-7 drip, drip, drip of anti-Russian propaganda from the corporate media)! No, I'm used to 'Putin is a gangster', 'Russia is backward', 'Putin is a warmonger', 'Go Pussy Riot', 'I *heart* Navalny', etc., etc. And now I just don't know what to think.

Comrade666 -> tanyushka 28 Feb 2015 11:20

Yes yes it was Americans who did it, they wanted him dead because he caused trouble for Putin, smart thinking right off RT

brokenbritan -> Michael Bluth 28 Feb 2015 11:20

your economy is down the toilet, your life expectancy is f... all, your birth rate is a minus . your best brains are going to the USA .

russia will be an empty country in 50 years.

no one cares what you think. go and drink some more vodka from your bath.

eastnorfirestarter -> knight802 28 Feb 2015 11:20

Political threats are conditions on the ground as they freshly apply. Not from early internet days of young mentored men who will mature to be quite different.

sasha19 -> tanyushka 28 Feb 2015 11:19

And Putin was hired by and worked with Yeltsin....

supergroovegod -> SHappens 28 Feb 2015 11:19

Government and taxpayers rarely share interests. You're starting to get somewhere, but you still have failed to tell me how the UK benefits. By supporting the US against our own interest in the EU? What? Anyway, no one said Russia is going to invade Europe apart from you just there, and the thing with arms and MH17, well, everyone suspects, clearly even you, but there has been no direct accusation, and other things keep happening and shifting the focus. "Facts is that NATO expanded towards Russia breaking all promises" - this isn't really a fact though, is it? What "all promises"?

The UK has a dark history in the same way that every country has, with many bright and great things to recommend it like every country has. Our colonial past is not a part of our current psyche in the same way that the Soviet period characterises part of the current Russian psyche, it's a matter of time and living memory.

Now then, are you going to answer my question with real, tangible benefits, or shall we keep dancing?

Comrade666 , ink

Isn't it just amazing this could happen a stone throw away from the Kremlin? with all the security, cameras and secret police roaming the streets. Something smells like dead fish, and my hope for the Russian people is that it puts more doubt on the Putin reign and that it puts even more pressure on his corrupt government

tanyushka Comrade666

obviously you have never been in Moscow... there's not such heavy security there... the Kremlin is a public square full of people most of the day, where even a so called performance artist can nail his testicles to the pavement... i bet there are many times more security services & stuff like that around the White House in Washington...

tanyushka

i am not going to speak evil of a murder victim, at least not now, although it should suffice to say that he was Yeltsin's Deputy Prime Minister... i only want to say the obvious: Putin has nothing to win with this murder...

Nemtsov wasn't even a popular figure of the opposition, Putin is right now at the highest point of his popularity in Russia & the murder is committed at steps of the Kremlin, automatically turning the spot into a place of pilgrimage, ideal for a new Maidan organized by the American Secret Services to overthrow the Russian Government & replace it by a puppet like Yeltsin was...

LetsBeClear

Obama calls for "prompt, impartial and transparent" investigation – in the 136th (of 175) most corrupt country on the planet? Good luck with that.

ContraryToDogma -> LetsBeClear

Yes it's like asking Obama to prosecute Wall Street or Bush-Cheney war criminals eh? Just move on, don't look back. Pot calling the kettle black.

ContraryToDogma

The US frenzy of Putin demonization is so pathetic. Like the US needs another enemy and another war? Capitalism has been deformed so badly that instead of just making money they want endless wars to steal resources. Let's have some in-depth reporting instead of these silly hit pieces.

Alexandra_Aleshina

Everything what happened looks like a painfully obvious provocation, Nemtsov was a very weak opposition. It made no sense to kill him. This death allowed to turn the weak opposition in Martyr and a symbol of opposition.

Moreover, it looks very illogical. He made a loud statement that he feared for his life, but was walking alone with a young girl in the middle of the night . What did they do there at this hour?!

SonnyTuckson

Funny to see how all these Putin lovers here shout that the USA did it. Putin lovers blame everything bad on the USA - their automatic and predictable reflex - but that is nonsense. Sprung from a huge Russian inferiority complex towards the prosperous Land of the free.

Why don't they understand that Russia is a non-entitiy for the US? To the USA Russia is just a regional European power with nukes and an economy in tatters.

For Europe, Russia as a neighbour and gas provider may be more relevant, but to the USA Russia is a far away irrelevant maffia state.

Xenkar -> SonnyTuckson

I like the fact that you mention nukes casually!

GameOverManGameOver -> SonnyTuckson

So why don't you keep your noses out of it's business then?

[Feb 28, 2015] To launch a color revolution the sacral victim is not enough

If to start a color revolution was so simple, the "Maydan" would regularly happen in all countries of the world, and the election would have been abolished as unnecessary. If all we need for starting another "Maydan" is just a "sacred victim" that would be extremely easy to accomplish. And now Boris Nemtsov was declared such a victim. Will the events now flow this way? No. For a "color revolution" or the "Arab spring" is necessary not only and not so much the victim. It still needs the population which is tired of and distrustful to the authorities, lack of prospects, the decomposition of the elites in the country and strong presence of Western MSM, NGO and intelligence services in the country. They also need a well prepared, financed and trained core, the passionate group of young people (far right nationalists are perfect canon fodder ), willing to risk their life for the cause. They also need noninterference of the army and carefully orchestrated paralysis of law enforcement agencies (or bribing the key figures and/or infiltration of them by CIA and friends as was the case in Kiev), as well as several other factors that simplify the task (Yanukovich was essentially "on the hook" by Americans, as his and his son capitals were abroad). "Sacred victim" in this list, while helpful at certain stages to ignite or sustain the protests, is far from the first place.
Feb 28, 2015 | vzglyad.ru

Among supporters (and even some opponents) of the "Maydan" color revolution in Moscow there are people who believe that "now we're going to do as they - and we, too, will succeed." For the "Maydan" style color revolution supposedly needed "sacred victim": and now we have such a "sacral victim". But for a "color revolution" or the "Arab spring" is necessary not only and not so much the "sacral victim".

Death on the bridge

With a difference of a few hours in Moscow and Kiev have been two deaths. In Moscow on the bridge opposite the Kremlin was shot and killed the member of the Yaroslavl regional Duma Boris Nemtsov. In Kiev jumped out of the window a prominent figure of the Party of regions Mykhailo Chechetov, which the new government was accused of abuse of power. This strange suicide of members of the "old regime" reminds us events that occurred after the last victory of the Maydan in 2005. For example, a strange suicide using two shots to his own head of the ex-interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko. The cause of his death, by the way, was announced by the current head of the Ukrainian Security Council Oleksandr Turchynov, who in 2005 was the head of Ukrainian Security Services (SBU).

Unlike those strange suicides, in the case of Boris Nemtsov, there is are clear circumstances of his murder and witnesses of the event. And for whatever reason it was done it looks like a political assassination. Because even if you kill politicians on domestic or economic reasons, even if he died after overheating with sauna or on his head accidentally drops a brick, still his death will have political consequences and it will be tried to be used iether by government or the forces oppositional to government.

I want to believe that the investigation will find out why Nemtsov was killed and who did that. Two similar political murder, the murders of Sergei Yushenkov and Galina Starovoitova had been solved, the first completely, the second in part. In the case of Sergei Yushenkov Mikhail Codenew ordered the killing wanting to intercept the Yushenkov the leadership of the party "Liberal Russia". The contractor now serves his jail term. In the case of Galina Starovoitova, the contractor was also found quite quickly, and in April 2014 Duma Deputy Mikhail Glushchenko confessed, but the court hearing still are ahead.

Also were found and convicted killers of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova.

So there is hope that the killer Boris Nemtsov, unlike murderers Vladislav Listyev, will be found and punished.

To put forward plausible versions and comment on them is a matter of investigation. The current range of version voiced in media is really extremely broad - from "the help" by the Ukrainian security services in the organization of the Moscow Maydan to "act of vengeance" of someone who returned from the Donbass militia. In the Yaroslavl region for a time a member of the Parliament Nemtsov also managed to amass a lot of enemies, and some of them could "hurry up" and try to solve all problems at once. Investigators have information that the German authorities know that he received threats in connection with his position regarding the execution of the staff of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. And even private life connected version though unlikely, cannot be ruled out. Again, this is not essential from a policy perspective.

On February 10, "Interlocutor" published an interview with Boris Nemtsov, in which he among other things mentioned that his 87-year-old mother (that's who is suffering the loss the most now) expressed the fear that Putin can kill him "because of the his political activities".

Most likely, the killer of this interview was read. Because the murder was definitely a highly symbolic and highly provocative political act, as were the place and time under the walls of the Kremlin, on the eve of this year's first mass opposition rally.

So far Western politicians are not jumping to assign the blame, including Senator John McCain, one of the first to respond to the incident. McCain, by the way, worried about the safety of Boris Nemtsov in 2013: "I'm a little concerned about the personal safety of Boris Nemtsov. Of course, I told him that something must happen."

... ... ...

Among supporters of the "Maydan in Moscow" there are some people who think that "Now the events start to flow like in Kiev - and we, too, will succeed."

If to start a color revolution was so simple, the "Maydan" would regularly happen in all countries of the world, and the election would have been abolished as unnecessary. If all we need for starting another "Maydan" is just a "sacred victim" that would be extremely easy to accomplish. And now Boris Nemtsov was declared such a victim. Will the events now flow this way? No. For a "color revolution" or the "Arab spring" is necessary not only and not so much the victim. It still needs the population which is tired of and distrustful to the authorities, lack of prospects, the decomposition of the elites in the country and strong presence of Western MSM, NGO and intelligence services in the country. They also need a well prepared, financed and trained core, the passionate group of young people (far right nationalists are perfect canon fodder ), willing to risk their life for the cause. They also need noninterference of the army and carefully orchestrated paralysis of law enforcement agencies (or bribing the key figures and/or infiltration of them by CIA and friends as was the case in Kiev), as well as several other factors that simplify the task (Yanukovich was essentially "on the hook" by Americans, as his and his son capitals were abroad). "Sacred victim" in this list, while helpful at certain stages to ignite or sustain the protests, is far from the first place.

That means that in the current circumstances the death of Boris Nemtsov can't become the ignition point for the new Russian color revolution (Moscow Maydan), even if someone in the West might passionately desire to use it this way...

The attack on Russia or back in the 60s

Regardless of whether you killed a staunch supporter of the current government or the opposition the murder of a politician is stronger blow to the legitimacy of power. And the murder of the opposition figure is more so than the murder of an official or a Pro-government deputy.

And we need quicly solve this murder, not because after the assassination of the opposition, Western leaders are lining up with condolences and demand to punish the perpetrators. No. Simply because a strong state should be able to provide security to all its citizens and will never stoop to power persecute their unarmed opponents. The country where killings of famous people - politicians, businessmen, cultural figures - remain unsolved is a weak country. And the citizens in this country will view the government accordingly.

In connection with the murder Nemtsov many people start to mention Yeltsin's period anarchy and lawlessness in 90th, but there is another, less obvious, but quite appropriate to the occasion analogy. The USA in 1960th. In less than five years in the USA were killed President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, militant fighter for the rights of black people Malcolm X, peaceful fighter for the rights of blacks, Martin Luther King and some less well-known politicians.

In those years, the US experienced a difficult period because of the Vietnam war, ending the economic boom of the 1950s, mass involvement of youth in escapist movement. The state was weak and politicians were killed. But out people detached from reality could spoke in those circumstances about the collapse of American States and the urgent need to organize a revolution.

The last echo of this weakness was the murder of John Lennon in 1980 and the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981. After this "landmark murders" and attempts on politicians life came to full stop, and former hippies graduated from their universities, have started to be engaged in politics and very quickly converted from the pacifists to the "hawks".

Russia now is also experiencing is not the easiest historical period. Therefore, efforts of those who want to check the country's strength and at the same time to solve some personal issues are intensified.

The murder of Boris Nemtsov is a challenge to the law-enforcement system, it is a challenge to the authorities, it is a challenge to the whole of Russia. So it should be solved.

Political life and political death

Many commentators on both sides say that it is denigrating to use the death of Boris Nemtsov for political purposes. It is not so. Yes, PR on spilled blood is one of the worst things invented by human civilization. But the tragic death of a politician always is not only death. It is a political event. Therefore, the desire of like-minded people from opposition to get PR points from Nemtsov death, aas well as desire of the government to avoid RP-losses is quite natural. It has always been, and always will be, as long as on the Earth live people and politicians. So the efforts should be made on eliminating those RP benefits and solving the crime is the best way to do so. There should be unsolved political assassinations in this country and on Earth in general.

[Feb 26, 2015] COLOR REVOLUTIONS AND GEOPOLITICS

Color revolutions are psycho-social operations of deception.
Feb 26, 2015 | colorrevolutionsandgeopolitics.blogspot.com

Color revolutions are, without a doubt, one of the main features of global political developments today. Should the casual reader immediately wonder what a "color revolution" is, keep reading, our view here is unique, but we most certainly have some answers.

Let us first begin with the Wikipedia definition. That website introduces the concept by stating the following:

"Color revolution(s) is a term used by the media to describe related [political] movements that developed in several societies in the CIS (former USSR) and Balkan states during the early 2000s. Some observers have called the events a revolutionary wave.

"Participants in the color revolutions have mostly used nonviolent resistance, also called civil resistance. Such methods as demonstrations, strikes and interventions have been [used to] protest against governments seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian, and to advocate democracy; and they have also created strong pressure for change. These movements all adopted a specific color or flower as their symbol. The color revolutions are notable for the important role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and particularly student activists in organizing creative non-violent resistance.

"These movements have been successful in Serbia (especially the Bulldozer Revolution of 2000), in Georgia's Rose Revolution (2003), in Ukraine's Orange Revolution (2004), in Lebanon's Cedar Revolution and (though more violent than the previous ones) in Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution (2005), in Kuwait's Blue Revolution (2005), in Iraq's Purple Revolution (2005), and in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution (1989), but failed in Iran's Green Revolution (2009–2010) . Each time massive street protests followed disputed elections or request of fair elections and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders considered by their opponents to be authoritarian."

What the Wikipedia article fails to mention is the massive foreign funding, and at least any notion that color revolutions are psychosocial operations of deception.

It's a fact that Western governments (especially the US government) and various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) spend millions of dollars to co-opt and "channel" local populations of targeted countries against their own political leadership.

Empty democracy slogans and flashy colors aside, we argue that color revolutions are good old-fashioned regime change operations: destabilization without the tanks.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9E75GWFDMec/SjXWwi-wPnI/AAAAAAAAAmc/Jlt2fAVGcgQ/s400/IranProtestor.jpg

The secret ingredient is a sophisticated science used to manipulate emotions and circumvent critical thinking. History shows that, to much of the power elite, humanity is seen as a collection of nerve endings to be pushed and pulled one way or the other, sometimes made to tremble in fear, sometimes made to salivate like Pavlov's dogs. These days the manipulation is so pervasive, so subtle, so effective, that even critical individuals at times must necessarily fail to recognize how often -- or in what context -- they have fallen prey.

Of course fear is the most obvious emotion played upon to effect massive social change. One need only to reflect upon the last ten years, since 9/11, to know that fear is a primary instrument used to initiate and justify dangerous shifts in public policy.

But as humanity has been physiologically equipped with a range of emotions, and is not merely arrested and controlled by fear alone, a strata of behavioral and political science also found it useful to master the flip-side of the emotional spectrum, and by that we mean desire, and all that drives groups of individuals to act, even in the face of fear, in pursuit of something worthwhile.

Many are the professions that utilize this type of understanding, including (but not limited to) marketing, advertising, public relations, politics and law-making, radio, television, journalism and news, film, music, general business and salesmanship; each of them selling, branding, promoting, entertaining, sloganeering, framing, explaining, creating friends and enemies, arguing likes and dislikes, setting the boundaries of good and evil: in many cases using their talents to circumvent their audiences' intellect, the real target being emotional, oftentimes even subconscious.

http://bmpr.com/chip_martin/blogs/images/chip_martin/Skyyad5.jpg(Legs for educational purposes only)

Looking beneath the facade of the color revolutionary movement we also find a desire-based behavioral structure, in particular one that has been built upon historical lessons offered by social movements and periods of political upheaval.

It then makes sense that the personnel of such operations include perception managers, PR firms, pollsters and opinion-makers in the social media. Through the operational infrastructure, these entities work in close coordination with intelligence agents, local and foreign activists, strategists and tacticians, tax-exempt foundations, governmental agencies, and a host of non- governmental organizations.

Collectively, their job is to make a palace coup (of their sponsorship) seem like a social revolution; to help fill the streets with fearless demonstrators advocating on behalf of a government of their choosing, which then legitimizes the sham governments with the authenticity of popular democracy and revolutionary fervor.

Because the operatives perform much of their craft in the open, their effectiveness is heavily predicated upon their ability to veil the influence backing them, and the long-term intentions guiding their work.

Their effectiveness is predicated on their ability to deceive, targeting both local populations and foreign audiences with highly-misleading interpretations of the underlying causes provoking these events.

And this is where we come in: to help deconstruct the deception.

But we will not just cover color revolutions here, as color revolutions are bound up in the larger geopolitical universe. A color revolution is only an instrument of foreign policy--only a tool -- the ultimate object being the geopolitical advantages gained by powerful financiers and the brain trust they employ. It follows that understanding geopolitical context (and motive) is necessary to understanding the purpose of the color revolution.

Toward that end, we will discuss and analyze relationships of global power in great detail. We will highlight specific institutions of power; identify what their power rests upon; draw attention to the individuals that finance and direct their activities; speculate upon some of their motives; and get to know the broad range of tools they use to achieve them, tools which include the color revolution.

As in-depth studies into the color revolution are far too rare, and as the issue itself is far too obscure, we hope to draw more attention to it; to spark discussion and even debate.

It is an issue that takes time and patience. And it is for those that are willing to provide this time and patience that we offer this site.

"Never utter these words: 'I do not know this, therefore it is false.' One must study to know; know to understand; understand to judge." --Apothegm of Narada

[Feb 25, 2015] Ukraine Enters The Endgame

We Weimar'd some folks via color revolution instead of WWI. Mission Accomplished... "Russia will cut off gas supplies to Ukraine if Kiev fails to pay in "three or four days," President Vladimir Putin said, adding that this "will create a problem" for gas transit to Europe."
Feb 25, 2015 | Zero Hedge

The Hryvnia weakened over the weekend to UAH 30 vs. the USD, prompting the Ukrainian authorities to tighten FX controls and to intervene by a reported US$80mn today, and causing a further weakening of the currency to UAH 40 on the black market as of this morning. While pressures have subsided somewhat (with black-market, mid-market spot now around UAH 33), in our view, the current FX controls are only likely to provide temporary relief to the currency and, thus, introduce risks that the authorities could tighten FX controls further

... ... ...

There are several causes for the weakening of the Hryvnia:

  • Net private capital outflows (excluding net IMF/official sector flows), which stood at an estimated US$10bn in 2014. This number excludes US$3.7bn in repayments to the IMF and about US$4.5bn in debt service on external sovereign bonds.
  • Current account and trade deficits, due to the collapse in exports and despite the fact that domestic demand has weakened sharply.
  • Monetary financing of Ukraine's fiscal deficits.

While Ukraine's current account and trade balances should close as domestic demand continues to contract and as the Hryvnia has weakened further, capital flight continues, with bank FX deposit outflows of US$600-700mn/month in November-January. Moreover, monetization of the deficit has accelerated as local banks are no longer able to absorb domestic bond issuance. The share of domestic government bonds owned by the NBU has risen to 71% in January, from 59% one year prior, with the share held by domestic banks falling by the same amount (to 20%). Meanwhile, narrow money continues to grow at around 15-20%yoy, at a time when domestic credit is now contracting by 10%yoy. While money supply growth in the mid-single digits in a context of weak credit growth may have been offset for most of 2014 by large-scale FX interventions by the NBU, withdrawing liquidity, FX interventions have slowed in H2-2014 and the NBU reportedly stopped intervening in February (although it intervened once again by US$80mn today). This has caused assets on the NBU's balance sheet to grow by about 60%yoy in recent months and by 8%mom in January (seasonally-adjusted). In our view, with the economy and cash demand weakening, domestic credit shrinking and an absence of liquidity withdrawal via interventions, money supply growth at the current pace will ultimately prove inflationary and will cause the Hryvnia to weaken further.

While monetary financing of the deficit may debase the value of the Hryvnia in the medium term, it is the shortage of FX in the system that has caused the proximate pressure on the currency, as NBU reserves declined to US$6.4bn in January (4 weeks of imports) and are likely to decline to US$5-5.5bn in February (3 weeks of import cover). These international reserves include about US$1bn in monetary gold, so the liquid amount of reserves is likely to fall to US$4-4.5bn in February (2.5 weeks of imports).

… raising short-term risks, until IMF funds arrive …

In our view, while the current FX controls may provide some temporary relief, pressure is likely to continue to build on the Hryvnia until expectations stabilize, confidence is restored, and the country's FX reserves are replenished. Given the poor liquidity and destabilization of expectations in the FX market, the ongoing conflict in Donbass that undermines confidence, and the continued need to import natural gas and other essential goods and make external debt payments, these factors are likely to continue to exert pressure on the Hryvnia, at least until the IMF Board approves the newly-agreed program and makes its first disbursement. However, this will likely take at a minimum 2-3 weeks and there are risks of delays. First, the authorities must fulfil their prior actions for the program, and notably the Rada must approve a new budget law. This is scheduled to take place in a session on March 3, although PM Yatseniuk is attempting to accelerate this process by holding an extraordinary Rada session to approve the legislation. Even if the session is moved forward, in our view, there is no guarantee that the law will be approved immediately and delays are possible. Once prior actions are fulfilled, the IMF Board can meet, approve the new program, then disburse funds shortly thereafter. Our base case is that this will take place in mid-March (the current board review date is reportedly scheduled for March 11), although it is possible that this could be delayed. With the current pace of reserve depletion and pressure build-up on the Hryvnia, it is possible that the IMF funds may not arrive quickly enough. This raises the short-term risk of a significant further increase in pressure on the Hryvnia.

… and implying potential need for emergency policy action

Given the balance of payments and monetary pressures on the currency, the authorities and international donors, in our view, have several policy options. First, the Ukrainian authorities could tighten FX controls further. In the extreme, this could potentially involve a bank deposit freeze, a ban on retail FX purchases and/or moratorium on external payments and complete closure of the capital account. Second, international donors (bilateral lenders and IFIs) could recognize the fragility of the current situation and the fact that the IMF timeframe may prove to be too slow to stabilize the currency. Thus, in our view, the international community could make available emergency funds in the coming days or weeks, effectively bridging financing for Ukraine until the IMF disbursement arrives. However, bureaucratic, legal and political hurdles may exist to any large-scale emergency disbursement to Ukraine, either bilaterally or multilaterally. Thus, there is no guarantee that such emergency funds could or would be made available. This introduces further short-term policy uncertainties.

Finally, the recent and sharp weakening of the Hryvnia, as well as significant recent shifts in money demand and supply, could necessitate an overhaul of some of the IMF's program assumptions and targets. In our view, this could require further technical work on the part of the IMF and could cause additional delays to disbursement of IMF funds. As the monetary and financial dynamics evolve rapidly, so may the IMF's working program assumptions and the parameters of the program.

actionjacksonbrownie

The truly crazy part of all this, is that the average ukrop "patriot" STILL thinks the u.s. is only there to help them, and russia is the root of all evil.

The farce is strong in this one.

Icelandicsaga.....

Mexico wont fade away .. we will harmonize . integrate . and become a bad case of Brazil disease .. top crust and the millions below.WE will blend into NORTH AMERIC the meme . .keep saying that NORTH AMERICA . . we are no longer USA . we are NORTH AMERICA .. say it over and over again .... we already got the cartels and corruption and 20 million illegals.. why not the entire enchilada. so to speak. Canada wont be too happy about it .. we already tried to scam their water resources to fix water shortages in the southeast .. they refused. but hey . there is always tomorrow... .

ThroxxOfVron

"Moreover, monetization of the deficit has accelerated as local banks are no longer able to absorb domestic bond issuance. The share of domestic government bonds owned by the NBU has risen to 71% in January, from 59% one year prior, with the share held by domestic banks falling by the same amount (to 20%). Meanwhile, narrow money continues to grow at around 15-20%yoy, at a time when domestic credit is now contracting by 10%yoy. While money supply growth in the mid-single digits in a context of weak credit growth may have been offset for most of 2014 by large-scale FX interventions by the NBU, withdrawing liquidity, FX interventions have slowed in H2-2014 and the NBU reportedly stopped intervening in February (although it intervened once again by US$80mn today). This has caused assets on the NBU's balance sheet to grow by about 60%yoy in recent months and by 8%mom in January (seasonally-adjusted). "

They are printing with complete wreckless criminal abandon: bonds and currency!

The level of monetization is way more than triple what The US Treasury and The FED have admitted to colluding together to float the system with as a gross percentage of bonds and currency en todo. ..& The FED had a huge stock of MBS to soak as well as the global payments system to disburse the emission to

This is a massive torrent of raw unsterilized counterfeiting of preposterous proportion to the existing stock.

Christine LaGarde presonally sent the Ukrainians letters telling them to flat out stop it or the IMF wouldn't give 'em any more emergency loans.

"We Weimar'd some folks."

This is gonna be one for the history books easily rivaling the German and Hungarian tsunamis of the last century.

There is no way in hell this can be reversed or mitigated at this point. Ukraine is doomed to suffer the full destructive force of a currency collapse. The damage is by no means completed...

IMHO, regretably, the Ukrainian citizenry would have been far better off being quietly wholly subsumed by Russia than face this tragedy. Everyone is trying to 'save' Ukraine ( for their own greedy purposes ) and they are burning it to the ground 'saving' it.

Disgusted and anguished do not fully convey the feelings I am experiencing...

IF you do such things as pray, you should pray for these people; -they are going to go straight through Hell.

Majestic12

"IMHO, regretably, the Ukrainian citizenry would have been far better off being quietly wholly subsumed by Russia than face this tragedy. "

Russia does not want their Nazi, lazy asses. Who would. The East is the center of industry and called "restive". Oh, and they all speak Russian?

Who knew. Hard-working, productive, hard playing people, and they're Russian?

ThroxxOfVron

Partition would have been a better answer than what is unfolding.

Who would actually want the 'Nazi, lazy'? Average Ukrainians, the EU, the British, the Israelis, the USA?

Unless I am mistaken the general consensus is that true Nazi types are not really welcome in most 'polite' company.

They would be a dangerous fringe element no matter the constitution of the nation unless they were to seize power and use it to disenfranchise the remainder, and any fringe/minority ideological element that seizes power and disemfranchises the remainder majority is unpopular no matter the ideology. See: Neocon, Neolib, Zionism, Feudalism, 1%er, Junta, Annanuki, etc...

The fact is that Ukraine only has a tiny minority that espouse such ideological concepts, and I suspect many of these only use the imagery as a front for more classic mobsterism and warlordism. Espoused Nazis may be a dominant militant organization in some parts of Ukraine; but, I am doubtful that Ukraine is generally predominantly dominated by Nazi ideology...

Motasaurus

That's what the support of the neo-Nazis is all about. They are just replaying WWII, only slight further to the West. After all the original German Nazis were funded, finances, politically supported and built by the Western powers terrified of being voraciously murdered in bolshevic revolutions.

Of course those "powers" were played for fools by those who fund them. I am fairly convinced that the entire 20th Century was simply a socio-psychological experiment to determine whether National Socialism or Communism was a better method for controlling the masses.

Jack Burton

The end game will have winners. Expect the usual suspects to walk away with some nice profits. And the Ukrainian farm lands, fracking potential and what little of industry remains, will all be sold to western baks for pennies on the dollar. Again, you can be certain the usual suspects, whose name can not be mentioned, will own Ukraine.

The people went to Maidan on the promise of a German lifestyle and EU passports which entail freedom of movement within the EU. Thus the mass exodus of youth for Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Madrid. In the flush of freedom, at least 2 million youth will move within weeks. More will follow as they arrange transport. Anywhere in Germany or west of Germany will be their target sites.

czarangelus

I am incredulous watching the human citizens of this world take careful, precise aim at their own feet. After thousands of years of written history of the same things not working!

NoDebt

We're not repeating the mistakes of the past because we're unmindful of history. We're being LED through this circle of rise and fall by the elites. That have it all mapped out. Not to the day, but they know damned well the waypoints to make the turns.

Let me ask you something. When was the last time you heard a politician or banker talk about avoiding the mistakes of the past? Never. They only talk about what "needs" to be done next. And they walk the world around in a big circle like at the pony rides.

Supernova Born

"Russia will cut off gas supplies to Ukraine if Kiev fails to pay in "three or four days," President Vladimir Putin said, adding that this "will create a problem" for gas transit to Europe."

-RT

DutchBoy2015

Putin should have done that LONG ago. Fuck the NeoNazis of Kiev

Buckaroo Banzai

The "NeoNazis of Kiev" will do just fine no matter what. It's the average Ukrainian that's going to get fucked.

suteibu

Our US democratically elected government, making friends...er...slaves all over the world.

It's like the War on Poverty gone international.

At some point in near future, Americans traveling abroad will be considered suspected terrorists requiring a local to vouch for an entry visa.

Motasaurus

Every "war on" in post WW2 history seems to have only created more of the thing. War on drugs? More drugs. War on poverty? More poverty. War on terror? More terror.

What we need is a good old fashioned, openly declared war, but this time put it on something useful like, manufacturing and the middle class.

We've got to stop this bullsh*t coming out of the ministry of truth where everything that is "being supported" gets destroyed and everything that has been declared war on thrives.

krage_man

The chance of getting the money is gettin slim with each second. The parlament is refusing to vote for the strings attached to it so far. It has a reason. Like after it, payments for basic services - heat, gas, electicity will exceed average monthly salary! Another condition is restructuring of the debt ( that is where 15bn come from) , which Putin refuses.

IMF may give the money under pressure from US/EU to preserve the gas flow but this will never be paid back. I question if donors would agree to lose money this way at all... Ukraine need about 150 billions to recover..

Now, Ukraine has a couple of billions left and this is it, huge debt on salary to goverment workers, no tax collection 30% fall of industrial output, etc. .... the state is failing.. we should expect emergency UN food shipment in a few months...

markar

The US/EU/IMF will be pouring billions down this rathole they call a country to the tune of trillions to keep this turd on life support-- until the asset stripping is completed. China, Russia & the BRICs better start demanding something besides worthless $s for their goods soon.

vincenze

Every Ukrainian will tell you that it's Putin's fault.

DutchBoy2015

I am sure Yats the Rat already has a couple of billion squirreled away and a place to bail out to...

DutchBoy2015

This is a pretty good video ''Crimea for Dummies''

Of course its BANNED in the USA LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1zvb_ottiw

WTFUD

From my extensive travels around eastern Europe i find it incomprehensible that the false lure of western riches by association still holds any sway.

In fact i struggle to find ANY evidence that any one of these countries has developed its infrastructure or raised its standard of living in the last 20/25 years.

Mini-cab drivers, hotel work and strip clubs remain the top 3 occupations for those who happen to escape.

The grass is not always greener. . . .

Advice - Look East

[Feb 24, 2015] Pictures From a Currency War, With Narrative

'Color revolutions' were becoming popular, as one country after another was falling into chaos, the kind that produces fire sales in productive assets and the elimination of inconvenient local rivals to power.
Feb 18, 2015 | Jesse's Café Américain

I have noticed lately that the spinmeisters are now latching on to the term 'currency war,' but are trying to deflect it merely to an intensification of the beggar thy neighbor strategy of devaluing your currency to subsidize exports and penalize imports.

This has been going on for a long time, most notably by the Asian Tigers, led by Japan and then perfected by China. But make no mistake, the real heart of this process is in an Anglo-American banking/industrial cartel that intends to beggar everybody.

The multinational corporations went along with it. They were its great lobbyists, and their wealthy scions the founders of think tanks to provide it a rationale and respectability.

Walmart wrote a chapter in the new gospel of greed as a means of undermining wages and the American working class by insisting, as far back as the 1990's and the Clinton era, that suppliers start offshoring to China. And servile politicians opened the doors wide, and turned a blind eye to abuses that are still coming home to roost.

Part of the arrangement was a quid pro quo. The multinationals, who successfully staged a financial coup d'état in the States and Western Europe, were to extend the reach of their strong dollar policy and europression via foreign direct investments in resources rich overseas nations and foreign markets in order to consolidate their power into the non-democratic world.

But China and Russia balked at their end of the presumed bargain. They realized that opening their own doors to dollar exploitation, and allowing the economic hitmen to come in and pick up assets on the cheap, would lead to eventual political unrest, encirclement, and their own loss of power.

'Color revolutions' were becoming popular, as one country after another was falling into chaos, the kind that produces fire sales in productive assets and the elimination of inconvenient local rivals to power. And in Europe, the powers that be created a Eurozone structure that any decent economist would know was unsustainable, and destined to create an unstable situation of few winners and many big losers.

And so a consortium of nations began to resist. Some called them the BRICS. They became alarmed, and then convinced, that allowing a single nation or group of multinationals to control the world's reserve currency was like a Ponzi scheme that could only continue on until its acquired the whip hand of power everywhere.

They started to speak up in international monetary organizations, long dominated by the Anglo-American banking and industrial cartels. They demanded the establishment of a new monetary standard for international trade that was broadly based, to replace the failed Bretton Woods Agreement that had continuing on as the ad hoc dollar hegemony known as Bretton Woods II after Nixon arbitrarily broke the formal agreement with the closing of the gold window in 1971.

And so we see a new phenomenon today, in which the long term selling of gold to control its price, resulting in the post-Bretton Woods bear market that lasted over twenty years, has given way to net gold buying by the world's central banks, and in increasing size. And the creation of a paper gold market in parallel, through which the West seeks to control the price and supply of gold, to maintain their financial operation while they more aggressively pursue nation recycling and repurposing, draconian trade deals that supplant domestic governance, and when that fails, through internal insurgencies and at times, overt military action.

Simultaneously, there are a proliferation of bilateral trade deals in which currency arrangements are being made between countries, and even among small regional groups of nations, to conduct their business outside of the US Dollar system. They are even building up their own financial networks and infrastructure in response to increasingly aggressive use of sanctions and other forms of economic pressure.

The US and UK, like China and Russia, are not immune to concerns about domestic unrest. A strong dollar policy and the support for a policy of offshoring to increase corporate profits are wreaking havoc on one of the world's greatest popular economic achievements: the US middle class.

Increasingly concerned, the governments are cracking down on any sparks of domestic dissent, targeting leaders, vilifying and suppressing minorities, and increasing the surveillance of its own people. They are weaponizing the domestic police forces, and establishing the 'legal means' by which control can be maintained in the face of increasing misery and discontent at home.

It is not a pretty picture. It is an old story of greed and deceit, of empire and world conquest, of the desolating sacrilege of betraying those who have fought for freedom and civil rights to cash in for their own selfish gains.

Will this end in a new gold standard, as this article A New Gold Standard in the Making, which is the source of these graphs suggests? I surely do not know, and still do not think so.

If you have been following the thought process here, going back before even the establishment of this blog to 2000, I have felt that the most likely course will be the establishment of a new unit of international currency, similar to but not the same as the SDR, with a far broader composition of currencies and commodities included, so that no single group would be able to control it for their own purposes.

Stagflation is no natural phenomenon. It is the act of man in a policy intervention or policy error par excellence. Until OPEC was able to trigger a stagflation through their use of an oil embargo and price cartel in the 1970's in the favorable conditions created by economic rot introduced by years of discretionary, aggressive war in Southeast Asia and the ensuing debts, most economists thought it to be impossible, and certainly not a 'natural' outcome.

I think that domestic reform will be coming, and this is necessary because no new monetary standard is going to repair a system that has failed from within due to corruption and systemic injustice.

Old systems, even when they finally turn to visible abuse as they decline, can fail for a very long time, seemingly unbeatable, until they finally collapse from within. This is how it was for the fall of the old Soviet Union, and this is how it may be for the Anglo-American cartel and their attendant nations like Germany and Japan.

It is still possible that Russia and China could make a deal with the Anglo-Americans and establish a tri-partite world government, with their own spheres of control and interest. As you may recall this was the way George Orwell saw it in 1984. I have been watching for that possible development based on my own research on the growth of international capital markets and flows since 1990 at least. People bring this up and so I wish to address it now, once and for all. I am aware of the possible deeper significance of these developments from an eschatological perspective. But recall that even the great apostle, who was 'lifted up to the third heaven,' was mistaken in his estimation of it, thinking it a phenomenon of his own time. It is a mistake of vanity to go too far in such arcane and difficult subjects, in pursuit of sick thrills that only serve to distract us from our call to the work of the day, and the practical task of finding sanctity and salvation in the world.

How we will react to this individually is critical for our own long term survival as spiritual beings regardless, since we all face our own ends individually. Of this we can be sure. We are told that most will give in, despairing at the increase in wickedness, and seek for power and riches of their own beyond all reason and grace. And it requires no end time to see this happening through all ages.

Change is coming. It may be a new arrangement that brings with it the blessing of reform, transparency and justice through peaceful evolution. It may be delayed and more difficult. What cannot be sustained will not continue.

This will end. But perhaps not very well. To a great extent that is up to us, unless we stand by and do nothing. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." But what shall I to do? Begin with yourself, despising only the fear and the evil in you. Do as you have been instructed by the two great commandments, which have been implanted as a seed in your heart.

You are called. You choose the answer.

[Feb 24, 2015] On the First Anniversary Of Ukraine's Maidan Coup Obama's War-Policies Show A Pattern by Eric Zuesse

February 22, 2015 | Countercurrents.org
[Editor's Note: Documentation on each of the key points in this news report and analysis can be seen by merely clicking on the link where the given point is asserted. This is being especially noted because many of the facts reported here have not been covered generally in the Western press, and much of what is reported here could surprise some readers anywhere, and thus the documentation is linked-to. Our editors have checked the links and have found all of the allegations to be backed by solid sources. The reader is thus provided the same access to these sources that we do, so as to check what's being alleged in this article.]

U.S. President Barack Obama has repeatedly employed a tactic of attacking Russia by using fundamentalist and other conservative extremists in a given Russia-allied nation, so as to turn that Russia-allied nation away from Russia, and toward America, and then of trying to crush these very same right-wing extremists who have been so effective in defeating (or at least weakening) the pro-Russian leader in that Russia-allied country. This tactic leaves civil war and enormous bloodshed in the given formerly (or still) Russia-allied nation.

One example of this anti-Russian tactic, of relying upon far-right extremists and then of trying to defeat them (in order for Obama to maintain the secular fig-leaf that he is seeking to advance 'freedom', rather than to weaken both Russia and Islamic extremists), has been Russia's ally Syria, where Obama joined with fundamentalist-Muslim extremists, by bombing the armed forces of Syria's Russia-allied leader, Bashar al-Assad, but then Obama turned to bombing also fundamentalist-Muslim extremists, including the ones, such as al-Nusra, whom his Administration had actually helped to supply the sarin which was used in the infamous gas attack that Obama:s perpetrated by Assad's forces. Theodore Postal of MIT studied the detailed evidence regarding the sarin gas attack that the Administration was citing as its basis for justifying a U.S. invasion of Syria, and he:at, though insufficient evidence was available on the basis of which to determine precisely who was to blame for that gas attack, "The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct." In order for the gas-delivery rocket to have come from Assad-held territory (instead of from territory controlled by the anti-Government rebels), it would have needed to fly at least 3.6 miles, but the actual rocket that was determined to have delivered the sarin was incapable of flying more than 2 or 3 miles at the very most. One thing that was clear from all of the evidence was that the Obama Administration were lying. Another was that they were eager to replace the pro-Russian dictator of Syria with an anti-Russian dictator. Obama (unlike the discredited George W. Bush regarding his similar lies about Saddam Hussein and Iraq) was not saying that his objective was to build a democratic state in Syria. Instead of democracy, Obama was talking about ending Syria's alliance with Russia. He was presenting this as a strategic issue, against Russia - which it is: to replace Assad so that natural gas from Qatar can be pipelined through Syria to Turkey to Greece and Europe, and thereby to reduce Russia's now-dominant position as being the chief supplier of gas to the EU.

Another example of this anti-Russian tactic - and an example which displays it outside the Middle East and the Islamic world - is currently occurring in Russia's neighboring country of Ukraine, which is Russia's main pipeline transit route supplying Russia's gas to Europe. Furthermore, it's on Russia's very doorstep, and thus a prime location for a nuclear missile base from which to hit Moscow within only ten minutes from an American President's button-push. (Ukraine could be, to Russia, even worse than Cuba was to the United States in 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis.) Finally, Ukraine has a religiously anti-Russian nationalist and Roman Catholic population around Lviv and western Ukraine, which can already serve effectively as religiously fanatical enemies of Russia. Ukraine is thus an ideal anti-Russian play. As will be documented here, the rabidly anti-Russian Obama has been taking advantage of it.

(NOTE: Throughout the following, the term "nazi" will refer to any racist fascist, whereas the capital-N term "Nazi" refers only to a member of the first political party which had that ideology, Hitler's Nazi Party. The distinction between the ideology, versus the first political Party that was based upon racist fascism, is important here, because a "nazi" may be obsessive for any type of racism, not necessarily obsessive against Jews as Hitler's Nazi Party was. Ukraine's nazis tend to be obsessive haters of ethnic Russians, even more than they hate ethnic Jews, but they still are ideologically nazis.)

A successful coup by Obama in February of last year used the local rabidly racist anti-ethnic-Russian fundamentalist-Christian fascists there, the local nazis whose heroes during World War II had been Ukrainians who were allied with Hitler, and now these nazis successfully, with the help of the CIA and U.S. State Department, overthrew (and even Ukraine's current President Petro Poroshenko admitted this at the time) the Russia-friendly democratically elected Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, and they installed there a regime that, with American and European money, is bombing the region of Ukraine, Donbass, which had voted 90% for Yanukovych, who was the very same man whom Obama and his nazis had overthrown. Unless those pro-Russian voters, in Donbass in Ukraine's southeast, can be either killed or expelled (they're fleeing mainly to Russia), the danger exists (which would be fatal to the Ukrainian part of Obama's anti-Russian global war), that Obama's rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian surrogate regime will be elected out of office and become replaced by yet another Russia-friendly democratic Government, which would then cause to have been a failed policy the overthrow of Yanukovych. So: Obama is already heavily invested in the success of that ethnic-cleansing campaign, to rid Donbass of its residents. However, just as had happened with Obama's support of Islamic jihadists in Syria, Obama is now turning also against Ukraine's nazis, because they are so obsessed with destroying Russia and killing or expelling all pro-Russian Ukrainians, so that Obama's broader anti-Russian objective, of turning Ukraine into a member-nation of NATO so as to position U.S. nuclear missiles there targeting against Russia next door, is becoming seriously jeopardized.

The reason why Obama's anti-Russian goal is becoming threatened is that increasingly the Ukrainian nazis are turning against the post-coup Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, who is taking his marching-orders from the U.S. White House.

Whereas back at the time of the coup, Obama had wanted the committed Russia-hater Yulia Tymoshenko to win the presidential election that was to be held in Ukraine on May 25th, she was too closely allied with Ukraine's overt nazis, for her to have been able to win even in the largely nazi-accepting northwest of Ukraine, which was the region that was voting in the post-coup Ukrainian Presidential election. (Turnout was light to nil in the southeast.) But, now, Poroshenko isn't sufficiently anti-Russian to satisfy the nazis who had brought this 'pro-European' (actually Russia-hating) Government to power, but Poroshenko is not getting enough money from the U.S. and Europe for him to be able to come even close to finishing the extermination-job that he has been doing for Obama.

Actually, that job began earlier than Poroshenko's election, under Tymoshenko's ally Premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom the U.S. State Department's Victoria Nuland had selected on 4 February 2014 to run the coup-Government that became installed 22 days later. But Poroshenko has been continuing it, as being (northeast) Ukraine's 'democratically' elected Ukrainian President (claiming to represent all of Ukraine, even the area that he's bombing, which had voted 90% for Yanukovych - the President whom Poroshenko had actually helped to overthrow). Poroshenko claims to represent the people who weren't able to participate in the election and whom he is now bombing. Obama supports that position. The EU leaders have gone along with it (at least up till February 12th of 2015 and the second Minsk agreement). But Ukraine's nazis are increasingly demanding even more (and so they refuse to go along with that agreement).

One-after-another of Ukraine's leading nazis (meaning racist fascists), even the top Jewish one (Ihor Kolomoysky, who enjoys personal ties to the White House), has rejected President Poroshenko's authority, or even threatened him and has demanded that he focus more on completing the extermination-campaign that was started by Yatsenyuk; and they are also organizing a campaign against Poroshenko in the parliament (or "Rada"); but now the U.S. White House is instead protecting Poroshenko from its nazi former allies, and not protecting their original stooge, Yatsenyuk.

On Tuesday, 6 January 2015, Russia's Tass news agency bannered, "Right Sector units Refuse to Obey Orders of Ukrainian Defense Ministry," and reported that, "Units of the radical organization Right Sector have refused to obey orders of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, presidential adviser Yury Biryukov: TV Channel 5 on Tuesday." Right Sector was the main armed force that had carried out the coup, and they now:at they constituted an "autonomous unit that subordinates to nobody," so that they would follow only their own leader, Dmitriy Yarosh, not President Poroshenko's orders.

Yarosh had led the coup, and he was now a member of the Rada - he was one of the three parliamentarians who were aiming to bring down President Poroshenko. This wasn't really new from him: on September 18th, he had:Unless Poroshenko comes to his senses, we'll have a new president and commander-in-chief in Ukraine. … If anyone doubts that it's possible, he can write to Yanukovich. He can verify that impossible things can be made happen." Yarosh was indirectly also warning Obama there, in effect: I gave you Ukraine, and I can take it over myself if I need to.

On 10 January 2015, the Fort Russ blog headlined "Ukrainian Armed Forces Are Bombing the Right Sector," and reported that Right Sector troops in battle were now being killed by Ukrainian Government forces, and were no longer being killed only by separatists. Then, on January 21st, UNIAN headlined, "Yarosh Wounded in Grad Attack," and reported that "Ukrainian MP and leader of the Right Sector organization Dmytro Yarosh has been injured by shrapnel from a Grad rocket strike." Also on January 21st, Harrison Koehli bannered at sott.net, "Kiev Lies to Its Own Troops, Sends Them to Be Slaughtered," and he documented (with recent videos) that Ukraine's Colonel Oleg Mikats, Commander of Ukraine's 93rd Brigade, had been captured by the pro-Russian separatists during a battle at the Donetsk Airport. However, Koehli failed to note that Mikats was also one of Right Sector's leaders, and that not only Mikats but also Yarosh himself had been in that battle, and that Yarosh's "hand is damaged seriously" from a "close exploding shell" and so Yarosh was evacuated to a military hospital. The Ukrainian site Unian headlined, "Yarosh Wounded in Grad Attack," and: "has been slightly wounded from shrapnel" and was up and about. "He is fighting on." No mention was made of Mikats. As "J. Hawk" commented at Fort Russ, on January 20th, "Mikats' capture suggests he, a rising star in the Right Sector, tried to prove his organization would succeed where the regular military had failed. Imagine the hero's welcome he'd have gotten in Kiev had he succeeded in retaking the Donetsk Airport." And the fact that Yarosh himself was also there, suggests even more strongly, that Yarosh was here aiming to achieve a military victory that Poroshenko's forces could not, which would embarrass Poroshenko by showing Ukrainians that only by means of the Right Sector's taking charge of the Government could the war against the 'Terrorists' - the 'Anti Terrorist Operation,' or ATO - be won. Perhaps one of the reasons why Mikats had been captured was that Poroshenko's line of command had intentionally left the Right Sector forces "to be slaughtered," so as to prevent Yarosh from overthrowing Poroshenko. The U.S.-installed operatives were now warring against one-another, and not only against Ukraine's pro-Russians. On January 29th, Ukraine's Political Navigator website bannered, "Yarosh Prepares a 'Parallel General Staff'," and reported that Yarosh had:at "after a while, it will be implemented" - a "General Staff" of "volunteers" - to compete against and (he expected) outperform Poroshenko's military team. Yarosh was now just waiting for Poroshenko's regime to collapse, so that Yarosh's own people would grab power. And then what? He would dictate terms, to Obama, and also to Ukraine's creditors? Really? On 30 January, Fort Russ headlined, "'Yatsenyuk and Turchinov started the war!' - Poroshenko Bloc Deputy," and reported that in the Rada, a Poroshenko ally was stating that Yatsenyuk, and his chosen colleague who was briefly Ukraine's appointed President until Poroshenko, Aleksander Turchinov, were to blame for the war; Poroshenko wasn't. Rats were scurrying from this sinking ship. The next day, at the same website, the headline was, "Ukraine After Poroshenko - Analysis by Aleksandr Rodzhers," and the analysis:at another violent Maidan would soon happen, and that U.S. "SecState Kerry personally flew to IMF to persuade them to stop Kiev credits under the pretext of 'absence of reforms.'" Of course, this would collapse the war-effort; so, Obama had now clearly abandoned the nazis; but the author amazingly assumed the exact opposite: "Poroshenko is being flushed," the Yatsenyuk bloc wasn't. More reliably, however, Rodzhers recounted: "Kolomoysky-controlled battalions are still raiding business[es] but even more nakedly than before, completely ignoring the central authorities, both Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk. All representatives of central authorities have been pushed out of Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye, this process is also evident in Odessa and some other cities." Kolomoysky was a former White House favorite; he now went his own way, to grab whatever the new chaos was making available to be grabbed. Then, on 1 February 2015, Fort Russ bannered, "We call on all commanders to rise up and start overthrowing the government," and reported that on that day, "a Volunteer Soldier National Assembly was held, with 500 militants who had fought in the Donbass. 'We call on all commanders to rise up and start overthrowing the government. The battalion brotherhood is starting a national tribunal', they chanted. … Their demands to the Verkhovna Rada included the impeachment of the President and the removal of legal immunity afforded to Rada members and judges." Some wanted not just Poroshenko impeached, but also Yatsenyuk. On February 2nd, Oleg Tsarev, a leader of the anti-coup government in Donbass, whose life had been threatened by Kolomoysky, headlined "Dnepropetrovsk Concentration Camp," and he reported that Kolomoysky was now a total dictator in the region (Dnepropetrovsk) over which Kolomoysky had been appointed governor. Four days later, Tsarev bannered "Stealing Is Not Work," and he reported that Tsarev's own family business, which unfortunately happened to be located in that district, had been forcefully stolen by Kolomoysky. This was the libertarian ideal: real anarchy. Only armed people held power - government was as "small" as possible. The gangsters were the 'government,' because there was none other. This was pure libertarianism: only natural law existed, because no man-made law existed to oppose and restrain it.

So: U.S. President Obama was having a difficult time getting his extremist right-wing clients to accept anything less than their total victory - such as Yatsenyuk had famously demanded. Obama's totalitarian team were cracking at the seams. The 'moderates,' led by Poroshenko, seemed willing to accept a negotiated settlement with the separatists, but the extremists, led by Yarosh, accepted nothing other than the destruction of the separatists, and of all of Russia.

The Muslim extremists are likewise demanding total victory against Assad in Syria. The Muslim extremists are Sunis allied with the Bush family's (and U.S. oil companies') friends the Saudi dynasty, but Assad is Shiite allied with Shiite Iran and their backer Russia. The chief difference between Muslim extremists and Christian extremists (and also Jewish extremists, Hindu extremists, etc.) is their respective religious affiliations. Otherwise, they're all basically the same. In Ukraine, the traditionally dominant religion, especially in the pro-nazi far-west of Ukraine, has been the Ukrainian Catholic Church. "It is led by His Beatitude Sviatoslav (Shevchuk), Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia. His election was confirmed by Pope Benedict XVI on 25 March 2011." Because of Ukraine's civil war, mutual accusations have flown back and forth between Shevchuk and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is headquartered in Moscow. On 28 May 2014, Russia's Interfax headlined, "Patriarch Kirill accuses Ukrainian Greek-Catholics of Russophobia." Catholic News Service responded on August 22nd, by reporting that Shevchuk "issued a rebuttal to Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow's claims that that the Ukrainian Catholic Church and its priests were fomenting hatred and violence against believers who belong to the Orthodox Church affiliated with Moscow." In this and other statements, Shevchuk blamed Russia. That report continued: "Muslim Tartars are most at risk, he:ut Ukrainian Catholics, Latin-rite Catholics, Jewish communities and members of the independent Orthodox Church have 'been menaced.' All those communities, Archbishop Shevchuk:are further endangered by the rhetoric of the Orthodox leadership in Russia, which is becoming increasingly similar to the propaganda of Russian political authorities and leadership.'" Another name for the Ukrainian Catholic Church is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; and, unlike the Russian Orthodox Church, this "Greek" Catholic Church recognizes the supreme authority of Rome's Pope.

When the Soviet Union ended, the head in Ukraine of the Russian Orthodox Church there, Patriarch Filaret, made clear his hatred of Russia, by his breaking away from the Russian Orthodox Church, though he still didn't recognize the Pope in Rome, since to do so would have made his followers an extension of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and Filaret turned out to be more of a Ukrainian nationalist than he was any sort of Roman Catholic. Thus, he founded, in 1992, what became Ukraine's largest denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate. The #2 religious denomination in Ukraine now is the Church he broke away from: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate. The #3 is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (which had been the main Church during Hitler's era, and which remains the leading Ukrainian Church in the most-nazi part of the country: the far west, around Lviv). Consequently, most of Ukraine's nationalists are now members of Filaret's Church, if they are affiliated with any. However, even those worshippers are idolizing as their political model, Stepan Bandar and the first generation of organized Ukrainian nazis during Hitler's time, including Yaroslav Stetsko (who was briefly serving under the Nazis as their appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine), almost all of whom were devout members of what is today the #3 church in Ukraine: the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. On 6 September 2014, Reuters bannered, "Putin is under Satan's influence: leader of Kiev Orthodox Church," and reported that Filaret had:here has appeared a new Cain" and he is Putin, who "has fallen under the action of Satan." This statement by Filaret, of course, supported the nazi Government's position. On 23 January 2015, the pro-nationalist (or 'pro-Western') Kyiv Post bannered, "Ukrainians shun Moscow Patriarchate as Russia's war intensifies in Donbas," and reported:

"Many Ukrainians have switched denominations, moving away from the Moscow Patriarchate that is very close to the authoritarian President Vladimir Putin. In a survey conducted by the Razumkov Center think tank in April 2014 [see p. 31 of this], 22.4 percent of Ukrainians then considered themselves parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate -- up from 18.3 percent just a year earlier. At the same time, the number of parishioners claiming allegiance to the Moscow Patriarchate dropped in 2013-2014 from 19.6 percent to 17.4 percent of population."

It explained the decline of the pro-Russian Church, and the growth of the new anti-Russian one, this way: "Unlike the Kyiv Patriarchate Orthodox Church that openly supports the Ukrainian army and volunteers fighting in the east with public statements and generous donations, the Moscow Patriarchate prefers to distance itself from the situation, upsetting some parishioners." All of Ukraine's major 'news' media are controlled by oligarchs (Ukrainian or Western), and/or by Western governments, and their propaganda had apparently succeeded in turning Ukraine's population sharply to the right. This has greatly benefited nazi churches, at the expense of churches that aren't. However, the racism of these churches is specifically anti-Russian, even more than anti-Jew. That specifically anti-Russian focus goes back to Hitler's time, and even before.

Religion is thus being used by the respective national aristocracies in order to intensify the willingness of their respective troops to fight, kill, and die, as the various aristocracies wage wars to establish their international dominance-submission relationships. The same is true between Shia and Sunni in Islam, and between Jew and Muslim in Israel. The clergy, for any religion, keep their respective followers in line, to fight the battles of their respective aristocratic sponsors - the people who control the money. The result is 'ethnic' or 'religious' wars, which are actually inter-aristocratic wars. The respective publics fight and die, each in service to its respective national aristocracy, but the aristocrats themselves are often unseen and unheard behind the scenes; only their money talks. This has been the situation throughout history.

Both of Ukraine's traditional two racist-facist, or nazi, political parties - both the former "Social Nationalist Party" that the CIA persuaded to rename themselves the "Freedom" or "Svoboda" Party, and the separate "Right Sector" or "Pravy Sektor" Party - derive from, and venerate, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN, which was led and co-founded by two Hitler-supporters, Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko, both of whom had been raised in fundamentalist Ukrainian Greek Catholic families, not far from Lviv in western Ukraine, and had fathers who were priests in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which strongly supported Adolf Hitler and his Nazis. That Church's head during World War II was Josyf Slipyj, who was also a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which was Hitler's Church, and which Roman Church chose to honor Hitler with a solemn memorial mass in Germany, upon his suicide (though suicide is prohibited by that Church), at a time when the Nazi atrocities were already well known to the Pope. Hitler's racist writings were never placed on the Church's banned list. The Roman Church furthermore helped thousands of Nazis escape to Argentina and elsewhere. It hid and protected and fed many of them in a network of churches and seminaries, overseen by the Vatican, while finding places for them abroad. Money-laundering for them to dispose of looted Jewish property was handled by the Vatican Bank, and the Vatican has refused to make its key records available to courts when sued. Even the eventual Pope Paul VI was involved in it. These weren't Jews and Gypsies or other victims of the Holocaust who were being helped by Rome; it was their murderers and thieves who were. It's no particular religion; it's all religion - "us" versus "them" - as if any authentic ethics can be based upon personal partisanships. The basis of any organized religion is loyalty, not ethics of any sort, at all - neither nationalistic nor religious - it is no ethics, but only fake ethics; it is a type of mere psychopathy that pretends to be ethics, that pretends to be something it's not. Supremacism is 'justified' by it ("Our believers have the inside track on heaven"); and that's its real purpose. So, in the current era: the Sunni Islamic supremacism by the Saudi Wahhabi clerics has its counterpart in the Western Christian supremacism of both of Ukraine's two nazi Parties, both of which are anti-Moscow, pro-Rome. This "Western" orientation turns out to include Obama, and virtually the entire American aristocracy that he represents. Furthermore, the Jewish supremacism of the Ukrainian regime's billionaire Governor in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ihor Kolomoyski, is likewise expressed by his Jewish nationalism or zionism, and by his major financial support to far-right Israeli causes. (He furthermore maintains both Ukrainian and Israeli citizenships.) But, basically, the Ukrainian conflict is another outcome of Rome's war against Moscow. Rome also supports far-right Israelis, because far-right Israelis hate Moscow, just as does the Vatican.

When Slipyj died in 1984, one of the attendees at his funeral was Stetsko; and, then, "The body of the Cardinal was buried in the Basilica of Santa Sofia in Rome." Russian communism having not yet been abandoned by Russia, U.S. President Ronald Reagan issued an anti-"Soviet" eulogy on that occasion, commemorating "Cardinal Slipyj's commitment to God and the freedom of men." But, at root, this wasn't really an anti-Soviet ritual; it was an anti-Moscow one, as has been made especially clear by subsequent history - the continuance of NATO after communism ended. What had once been (at least nominally) an ideological conflict (communism v. capitalism), has since turned out to have been actually a 'racist' one, which is really (at the very deepest level) a conflict between contending national aristocracies; and NATO is the military arm of all national aristocracies that accept the supremacy of America's aristocracy. The euphemism for this is "the West."

When Germany's Nazis took over Ukraine in 1941, they had appointed Stetsko as Ukraine's Prime Minister, and he: the time, "Jews help Moscow to keep Ukraine in captivity; that is why I hold that Jews should be annihilated and the German method of destruction of Jewry is necessary." Furthermore, according to wikipedia, "On 30 June 1941, Stetsko declared in Lviv the formation of a Ukrainian state which 'will closely cooperate with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its leader Adolf Hitler which is forming a new order in Europe and the world.' … Gestapo and Abwehr officials protected Bandera followers." This is what those followers did:

The base for Bandera and Stetsko was (and remains) Lviv. Even before the Janowska Concentration Camp was built in Lviv, late in 1941, the "Banderites" as they were called, rounded up and slaughtered the local area's Jews. According to wikipedia: "Encouraged by the German army, local Ukrainian nationalists murdered about 5,500 Jews during the second Lviv pogrom in early July 1941. On July 25–27, 1941, a second pogrom took place, known as the 'Petliura Days', named for Symon Petliura [a political hero to both Bandera and Stetsko]. For three straight days, Ukrainian militants went on a murderous rampage through the Jewish districts of Lwów. Groups of Jews were herded out to the Jewish cemetery and to the prison on Lackiego street where they were shot. More than 2,000 Jews were killed and thousands more were injured." The Ukrainian leader at the time, Stetsko, had already endorsed these actions; and now they were being done.

However, unlike in Germany where the chief bigotry was against Jews, Stetsko's and Bandera's actual chief bigotry was against Russians. For Hitler, killing Jews took a higher priority than killing Russians. However, Stetsko as Ukraine's new leader cooperated - and eagerly - with Hitler's Holocaust against Jews. It just wasn't his main objective: destroying Russia (and killing all Ukrainians who supported Russia) was Stetsko's top goal. In this respect, he was unlike Hitler: his priority of bigotries was different. But he cooperated with and followed Hitler's lead at that time. Hitler briefly imprisoned both him and Bandera anyway, because they insisted upon ultimate independence for Ukraine, which Hitler wouldn't allow for any country, and especially not for a 'Slavic' one. Hitler's contempt for Slavs was nowhere nearly as intense as was his contempt for Jews, but it was still contempt. He viewed Jews as snakes, descended from the snake in Genesis 3, and so to be killed for constituting the ongoing source of "original sin," which he felt must be eradicated; but he viewed Slavs as mere "Untermenschen" or "sub-humans," and so to be enslaved as constituting human beasts-of-burden, their land to be taken from them by "Aryans" (who are pure-blooded Christians, as he viewed it). As regards Muslims and Japanese, etc., Hitler didn't even think at all about them, except as potential allies. His total concern was Christian history, Christian culture. Other cultures, he just didn't care about.

The CIA's file on Stetsko noted on p. 139 that Stetsko was "Chairman of the Central Committee of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations," and on its p. 72 the CIA's file noted the specific type of racism of this organization, its anti-Russian bigotry:

"ABN hates all things Russian - not Bolshevik but Russian. It proclaims 'We are fighting for the complete annihilation and partition of the Russian empire.' … The whole course of Russian history is portrayed as … the nature of 'that people.' … 'The Russian people,' ABN Correspondence says,' has never been able to evolve what the West considers to be an order of society worthy of human beings.' The refrain continues: 'There is only one inveterate enemy of humanity in this world: Moscow.' … It does not matter for ABN what type of government is established in Russia, for 'Russians are all the same.'"

Consequently, the CIA - an agency of America's aristocracy that seeks global supremacy for them - worked very closely with Stetsko, against Russia (not really against communism, which was just the aristocracy's ideological cover-story).

Here is a photo of U.S. Vice President (and former CIA Director) Bush greeting Stetsko:

So, in regards to foreign policy: just as Obama is allied with Islamic extremists, he is allied also with Christian extremists, and with Jewish extremists - all in order to conquer Russia, which is his real goal.

But, now, Obama's nazis in Ukraine, who brought Obama to power there via the coup, are trying to assert independence from him, by toppling Poroshenko and replacing him with a leader who is to the right of even the conservative voters who constitute the overwhelming majority in northwestern Ukraine. Obama knows that that's an impractical idea. But perhaps Obama had simply not been aware that extremist right-wingers despise anyone who would negotiate with people whom they passionately hate and despise and want to see dead; and, that, therefore, Obama's support to religious extremists might produce consequences that would get out of his control. It's happening right now in Ukraine, just as it did in Syria.

On 22 May 2014, Agence France Presse headlined from Lviv, "In Ukraine's Nationalist Bastion, Locals Want Revenge Against Rebels," and Vassyl Trukhan reported an encounter with a resident there, who "protested that the government was just 'too soft'. 'We must kill the separatists and bring the traitors to justice so that order is restored and we stop the spread of this gangrene.'" As Ukraine's military failure to eliminate this "gangrene" becomes clearer, the public support for another violent overthrow of Government grows - but, this time, it will be indigenous, not imposed.

The only way that people like Hitler or bin Laden can be satisfied is for their enemies to be utterly destroyed. Is Obama like that? He will need to decide whether he is or not. But, for now, he's supporting Poroshenko in Ukraine, and the moderate Islamists in Syria. He had started with Tymoshenko and al-Nusra, but he's now essentially at war against both of them - he is turning against the extremists in both countries. But, he still needs those extremists, in order to achieve his objective of destroying Russia.

Obama will thus now have to choose between, on the one hand, destroying Russia, or, on the other, negotiating with Russia a face-saving way out of Obama's primary foreign-policy aim: that of crushing Russia.

Both in Syria, and in Ukraine, Obama's real target is regime-change in Russia - replacing Vladimir Putin with someone who will accept Russia's being a client-state of the American Empire; that is, a nation whose aristocracy subordinates itself to America's aristocracy. Obama's initial hope in Ukraine had been that Putin would send Russia's armed forces into Donbass to rescue its pro-Russian population, which would then give Obama an open door toward turning northwestern Ukraine into a U.S. military base 'to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression.' Putin didn't do that. The aid that he has supplied to Donbass has been far short of an overt war against Ukraine.

Obama's fallback position has perhaps been for Russian nationalists to win the support of Russia's own population if Putin lets the people in Donbass be exterminated and he thus becomes replaced via a Russian civil war, which would provide a U.S. pretext to invade Russia, and to establish "order" there. But that too isn't happening. On the contrary: this past December 18th, the AP headlined "Poll: 81 percent back Putin even as ruble falls." This AP poll confirmed previous polls, such as Gallup's having bannered on July 18th, "Russian Approval of Putin Soars to Highest Level in Years: Ratings of U.S., European Union leadership sink to record lows, in single digits."

If Obama cannot find a solution to this problem, then the possibility of a nuclear war, which would destroy the entire planet, is very real, and then the outcome of Obama's anti-Russia war will end up depending upon whether or not Obama can accept what would inevitably be a very embarrassing public defeat for him, and for his aristocratic backers - America's aristocracy (including not just his backers but the ones who had stood with Mitt Romney when he asserted that Russia "is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe") - a defeat which would prove to the world that the nation that Obama leads, which he has repeatedly called by the supremacist nationalist phrase, "the one indispensable nation," isn't so unique, after all. By his calling his country that, he is implicitly asserting that every other nation is "dispensable." Hitler, too, felt that way about his nation, Germany ("Deutschland über alles" was his phrase for it). But Hitler didn't possess nuclear weapons; Obama does, and Obama might soon have to either give up his extreme nationalism, or else use these weapons to enforce it.

Such a defeat would be a huge come-down for Obama's ego. So, maybe he will stick with his plan, even if it means destroying the world. But, no one today can yet say which is more important to him: Is it destroying Russia? Or is it instead avoiding a nuclear war?

Within a few years, we (or at least the survivors) will know which of these two priorities was the higher for him.

The people whom Obama represents are standing firm with the nazis. Obama's chief political donor, George Soros, is, in fact, frantically campaigning throughout the world for taxpayers in both the U.S. and EU to finance at least a $20 billion step-up in aid to Ukraine so that they can complete the job that he has personally invested very heavily in. (Of course, some of Obama's main financial backers don't have any involvement in Ukraine, and don't care what happens there. None who do care, however, has in any way been supporting the anti-nazi position and helping the Donbass residents.)

The U.S. House and Senate are both virtually unanimous, by more than 98%, supporting more money from U.S. taxpayers in order to achieve a successful final solution to rid Donbass of its existing residents so that NATO missiles can be placed there. Republicans have traditionally hated Russians (not only communism), and congressional Democrats have recently been bought-off by aristocrats such as Soros (who, perhaps, has hated Russians all his life; though, until the fall of communism there, he had veiled this hatred by criticizing communism instead - and, now that the ideological veil is finally off, the nazi shows; and, consequently, on a popular Ukrainian TV station, which was financed by the U.S. Government, the Dutch Government, and Soros's International Renaissance Foundation, a journalist even spoke openly about the necessity to exterminate at least 1.5 million residents of Donbass). So, the slaughter of Donbass residents goes on. And Ukraine is now trying also to starve them to death. So, Soros now is pleading for $50 billion from taxpayers in U.S. and EU, in order to finish the job.

Killing and starving millions of people is costly, but Soros has a plan to do it, with taxpayers' money - 'loans', which will go to the very end of Ukraine's creditors' line for payback from a bankrupt country, and therefore can't even begin to be paid, ever: never start to pay, no matter how hard Ukrainian citizens might work in order to pay their taxes and so their country's debts. These 'loans' will instead be donations, not really loans, from Western taxpayers. But the money won't go to the citizens of Ukraine; all of it is to go instead to the war-effort, to the anti-Russian killing-campaign. On January 9th, Ukraine's Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, reassured the IMF, EU, and other investors of all funds that are being loaned to Ukraine, that Ukraine is doing everything possible to fulfill on its financial obligations to all investors: "I would also like to note that the money that we get in the framework of international financial assistance, does not go to finance the state budget deficit, it does not go to the payment of pensions, it does not go to the payment of wages. All of this is happening in the first place, solely to perform our external obligations." On 1 May 2014, the IMF (whose money comes from taxpayers in U.S. and the EU, not from the aristocrats whose investments the IMF protects and whom the IMF actually serves) had stated that Ukraine's first obligation, without which the IMF would lend no more money, is to win the war against Donbass. Yatsenyuk, thus, is here reassuring the IMF, and other investors in Ukraine, that their money will not go to pay for anything but winning this war.

The IMF, and other lenders, require Ukraine to win this war, because, if the Ukrainian Government doesn't win, then the natural gas and other assets that are in the ground in that region will not become available to be sold (privatized) by the Ukrainian Government in order to pay-off those investors; instead, the residents there (the people whom the Ukrainian Government is now trying to eliminate) will control those assets, as being assets of a separate state - one which has not borrowed from these investors. The IMF wants the assets that are in the ground, not the people who are living on it. That is why it demands victory (elimination of the people in Donbass) - or else Ukraine will promptly go bankrupt. (And, perhaps, so too will some of those investors.)

Ukrainian citizens will be bled dry to live in perhaps the most corrupt country on Earth. As Ukraine's nazis proudly say: "Ukraine above all! Russians on knives!!"

In order to support the nazis, Obama even had his U.N. representative vote with only two other countries - Ukraine and Canada - against a resolution condemning racist fascism (nazism). Ukraine wasn't so much as mentioned in the resolution (though Ukraine is the world's only country now that has an outright nazi government), but these three countries stood out alone from all the rest, and voted against the thoroughly reasonable (especially in light of the recent worldwide increase in racism) resolution, anyway. The remaining fig-leaf of American decency is thus now gone. Ukraine refused to endorse the resolution; and, so, the U.S. representative:at the U.S. stands with Ukraine. Canada then joined in, supporting the U.S., even despite all the rest of the world. Like Obama's agent controlling the coup, Victoria Nuland, had:ust weeks before the coup: "F-k the EU!" She had, we now know, meant it: If the EU feels queasy about installing a nazi government in Ukraine, then to hell with them - we're the ones in control, and they'll do what we say!

This statement by her was actually in character, and it expressed one of the reasons why Obama had given her the power that she has, to exterminate people that America's aristocrats want to get rid of: she had previously been Vice President Dick Cheney's foreign-policy advisor, and then, during 2005-2008, she became the U.S. Ambassador to America's international military club against Russia, NATO. Her husband, Robert Kagan, had been John McCain's foreign-policy advisor during the 2008 Presidential campaign (and McCain has been one of the leading American supporters of Ukraine's nazis); and, before that, Kagan had been one of the main proponents throughout 2002 and 2003 of George W. Bush's "regime change in Iraq" policy, and of its resulting 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Kagan prominently argued for. Victoria Nuland was one of Hillary Clinton's closest advisors, while Hillary was Secretary of State; and, on 5 July 2014,The New York Times noted that Robert Kagan had "co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton's time at the State Department." So: Hillary Clinton can be expected to be similar to Barack Obama, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and Mitt Romney, all of whom favor a "muscular" foreign policy, to advance the interests of the American aristocracy, and so to crush Russia and its aristocrats.

Throughout history, aristocracies have been at war against each other, asserting their dominance over one-another; and, after the historically brief period when democracy had been fashionable, the world is returning to that aristocratic model, of Empire. The modern term for it is fascism; and the extreme, or racist, form of that, is nazism.

In addition to the aim of America's aristocracy to place quick-strike missiles in Ukraine aimed against Moscow, Washington also seeks to grab away Russia's role of being the main energy-supplier to Europe; and this means changing Russia's gas-pipeline through Ukraine to Europe, to become instead a pipeline carrying fracked gas from Ukraine's own Yuzivska gas field in Donbass, to Europe, thus replacing Russia as that gas supplier, so that this formerly Ukrainian gas will have been privatized to Western aristocrats in the fire-sale of formerly Ukrainian-Government-owned property, and the Russian-built pipeline will be benefiting Western aristocrats instead of Russian ones. A good summary of this plan was provided by local resident "Ayre," (Ms. Ayre Vende) titled "Naked Goals of Ukrainian Genocide." She:at Western aristocrats are "interested in the war to make Yuzivska gas field clear of local folks." The land will be destroyed anyway, so (purely as a business proposition) the people who live there might as well be killed or expelled by war - it'll remove an economic problem for Western investors, since the land will thus get cleared of its population in advance of the transaction. War will have cleared the land for these new owners.

Consequently, Western aristocrats benefit not only by increasing their military advantage, but by increasing their economic advantage as against Russia's. It's a double-whammy, for Western aristocrats. The economic losses will be experienced not only by Russia, but by taxpayers in the West, who will have paid for the bombs, etc. Meanwhile, all of the investment profits will go to the investors who will have bought up these privatized fire-sale Ukrainian assets. But this means that the war against the Donbassers must first be won. Obama needs the nazis for that, but he also needs to keep these nazis under his control. It's like a rodeo's bucking-bronco act, but it spills lots more blood and guts. And it transfers even more wealth to the 'right' aristocrats than they had previously controlled.

Push is finally coming to shove, for Obama's favorite foreign-policy tactic - the use of dedicated nazis to lead their regime-changes, so as to establish and maintain their international dominance. Now that Obama is learning this lesson, that things can get out of control this way, he will have to make up his mind who he is. In Syria and Iraq the supporters of global Islamic Caliphate, and in Ukraine the supporters of "Ukraine above all!" (like Hitler's "Deutschland über alles!"), are willing to destroy the world in order to achieve their goal of nationalistic dominance; so, Obama will ultimately need to decide whether he's really one of them himself - one of the nazis - or not.

We can't yet know. But does he? Perhaps that's the biggest unresolved mystery here. What are his priorities? Beyond all of the rhetoric, what is he, really? How does he feel about the enormous bloodshed he has caused - bloodshed of entirely innocent civilians who are trapped in the hatred by some, and the unconcern by others (such as himself)? Does the person who ultimately caused these deaths, even care about it? His White House has argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that political lying is essential to democracy. (The Court unanimously agreed.) So: what's the real purpose of his lying? He does it on both domestic and foreign policy. Is he as proud of himself as he seems? What are his values, or does he have any?

The mystery is about Obama - it is not about his standard foreign-policy tactic, which is clear. Obama will soon have to make a choice, about what he really is.

PS: Two objections will be discussed here that are frequently raised regarding Russia's alleged blame in the Ukrainian matter:

First, the White House and its agents assert that Russia precipitated the conflict in Ukraine by its 'aggression' in 'seizing' Crimea away from Ukraine. These allegations ignore that in 2010, Russia and Ukraine had signed a 25-year extension on the lease that Russia had had on Russia's Black-Sea-Fleet naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea ever since 1783, when Crimea first became a part of Russia. In 1954, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev donated Crimea to Ukraine without considering the wishes of the Crimean population, who strongly opposed that, and who overwhelmingly considered themselves to be Russians, not to be Ukrainians, anyway. One of Obama's objectives in taking over Ukraine in the 2014 coup was to cancel the remaining 21 years on Russia's lease. Crimeans and Russia both opposed doing that, and Crimeans held a plebiscite on March 16th about whether to rejoin Russia. With that as historical background, then:

(A) The March 16th, 2014, referendum of the voters in Crimea, produced a 96% vote to secede. Some people, like the anti-democratic Russian nationalist "Girkin," ridiculed it, because the Ukrainian Government's officials in Crimea at the time (who hadn't yet been changed by the new coup Government) opposed holding any such referendum. But of course they would have opposed it; they'd have gotten immediately fired by the new Government if they had:at this new Government wasn't now legally the Government in Ukraine. Girkin:The Ukrainian army units remained loyal to Kyiv as they were. Furthermore, most of the army remained that way. The only thing that made what we have accomplished in Crimea possible was the presence of Russian army." And that too is true, just not relevant: without the Russian army there (as part of the lease agreement for protecting Russia's naval base), Crimea would have gone the way of Donbass: civil war. The real question is instead: Did the majority of Crimeans favor or oppose rejoining Russia? The answer to that question is clear; it is:

(B) Gallup polled 500 Crimeans during May 16-30 in 2013, and found that only 15% considered themselves "Ukrainian." 24% considered themselves "Crimean." But 40% considered themselves "Russian." Even before Obama's February 2014 coup which overthrew the Ukrainian President whom 80% of Crimeans had voted for, the Crimean people overwhelmingly wanted to secede from Ukraine - and, especially now they did, right after the President for whom they had overwhelmingly voted, Viktor Yanukovych, had been overthrown in this extremely bloody coup. Furthermore, in April 2014, Gallup again polled Crimea, and they found that 71.3% of Crimeans viewed as "Mostly positive" the role of Russia there, and 4.0% viewed it as "Mostly negative"; by contrast, only 2.8% viewed the role of the United States there as "Mostly positive," and a whopping 76.2% viewed it as "Mostly negative." During the intervening year, Crimeans' favorability toward America had plunged down to 2.8%, from its year-earlier 6%. Clearly, what Obama had done in Ukraine (his violent coup in Kiev) had antagonized the Crimeans. And, as if that weren't enough, the 2014 poll provided yet more evidence: "The 500 people that were sampled in Crimea were asked [and this is crucial] 'Please tell me if you agree or disagree: The results of the referendum on Crimea's status [whether to rejoin Russia] reflect the views of most people here.' 82.8%:gree.' 6.7%:isagree.'" In the hearts of the local residents, Crimea was still Russian territory, after an involuntary hiatus of 60 years; and, so, the Russian Government accepted them back again, into Russia - this was not 'Russia's seizure of Crimea.' It was Russia's protection of Crimeans, from the invasion of Ukraine by the United States in a bloody coup in Kiev.

Second, the White House and its agents blame Russia for the shooting-down of Malaysia's MH17 airliner over Ukraine's conflict-zone on 17 July 2014, and on that basis they won a crucial hike in the economic sanctions against Russia. However, even if it had been the case that the White House and its Ukrainian regime were correct in their allegations that this shoot-down resulted from an error by the separatists when they were mistaking that airliner for a Ukrainian bomber, of which they had already shot down several (in order to protect themselves and their families from being bombed), this still would not have been any reason for Obama and the EU to hike the economic sanctions against Russia, as they did. But it was not the case: The Ukrainian Government shot down the airliner, and moreover intentionally - it was downed by gunfire and then missile-fire both from at least one Ukrainian fighter-plane. U.S. President Obama had failed to persuade the EU to hike those sanctions, and so this event was perpetrated precisely in order to get these sanctions hiked, which the event (and the propaganda about how it had happened) succeeded in achieving.

The bottom line in all of this is:

Whether or not Russia's President Vladimir Putin should be removed from power is something that should be determined by the Russian people themselves, by means of uncorrupted democratic procedures that are not being manipulated either by Russia's aristocracy or - and especially not - by the aristocracy of America or any other foreign country.

Obama's desire for regime-change in Russia is by now obvious, just as was G.W. Bush's desire for regime-change in Iraq. In either instance, one's prejudices about the matter (and everything that had helped to produce those prejudices) should be rejected, in favor of the actual relevant facts, in the given case; and the relevant facts regarding the situations in both Syria and Ukraine are facts about Obama and his aggressions against Russia, vastly more than they are any facts about Putin and his aggressions against the United States, especially because there are actually no aggressions by Putin against the United States, though there might soon be such, if Obama keeps pressing for Putin's removal, either by the tactics that are described here, or else by others. Bush succeeded in Iraq. He ended Saddam and the existing regime there. The results if Obama succeeds in Russia could turn out to be even worse - far worse than what resulted in Iraq. And the costs to the entire world would likely be incalculably higher.

The American Government has become extremely skilled at overthrowing foreign democratically elected - and sometimes not elected - governments. But clearly now, the government that urgently needs to be replaced is the one in the United States itself. This has nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution - the Supreme Court has already destroyed that, and replaced it with rule-by-aristocracy, which America's Founders had instead tried to end, rather than to establish. The American aristocracy itself is now the enormous threat to this planet. America is ruled by corruption, which is normal throughout the world; but absolute power corrupts absolutely, and America's aristocracy is seeking (and close to obtaining) absolute power. Obama calls this aristocratically controlled America, "the one indispensable nation." To him, all other nations are dispensable. It's the same nationalistic ideology as Hitler's "Deutschland über alles!" and nazi-Ukraine's "Ukraine above all!" But it's backed by nuclear weapons and the world's largest military.

All other NATO nations must therefore quit the U.S. military alliance, NATO, which should have been disbanded when the Soviet Union did. And every nation should view the U.S. - the power that controls this country, which is America's aristocracy - to be profoundly hostile; because, tragically, that's what America has now become, to the welfare of all countries.

The American people are not to blame for this. The gangsters who control this nation are. They now threaten the entire world. They need to be cut off, by all other nations.

Any nation that considers itself to be "the one indispensable nation" needs to be dispensed with. Germany, Italy, and Japan, each declared themselves to be the one indispensable nation, before the world almost exhausted itself in defeating them.

Perhaps the solution this time around won't need to be so violent. But continued inaction certainly will be. The choice is thus stark, and delay would be disastrous.

----------

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

[Feb 21, 2015] 15yo NATO bombings of Yugoslavia in 15 dramatic photos

Serbia later became another victim of "color revolution"... This was period of triumphal march of neoliberalism over the worlds, which left a lot of devastation behind... The only countervailing force for the US imperialism, USSR disintegrated in 1991 and victory of neoliberalism was complete at this point.
24.03.2014 |

2,000 civilians died during 78 days of devastating NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia in 1999, when citizens of a European country became accustomed to war-heads flying over their heads, hiding in bomb shelters and praying for their loved ones to stay alive.

US President Bill Clinton calls the bombing "humanitarian intervention" adding "It is also important to America's national interest".

[Feb 21, 2015] The art of provocation and Sacral victims of Maidan

Color revolution is a military operation in which protesters are just a tip of the iceberg. the key players are Embassy staff, three letter agencies, NGOs, bought and foreign owned neoliberal press, some orligrached (who might be pressed into submission with the threat of confiscating their assets), compradors and bought players within the government. It was by bought players within the government initial crashes with police were organized. One of the key instruments are huge cash flows in diplomatic mail that feed the protest ("bombing country with dollars"). In a sense in any neoliberal republic color revolution is designed to be a sucess, the fact which EuroMaidan proved quite convincingly. Ukraine actually was a very easy target. Yanukovich was essentially neutralized and paralyzed by threats from Biden. Security services were infiltrated and partially work for Americans. Several bought members of the government (Lyovochkon?) did their dirty job in organizing the necessity clashes with policy to feed the protest.

Former Prime Minister Azarov explained his version of events on the Maidan. The script writers of the Maidan, in his opinion, were Americans.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told the NTV about how coup d'état of February of the last year was organized. According to him, the script of the coup d'état was written at the U.S. Embassy.

"The main puppeteers were not on the Maidan," Azarov:he protests started because of the decision of Ukrainian authorities to suspend the signing of the Association agreement with the EU.

"There was, of course, the enormous pressure from the leaders of the European Union, from several European countries. The meaning of this pressure was the fact that we must put aside all doubts and to sign this agreement,":e former Prime Minister. "They just needed an excuse, a reason to overthrow our government. Because we were frankly told: "If you do not you sign this agreement, it will sign another government, another President,"

In this regard, according to Azarov, they needed a provocation to start protest and such a provocation became the use of force on Independence square in Kiev, where supporters of European integration were staying for several nights. "The action was slow. The organizers understood that without the sacred victims they will be unable to ignite the crowd. Suddenly around 3 am several TV crews arrive, set lights, camera. What to shoot? This ordinary situation, when people spend the night at the square?" -:arov.

Me and the whole Ukrainian people were cynically played. According to Azarov at this moment "prepared by gunmen in masks" arrived to the square. They started beating on duty policemen with metal sticks. When police called reinforcements instigators quickly disappeared. And when riot police began detention, "they detain generally innocent people who spend night at the square as a part of peaceful protest."

Speaking about the negotiations Yanukovich with the opposition, Azarov noted that the current Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk "every day spend most of his time in the American Embassy and following their instructions to the letter."

In the end, an agreement was signed between the President and opposition leaders on the peaceful resolution of the conflict, the guarantor which were several European countries, but no one except the Yanukovich, fulfilled their obligations. "I still do not understand, how foreign Ministers of Poland, Germany, France, which signed an agreement on February 21 feel themselves. In the history of diplomacy this agreement will be included as an example of the utmost degree of cynicism and deceit,":arov.

See also

[Feb 20, 2015] Debaltsevo fallout in Banderastan

I think Gary (see comments below) forget about one interesting side effect "reaction of Ukrainian to the attempt to depose Kiev junta by military force". Now after Odessa Massacre of May 2, 2014, crimes committed by Right Sector, and territorial battalions of neo-Nazis (such as Azov) indiscriminate shelling of Donbass by Ukrainian army, killing woman and children this reaction on South East will be completely different. People saw the real danger with their own eyes. Russia now have at least 2.5 million people who are ready to die fighting with her. And neutrality of approval of majority of the rest of South East. That's a big, big difference with the situation in February 2014, when Russia occupying Ukraine would look ore like aggressor then liberator.
Also the fact that the US weapons and foreign fighters were captured in Debaltsevo put the USA in vulnerable position now, as blood of woman and children of Donbass cry for revenge.
Quote: In the Russian view, US overt recognition and support for Ukrainian neo-Nazis, its support of an unconstitutional coup in Kiev, and its defense of it later, is not only an insult but also a betrayal. It was seen not only as an act of breaking all norms and laws and in posing a direct danger for Russia and ethnic Russians in Ukraine, but also as a betrayal of the worse kind in which the other side has shown clearly that it holds nothing sacred.
The Vineyard of the Saker

An EU Coalition of the Willing?

When I first heard of Poroshenko's latest idea about sending peacekeepers to the Ukraine, I had figured that he was talking about UN peacekeepers, the only ones with any possible legality for such an operation. Turns out I had "misunderestimated" Poroshenko. His idea is even crazier: he wants *EU* "peacekeepers"! This is what the official website of the President of the Ukraine says:

Ukraine considers the EU mission in the framework of the Common Security and Defense Policy the best option of peacekeeping operation in Donbas, as stated by President Petro Poroshenko at the meeting with Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn in Kyiv.

The Head of State has outlined clear position: "Russia, as country-aggressor, cannot and will not take part in the peacekeeping operation". "Ukraine will not agree to a peacekeeping format, which threatens to legalize thousands of Russian militaries – we already have enough such "peacekeepers"," Petro Poroshenko noted.

The President has informed on the decision of the National Security and Defense Council to appeal to the UN Security Council with a request for an international peacekeeping mission to ensure the preservation of peace in Donbas and control the Ukrainian-Russian border in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "The format of the European Union Police Mission is preferable," the President added.

Am I the only one who is detecting a distinctly American "handwriting" behind this latest idea? Look again: the idea is this - first go to the UN and when the Russians and Chinese veto it, then turn to the EU and use EU states to make a "coalition of the willing". Why? Let me spell out the rationale here:

The prime goal of the USA was to get Russia to militarily intervene in the Donbass to trigger a continental war. Now that this has clearly failed, they want the Europeans to enter the Donbass with exactly the same goal. Once the EU peacekeepers are deployed, all it would take is a bloody false flag (an artillery strike, or a bomb) killing enough EU peacekeepers to raise the immediate need to protect them. Except that the EU does not have any "EU armed forces" so can you guess who would be sent it? Exactly - NATO.

Will the Europeans fall for that? I doubt it. Even the Eurocretins seemed to have lost their taste for crazy US Neocon schemes. Besides, Russia is not Serbia and there is no way the EU will bypass the UNSC for a military operation, not without triggering a huge political crisis inside Europe. To me this latest plans smacks of something McCain and Saakashvili could have cooked up and not something coming out of this White House. God knows I have no sympathy for the Obama Administration or for the Eurocretins in Brussels, but this latest stunt is dumb even by their standards.

Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen! SA marschiert mit ruhig festem Schritt. (The flag on high! The ranks tightly closed! The SA march with quiet, steady step. Horst Wessel Lied - Nazi anthem)

Looks like the Nazi death squads are on the march again, this time they are looking at Kiev. Thirteen death-squad (aka "volunteer battalion") leaders have now declared that they are forming their own military command under the command of the notorious Semen Semenchenko. Officially, they are not in any way opposed to the current regime, so:menchenko, but in reality their rank and file members are pretty clear about what they want to do: organize a third Maidan and toss out Poroshenko. What makes these 21st century version of the SA so dangerous for Poroshenko it that he, unlike Hitler, does not have a 21st century version of the SS to eliminate them all overnight.

In fact, according to many reports the entire southern part of the rump-Ukraine is now "Kolomoiski-land" fully under the control of the oligarch who finances these death-squads. Add to this the fact that most of the Rada is composed of the very same battalion commanders and assorted Nazi freaks, and you will why Poroshenko is now very much in danger.

The next leaders of Banderastan?

Poroshenko can try to present the Debaltsevo disaster as a huge victory, but apparently everybody in the Ukraine knows the truth and that, in turn, designates Poroshenko as the ideal scape-goat and culprit for what happened. The sad reality is that there is simply nobody in the Ukraine capable of disarming these so-called "volunteer battalions". There are now thousands of uniformed Nazi freaks roaming around with guns who can now impose their law of the jungle on everybody. It sure looks like the future of Banderastan will be something like a mix of Somalia and Mad Max - a failed state, a comprehensively destroyed economy, a collapsed social order and the law of armed gangs of thugs.

In a couple of days it will be one year since the US-backed Nazis took power in Kiev and when I think of what they have "achieved" in such a short period of time I wonder if the idiots who were jumping on the Maidan and screaming "he who does not jump is a Moskal" and "glory to the Ukraine! to the heroes glory!" had any idea that their actions would completely destroy the country which they wanted to bring into the EU.

pug

Interesting and extensive interview with Ukrainian Azov Battalion POW, with English subtitles.
NAF is treating its prisoners humanely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOv_KSWRRc

Kat Kan

"[none]...had any idea that their actions would completely destroy the country which they wanted to bring into the EU..,".

And now never will.

Yanukovich should have laid it out in detail what the real costs would be.

Any decent government should be straight with its people about what they're doing. Every minister should be able to do a one hour Q&Am dont expect them to go 4 hours like Putin. In "democracy" they talk, debate, avoid or answer questions, to sell themselves as the best candidate. Then their press secretaries do everything to keep them from giving a straight answer. What they should do is give account of themselves afterwards, twice a year.

There may be a small number of potentially acceptable people in the Rada. Everyone else would have to be from the people who know things, not those who just want stuff.

Russia, old or new, would have to have a hand in a change, it won't happen just by itself.

andrei put:

EU peacekeepers are not a new idea.

EU have been present in ukraine since 2005 as the EUBAM european bored Assistance Mission and have bee in Palestine as

"EUPOL COPPS - POLICE AND RULE OF LAW MISSION FOR THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES"

This is a document you can get from European union External Action site and is part of Common Security and Defence Policy

nothing new here.

Penelope:

What a Machiavellian mind you have, Saker! Sucker the EU in for peacekeeping in order to attack them w a false flag. You're probably right.

What's more, Porky wants the EU to monitor the Rus-Donbas border to prevent supplies reaching Donbas, while US supplies to Kiev wd be completely unmonitored since they don't occur at the ceasefire line.

The Kiev kleptocrats recently sold off the last of the grain reserves. Agricultural inputs for Spring planting are not available yet-- fuel, lubricants. I suppose Monsanto will be supplying GMO seed & will be allowed to buy up the land of all the bankrupt farmers.

Usual Ukrainian crops are wheat, barley, vegetables, sugar beets, sunflower seeds. Monsanto makes GMO seed for sugar beets and for wheat and a few vegetables.

One hates to see the chaos of fullscale rebellion, especially because CIA, Mossad, etc might use it to destroy the infrastructure. But the only other possibility for escape from Ukraine's dismal future wd be a benevolent countercoup.

Anonymous

Let's hope they get at each others throats BEFORE they send in the UN or EU peacekeepers. And I do believe that the US is stupid enough to play this game after all they pulled the coup didn't they. American's act with impunity because the their is no price for failure born by those who promote the failed polices in fact many of them get promotions just to cover up the failure. Something like Pornoshenko is trying to do now only thing is he is not John MCCain sitting in the US Senate he is in Kiev....and puppets don't matter to anyone.
RR

Penelope

Martijn, interesting about Eurocorps. I understood that the Maastricht Treaty that created EU provided for an independent military force, but tha the US had such a prolonged hissy-fit that EU gave up & put it under NATO command.

It is not obvious from the Wikipedia entry that Eurocorp is under NATO command but it does say "From 1 July 2006, to 10 January 2007, the headquarters of the corps was the land component stand by element of the NATO Response Force 7." It then has its "headquarters" at other NATO Response Forces. So I doubt that it is independent of NATO.

Gary:

Saker:The prime goal of the USA was to get Russia to militarily intervene in the Donbass to trigger a continental war."

This assertion keeps being made with no logical argument to back it up. Saker is always challenging us to back up our assertions. I return the favor.

This assumes NATO would enter Ukraine to fight against Russian troops, therefore fulfilling US plans to engage Europeans against Russia in Europe. Right? Who else would be engaged in a continental war against Russia?

Let me grant the Saker, Starikov, Putin the benefit of the doubt. They have far more inside info, experience, and insight than any of us mere mortals. Seriously, I mean it.

Russia succeeded in its mission to help defend Donbass without sending its own military. Mission accomplished, for now. I'll grant them that.

Novorossia can have national pride that it defended itself without big brother stepping in. That is probably worth a lot.

So this is a moot point for now, until next time NATO/Kiev attack Novorossia. So the question must be asked. What should they do next time?

Consider the cost of all the dead civilians. Was it necessary to allow this?

Strelkov says no. I agree with him.

Here is why.

Every bit of Western media and every public figure in every Western country says Russia invaded. So what difference would it have made if Russia actually did? None.

If Russia invaded why is there even debate about sending weapons, and/or NATO troops to Ukraine? According to argument above, Russian invasion would immediately trigger "continental war". It didn't, therefore proving the above statement is wrong. The public believes Russia invaded. Every single person I have talked to says they did. So as far as the west is concerned Russia did invade.

The statement above is premised that NATO or someone would have invaded Ukraine to defend against Russian "aggression", therefore triggering a continental war. There is NO WAY US/NATO would engage with Russia. The US is a bully, and bullies only attack the weak. Russia is not weak.

Would Europe go along with an invasion of Ukraine even if US wanted to? I doubt it. Ukraine is far more important to Russia than to Europe, and you can see Europe backtracking now that the blitzkrieg wasn't a cakewalk.

Estimates were that Russia could have rolled back the Kiev attack on Donbass in anywhere from 48hrs to one week. What would US/NATO do in that time? I doubt they could make a decision that fast.

In the psychological warfare game, I think the US scored one point, maybe losing others. Using its standard reverse projection (McMurtry-blame others for what you are doing), the US put Russia on the defensive and influenced it NOT to invade, so as not to be thought an "aggressor". So they fell for this psy-op to prevent them from invading as a defensive anti-genocide force.

Starikov claims that the advocates of Russian invasion in Russia were pointed to by US as evidence of "Russian Aggression". This assertion is totally wrong. US doesn't need any evidence. STarikov needs to read McMurtry.

Russia could have gone to the security council and called for UN troops to protect Donbass from ethnic cleansing. This would have been vetoed by US. Russia could then claim R2P and sent troops to protect civilians in Donbass, and clear out the NAZIs.

I will concede to opponents of this position that Russia succeeded without invading Ukraine. But was it necessary to allow ethnic cleansing to take place? I don't think so.

If anyone can refute what I'm saying, please do. I could be wrong.

Luca K:

Banderastan?
More like Neoconistan, no?

This whole thing in the Ukraine has the the neocons's fingerprints all over it.

Does Mr.Saker know that Neoconservatism is a Jewish political and intectual movement?

Main themes; Israel and whats good for the jews..

The "nazis" in the Ukraine are paid by a Jewish/israeli oligarch... right. And the nationalists want to actually join the most anti-nationalist organization in the world, the freakish EU.

American Kulak:

@ Alien Tech 20 February, 2015 04:31

On the whole NATO troops thing and the NAF saying they overheard English, Polish and Flemish (? Belgian language) on the UAF radio sets: I think after 'outta my face' guy got caught on camera in Mariupol OPSEC was tightened up. I also do not believe the Poles are present in the numbers they were used in the late spring and summer phases of the 'ATO' when we know they were deployed around Slavyansk and some may have died on board the IL-76 full of elite paratroopers that was to land in Donetsk but got shot down due to the UAF's poor intel about NAF MANPAD capabilities.

Jim Willie told the Ontario resident Paul Sandhu on his Wake Up and Live radio show this week that the NATO mercs were evacuated as part of the quid pro quo between Merkel, Hollande and Putin. Although VVP is a good poker player the unconcealed glee on Putin's face to me suggests a man who had Poroshenko and his sponsors by the gonads and knew it. Foreign mercs after all the howling about '#RussiaInvadedUkraine' getting exposed in a big way would not be a game changer but it would make US/UK media take the bleating about #RussiaInvadedUkraine slightly less seriously.

I am still waiting for the Polish version of Glenn Greenwald to publish about the 'vacationers' especially from the country's elite GROM special forces sniper unit and among Poland's Su-25 pilots who didn't come back. But that's far off. I doubt the Lithuanians would've provided enough numbers to make much of a difference except for the very early, limited number battles around Slavyansk and Kramatorsk where Strelkov's group was outnumbered 20 to 1. It is far safer for the foreigners to have units with which they can blend in but we also know from UAF defectors/deserters to the NAF that the American mercs were kept segregated from the Ukrainians at their base and did as little speaking as possible, probably to train the men against a sudden native English speaker outburst like 'outta my face' guy who 90% was from the northeastern U.S. Regrettably some even on the pro-NAF side on Twitter seem confused or to conflate outta my face guy with the Brit Azov Battalion Nazi volunteer Chris "Swampy" Garrett but Swampy has a beard in the footage where he's looking for munitions in Mariupol whereas outta my face guy was clean shaven. That's an American merc and I would place his place of being raised as between Philadelphia and Buffalo, NY.

Alien Tech:

Gary:

"The prime goal of the USA was to get Russia to militarily intervene in the Donbass to trigger a continental war."

Well that is the first goal. Get Russia to accept the tar baby after which Europe will split. Russia being the biggest European market means a lot more American goods. No more Russian gas means a lot bigger market for US gas. US would also be able to point out what Russia did to other countries and get them to turn against Russia.

Until now there is no evidence that Russia invaded. They all come down to Russia invaded Crimea.. Which is why people believe Russia invaded Ukraine. Earlier it was mentioned that thousands of Russians were in the NAF forces, I am thinking the actual number of people who took time off from the RF forces are very few. Remember, anyone with soviet passport can get a Russian passport, does not mean they are Russian, Only in technicality they are Russian so we can say everyone fighting in Ukraine are Russian, either they hold a Russian passport or speak Russian or have relatives in Russia. But it wont hold up in court that they acted on behalf of the Russian government which is a huge stumbling block, Propaganda does not affect court proceedings. Just like the mayor of London cant be considered an American even though he was born in the US and hold a US passport.

Many of the things you mentioned works because like 911 where the US forced everyone to accept their version of things, without showing any proof. They mostly force the justice department to reject anyone questioning the governments version but that only works in the US for now. The EU is neck deep in this fiasco considering it was merkels plan for a greater German empire. The world has their own legal system, but they need proof.. US has no proof so only thing they can do is use force against those with them to go along. The world is not just the US/EU.. I am sure even the Chinese would be careful since they also have a restless population that ants their own country, siding with another country that foments such things would make them nervous. India another such country, When Russians tell Indian leaders they are not doing it, its taken as money in the gold vault. There has to be honesty and trust.. If Russia is doing a Pakistan, no one will trust them.

Also remember, in time the truth will come out. We know not to take anything the US says at face value. Now we dont even take what the EU says at face value, in fact we believe they are lying about everything and without proof nothing they say matter. More and more people will now not take it for granted when Europeans come bearing gifts.. Most will wonder what poison is in the cookies..

In less than 10 years, an entire race of people have turned in lying deceitful cretins and the people living there let it happen without a fight. Even their allies are very nervous because they don't know where they stand. Nice reassuring words are meaningless.

When Iran says, invading Syria is an act that would be the same as invading Iran. Anyone doubt that? I highly doubt the convictions of EU/nato....

Alien Tech:

Gary: and here is a far better answer... The underlying tactics of each side.. And why one side does something and the other does things differently. Even if both wants the same outcome.

While US support for the coup in Kiev could be analyzed from the perspective of traditional imperialism with the US seeking to impose its will and ensure that its will overrides others, even that of regional powers, the way it has managed to convince many in the West of the righteousness of its cause and in its support of the Kiev post-coup government, was due to an appeal to the Western sense of justice and law with Russia being presented as an aggressor and violator. Furthermore, Russia was presented as practicing the "laws of the jungle" as Angela Merkel put it, and therefore as a barbarian.

If one wishes to understand the crisis and its nature, it is necessary to analyze the respective mentalities of each side.

The rule of law is held sacred as it is the mechanism by which the market operates, even when the law serves to strengthen the control of corporations over the lives of ordinary people. Within this framework, the creation of an independent, rational actor, who must live for his or her own sake and seek to express his worth via his external accomplishments, is the hallmark of the Western civilization. and yet does not have the support of a larger community to a degree more common in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The individual in the West is judged solely on his accomplishments and not on his internal value as a human being. For this reason, he is constantly insecure and seeks to prove himself. The easiest way one can feel secure about himself, therefore, is by seeing how he is better than others, and ways in which he is superior. Therefore, by pointing at how he is better than others, more moral than them, more professional and so on, he feels better about himself and is secure.

Western history, especially of the UK, US, Germany, it is replete with aggressive expansion, imperialism, bloodshed, colonialism, exploitation and slavery. wars conducted by the US and UK have continued and intensified in recent decades. The Western mentality, still holds that the West is better than all other 'oppressive' countries, despite the fact that the latter did not engage in bombing campaigns of 'backward' countries.

Therefore, it is all too convenient for it to point a finger at Russia for violating international law By blaming Russia, the West feels better about itself.

Although strong ties in the community have weakened in Russia in the past two decades, the individual is still not viewed wholly as an atom who lives for his own fulfillment, but as one who belongs to a community and a nation, and must live for a moral purpose.

Russians tend to be very critical of themselves in how well they live up to certain standards and are not too comfortable with themselves in the way Westerners tend to be.

In Russia, despite the image of immense corruption that is common in how Westerners view it, friendship usually comes before career. People will go out of their way to help a friend in most cases, even at their expense of their professional development, in the Russian mentality, basic decency is to be generally respected and people are not to be humiliated or mocked without mercy unless in exceptional cases as a response to an aggressive action.

What is true for the individual is also true for the society at large.

Alien Tech:

Gary: and here is a far better answer... The underlying tactics of each side.. And why one side does something and the other does things differently. Even if both wants the same outcome.

While US support for the coup in Kiev could be analyzed from the perspective of traditional imperialism with the US seeking to impose its will and ensure that its will overrides others, even that of regional powers, the way it has managed to convince many in the West of the righteousness of its cause and in its support of the Kiev post-coup government, was due to an appeal to the Western sense of justice and law with Russia being presented as an aggressor and violator. Furthermore, Russia was presented as practicing the "laws of the jungle" as Angela Merkel put it, and therefore as a barbarian.

If one wishes to understand the crisis and its nature, it is necessary to analyze the respective mentalities of each side.

The rule of law is held sacred as it is the mechanism by which the market operates, even when the law serves to strengthen the control of corporations over the lives of ordinary people. Within this framework, the creation of an independent, rational actor, who must live for his or her own sake and seek to express his worth via his external accomplishments, is the hallmark of the Western civilization. and yet does not have the support of a larger community to a degree more common in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The individual in the West is judged solely on his accomplishments and not on his internal value as a human being. For this reason, he is constantly insecure and seeks to prove himself. The easiest way one can feel secure about himself, therefore, is by seeing how he is better than others, and ways in which he is superior. Therefore, by pointing at how he is better than others, more moral than them, more professional and so on, he feels better about himself and is secure.

Wstern history, especially of the UK, US, Germany, it is replete with aggressive expansion, imperialism, bloodshed, colonialism, exploitation and slavery. wars conducted by the US and UK have continued and intensified in recent decades. The Western mentality, still holds that the West is better than all other 'oppressive' countries, despite the fact that the latter did not engage in bombing campaigns of 'backward' countries.

Therefore, it is all too convenient for it to point a finger at Russia for violating international law By blaming Russia, the West feels better about itself.

Although strong ties in the community have weakened in Russia in the past two decades, the individual is still not viewed wholly as an atom who lives for his own fulfillment, but as one who belongs to a community and a nation, and must live for a moral purpose.

Russians tend to be very critical of themselves in how well they live up to certain standards and are not too comfortable with themselves in the way Westerners tend to be.

In Russia, despite the image of immense corruption that is common in how Westerners view it, friendship usually comes before career. People will go out of their way to help a friend in most cases, even at their expense of their professional development, in the Russian mentality, basic decency is to be generally respected and people are not to be humiliated or mocked without mercy unless in exceptional cases as a response to an aggressive action.

What is true for the individual is also true for the society at large.

In the Russian view, US overt recognition and support for Ukrainian neo-Nazis, its support of an unconstitutional coup in Kiev, and its defense of it later, is not only an insult but also a betrayal. It was seen not only as an act of breaking all norms and laws and in posing a direct danger for Russia and ethnic Russians in Ukraine, but also as a betrayal of the worse kind in which the other side has shown clearly that it holds nothing sacred.

http://syncreticstudies.com/2015/02/15/the-battle-of-wills-between-the-west-and-russia-which-side-will-win/

Gary:

Perhaps Russia feared another Afghanistan quagmire, where US/NATO could launch a guerrilla war against them and keep attacking them and costing them. That would be a logical fear to keep out.

But if they moved in-moved out, turned over border defense to Donbass, that wouldn't happen.

McMurtry calls Ukraine, "the biggest ethnic cleansing operation of the millennium."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41051.htm

And that doesn't justify military intervention? If not what does? I keep going back to the talk I heard from Romeo Dallaire, head of UN in Rwanda.

Put the shoe on the other foot. If Americans or US business interests in, I don't know, say Panama, Grenada, or Cuba were threatened, would the US hesitate to invade to protect them? Oh yeah I forgot, they DID invade those countries.

eimar clark

Very well: wonder if the obsession with 'proving oneself' as a superior individual (the ubermensch who must make untermensch of others, since this valuation must be relative) has it's roots in aristocratic primogeniture?

Once the heir was produced, the 'spare' - or more - had no entitlement. Many of then went abroad to colonize other lands as a result. That insecurity led to am obsession with control - and the political pathologies of, lets say, the apartheid state of South Africa. The absence of roots or sense of belonging and the lack me connection to family may very well have generated a 'race' of the 'rootless' - and so became ruthless.

It's a possibility, don't you think ?

Selected comments form M of A Biden Donates Counter Mortar Radar To Russian Weapon Exhibition

Charles | Feb 20, 2015 5:29:47 PM | 8

The loss of Debaltsevo is an enormous and well-deserved embarrassment for Kiev. But my feeling is that it's not quite the disaster the rebels are claiming. Here's my analysis, which I admit is just a layman's read of the situation. I'm guesstimating 30% KIA/WIA/captured, with most of the discrepancy being due to desertion, and a loss of 50-70% of their mechanized equipment and heavy weaponry.

Meanwhile, it's the rebels and their families whose homes have been destroyed and who are surviving on crumbs. It doesn't look like a great victory to me. Though it might be enough to force Kiev to grant limited autonomy to the Donbas, as prescribed in Minsk 2.

Anyway, I am outsourcing further analysis to Moon. This is a very difficult story to follow, especially for this non-Russian speaker.

Demian | Feb 20, 2015 5:43:36 PM | 11

Edifying video in which one first sees Ukrainian soldiers alive, and then one sees them dead. Ukrainian soldiers make football hooligans come across as opera goers.
Demian | Feb 20, 2015 6:15:54 PM | 15
Here's a Polish map of what Europe will look like. According to this conception, a rump Banderastan centered around Kiev will remain. But it remains to be seen whether any trace of Banderastan will remain. By allowing themselves to be tricked by Obama and Victoria Nuland, thus showing their true fascist nature, Ukrainians lost their right to having any kind of country, no matter how tiny.
Demian | Feb 20, 2015 6:34:24 PM | 17

@S-true #14:

If I were Russia, and WW3 does indeed come (which it seems it will), I'd target Germany first.

Yes, but you're not Russia. The Russians are inveterate Germanophiles. Even though I have:at Merkel's conduct in this crisis has been more disgusting than Obama's, I still can't hold anything against Germany.

Germany and Russia have deep cultural affinities, whereas the Anglosphere is alien to both of them. This has been obscured by Germany's nature being temporarily effaced by its current American occupation.

S-true | Feb 20, 2015 6:35:11 PM | 18

Here's a Polish map of what Europe will look like. According to this conception, a rump Banderastan centered around Kiev will remain. But it remains to be seen whether any trace of Banderastan will remain. By allowing themselves to be tricked by Obama and Victoria Nuland, thus showing their true fascist nature, Ukrainians lost their right to having any kind of country, no matter how tiny.

Screw that!
Kiev is "the mother of all Russian cities", and ending up in "Banderistan" ain't feasible. Many mighty empires throughout history have fallen, and the Bandera/ISIS/Israel backers are no different...they'll fall too.

Besides, anything that's coming from Poland or has an "Euro" prefix isn't something that should be taken seriously. It's Monty Python stuff.

This whole Ukraine/Syria/Libya/Iraq/Afghanistan/Bosnia/Kosovo/Serbia mess was a true eye-opener for me!

Demian | Feb 20, 2015 7:11:41 PM | 23

@Lochearn #16:

I see some young guys laughing and joking

Yes, that is a large part of the problem. Ukrainians see exterminating Russians as fun and a laughing matter. There are countless posts on social media in which Ukrainians laugh and express glee about Ukrainians massacring innocent Russian civilians. That began with the Odessa Union Building massacre, in which Ukrainians joked on social media about the Colorados getting barbecued. This is what makes Ukrainians more ineffably evil than the original Nazis.

@chuckvw #20:

Look like the guys I served with many moons ago, trying to laugh off an effed up situation. Pawns in a game over which they have no control.

This is not like US grunts killing Vietnamese. It is like boys from New Jersey thinking that killing Bostonians is a fun joke. Would you have any sympathy with such people? Their being branewashed by their educational system and mass media does not exculpate them. If they had any grain of basic human decency, they would not think that killing their own people is a joke.

[Feb 19, 2015] Chinese Authorities and US-Made 'Color Revolution' in Hong Kong

"...China has carefully worked the Hong Kong professors, who trying to repay the US grants by droving students to the streets. Dismissal, conversations with the Chinese KGB, check about the payment of taxes from money from grants make this method of generating the crowd from university students by-and-large closed. Similar problems were created for all American NGOs."
"...China found for local Poroshenko, who fanned the Maidan through his media resources, some very convincing words. Jimmy Lai for a couple of days disappeared from the public view, and when he returned, his revolutionary enthusiasm had sharply diminished."
Let's see what methods the China used in response to the orange infection.

1. As we remember the significant contribution to EuroMaidan was transportation by buses of residents of Western regions of Ukraine into Kiev. In Hong Kong this trick failed. China has established a tight cordons on the border of Hong Kong – tourists who looks like potential street fighters and coordinators tourists were turned back. Buses with armed bits and fittings gull of young aggressive young people had no chance to get into the area of unrest.

2. China has carefully worked the Hong Kong professors, who trying to repay the US grants by droving students to the streets. Dismissal, conversations with the Chinese KGB, check about the payment of taxes from money from grants make this method of generating the crowd from university students by-and-large closed. Similar problems were created for all American NGOs.

Yanukovich during his time in power did not managed to close this channel of feeding of Maidan via "pre-paid" university professors, and NGOs has almost diplomatic immunity status in Ukraine. At the end he almost paid with his life for that.

3. A dangerous groups that could take on the role of storm troopers for insurgents – such as radical environmentalists were placed under administrative arrest and could not participate in the riots.

4. Around the Maidan was organized by the cordon of police, who did not give peaceful protesters the ability to smuggle to the place of unrest Molotov cocktails and such. Those who were caught were packed into police car and removed.

5. China found for local Poroshenko, who fanned the Maidan through his media resources, some very convincing words. Jimmy Lai for a couple of days disappeared from the public view, and when he returned, his revolutionary enthusiasm had sharply diminished.

6. Chinese media together were explained to local residents that because of protests big business and big money will move to other cities. which gladly will cease the opportunity to take over Hong Kong financial hub. For residents of Hong Kong this is a very troubling prospect: at least in terms of higher unemployment and lower wages. At this point many will not be able to pay their mortgages and other loans.

Explanations had its effect – CNN reports that the locals became really aggressive toward protesters. Quote:

Talks planned as Hong Kong protest numbers shrink – CNN.com

The news of official talks comes as a dwindling number of pro-democracy demonstrators continue to cling on to their protest sites in key areas of the tightly packed city. As their numbers wane, so does patience of some of their fellow citizens.

"At first, I supported them, but then I started to think they are being selfish because they block the roads - and that's wrong,":rginia Lai, who has sold newspapers from a stall in the busy district of Mong Kok for 45 years.

Lai says her business is down 30% and getting worse. The student-led demonstrators are camped out at a major intersection in the neighborhood, which witnessed violent clashes between protesters and their opponents over the weekend.

At the moment on the streets of Hong Kong are still about 300 protesters:

http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1492865

As we know from previous color revolutions experience, hardcore protesters themselves usually do not disperse voluntarily: they sit until the last, waiting for the moment when the police begin to disperse them. How will China to solve the problem is unclear.

However, we can already say that Americans have faced this time with an intelligent and cold-blooded enemy: the enemy, who had carefully studied all of their previous games, and provided a strong response to each standard course of manuals.

Perhaps, in the place of the Americans, I would think not even about Hong Kong, but about Texas and Washington. In the U.S., more than enough smoldering conflicts that an experienced player will be able, with a little luck to inflate to a full-scale protest. and amount of armed people could make it problematic for policy to crash.

By Fritz Morgen

[Feb 19, 2015] Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" is US-backed Sedition by Tony Cartalucci

"...Lai's liasons with notorious Neo-Con Wolfowitz should be no surprise – as NED, the principle director of Washington's vast portfolio of political agitators worldwide is rife with Neo-Cons who intermingle both on NED's board of directors, as well as in various other corporate-financier funded think tanks."
October 20, 2014 | journal-neo.org

The goal of the US in Hong Kong is clear – to turn the island into an epicenter of foreign-funded subversion with which to infect China's mainland more directly.

Protesters of the "Occupy Central" movement in Hong Kong shout familiar slogans and adopt familiar tactics seen across the globe as part of the United States' immense political destabilization and regime change enterprise. Identifying the leaders, following the money, and examining Western coverage of these events reveal with certainty that yet again, Washington and Wall Street are busy at work to make China's island of Hong Kong as difficult to govern for Beijing as possible.

Naming Names: Who is Behind "Occupy Central?"

Several names are repeatedly mentioned amid coverage of what is being called "Occupy Central," the latest in a long line of US-engineered color revolutions, and part of America's vast, ambitious global geopolitical reordering which started in earnest in 2011 under the guise of the so-called "Arab Spring."

Benny Tai, a lecturer of law at the University of Hong Kong, is cited by various sources across the Western media as the primary organizer – however there are many "co-organizers" mentioned alongside him. The South China Morning Post in an article titled, "Occupy Central is on: Benny Tai rides wave of student protest to launch movement (1)," mentions most of them (emphasis added):

Political heavyweights including Civic Party chairwoman Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, former head of the Catholic diocese Cardinal Jospeh Zen Zi-kiun and Democratic Party founding chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming addressed the crowd.

The Post also mentions (emphasis added):

Jimmy Lai Chi-Ying, the embattled boss of Next Media who is under investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption over donations to pan-democrat politicians,: arrived immediately after a call from Martin Lee Chu-ming.

Benny Tai regularly attends US State Department, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiary the National Democratic Institute (NDI) funded and/or organized forums.

Just this month, he spoke at a Design Democracy Hong Kong (NDI-funded) conference on political reform. He is also active at the University of Hong Kong's Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) – also funded by NDI.

CCPL's 2013-2014 annual report lists Benny Tai as attending at least 3 of the center's functions, as well as heading one of the center's projects.

Martin Lee, Jimmy Lai, and Joseph Zen are all confirmed as both leaders of the "Occupy Central" movement and collaborators with the US State Department. Martin Lee, founding chairman of the Democratic Party in Hong Kong, would even travel to the United States this year to conspire directly with NED as well as with politicians in Washington.

Earlier this year, Lee would even take to the stage of NED's event "Why Democracy in Hong Kong Matters." Joining him at the NED-organized event was Anson Chan, another prominent figure currently supporting the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong's streets.

Media mogul Jimmy Lai was reported to have met with Neo-Con and former president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz in June 2014.

China Daily would report in an article titled, "Office opposes foreign interference in HK," that:

A special edition of Eastweek showed Lai, owner of Next Media and Apple Daily, meeting Paul Wolfowitz, a former US deputy secretary of defense in George W. Bush's administration. The pair met on Lai's private yacht for five hours in late May.

Wolfowitz, who was also president of the World Bank between 2005 and 2007, is well-known in the US for his neo-conservative views and belief in a unilateral foreign policy. Wolfowitz also held the post of under secretary of defense between 1989 and 1993. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Lai would also seek Wolfowitz' help in securing various business deals in Myanmar. The South China Morning Post in their article, "Jimmy Lai paid Paul Wolfowitz US$75,000 for help in Myanmar," reported that:

Leaked documents show Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying paid former US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz US$75,000 for his help with projects in Myanmar.

According to a July 22, 2013, remittance notice by the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank, Wolfowitz received the money from Lai as "compensation for services in regards to Myanmar".

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Lai's liasons with notorious Neo-Con Wolfowitz should be no surprise – as NED, the principle director of Washington's vast portfolio of political agitators worldwide is rife with Neo-Cons who intermingle both on NED's board of directors, as well as in various other corporate-financier funded think tanks.

NED itself is merely a front, couching geopolitical and corporate-financier interests behind the cover of "promoting freedom" and "democracy" around the world.

There is also "student leader" Joshua Wong, who was arrested amid the protests. Wong has had his career tracked by the NDI's "NDItech" project since as early as 2012. In a post titled, "In Hong Kong, Does "Change Begin with a Single Step"?," NDI reports:

Scholarism founder Joshua Wong Chi-fung, 15, has become an icon of the movement, and his skillful interactions with media have been memorialized and disseminated on Youtube. Through this page, Hong Kong youth have coalesced around common messages and images – for example, equating MNE with "brainwashing" and echoing themes reminiscent of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.

Wong's work serves to challenge attempts by Beijing to reestablish Chinese institutions on the island, preserving Western-style (and co-opted) institutions including the education system.

The aforementioned Civic Party chairwoman Audrey Eu Yuet-mee is also entwined with the US NED, regularly attending forums sponsored by NED and its subsidiary NDI. In 2009 she was a featured speaker at an NDI sponsored public policy forum hosted by "SynergyNet," also funded by NDI.

In 2012 she was a guest speaker at the NDI-funded Women's Centre "International Women's Day" event. The Hong Kong Council of Women (HKCW) itself is also annually funded by the NDI. Just this year, should would also find herself associated with CCPL, presenting at one of its functions beside "Occupy Central" leader Benny Tai himself.

In addition to SynergyNet, CCPL, and HKCW, there are several other US-funded NGOs supporting, legitimizing, and justifying "Occupy Central," or hosting those leading it. Among them is the US NED-funded "Hong Kong Transition Project" which claims it is "tracking the transition of Hong Kong people from subjects to citizens."

In name and mission statement alone, the goal of the US in Hong Kong is clear – to turn Hong Kong into an epicenter of foreign-funded subversion with which to infect China's mainland with more directly.

The Transition Project was tasked with legitimizing Occupy Central's "pro-democracy referendum" conducted earlier this year – which then served as justification for increasing unrest on Hong Kong's streets. Guardian in a June 2014 article titled, "Hong Kong's unofficial pro-democracy referendum irks Beijing," would report:

About 730,000 Hong Kong residents – equivalent to a fifth of the registered electorate – have voted in an unofficial "referendum" that has infuriated Beijing and prompting a flurry of vitriolic editorials, preparatory police exercises and cyber-attacks.

Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP), the pro-democracy movement that organised the poll, hopes to pressure Beijing into allowing Hong Kong's 7.2 million residents to choose their own leader by 2017. If Beijing refuses, OCLP says, the movement will mobilise at least 10,000 people next month to block the main roads in Central, a forest of skyscrapers housing businesses and government offices on Hong Kong island's northern shore.

The Transition Project links with other US-funded organizations, including the Hong Kong-based "think tank" Civic Exchange. Funded by Exxon, the US State Department's NDI, the British Council, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Morgan Stanley, Citi Group, the British Consulate itself, and many others, its claim of being "Hong Kong's independent public policy think tank" is scandalous.

The Agenda: What Does "Occupy Central" Really Want?

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US NDI openly states on its own page dedicated to its political meddling in Hong Kong that:

In 2005, NDI initiated a six-month young political leaders program focused on training a group of rising party and political group members in political communications skills. In 2006, NDI launched a District Council campaign school for candidates and campaign managers in the lead-up to the 2007 elections.

NDI has also worked to bring political parties, government leaders and civil society actors together in public forums to discuss political party development, the role of parties in Hong Kong and political reform. In 2012, for example, a conference by Hong Kong think tank SynergyNet supported by NDI featured panelists from parties across the ideological spectrum and explored how adopting a system of coalition government might lead to a more responsive legislative process.

Indeed, the very organizations, forums, and political parties the "Occupy Central" movement is associated with and led by are the creation of foreign interests – specifically the US State Department through NDI. Since "democracy" is "self-rule," and every step of "Occupy Central" has seen involvement by foreign interests, "democracy" is surely not the protest's true agenda.

Instead, it is "soft" recolonization by Washington, Wall Street, and London. If "Occupy Central" is successful and Beijing ever foolishly agrees to allowing the leaders of this foreign-orchestrated charade to run for office, what will be running Hong Kong will not be the people, but rather foreign interests through a collection of overt proxies who shamelessly sustain themselves on US cash, political backing, and support across the West's vast media resources.

The West's Long War With China

"Occupy Central" is just one of many ongoing gambits the US is running against Beijing. A visit to the US NED site reveals not one, but four pages dedicated to meddling in China's internal politics. NED's activities are divided among China in general, Xinjiang – referred to as "East Turkistan" as it is called by violent separatists the US backs – and Hong Kong.

All of NED's funding goes to politically subversive groups aligned to and dependent on the West, while being hostile toward Beijing. They range from "monitoring" and "media" organizations, to political parties as well as fronts for violent extremists.

And as impressive as this network of political subversion is, it itself is still but a single part of a greater geopolitical agenda to encircle, contain, and eventually collapse the political order of Beijing and replace it with one favorable to Wall Street and Washington.

As early as the Vietnam War, with the so-called "Pentagon Papers" released in 1969, it was revealed that the conflict was simply one part of a greater strategy aimed at containing and controlling China. While the US would ultimately lose the Vietnam War and any chance of using the Vietnamese as a proxy force against Beijing, the long war against Beijing would continue elsewhere.

This containment strategy would be updated and detailed in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute report "String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China's Rising Power across the Asian Littoral" where it outlines China's efforts to secure its oil lifeline from the Middle East to its shores in the South China Sea as well as means by which the US can maintain American hegemony throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean.

The premise is that, should Western foreign policy fail to entice China into participating in the "international system" as responsible stakeholders, an increasingly confrontational posture must be taken to contain the rising nation.

This includes funding, arming, and backing terrorists and proxy regimes from Africa, across the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and even within China's territory itself.

Documented support of these movements not only include Xinjiang separatists, but also militants and separatists in Baluchistan, Pakistan where the West seeks to disrupt a newly christened Chinese port and pipeline, as well as the machete wielding supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar's Rakhine state – yet another site the Chinese hope to establish a logistical hub.

Meddling in Thailand and stoking confrontation between China and an adversarial front including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan are also components of this spanning containment policy.

Whatever grievances those among "Occupy Central's" mobs may have, they have forfeited both their legitimacy and credibility, not to mention any chance of actually achieving progress. Indeed, as the US-engineered "Arab Spring" has illustrated, nothing good will come of serving insidious foreign interests under the guise of "promoting democracy."

The goal of "Occupy Central" is to make Hong Kong ungovernable at any cost, especially at the cost of the people living there – not because that is the goal of the witless though well-intentioned participants being misled by Washington's troupe of seditious proxies, but because that is the goal of those funding and ultimately directing the movement from abroad.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook".


First appeared:http://journal-neo.org/2014/10/01/hong-kong-s-occupy-central-is-us-backed-sedition/

[Feb 19, 2015] ​Egypt is calling the West's bluff over its phony war on ISIS

They destroyed Iraq, they destroyed Afghanistan, they destroyed Lybia, the destroyed Syria. Now they are destroying Ukraine.
February 19, 2015 | RT Op-Edge

Western states are trumpeting ISIS as the latest threat to civilisation, claiming total commitment to their defeat, and using the group's conquests in Syria and Iraq as a pretext for deepening their own military involvement in the Middle East.

Yet as Libya seems to be following the same path as Syria – of 'moderate' anti-government militias backed by the West paving the way for ISIS takeover – Britain and the US seem reluctant to confront them there, immediately pouring cold water on Egyptian President Sisi's request for an international coalition to halt their advances. By making the suggestion – and having it, predictably, spurned – Sisi is making clear Western duplicity over ISIS and the true nature of NATO policy in Libya.

On August 29, 2011, two months before the last vestiges of the Libyan state were destroyed and its leader executed, I was interviewed on Russia Today about the country's future. I told the station: "There's been a lot of talk about what will happen [in Libya after the ouster of Gaddafi] – will there be sharia law, will there be a liberal democracy? What we have to understand is that what will replace the Libyan state won't be any of those things, what will replace the Libyan state will be the same as what has replaced the state in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is a dysfunctional government, complete lack of security, gang warfare and civil war. And this is not a mistake from NATO. They would prefer to see failed states than states that are powerful and independent and able to challenge their hegemony. And people who are fighting for the TNC, fighting for NATO, really need to understand that this is NATO's vision for their country." Friends at the time told me I was being overly pessimistic and cynical. I:hoped to God they were right. But my experiences over a decade following the results of my own country (Britain)'s wars of aggression in places like Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq long after the mainstream media had lost interest, led me to believe otherwise.

Of course, it was not only me who was making such warnings. On March 6, 2011, several weeks before NATO began seven months of bombing, Gaddafi gave a prophetic interview with French newspaper Le Monde du Dimanche, in which he stated: "I want to make myself understood: if one threatens [Libya], if one seeks to destabilize [Libya], there will be chaos, Bin Laden, armed factions. That is what will happen. You will have immigration, thousands of people will invade Europe from Libya. And there will no longer be anyone to stop them. Bin Laden will base himself in North Africa and will leave Mullah Omar in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You will have Bin Laden at your door step."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting about the situation in Libya in the Manhattan borough of New York February 18, 2015. (Reuters / Carlo Allegri).

He specifically warned that Derna, a town that had already provided large numbers of suicide bombers to Iraq, would become an "Islamist emirate" on the Mediterranean. Gaddafi's warnings were mocked in the Western media (although many intelligence experts, in under-reported comments, backed his assertions), and few in Europe had ever heard of Derna. Until November 2014, that is – when ISIS announced their takeover of the city, the first of three in Libya now under their control. Their most recent conquest, Sirte, Gaddafi's hometown, was heralded by the posting onto youtube of the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians they had captured there last December. They are widely believed to have been immigrant workers from one of the poorest parts of Egypt.

... ... ...

This is the state of affairs NATO bequeathed to Libya, reversing the country's trajectory as a stable, prosperous pan-African state that was a leading player in the African Union and a thorn in the side of US and British attempts to re-establish military domination. And it is not only Libya that has suffered; the power vacuum resulting from NATO's wholesale destruction of the Libyan state apparatus has dragged the whole region into the vortex. As Brendan O Neill has shown in detail, the daily horrors being perpetrated in Mali, Nigeria and now Cameroon are all a direct result of NATO's bloodletting, as death squads from across the entire Sahel-Sahara region have been given free reign to set up training camps and loot weapons across the giant zone of lawlessness which NATO have sculpted out of Libya.

The result? African states that in 2010 were forging ahead economically, greatly benefitting from Chinese infrastructure and manufacturing investment, moving away from centuries of colonial and neo-colonial dependence on extortionate Western financial institutions, have been confronted with massive new terror threats from groups such as Boko Haram, flush with new weaponry and facilities courtesy of NATO's humanitarianism. Algeria and Egypt, too, still governed by the same independent-minded movements which overthrew European colonialism, have seen their borders destabilised, setting the stage for ongoing debilitating attacks planned and executed from NATO's new Libyan militocracy. This is the context in which Egypt is launching the regional fightback against NATO's destabilisation strategy.

Over the past year in particular, Egyptians have witnessed their Western neighbour rapidly descending down the same path of ISIS takeover as Syria. In Syria, a civil war between a Western-sponsored insurgency and an elected secular government has seen the anti-government forces rapidly fall under the sway of ISIS, as the West's supposed 'moderates' in the Free Syrian Army either join forces with ISIS (impressed by their military prowess, hi-tech weaponry, and massive funding) or find themselves overrun by them. In Libya, the same pattern is quickly developing. The latest phase in the Libyan disaster began last June when the militias who dominated the previous parliament (calling themselves the 'Libya Dawn' coalition) lost the election and refused to accept the results, torching the country's airport and oil storage facilities as opening salvos in an ongoing civil war between them and the newly elected parliament. Both parliaments have the allegiance of various armed factions, and have set up their own rival governments, each controlling different parts of the country. But, starting in Derna last November, areas taken by the Libya Dawn faction have begun falling to ISIS. Last weekend's capture of Sirte was the third major town to be taken by them, and there is no sign that it will be the last. This is the role that has consistently been played by the West's proxies across the region – paving the way and laying the ground for ISIS takeover. Egyptian President Sisi's intervention – airstrikes against ISIS targets in Libya - aims to reverse this trajectory before it reaches Iraqi-Syrian proportions.

The internationally-recognised Libyan government based in Tobruk – the one appointed by the House of Representatives that won the election last summer - has welcomed the Egyptian intervention. Not only, they hope, will it help prevent ISIS takeover, but will also cement Egyptian support for their side in the ongoing civil war with 'Libya Dawn'. Indeed, Egypt could, with some justification, claim that winning the war against ISIS requires a unified Libyan government committed to this goal, and that the Dawn's refusal to recognise the elected parliament , not to mention their 'ambiguous' attitude towards ISIS, is the major obstacle to achieving such an outcome.

Does this mean that the Egyptian intervention will scupper the UN's 'Libya dialogue' peace talks initiative? Not necessarily; in fact if could have the opposite effect. The first two rounds of the talks were boycotted by the General National Congress (the Libya Dawn parliament), safe in the knowledge that they would continue to receive weapons and financing from NATO partners Qatar and Turkey whilst the internationally-recognised Tobruk government remained under an international arms embargo. As the UK's envoy to the Libya Dialogue, Jonathan Powell, noted this week, the "sine qua non for a [peace] settlement" is a "mutually hurting stalemate". By balancing up the scales in the civil war, Egyptian support military support for the Tobruk government may show the GNC that taking the talks seriously will be more in their interests than continuation of the fight.

Sisi's call for the military support of the West in his intervention has effectively been rejected, as he very likely expected it to be. A joint statement by the US and Britain and their allies on Tuesday poured cold water on the idea, and no wonder – they did not go to all the bother of turning Libya into the centre of their regional destabilisation strategy only to then try to stabilise it just when it is starting to bear fruit.

However, by forcing them to come out with such a statement, Sisi has called the West's bluff. The US and Britain claim to be committed to the destruction of ISIS, a formation which is the product of the insurgency they have sponsored in Syria for the past four years, and Sisi is asking them to put their money where their mouth is. They have refused to do so. In the end, the Egyptian resolution to the UN Security Council on Wednesday made no mention of calling for military intervention by other powers, and limited itself to calling for an end to the one-sided international arms embargo which prevents the arming of the elected government but does not seem to deter NATO's regional partners from openly equipping the 'Libya Dawn' militias. Sisi has effectively forced the West to show its hand: their rejection of his proposal to support the intervention makes it clear to the world the two-faced nature of their supposed commitment to the destruction of ISIS.

... ... ...

Dan Glazebrook, for RT.

Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and author of "Divide and Ruin: The West's Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis".

[Feb 19, 2015] Brokering power US role in Ukraine coup aine-crisis

RT News

After months of denying having a hand in the Ukrainian coupe, US President Barack Obama admitted playing power broker for the "transition." This probably falls short of America's actual involvement.

READ MORE: Obama openly admits 'brokering power transition' in Ukraine

Washington was investing heavily in Ukraine long before the Maidan protests started in Kiev in 2013. According to Victoria Nuland, the State Department's top diplomat for Europe, since 1991 America has poured $5 billion of taxpayers' money into what she called assisting Ukrainians in building "democratic skills and institutions."

Some of the money went into sponsoring various NGOs, political parties and media outlets. For instance, Hromadske.tv, an internet-based television channel created in summer 2013, received a grant of some $50,000 from the US embassy. The channel provided full-time coverage of the Maidan protests and gave a platform to various opposition figures.

Such funding is a well-known tool of the American government. Washington describes it as promoting a positive change and denies accusations that it gives money to get leverage to pursue its own goals in targeted countries. But in Ukraine US officials played a far more prominent role than simply funding local players.

Some like film director Oliver Stone even call it a US-staged coup, while former US Congressman Ron Paul called for the US to stop meddling in Ukraine.

Nuland's cookies

A parade of Western officials descended on Kiev to support the protesters and discourage President Viktor Yanukovich from taking tougher measures against them. One vocal star of the US political stage, Senator John McCain, enjoyed an evening with opposition leaders and tweeted photos of the crowds in the square. He went on to address the protesters the next day.

Nuland herself is probably most remembered now for handing out cookies to riot police officers and demonstrators, while on a November 2013 Maidan tour accompanied by Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.

Read more: 'F**k the EU': Snr US State Dept. official caught in alleged phone chat on Ukraine

Behind the scene, the duo were engaged in power brokering. In January, it was Pyatt who made radical protesters withdraw from the Ministry of Justice building, which they had previously seized by force. Ukraine's Interior Ministry, then still loyal to Yanukovich, officially thanked the ambassador.

Later in February, a leaked phone conversation, notable for Nuland's unprintable expletive at her frustration with the EU, revealed the pair discussing who should lead the new Ukrainian government (Arseny Yatsenyuk, incidentally, the current PM) and who should not be in it (Vitaly Klitchko, currently mayor of Kiev).

Rule by foreigners?

The US government's support for the post-coup government in Kiev never dwindled even as it went on to encroach on media freedom and the free speech and launched a military crackdown on its dissenting eastern regions. At times, critics say, it was difficult to distinguish the new Ukraine from an entity directly ruled from Washington.

One ironic episode occurred in December, when the Ukrainian Security Service building flew a US flag alongside a Ukrainian one over its entrance. Photos of the flags were quickly dismissed as a propaganda fake by Ukrainian bloggers, but the SBU later confirmed that it ran up the stars and stripes to honor visiting US Under Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, who is in charge of arms deals with the State Department.

The debate over the flag was partially fuelled by rumors in Ukraine that the SBU allocated an entire level in its HQ to US consultants, including active CIA agents.

The rumors may be insulting to Kiev's sovereignty, but there could be some substance behind it. Ukraine didn't hesitate to appoint several foreigners as ministers, hastily giving them Ukrainian citizenship necessary for the jobs. Among them is Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, a former section chief at the US embassy and chair of an investment fund, which distributed US Congress money provided thorough the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Biden's chairmanship

A similar episode transpired in April, when US Vice-President Joe Biden arrived in Kiev on a state visit. The top American official came just after then-acting President Aleksandr Turchinov had declared the military campaign against the rebel forces in Donetsk and Lugansk regions was active. This later escalated into a full-fledged civil war.

A humorous moment came in Biden's trip when he chaired a session with Ukrainian officials, taking the seat normally reserved for the president of Ukraine. Ironically, Dozhd TV, a leading Russian opposition TV channel, erroneously called Biden the acting president of Ukraine and misquoted him as demanding that Russia "stopped meddling into US internal affairs."

Read more: White House: No ethical issues with Veep's son joining Ukraine gas giant

For Biden, Ukraine's economic future is a matter of concern not only due to his office but also due to his family's ties with the Ukrainian energy sector. In May, Ukraine's largest private gas company, Burisma Holdings, announced the appointment of VP Biden's son, Hunter, to its board of directors. The White House insisted the appointment posed no conflict of interest for America's second-ranking public official.

These and other examples of US "power brokering" raise some doubt about Washington's claimed distance from the regime change in Ukraine. After all, the US has a long record of meddling in other countries' affairs, ousting governments Washington didn't like and imposing those it did. Why would Ukraine be any different, skeptics ask?

[Feb 17, 2015] Comparing the Ukraine and Yugoslavia + Open Thread

Feb 16, 2015 | The Vineyard of the Saker
Alien Tech
Geopolitical Gaslighting, Propaganda & Disinformation

Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity. Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term "gaslighting" comes from the 1938 play Gaslight.

The term is used in clinical and research literature generally it can also be applied in the context of media propaganda.

A good gaslighter will make all efforts to control the environment of their victim so the lies and manipulations go unchallenged. In the scenario of an abusive relationship this might mean limiting the victim's contact with friends or family (isolation). In a geopolitical context, things like censorship and disinformation are used to control environments.

The book State of Confusion by Dr. Bryant Welch, (2008) discusses gaslighting in regards to US media and its effects on the American public. Dr. Welch is an American psychologist and attorney who spent half of his 30 year career in Washington DC working for the American Psychological Association.

He explains that the human mind does not cope well with uncertainty. It will always gravitate towards a reality that feels correct based on our own perceptions but that may not be actual reality. He goes on to explain that it is much easier to gaslight someone who has dealt with some sort of traumatic situation.

A mind that is already on shaky ground will grasp onto any scenario that seems accurate, as long as it simplifies a confusing situation.

He also cites instances of smear tactics and negative campaign ads as contributing factors to gaslighting. Even though we (the general public) may feel we are intelligent enough to recognize character assassinations as manipulative – they still have devastating consequences for their victims and lasting subliminal effects on our attitudes towards their targets.

US media is heavily sanitized. For example, US mainstream media rarely if ever shows dead bodies where in other countries the gory realities of death, destruction and war are shown in broadcast media. We have noticed on the Revolution News facebook page, our US fans are far more sensitive to images showing blood and death.

There is a fundamental problem with sanitizing media to the point that media consumers never view a realistic representation of events like the aftermath of a drone strike or photos of torture. If those victims are not represented in mainstream media then the public becomes disconnected from the reality of human suffering. If MSM were to give equal airtime to victims, the public might feel empathy and not blindly support when their government starts up a fresh round of drone strikes.

It has become increasingly more difficult for governments and mainstream media to control news narratives with the advent of social media.

From a clinical standpoint, usually a gaslighting victim becomes anxious, depressed, confused and demoralized. When gaslighting is done effectively the victim is rendered incapable of logical thinking and relies solely on the gaslighter to dictate what is "real." A properly gaslighted victim feels helpless to rebel against the gaslighter.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of gaslighting is that when it is done well, it is so subtle that the victim never knows they have been gaslighted. To an outsider, someone who has been gaslighted might appear slightly crazy and that's exactly the intended result.

"Political gaslighters have consciously and ruthlessly tried to impose a reality beneficial to their own cause without regard to the long-term psychological effect their behavior has on the individuals they are trying to influence."

http://revolution-news.com/geopolitical-gaslighting-propaganda-disinformation/

Anonymous

The Israeli quisling, Inhofe is upset because he got caught passing fraudulent "evidence" of a Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

Ай да Костя, ай да сукин сын! (Ai Da Costa, ah yes son of a bitch!)

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2047367.html

..."The photos that were the basis of preparation of the draft law on the supply of US weapons to Ukraine, were fake.

US Republican senator was furious to find out that Ukrainian parliament gave him fake pictures as evidence the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine. Employees senator gave these pictures edition The Washington Free Beacon for publication. Readers also immediately noticed something was wrong.
Later publication reported that the images "raised a number of issues," and this fact is being checked. "Some of the photos of Russian military were made ​​in 2008 during the conflict in Georgia", - admitted to journalists. Other photos were taken years before in other armed conflicts.
Be that as it may, these images were transferred to a reception Senator Jim Inhofe in December 2014 under the guise of photo chronicle of events in Ukraine. The representative of the senator noted that the photos in the office were in printed form. Inhofe staff contacted Professor Phillip Karber from Georgetown University. Professor: was willing to confirm the authenticity of pictures and the fact that they were made in the period from 24 August to 5 September 2014 in eastern Ukraine.
Employees Inhofe took his word and did not bother to verify the origin of images online with a special service. They scanned these photos to the media. "Other sources have also confirmed to us that these images coincide with what is happening in Ukraine," -:e representative office of Senator Donel Harder. Then it turned out that one of the pictures was made ​​Officer Associated Press during the conflict in Georgia in 2008.
"Members of the Ukrainian Parliament, who gave us these pictures themselves a disservice - Jim Inhofe: We thought that we can confidently publish these pictures, because pictures correspond to reporting on events in the region." Senator admitted that he "was furious" to learn that the pictures are not related to Ukraine."

So, with proof in hand that he was lied to and made a fool of, what does Israel's boitoy, Inhofe, do?

"But this does not negate the existence of ample evidence that Russia invaded the Ukraine on their T-72 tanks, and the fact that the pro-Russian separatists were killed in cold blood Ukrainians" - hastened to add Inhofe..."

The pork barreling, trough-feeding Israelo-scum digs the hole deeper.

вот так

Yodarik

The following is from http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.ca

"I find the world to be full of endlessly fascinating people and things, and books, travel, lectures, essays, and personal conversations are the pathways to them. And the internet is a marvel of convenience for this.

This fascination with the world and the people in it is very much in the nature of Renaissance Christian Humanism, which sees the things of the world in all their variety, but views little of His creation as inherently profane or evil, including human beings who can be a wonder and a source of grace. It is we who make it so.

Evil is not a created thing, but the absence of good, a choice of free will. The world is not inherently evil. It inherently is, having no free will of its own Plants and animals are not inherently evil, although the little girl has often put forward an exception to this for spinach and spiders.

Creation is like a richly provisioned canvas on which we draw our lives, and it naturally shimmers in His light. It is the darkness of our hardened hearts that casts images and shadows in the light.

So the Christian humanist, in the Renaissance tradition, would agree with Socrates in saying, 'I am a citizen of the world,' but adding and most importantly, 'and nothing is alien to me except sin.' Because it is in sin that we cut the connection between the Incarnate world and its Creator, for it is was in the almost shocking implications of the Incarnation that the world was refreshed and made new, as all things will be made new some day again."

I though this was worth repeating here. I am a citizen of the world who lives in Canada, we are all brothers and sisters.

Blessings

Anonymous

В ОБСЕ отказались выслушать жителей Луганска после обстрела (In the OSCE refused to listen to the residents of Lugansk after firing)

http://lifenews.ru/news/149831

"...The blast wave also damaged the windows of several houses in the Volkov. Residents who do not have time to escape deep into the apartment or fall to the floor during the shelling, injured by shrapnel. Several people who were at the time of artudara on the street, seriously injured, and 40-year-old man died before he could reach the entrance just a few meters.

Several shells hit the apartment and exploded inside, making part of the premises uninhabitable, and wounding dozens of people and killing two others. In the central streets of Lugansk city dwellers are still unexploded ordnance.

In place of the night shelling in the morning arrived group of observers from the OSCE. Representatives of international organizations not only refused to talk to journalists and demanded to turn off the camera, but did not listen to civilians, funky nightlife events in the city.

OSCE staff have long studied the neighborhood, avoiding contact with the residents of the affected areas, but people surrounded a group of observers about their company cars and demanded to fix their evidence and present to the world community..."

That makes those OSCE scum equally guilty of these war crimes as those who ordered the attack.

вот так

know the truth

The current Ukrainian "parliament", the rada, is a zoo. I was simply dumbfounded to see its members duking it out, fists flying and this it would seem is a regular occurence in the rada.
I really cannot find the words for such a people, who constantly shout "glory to ukraine" and who seem to consider themselves as being the epitome of "civilization" in Europe and look down their noses on their Slavic brothers in Russia as being somehow "subhuman", unable to get through a session of parliament without it turning into a bar room brawl. What a bunch of psychopathic animals (my apologies to all genuine animals for comparing them with these vermin). The Ukrainian "parliament" consists of nothing but sociopaths and thugs with the IQ of an amoeba, which is why I dont hold out any serious prospects of peace in the near future. The only way for peace and stability to return to Ukraine is for the nest of sociopaths, psychopaths and nazi freaks in Kiev to be burned and cleared out once and for all, and president Putin is well aware of this reality.

For everyone saying that Putin has sold out the Novorussians I would say that personally I believe president Putin is just playing for time. I think once the BRICS development bank is up and running we are going to see a whole different scenario unfolding. I believe president Putin is due to ratify the BRICS bank at some point later this year (September ?), and after that Im not sure how much longer it will take to become operational, but I do believe things will get very interesting from that point on.

As the Saker is fond of saying, Russia is ready for war from a purely military perspective but until she can fully protect herself from the wests financial system on which she is currently dependent to some degree president Putin will keep playing for time.

David Chu

THE BEST talk on the US War of Genocide against Yugoslavia is given by Michael Parenti in 1999. You can find the video of this talk here: bit.ly/1AbKjKa and in audio only here: bit.ly/1pQWjX2

I recommend everyone take the time to listen to this most important talk. Extremely insightful information as to the WHY the Yankees do what they have been doing for the past 100 years, especially since WW2. And very very funny too.

I agree with the Saker that Ukraine is NOT the same as what happened to Yugoslavia for several reasons. However, they are similar in the indiscriminate killing of civilians, especially those civilians on the "wrong side" of the civil war.

[1] US/NATO cannot bomb Eastern Ukraine like they did in Yugoslavia for obvious reasons (Russia would not stand for ANY US/NATO military involvement in Eastern Ukraine, training of the Kiev Nazis notwithstanding). This factor is extremely important as almost all Yankee wars are waged first and foremost by their air force, using overwhelming bombing and superior technology against basically an un-armed enemy on the ground. Without this ability, the Yankees and their All-Lies are back to square one in fighting wars, i.e, their force-multiplier via air attacks is thereby nullified.

[2] Russia today is not the Russia of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Back then Yeltsin was basically a Yankee drunk, and his Russia is not Putin's Russia. I believe Russians were shocked by the degree of devastation and destruction inflicted upon Yugoslavia during that Genocidal War. This time around, both the Russian people and their key leadership, i.e. President Putin et al., are seeing the US/NATO for it really is. And acting accordingly.

[3] The people of Eastern Ukraine have also learned from the devastating history of the destruction of Yugoslavia. Hence, they are not going to lay down their arms and sit at negotiating tables to fritter away their freedom and their lands. They know the score and the history of US/NATO and their fascist puppets.

I am sure there are many other reasons why Ukraine today is not the same as Yugoslavia of the 1990s. These are three that I could come up with.

TooLegit2Quit

[Argentine's 'regime' change in progress -> update]

BREAKING NEWS:

[via ZeroHedge] Argentine President Fernandez Charged In Alleged Cover-Up

LINK> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-13/argentine-president-fernandex-charged

-

More on this:

Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner charged

"[..] The administration is currently fighting a ferocious media battle on two fronts, seeking to distance itself from any involvement in Nisman's death while simultaneously seeking to undermine the case he built against the president.

As news of impending charges against Ms Kirchner circulated yesterday morning, her cabinet chief Aníbal Fernández:y such move "would be a measure to destabilise democracy [..]"

LINK> http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/argentina-s-president-cristina-fernandez-de-kirchner-charged-1.2103339

-

Argentine President Kirchner is being formally investigated for alleged cover-up of 1994 bombing

"Policita has requested to investigate Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman. He will present his findings to judge Daniel Rafecas, the federal magistrate who will decide whether to dismiss it or send it on to trial [..]"

LINK> http://uk.businessinsider.com/report-president-kirchner-charged-for-alleged-cover-up-of-1994-bombing-2015-2?r=US

-

[via SputnikNews] Cristina Fernández de Kirchner denies accusations of a cover up attempt, after a new prosecutor in her case vows to go forward with the investigation

"After Nisman's death, the president alleged that the prosecutor was killed by forces who tried to remove her from office" [..]

Under Argentine law, Fernández de Kirchner cannot be prosecuted without being stripped of immunity, but she is leaving office at the end of the year [..]"

LINK> http://sputniknews.com/world/20150213/1018240040.html#ixzz3ReJmsoH3

.

TL2Q
13 February, 2015 22:13

CubuCoko:

For what it's worth, my column at Antiwar.com tomorrow will talk about this very topic. I've also blogged about it yesterday.

Short version: the West is trying to use the Yugoslavia script, but the Russians have figured it out, and are successfully countering it.
13 February, 2015 22:39

Anonymous:

Only spot I could see to make the following observations.

The "Wall Street Journal," has 2 lengthy articles on the War in Europe (Ukraine). They, and the other Oligarch mouthpieces (NYT, CNN, MSNBC, Manchester Guardian, BBC, etc.), are energetically discussing the Minsk Cease Fire agreements.

1. Their first major aim, is to blame the war on the Russian Nation, and their President, Vladimir Putin. The Oligarch authored articles (diatribes), radiate a great fury at their not being able to have their way (with the Russians).

2. They are also afraid, (despite their domination of the Media) that, one day, the Sheeple might Think, and reject all their prior programming. *The Oligarchs are omnipotent, but not confident. They sweat profusely.

One link:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fighting-rages-in-eastern-ukraine-as-cease-fire-deadline-approaches-1423833402?mod=WSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

3. The war against Russia, Russians, the Novorossian Republics, and anyone else who resists the unipolar Anglo/American/Zionist - New World Order (One Ring to Rule them All): This War in Europe, is the central event in the Global Struggle between good and evil. And that is why everything the resisters, such as the Novorossian Militia do, receives the closest attention from the imperialist Oligarchs.

4. The Imperialist Oligarchs detest Cease Fires, and any other diplomatic niceties. Because... Cease Fires award both sides with legitimacy (one does not enter into agreements with those who have not effectively resisted). The proto-Nazis are foaming at the mouth. Read the Media coverage -(before you have supper). See?

... ... ...

Anonymous:

Paul Craig Roberts here mentions points of agreement and disagreement with Saker on the Minsk 2 agreement.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/02/13/update-minsk-peace-deal-paul-craig-roberts/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Update of Minsk Peace Deal

In my last column I provided reasons for believing that the deal will fail. I saw a larger downside for Russia and the Donetsk and Luhansk republics because Putin and the break-away provinces will be blamed. English is the world language, and this enables Washington and its presstitutes to control the explanation.

The Saker and I are in agreement that the provisions of the peace deal are ridiculous and cannot and will not be implemented. However, The Saker sees an advantage for the republics in the provision, if implemented, to remove heavy weapons from the conflict zones. The Saker's viewpoint is worth knowing. Whereas I have stressed that the conflict could be ended by Russia accepting the republics' requests for unification with Russia and that the longer the conflict is drawn out the more the West can demonize Putin and the break-away republics, Saker sees the conflict ending this year with the economic, military, and political collapse of Ukraine. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40979.htm

Alexander Mercouris makes the point that one positive feature of the Minsk agreement,
which isn't actually a deal or an agreement, is that Europe is now involved and opposes Washington's plan to escalate the military conflict. He writes that the outcome in Ukraine depends on what the Europeans do, a point with which I concur. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40967.htm

It is difficult to believe that European governments are not aware that the entire Ukraine crisis is a Washington orchestration. Now that Europeans are beginning to realize the risk and recklessness in Washington's aggressive hostility toward Russia, Europeans might develop an independent foreign policy, as opposed to lining up with Washington, and cast off their vassalage. If this were to happen, Washington's hegemonic aggression would cease to have enablers. The Evil Empire would begin its break-up, and the chances for peace would improve.
13 February, 2015 23:01

Anonymous

Hi Saker, you mentioned Yugoslavia, and I listened to your podcast, and more than the comparison with the reasons and the tactics of the whole thing during the fighting, I am interested in your opinion on the ever closer edging reality of a splintering Ukraine. The spectacle of an entire nation - however new it is - imploding financially, ideologically and splintering geographically. Of that, I don't think there are that many precedents.

How did Yugoslavia settle financially? Here we are talking about a nation with a huge mountain of debt; when it splinters I cannot imagine the creditors accepting full and complete default. They will look to unload at least part of the debt onto the nation's 'children'. If you have time, or can point me to some interesting articles, I'd be much obliged.

Josh

13 February, 2015 23:06

Sampanviking

The problem with similes, is that they can be taken to far and lose their significance.

I have raised the example of Yugoslavia in the context of the Ukraine war, but only with respect of one specific detail.

It is a common refrain from the West and the MSM, that Russia is trying to use military force and subversion to change the national borders of Europe for the first time in 70 years.

I have countered that this is incorrect and that NATO took this distinction for itself some twenty years ago.

13 February, 2015 23:34

matt janovic

There are recorded precedent for Zakharchenko's no prisoners threat:
1943, Patton's speech before Sicily landing. Result: two recorded massacres of Italian prisoners. Without doubt, there were also unrecorded killings.

From General Patton's Diary:

"I told Bradley that it was probably an exaggeration, but in any case to tell the Officer to certify that the dead men were snipers or had attempted to escape or something, as it would make a stink in the press and also would make the civilians mad. Anyhow, they are dead, so nothing can be done about it."

13 February, 2015 23:47

Anonymous

Can you speak of Russia's actions against the Bosnian Serbs: approving the airstrikes, sanctions and the creation of the ICTY kangaroo court, as well as Russian arms merchants selling weapons for the Bosnian Muslims through Slovenia (this is documented in a book by Slovenian journalists/researchers who wrote on Slovenia's big role in illegal arms sales for BiH).

And a Scottish mercenary, John MacPhee, who fought on the Bosnian Croat side, claimed that one of Croatia's islands was used by Russia to bring in weapons for the war. (I don't remember if they were weapons for Croatia or meant to be for the Bosnian Muslims.)

Were you aware of large Russian army sales for the Bosnian Muslims through Slovenia? Of course, Russia was just one of dozens of countries violating the UN arms embargo.

But fact is Russia did do a lot of things to hurt the Serbs and very little to help them in the 1990s.
14 February, 2015 00:06

Penelope:

The main obstacle to China's Silk Road and Russia's development and peace everywhere is the actions of the criminals who control the US govt. A peaceful way of reducing their power is to convert US/UK/EU to only US/UK vs EU/Rus/China.

The agreement is an official statement in which Germany & France join Russia in trying to impose a ceasefire and lasting peace upon Ukraine. They do this in reaction to the US stated intention to provide weapons and training to the Kiev forces.

This is diplomacy. There is nothing shameful, farcical or weak in trying to avoid war. For once Hollande & Merkel behave like diplomats.

After all, the looting can occur more easily w/o the war. And US may have plans to blow the pipeline under cover of the war.

Even if the agreement is totally unenforced now it may have its uses later-- like when the Novorossiyan forces are closer to Kiev.

14 February, 2015 00:11

Anonymous:

Deceit everywhere. A vast web of deceit. Watch this

from Independent Media Solidarity -
"We Need To Talk About Sandy Hook"

Full video in higher quality

http://mediasolidarity.com/watch_video.html
14 February, 2015 01:15

Anonymous:

I have to agree with you. Both sides are digging in for the long haul and it will only come to an end with some sort of dissolution of the Ukraine. Though I can't imagine Russia giving up an inch of her historical territory to NATO guns. It can still get very ugly.

Farflungstar
Zio Occupied AmeriKa
14 February, 2015 01:16

Brian_J:

I just read a long interview with Dr. Mikhail Kovalenko. He is the man photographed carrying a little girl's dead body which many of us remember from last spring. He continued working as a surgeon until the NAF withdrew from Slavyansk. He makes many interesting observations about the nature of this war and the UAF.

http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/02/slavyansk-surgeon-talks-about-another.html

Brian

14 February, 2015 01:18

Anonymous: 14 February, 2015 01:19

As a Citizen of Croatia, I can tell, that ongoing comparisons with the war in Yugoslavia, are not accidental. Seems that we are again slowly getting prepared to what "chaos maker" have further in plan for Europe.

Porosenko will attend presidential inauguration in Croatia, which I see as a ominous sign of possible escalation of tensions between Croats and Serbs. Media is strongly pushing identification of Croatians and Ukrainians. In reality, more people here support Novorussia, and are able to see through media deception. However, Porosenko visit is hardly a coincidence. It's a sign that officials are working hard on potential polarization and destabilization of Balkan regions.

Some aspects of Ukrainian chaos resembles Yugoslavia, if not in details, but in methodology for sure.

Yugoslavia seems to serve as a sand box for practicing possible scenarios which to apply on ex USSR territories.

Some issues have not been clarified since, and they are arising right now.

Anonymous:

Vietnam quagmire is perfect for the military industrial complex and their investors. This is what it's all about. Poor Ukrainians.
14 February, 2015 01:47

Penelope:

KAT KAN

"Fifth Conclusion: Ukraine has no money
The currency reserves of the National Bank of Ukraine are microscopic, and almost entirely consist of securities which nobody else wants (there are rumors that $6 billion of currency reserves were traded for shares in Lehman Brothers which went bankrupt in 2008), the exporters are not selling their hard currency since they themselves are struggling, and importers cannot obtain hard currency even for critical purchases.

At the same time Kolomoyskiy is supplying substandard body armor at their weight in gold and is increasing the capital of his own Privat Bank, while at the same time reducing tax obligations to the state.

Ukraine is bragging that it increased exports this year, forgetting to add that it accomplished that feat by exporting the last of its grain reserves. As to what will happen in the spring and how the people of Ukraine will be fed, it does not seem to concern the government. ---

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2014/12/ukraine-plunder-continues.html

Also, Kat Kan, a Fort Russ article "Ukraine Is No Longer an Agricultural State" says there will be no Spring sowing unless farmers have inputs. I think he mentions lack of fuel and lubricants for farm machinery. Seed is not mentioned.

However, from my farming background I note that winter wheat would already be in the field and growing. (Requires cold weather & is planted in the Fall) Sometimes animals are permitted to crop the plants in the Spring, without diminishing by much the Summer harvest.

Have enjoyed your Ukraine updates.
14 February, 2015 03:36

mmiriww:

There are NO independent media in the USA. There are independent reporters. That is because it is so easy to close down a company that does not toe the line. So not only are the media controlled by a few companies, the rest are afraid of being closed down just like there are no secure encrypted web sites in the US because well, the US government wont allow it without having the ability to see the decrypted data. So it is all smoke and mirrors. You cant write and publish what you think as it might offend someone and you cant store what you think or send it to someone in case it might offend someone. All this is far too easy to check out and not conspiracy theories. Unless you still believe it is land of the free where liberty runs amok and naked.

14 February, 2015 05:13

Anonymous:

@Nikko

here you have a couple of good videos about the war

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEYQ46gH08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUuhSGnLvv8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MklbRPjdIVo (part1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpkmPvfXuIo (part 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NgJYi8fA3Y

here's a German documentary about Kosovo war, I'm not sure if it has english captions (it was only aired once live on German TV, on youtube it's private, name "Laži kao povod za bombardovanje SRJ")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqePoEZSY8o

here's a video comparing sarajevo 92-95 with 9/11 attacks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSYm0QW54ng

I hope it's a little help ;)

Best wishes, L
14 February, 2015 06:43

David Chu:
@Penelope "However I don't have a really good link of the Boston Scene. Does anyone have one?"

This guy David McGowan is amazing (his writing on Laura Canyon will blow your socks off!):

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com (see the section on the Boston Marathon Bombings)
14 February, 2015 07:54

David Chu:
The best documentary on the US Genocide War against Yugoslavia is called "The Weight of Chains":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEYQ46gH08
14 February, 2015 08:02

Kat Kan:

NAF psyops

Many soldiers in Debeltseve cauldron getting blanket SMS saying "Guys, I've surrendered, they don't shoot POWs. Better than dying" . Two days ago they were shelling with blank casings full of leaflets encouraging surrender, and a map of how they are truly encircled.
from Twitter Conflict News @rConflictNews ·


Video with very faint sound of supposed captured NAF fighter they claimed to be "Gnome" from Givi's team; guy saying he's a cook. captured near Airport, not sure if Givi's lot are there right now. Whoever it is, now they've videod him they'll have o exchange him, in good condition.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1561544364114375
14 February, 2015 08:29

Anonymous:

Great work as always Saker!

I enjoyed the comments regarding the Yugoslav conflict, especially your thoughts about Srebrenica, however you neglected to mention that information from Muslim sources who mentioned Clinton offering Izetbegovic the option of 'sacrificing say 5,000 Muslims' in Srebrenica and NATO would have reason enough to intervene against the murdering Serbs!

Together with the commanders conveniently evacuating the enclave months prior to the Serb offensive, thus leaving the UN and the inhabitants to fend for themselves.

Crimes certainly happened but not the figures brandished around and definitely NOT the 8,000+ figure on the Potocari memorial which Clinton later visited.

Genocide never happened as civilians were bused to Muslim territory at great expense to Serbs who were suffering under attacks on all fronts, as well as sanctions from Milosevic who closed the borders.

Fortunately for Russia and the free world, NATO's met its match in Putin who it appears has learnt the lessons of the Kosovo bombings and finally drawn a line in the sand!

Keep up the great work and thanks for giving us insightful analysis and opinions on the many important events effecting our world today.
14 February, 2015 09:12

Anonymous:

@ Penelope

There is a link between the Sandyhook psyop and the James Foley "beheading" psyop.

A girl named Alex Israel was supposed to be an acquaintance of Adam Lanza. Katie Foley was supposed to be the sister of James Foley (I watched the Foley "beheading" video when it came out, and it is totally ridiculous. No beheading of any kind in that video.)

Both these young women were interviewed once on tv, and soon enough someone picked up on the fact that they look and sound so much alike, they are most likely the same person. There are a number of convincing comparisons based on those interviews

Katie Foley interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QscFSYyzG9w

Alex Israel interview
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=us/2012/12/15/pmt-intv-former-lanza-classmate.cnn

COMPARISON VIDEOS. The following one is (to me) the most compelling because it includes voice and speech comparisons. Identical.
Ummmmm Ya Think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4DVaWE2eU

There are other comparison videos focusing mostly on the face. Here is a compilation of those:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYjrM5VYwRk

And these are the comments of the guy who runds the Before It's News site, who was blown away when he realized this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmwhfirp830
14 February, 2015 12:27

Anonymous:

@ Penelope

(videos below)

3 security contractors in Boston bombings and 3 police officers in Sandy Hook are the exact same people.

Also, same kid, exact same picture, sho supposedly died in Sandy Hook, died again in Pakistan in a school shooting and had his picture placed on some kind of memorial wall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt8vLGtsK-E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt8vLGtsK-E
14 February, 2015 12:53

Anonymous:
@ Penelope

Check out this company

IIF Data Solutions, Inc
Role Player Support Services

http://www.iifdata.com/core-competencies/role-player-support/

Their motto is: "Turning Ideas Into Reality"
14 February, 2015 13:01

O:
Still no thoughts from admin here as to whether the site in ca is kosher or a fake set-up.
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.ca

Not even a mention of the above site in your lists Saker,what's going on?If someone spoke of this ,I must have missed it,propaganda everywhere.
XbNB
14 February, 2015 15:41

Nikko:
To those who replied to me thanks you!!!
14 February, 2015 21:20

Anonymous:

O 14 February, 2015 15:41

There are many mirrors of Sakers blog. That is how blogspot works.

Try for example:

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.uk/

14 February, 2015 22:18

Lord_High_Executioner:

The Srebrenica comments; that's exactly what is indicated by all the evidence. I find that the name "Srebrenica Massacre" is misleading, most prisoner of war shootings occurred outside Zvornik, which is considerably to its north, and was the result of the column of the 28th Division breaking out...

Milosevic was in a difficult situation because he had no help at all from outside.

I see the last time that Russia just gave in to the West in these situations as being the overthrow of Aslan Abashidze in Adjaria in 2004 I think... they negotiated his surrender more or less and flight to Moscow.

That's one reason why Saakashvili attacked Tskhinvali in 2008. They were shocked to see the response. This was it, no more games. The Russian role until then was to help their friends surrender. No more.

15 February, 2015 01:31

C:

Saker,

Here is the comment I posted to J Paul Roberts' post to ZeroHedge today. We come from very different traditions but you keep touching my heart and I've come to rely on you.

That conversation with my Congressman I mention at the end - it almost didn't happen, but I heard your words from Podcast 5 in my head speaking to me, and I:*** it", and made it happen. - C
....................

Part 1: Paul, you are one of my heroes, a defector from the criminal warfare state who has become a voice of truth, reason - and outrage. There is a level however at which I don't think you quite understand what is going on yet.

Strategies for defeating the Empire have to involve engaging the people at all levels, building coalitions, exploiting cracks in the Empire's coalitions and isolating its moves one after another. It has to be a long-term game. Putin understands this. Many of the supporters of Novorossia do too.
Some questions to ask:
Peace in Ukraine becomes possible when Germany, France and other nations of Europe put NATO in check, break with Washington and insist on it. Does this Minsk deal increase the pressure on those governments to break with Washington's plans to expand the war? We've seen very clear and dramatic signs over the last week of a growing schism.
Peace in Ukraine comes when the Nazi thug "government" in Kiev collapses and the people of Ukraine take over and hold the criminals responsible. Does this agreement increase the pressure on them? We see a huge popular movement against the draft growing while the crazy right is mobilizing to overthrow the Poroshenko "government". Each defeat on the battlefield is making Ukraine's regular soldiers ever more bitter, and the defeated troops if they are set loose from Debaltsalvo instead of mostly being slaughtered which they know is coming are going to go home looking for blood! And when the Kiev government fails to implement its agreements, if and when they try another offensive, the disgust of the people of Europe will reach new heights.
In the meantime there is the Greek drama, not unconnected. Putin is maneuvering to give Greece critical support, while helping Greece keep maximum pressure on the European governments to break ranks with the ECB - and holding out the carrot of a Eurasian Alliance and escape from the Empire of the Dollar Bill. For this he has to keep avoiding every move to paint Russia as a determined aggressor, and to patiently but vigorously keep fighting the information war. Many European leaders are too compromised to bite but the people are watching and raising their demands. And even the compromised ones have to be chafing under their humiliation.


15 February, 2015 02:04

C:

Reply to J Paul Roberts on ZeroHedge, Part 2:

Meanwhile every week that Putin buys with this maneuvering sees another step in the collapse of the Dollar as the world's currency, the growth of bilateral currency agreements, new exposes of the fraudulent nature of the whole dollar-euro system. The US alliances in the Middle East are in tatters. Iraq, Syria and Yemen are not toppled dominoes any more, they're the Tar Babies!
The global economy is collapsing, as witnessed by the collapse of the Commodities Index and the Baltic Dry Index. China, forced by its collapsing export trade, is about to cast the dollar lose and the rising dollar is putting intense stress on the entire dollar-denominated bond market. Now, the demand for an audit of the US gold reserve is bringing to a head the growing admission by the world's bankers that the gold's not there, and the policy of suppressing the dollar price of gold is on the brink of collapse.
The world is indeed a very different place from the one last Spring when Putin took his stand. As in the 1960's when the US' advanced plans to wipe out the "communist world" with a nuclear blitz were derailed by growing entanglement in wars along the periphery, the US' troubles are multiplying beyond anything that can be focused on Russia.
Putin's playing for time, and winning - and the Donetsk Republics need Russia to win. The brave and heroic men and women of the Donetsk are the front line in the battle against fascism and world war. Much is being asked of them, but not too much - no more than they're capable of. They deserve our support in the only way we really can, to speak out for them and demand Washington back down.
We're not helping them by calling Putin a traitor.
…………….
btw I got some facetime with my Congressman last night. I have many pieces of business with him, but I used my two minutes to talk with him not about those but about the Ukraine and the Russian sanctions bills. I feel proud that I did, and sad that I had to. He seem startled that I confronted him bluntly with things he evidently knew to be true but was used to weaseling around. FWIW, I think he heard me.
Just one conversation between one Congressman and a constituent he counts on, but history is built of the cumulative effect of millions of choices, millions of events. Like the brave defenders of Donetsk hunkered down in the cold, all we can do is play the part that life puts in front of us, and trust that it matters.

15 February, 2015 02:07

Anonymous:

The fact was that the Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica were ordered off their "strong positions all around" the day before.

They were ordered by their Brigade commanders and the UN, according to a former soldier interviewed in St. Louis, where the U.S. State Department decided to settle many Bosnian Muslims. He and other soldiers, all of an extended family, are interviewed in a book called something like "After the Fall: Srebrenica survivors in St. Louis".

He is one of three former soldiers from an extended family (they are all brother-in-laws). They all made it to Tuzla. Another brother-in-law went missing during a battle/firefight in the woods where a huge tree branch fell and killed some and caused large panic and confusion.
Years after the book was published (circa 1999), they did find that he'd died. But he was also a SOLDIER and odds are that he was killed in the running battles between Srebrenica and Tuzla.

Fact is that the Bosnian Muslim forces were MUCH LARGER than the Serb forces in the area and they would be holding the advantageous "defensive position" if there really was an attack.
But there was NO FIGHTING when they were suddenly ordered to leave.
The Serbs only sent in a few hundred - they just drove in the next day.

The Serbs must have been informed or heard rumors that the army was gone, otherwise it would be suicide for them to attack the much larger, entrenched army.
Serbs were mainly keeping their lines to prevent raids and attacks from the Bosnian Muslims.

It was the Srebrenica Muslims who were expanding outward during the first 10 or so months of the war.

The Serb villages all around Srebrenica had been burnt out in a scorched-earth policy by the Muslim forces.

It was only when the Bosniaks had over-stretched themselves and the Serbs (who'd been abandoned by the Yugoslav army) organized into a successful fighting forces causing the Bosniak expanse to be halted and then shrunk back, that the UN forces went into Srebrenica.

The UN only went there when the Serbs were successful - it ignored the brutal killings of Serbs by the Srebrenica Muslim forces in 1992 and 1993.

Also, the UN left their own positions, which were side-by-side, with the Bosniak positions the day before the fall as well.

This was when the Bosniak soldier shot and killed the UN Dutch soldier.

It was during this ARRANGED abandonment of Srebrenica that the Dutch soldier was killed.
The Serbs weren't to arrive until the next day.

The UN abandoned all its positions EXCEPT in the north which was where it was arranged for the Bosniak army and men to leave.

The number of men leaving was estimated around 15,000 by the Bosniak soldiers and is similar to the official UN Srebrenica Report.


15 February, 2015 02:11

Anonymous:

People are asking why there are Problems in the Continental European Union, where most of WW 1 and WW 2 occurred.

A lack of Considering the Legitimate Interests of all of Europe resulted in these Problems, because there are too Many Puppets of the Evil Anglo-American Puppet Master in the European Union.

Germany remains an occupied Country by Anglo-America, even though the Soviet Union gave Germany its Independence Decades ago.

Anglo-America Colonized Germany to Rule Continental Europe for Anglo-America, and Britain pretends to have no say in Europe.

This way, all Criticisms can be directed at Germany, rather than at Anglo-America, and Britain is Very Discreet with its Dictatorship over Europe, but America is not so Discreet, and we have seen this with Ukraine, whose President is a Billionaire and a Puppet of Anglo-America, and who was installed by a Coup.

Anglo-America Selects those in Germany who will do their Evil Bidding, and allows Germany to remain Loyal to Hitler's Vision for Europe, which is also Anglo-America's Vision for Europe of another World War, except that this time, Germany enacts Dictatorial Decrees as Anglo-America's Most Senior European Puppet.

France is a Partner of Anglo-America, because of Canada and the French Empire, and so France does not have their Politicians Volunteer to be Filmed in Acts of Pedophilia to Guarantee that they will be Puppets of Anglo-America.

Germany has agreed to do Anglo-America's Evil Bidding in Europe after WW 2, and many German Politicians gave their Guarantee to be the lifelong Puppets of Anglo-America, by Voluntarily Agreeing to be Filmed having sex with a child, and this Guarantees that they will be Anglo-America's Puppets, because they do not want to go to jail.

The European Union was: have been set up to prevent wars in Europe, and to be a Free Trade Zone at
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/21/tenquestionsonslobodanmilo , and at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/12/warcrimes.comment .

The European Union was created Anglo-America to expand NATO for the purpose of WW 3, and to use the European Union to begin another World War in Europe.

Anglo-America found Traitors who want to be Rich, and who also want WW 3, and so they Volunteered to be Filmed having sex with a child as their Guarantee to be a lifelong Puppet of Anglo-America, and they Obey Anglo-America, because they do not want to go to jail.

Anglo-American Puppets were given a warning with the Trial of a former Eurozone Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, who is one of Italy's Richest Person, and was convicted of having sex with a minor, and Some People have:at Berlusconi Technically Committed Pedophilia under the strictest interpretation of Italian Law at http://world.time.com/2013/06/24/silvio-berlusconi-convicted-of-having-sex-with-underage-prostitute-but-will-he-go-to-jail/ .

Berlusconi was found Guilty in 2013, and we know that Austerity which is a Failed Economic Policy was Imposed on Italy, and some are in Austerity Denial, even though a Professor of Economics and a Nobel Laureate in Economics wrote the News Article Titled: Stiglitz says Greece did not fail; austerity failed at http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stiglitz-says-greece-didnt-fail-austerity-failed-2015-02-03 .

These Puppets do as they are told by Anglo-America and Germany, and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 began because America Deliberately would not help a small financial institution, and America assured everyone that it would not matter.

There are those who think that Anglo-America and Germany knew that is was a Lie, because this was their Evil Plan for Economic Holocaust on Europe, which also includes their Evil Plan to Deliberately Engineer a Civil War in Ukraine and to place Unjustified Sanctions on Innocent Russia, along with opposing the South Stream Project, which would have created Many Jobs.

A Proper Functional European Union would consider Not Only their own Country, but that of all of Europe.
15 February, 2015 19:01

Thomas:

Dear Saker,

do you know what happened to the "unwashed brain" blog?

http://theunwashedbrain.blogspot.de/

It run two absolutely must-read pieces "kiev's fake picture scam" and "kiev's war on video", and an interesting analysis of the alleged "Slavyansk Crucification", quickly dismissed in our press as Russia Propaganda, but the author - apparently British - concluded that it could have been true, and no evidence suggested otherwise.

I have also read a fantastic piece "Crimea - the untold story", which was the best recapitulation of the history of Crimea, from the Baptism of Vladimir the Saint in Khersonessos, over the Greek vintage of that town, to Catherina the Great, the Crimean War, and Khrushchev's "gift" to the Ukraine (probably more in the german sense of the word than the english one), up to the referendums held in 1991 (with 94% declaring to be an Autonomous Republic of the - then still existant USSR - rather than an Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR), and 1994, with again over 80% declaring in favour of independence.

That piece has disappeared completely, and the blog has been inactive for half a year now.

Maybe there is an innocent explanation to this, but otherwise it seems that bloggers critical to Pro-US forces live constantly in danger. So much for our Western Values!
15 February, 2015 23:53

[Feb 17, 2015] The analogy between Yugoslavia and the Ukraine by Stephen Karganović

February 15, 2015 | Czech Free Press
Russian experts analyzed in detail the similarities in the methods and strategies used by the western coalition in connection with the Ukrainian crisis that has spawned and has exacerbated into brutal civil war. The same actors used those strategies developed in the 90's create the fertile soil for a brutal civil war which resulted in the destruction of the former Yugoslavia, are The reasons for such in-depth research are legion. First of all, if your not very imaginative or too arrogant enemy repeatedly acts according to the same template, knowing it provides you with a significant strategic advantage. It allows you to some extent to predict his actions and propose effective countermeasures.

Although chutzpa of western strategists undoubtedly allow to counter their schemes more effectively, however, it is very important carefully analyze the key similarities and differences in two different situation so that you are not fighting the last war. Here are key elements of the color revolution template:

  1. The ethnic and religious fragmentation. The starting point of any color revolution is Identification of the usable social tensions and their systematic aggravation so that that at the end they can serve as a detonator of the planned crisis. This means mutual divide constitutive of the community, with an emphasis on what sets them apart, and at the same time reducing the weight of what they have in common.

    In Yugoslavia this strategy began be carried out long before the visible signs of the crisis, forming of new ethnic identities (Muslim, Montenegrin and Macedonian) was financed and supported as well as separatist aspirations were systematically encouragement and refined in the context of the existing ones (especially among the Croats and Slovenians). The Ukrainian identity is also an artificial construction, which is defined not positively, but primarily in a hate of all Russians, as a militant negation of all Russian culture and language. In Ukraine, as before, in Yugoslavia, existing religious cleft between the Catholics and the Orthodox part of the country was also successfully used to increase, deepen and sharpen the existing animosity.

  2. Deceptive by promise higher standard of living and creation of various material temptations to support the politically desired behavior.

    In the former Yugoslavia, where there was by the end of the 80. years of a decent standard of living, has been used in the prospects for an even better life, which would have followed the dissolution of the socialist state, as a bait to encourage separatist tendencies. Yugoslavia Catholic west was promised to increase the well-being to the level of Germany, when they decide to separate and commit to the "civilizational choice" (nearly identical phrase was used in the context of Ukraine) in favor of the integration with EU. Muslims in Bosnia and in Kosovo were promised great benefit from close connection to the rich Islamic countries. In Ukraine the EuroMaidan events were triggered by the illusion of rapid inclusion into the European union as associated ability to travel to the Western countries without visa and dramatic raise of standard of living.

    The majority of the population in western and central Ukraine, who have responded positively to these fake prospects of improving their standard of living and totally failed to realize gravity of the real economic and social transition, and more importantly, didn't realize the existence of the strong "no new members" trend in the EU. As a result they were forced to act on the basis of completely unfounded assumptions.

  3. Control of MSM in the target countries for the purpose of influencing the perception and behavior of the masses.

    The penetration of western influences in the media space in the former Yugoslavia, the pioneer of which was Soros, started immediately as soon as the political liberalization at the end of the 80th allow it. From the early 90's. years, when the conflict was the feeded mainly from abroad and did not yet became self sustained, a big part of the local media in all of the Yugoslav republics fall under the direct control of the western owners. A similar transfer of MSM into western hands occurred in Ukraine during the last two decades, where before EuroMaidan all the major MSM including TV channels were under the firm control of the controlled by the west oligarchs such as Poroshenko and kolomyski. all of them simultaneously Promoted the almost uniform and factually incorrect narrative about the benefits that would come from a political alliance EU and NATO and the EU, and total alienation from Russia.

  4. As in Ukraine, as in Yugoslavia, there was a certain core of the population, which proved to be resistant to brainwashing and continues to hold its own narrative. It was politically marginalized.

    While those people Radically reject these false ideas, which were designed to guarantee the acceptance of the new political arrangement under the iron heel of the West. In Ukraine, it was the Russian speaking east, in Yugoslavia the Serbs.

    The rejection of these groups to accept peacefully the loss of their own cultural identity and political autonomy has led in both cases to conflicts. A clear answer is required whether the armed conflict (although he was in principle predictable) also the preplanned and intended consequence of the processes that have been put into operation.

    In the case of Ukraine we can be reasonably doubtful, because of the apparent intention of the new Kiev junta after regime change was to include the country to NATO and the EU under the guidance of a vassal government in Kiev and this goal does not include the political disintegration of the country. EU wanted to eat the whole peace, as a single country.

    In the case of Yugoslavia, it can be argued that the conflict leading in the Serbian military defeat was clearly part of the plan. It is possible, however, that was originally expected that the campaign will be much faster and more successful. As it turned out, by the fact that the instigators of the Yugoslav crisis reviews are written by free rein to their Croatian and Muslim protecting, perhaps inadvertently, created a clear existential threat to the Serbs, who were scattered throughout the territory of the former Yugoslavia, which greatly cemented their resistance and prolong the conflict longer than originally expected.

    In addition, it could lead to further unintentional result: a serious challenge to the Yeltsin's alliance with the West (although Russia played a role of Western vassal in this case). It has come to a critical stage in the time of the Kosovo war. The result was the rise of Putin and his political vision as a response to the war.

    Whether it was the original intention of the Ukraine anything (was probably only about the direction of cultural fragmentation while maintaining the overall political integrity of the country, albeit with a much more reliable western component, which would put to the untrusted east of the country into submission), it seems that failed as soon as it was when Kiev junta used brute force. As pointed out by informed analysts, power compromise between Kiev and Russian speaking east, which was possible two or three months ago [the article was written in September 2014, nb], is no longer possible because of the suffering and destruction Kiev junta has caused. The situation is evolving rapidly, while the regions that are culturally focused mainly on Russia, more and more refuse to have anything to do with Kiev, irrespective of the details of the proposed arrangement, if any. In this sense, today in Ukraine are getting a strong analogy with the spirit of the resistance, which was typical for Bosnian and Croatian Serbs during the Yugoslav conflict.

    One can imagine that if the West backed junta in both of the cases from the beginning took a more subtle and a more flexible attitude towards the Serbian and the Russian population, whose political role they want to diminish, it could proceed much more effectively, and might even prevent the radicalization of the opposition. And could it be truly successful, because in both cases, it was junta not the rebels, who, at least initially, intend to resort to violence.

  5. The west uses the most despicable social strata and dirty methods to achieve their goals. there are a number of documents that can shed light on the diabolic pact of the West with Iran (Iran-Contra) and other usage of more or less fundamentalist Islamic actors in order to strengthen the local Muslim forces in Bosnia, which was in line with the interests of NATO and the EU and the fight for control of the whole country.

    The participation of certain elements of the European far right in the war on the side of the right-center regime in Croatia was encouraged. A similar pattern can be observed in the Middle east, where the radical Islamic faction become a means to undermine the secular regimes, which were regarded as hostile to the West.

    In Ukraine there was a contract with the devil clearly included some of the most egregious of the local fascist forces, literally remnants and direct ascendants of forces that collaborated with Nazi during WW2. Their task was to provide a storm troopers for seizing power, and stage the coup d'état after which the West supported oligarchs and politicians in Kiev took power consolidate pro western neoliberal government. It seems that in both in Yugoslavian the Ukrainian case the key idea was :

    "Now we are going to use them for the removal of our main opponent and them we will deal with neofascists later."

    The probability that monsters which the West created at some point can refuse to obey their Western masters, was not taken into consideration. The post-war spread of radical Islam in Bosnia, where it previously never existed, and the consolidation of a strong fascist groundswell in Croatia is enough proof of this effect. In terms of the Nazi-inspired movements and armed formations in Ukraine, it seems that there is no clear plan as for how to bring them back to obedience once a conflict is over and they, presumably, outlived their usefullness for the west.

    Those tools, which the West amorally used to achieve their objectives, sow the Dragon teeth of the long-term instability as there is a distinct tendency of such forces to get out of control of their creators and even turn against them as happened with radical Wahhabism Islam.

    For Russia, the Ukraine is a serious problems, as those Dragon teeth, which was sown opportunistically by West as a tool for interference , will bear bitter fruits. Undoubtedly, they will prevent integration of Ukraine into the "Russian world", even if we limit to most basic cooperation as understood by the current Russian politicians. In other words Ukraine lost all Russian market.

  6. Covert support of Western puppets, while publicly proclaiming the policy of non-interference, which in practice is demanded only from other parties.

    Another important similarity lies in the fact that in the case of both the crisis of the West has initiated an embargo on the importation of weapons and logistical support to the conflicting parties, but on a regular basis is skirted in favor of their local clients. Rich evidentiary material, which was accumulated after the end of the 90. years, leaves no doubt about the fact that the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian forces in Yugoslavia were supplied by the west with a huge amount of weapons and large amount of training.

    Russia is the target of the process of demonization for not only the military, but even humanitarian aid to rebel regions in Ukraine. Western patrons insist on an almost unlimited right to support their clients, as in Belgrade in the 90's years, and Moscow now have similar privileges denied. Their insistence on a "level playing field" - the cliché which was often used at the time of the Bosnian conflict, turned out not to be what was in fact: it was the naked hypocrisy.

  7. A significant difference: Moscow has a clearly defined political objectives. You could say that one of the main reasons for the failure of the Serbian resistance in Croatia and only partial success in Bosnia was the lack of a clear political vision of both in their own ranks, and in Belgrade, which supported them.

    The Russian analysis of this experience has played an important role in ensuring that Moscow and its allies try to avoid to get into the swamp of the civil war without a clear definition of their goals and means to achieve them. No doubt that president , Putin does not want to imitate Slobodan Milosevic, who delivered a brilliant television speech, which contained a crucial insight about the machinations of his western opponents, but his timing couldn't be worse - it was delivered a few days before his overthrow.

It seems that the Balkan events led to a more sobering view on the USE and a lot of self-reflection of Russian politicians, and that has double effect. First of all, the Kosovo war and the bombing of Yugoslavia at the end of the 90. years clearly give rise to substantial upheaval that has contributed to the change of Russian leadership. As a result Vladimir Putin became Russian president and his vision now if dominant. However, the negative consequences of the tortuous policy of encouraging their protégés in Bosnia and Croatia, followed by Milosevic, have been for the Russians another huge lesson. This lies in the fact that if someone does not have a wider strategic vision and the ability to put it place, it is better to avoid such a risky and complex entanglements.

Source: vineyardsaker.blogspot.cz, translation: Charles Hyka

Taken from the www.kosovoonline.cz

[Feb 15, 2015] Ron Paul: Ukraine Coup Planned By Nato And EU

Ron Paul: "The Ukraine coup was planned by NATO and EU... The best thing we can do for Ukraine is get the foreigners out." Quote from comments: "That is where anyone who does not believe that USA, EU and NATO are totally responsible for the violent mess Ukraine has become."
Feb 15, 2015 | zerohedge.com

As Ron Paul recently exclaimed, the war propagandists are very active and are winning over the support of many unsuspecting American citizens. So we thought the followingg 90 seconds of 'pure Paul' would provide a refreshingly different perspective as he explains, "I'm not pro-Russia, I'm not pro-Putin, I'm pro-facts."

"The Ukraine coup was planned by NATO and EU... The best thing we can do for Ukraine is get the foreigners out."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G93SlyJIQSg

As Ron Paul previously concluded:

Our government has no more credibility in telling us the truth about the facts that require us to expand our military presence in this region than Brian Williams.

Constant war propaganda has proven too often to be our nemesis in supporting constant war promoted by the neoconservatives and the military industrial complex.

...

The only way that Congress can be persuaded to back off with our dangerous interventionism, whether it's in the Middle East or Ukraine, is for the American people to speak out clearly in opposition.

ekm1

Where are the facts Mr Ron Paul?

Ron Paul is making up stuff in order to sell products to disciples.

Coup in Ukraine was staged by Putin via Yanukovych. Yanuk did not camapaign on joing eurasian union.

Joining eurasian union was a coup d'etat by Putin and Yanukovych.

What happened was the counter coup, which yes, was urged by USA and nato

cigarEngineer

EKM1, how is the air conditioning at US Misinformation Warfare Headquarters? Do you get paid weekly or bi-weekly? Then again, at $15/hr, who cares, right...

Ignatius

Lying for a living. Don't he know that politics pays better? Maybe he's just packin' his resume.

Winston Churchill

EKM just graduated to my do not bother to read comment list.

Maybe PPT really stands for Piss Poor Trolls.

Calmyourself

British Battalion 77 peter puffers have arrived.. EKM, which barracks you out of? I am sure you will tell us next multiculturism is strengthing Britain..

Jack Burton

Winston, I don't know if you have noticed, but over the last few months the State Department Internet posters have moved away from ZH. Perhaps they consider us a lost cause. But some months back they were still very active here, posting sometimes dozens of State Department talking points, but winning no converts. As of late, they have withdrawn to troll more mainstream blogs and News Paper comments sections.

The one benefit of the Ukraine Coup and civil war has been the western media exposing it'self like never before as one channel propaganda. Never before has media told so many demonstrable lies in so short a time. The transparent lies have begun to catch many people's attention. The script they read from is not at all clever or well thought out. The script is terribly transparent, and so easily proved to be lies.

So, will this new war propaganda win? So far I say it's 75 yes, 25% no. So many Americans just lap up the lies without trying to get the real story. Fools have been

TungstenBars

"The one benefit of the Ukraine Coup and civil war has been the western media exposing it'self like never before as one channel propaganda."

I agree 100% with this; more and more people are seeing the US state sponsored propaganda for what it is.

In regards to "So, will this new war propaganda win?":

I stated here before that the secondary objective of modern state sponsored propaganda in the west is to gain popular support, but the main objective is to send out the "offical accepted version of world events", meaning that it does not matter if 99% of Americans do not believe it. So long as America does not erupt in a civil war, what the state sponsored media says stands and nothing else matters and will be ignored. Anyone asking questions or causing trouble will be pointed to or judged based on that propaganda as if it was truth. Pretty much 1984.

angel_of_joy

He's from Toronto... the navel of the Universe (in their own opinion). Their view of the world is somewhat distorted, and "potted"...

TungstenBars

The state-sponsored anti-russian propaganda in Canada is in overdrive. Harper has gone full retard and traitor to appease to certain foreign interests.

Most people don't believe the nonsense whatsoever. EKM, I don't get why he is so special as to actually believe it. He speaks for no-one.

Jack Burton

Canada just happened to be where the allies shipped the Ukrainian Nazis and SS veterans after World War II. The allies knew their strong anti communist and anti Russia bent, so figured to save as many as possible to form the useful agents they and their families now are. Harper is feeding those Western Ukrainian trolls and they in turn help ramp up public opinion into fever pitch.

I am sick of this shit. My response to every person who repeats the lies, I will tell them that it is "their duty to go to this war in person, I will not accpet bullshit lies and then people asking others to due the fighting!" Put up or shut up assholes!

Why does the west feed this war fever, and why the coup in the first place? War allows the public to be stripped of tax revenues, it allows national security to trump privacy and freedom, and it allows politicians to claim a patriotic mandate to rule us. Plus corporate profits and stocks are off the charts money makers.

Spitzer

This is true. They are scattered all over alberta and Sk. I met one recently that was bragging about cross burnings in Provost. Provost is a nazi ukranian KKK town

Latina Lover

Quoting Jack Burton:

"I am sick of this shit. My response to every person who repeats the lies, I will tell them that it is "their duty to go to this war in person, I will not accpet bullshit lies and then people asking others to due the fighting!" Put up or shut up assholes!"

I couldn't have:tter myself. As a former grunt who saw some action when I was young and very stupid, any idiot advocating violence against others should put their money where their mouth is and lead by example.

Instead we have this hypocrite drone army, spewing endless BS to induce others to die for their shabby causes, cowards hiding behind keyboards. To hell with all of them!

schadenfreude

http://www.kas.de/ukraine/en/publications/21063/

This is from Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung a NOG from Germany. So this mght be propaganda or not. In fact there never were real elections Ukraine ever. Lawful was not one government there.

giovanni_f

Konrad-Adenauer-Siftung is anything but an unbiased organisation. Actually it is a transatlantic networking group in the business to spread neocon messages in Germany. The page you refer to does not contain ANY actual, proven issue but just the general out-of-the-air claim that the elections didn't meet demoratic standards.

Try harder, Neocon troll.

El Vaquero

Are you claiming that Ron Paul was wrong when he:at we had a recording of the assistant US secretary of state and the US ambassador to Ukraine discussing who is going to take power in Ukraine BEFORE the coup in Ukraine?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvRljAaNgg


ekm1

Nuland did the right thing. It prepared the counter coup against Putin's coup

El Vaquero

Yes, Nuland took part in starting a civil war that has killed innocent people. That is obviously the right thing. Civil war is good for the people, or didn't people realize that?

JESUS! FUCK!

EU-Ukraine-Russia trade deals are NONE OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS!

BlindMonkey

so the Nazi Ukies could have gone about their protests by peaceful means but Nazis gonna Nazi and tortured, burned, raped and stole their merry way across the countryside. Even the Ukies have had enough of their shit and have tried to pull them back at various times just to see the Nazis flex and storm the buildings of their own gov.

As I write this I am wondering what ahit are you trying to pull? You don't seem to be a satire artist like MDB. Paid troll? Maybe. I don't see how anyone can objectively read the news and come to the same conclusions as you.

El Vaquero

That is some seriously fucked up reasoning. The US did the right thing by kicking off something that was inevetable and accomplished nothing except putting the US and Russia closer to war, which, BTW would go nuclear. You call that the right thing?

You're fucking nuts. This should be none of the US's fucking business. I'm sick of sending our soldiers over to die for somebody else's cause. Why don't you Eastern Europeans solve your own fucking problems?

ekm1

USA is now the business of world police. Becoming a soldier is the safest way of employment.

World security is USA's export now. There is no other way, for now.

Soldiers know very well they will end up in interventions, but they like the money and the thrill of it.

Nobody forces young people to enroll. The money and the thrill entice them to

El Vaquero

So you want the USA to solve your problems? Being globo-cop is proving to be an unethical gig for the US, and should stop.

And have you ever heard a US soldier talk about how they were defending the US in our interventionist wars? I have. They actually believe it. Young people don't know what they are signing up for, and often they fail to realize what they have done after they are finished.

So, again, why can't you Eastern Euroopeans solve your own fucking problems? You know that the US is not going to be able to backstop you forever. What then?

ekm1

Yes. I've spoken with many. Most love it being in the military, absolutely love it

El Vaquero

Gee, that must explain the excessively high suicide rate amongst US vets.

ThroxxOfVron

"Most love it being in the military, absolutely love it "

I believe it. Oh, the gory glory. Oh, the rush of being tough and exerting power.

...& dumb women love a douche with a paycheck in a tidy uniform.

angel_of_joy

That love generally stops suddenly when they come to suffer the consequences of their choice (i.e. the possibility of getting maimed or dying in combat).

The military is a wonderful (state supported and encouraged) vehicle for crass freeloading, until a war happens. Then, a soldier's personal ROI becomes dramatically (even terminally, for many) NEGATIVE !

The_Prisoner

Course they do. They're sociopaths like you to whom only personal gain, even at the cost of murdering others whom just want to live their lives is justified.

g speed

A lot of these kids just do what their parents want them to do---very sad---kids come home with no legs and look at dad and ask why?

green888

Dispute resolution ? Kill someone is your only way- look at your films, entertainment; there is a bad guy and then the "good guy" kills him. It has all become part of your psyche, as ultimately any of your disputes has to be resolved in this way; but the resentment you leave behind has a price.

If you complain about others, you should go home and conduct a self examination.

RichardParker

EKM1:

You want to know what your masters think of the military?

POS Kissinger actually told the truth for once when he explained how ""Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."

JustUsChickensHere

Somebody seems to have hacked the ekm1 account. He was always sort of necon, but never this blatantly wacko before.

El Vaquero

He's Eastern European. I suspect that some deep cultural hatred of the Russians going back a century or 5 has something to do with it. I want nothing to do with that tribal mentality bullshit when it comes to a potential US-Russia confrontation because I don't want to see mushroom clouds over Kirtland AFB with my own eyes. Call me crazy for that.

TheFourthStooge-ing

He's Albanian, which makes him half Latvian, half Polack, and half Bulgoslovenakian.

OpenThePodBayDoorHAL

WTF you fascist, the world does not want or need American storm troopers telling them how to run their lives for the benefit of America. History is a story of lesser powers uniting to oppose tyranny and eventually winning, this will be no different. Get the fuck back in your cave deep in exceptionalist Anglo-American fantasy land and leave the rest of the world the fuck alone.

reload

@EKM

'world security'

Right: let's have a little stock take shall we of those recent lucky nations receiving the security export.

  • Iraq
  • Libya
  • Egypt
  • Yemen
  • Ukraine
  • Somalia

Notice the trend? All places of great insecurity due to US led attempts to insert or maintain puppet client governments whose purpose is to loot their host countries.

You used to make sense on some issues, even when you were needlessly cryptic you were thought provoking. Hell, you even called for oil to trade with a $40 handle even though your reasoning was off, it Has happened.

You have lost the plot tonight.

Libertarian777

because... Putin wants to rule a basket case? that's why he started a civil war?

I haven't heard any logical arguments for why Putin would want to take over the Ukraine. Next I'll hear he wants to take over Greece. For what purpose? Cos he wants their monuments? Or does he like their national debt and 30 hour workweek?

The Russians are saying they are intervening to protect Russian people. The West claims Russia is trying to rebuild the Soviet Union.

On the other hand the west is trying to expand NATO up to Russia's border (think of it as a 'western union').

So even if Putin wants to recreate the USSR, why is it 'bad' when he wants to do it, but 'OK' when the west wants to do it? What is the distinction? Let me guess... human rights? Well the USA with a population of 330 million has MORE people incarcerated than CHINA with 1.2 BILLION people. (4x). Where's the 'human rights'?

How many countries has Russia invaded. I'll even give you Crimea, so Crimea and Georgia.. that's 2.

How many countries has the USA invaded... Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia.

I can't follow the logic.

LocalBoy

NATO / IMF controlling Ukraine, along with Sevastopol, is instant suicide for Russia.
Their choice was give in or fight. War became inevitable when NATO expanded toward Russia -

It is well known that Russia will not give up Sevastopol, will not give up Ukraine to a foreign military alliance.

lasvegaspersona

'Nuland did the right thing'...sure...unless you believe in that whole 'democracy' thingy.

An elected government was overthrown in violent protests that it appears the US organized and aided.

This was done because NATO was displeased that the Ukes were not willing to move closer to the EU.

NATO has shamelessly disregarded the agreements made way back when Gorby was in charge. They have place missiles in Poland fer-cryin-out loud.

I think if I were Putin (and Russia) I'd be worried.

chinoslims

That's a bingo!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5pESPQpXxE

will ling

ah, nuland, mccrazy, kristol, et al , are "just soft" war criminals.

ebworthen

Oh ekm 1, puhleease! Yanukovych was elected by the people of Ukraine.

How is an elected leader ousted by pro a EU Maidan which is supported by: the EU, NATO, our State Department, and meddling U.S. Senators - a coup by Putin?

What is it you are smoking to make you believe such a thing?

El Vaquero

Observable facts do not matter to the narrative. Most will not look at them anyway. Putin could be the most evil sonofabitch the world has ever seen, and that still would not justify our destabilizing Ukraine.

Element

You realize Ukraine was totally broke well before any of this? Deeply in debt, big bills to pay, pooched economy? That sound stable to you?

The reason Yanukovych was trying to obtain an association with the EU at all was because Ukraine was so broke and desperate for a new sugar daddy.

And Yanukovych definitely would have gone that way too, if the IMF had not tried to fuck Ukraine so badly that Yanukovych was forced to walk away as it was national financial suicide to accept the terms Legarde wanted to inflict.

The real source of the instability was Ukraine's own mess.

What came next was just the rush to get the best bits of the carcass.

So who was doing, or rather had already done, the destabilizing of the country?

El Vaquero

Yes, Ukraine was a corrupt broke mess. Why the fuck were our politicians over there? Why were they acting as though they knew that "Yats" was going to be the new PM? Why the fuck was John Brennan over there? What fucking business is it of ours?

Miffed Microbio...

The time will end for us as Global Cop as it always has in history. This is assured. However, only after millions have died during the posturing. And those who have played this role have never risen to that status again.

This country will pay, including the innocents who were against the whole thing in the first place. We just get to watch while others distract themselves with amusements and trinkets.

It is not our business now nor ever was. Why Ron Paul wasnt elected just blows my mind. That was our last hope for redemption.

Miffed

chinoslims

It's not global cop. It's global robbery.

El Vaquero

Haven't you been paying attention to policing in the US lately? Civil asset forefitures plus shooting people because they dared to turn their back on the police while holding a plastic spoon means that cops and robbers are often one in the same.

TheFourthStooge-ing

The term you're looking for is protection racket.

Element

Nicely: see you have no trouble coming to terms with it, must be trauma ward experience kicking in.

Miffed Microbiologist

I accept the reality of it but this is no means a personal relief of my own responcibilities as a participant nor is it an escape into futility of action. Yes, if omnipotent, I would end this fast but since I am woefully lacking in such power I must content myself to personal and local rebellion. I hope others will join me at some point but it is always unwise to count on others.

Americans have become slothful and content in their status in the world. It is ending now but few truly perceive it being subtle at this stage. When one is unconcerned about the atrocities this country is perpetuating on its own citizens or those in other nations, be it overt attacks or political maneuvering, then ones humanity is lost. I am not sure if it can be truly recovered. We brand our leaders as psychopathic but we should examine our own hearts as well.

Yes, the inward trauma ward is not very pleasant. ;-)

Miffed

Element

You don't really need a lesson on how geopolitics is played do you? I'll give you credit and presume you don't. But you better start to get real about this ElV, it isn't going to go away via wishes and idealism.

It is real, and it is ugly, and it is about survival, or else not, and you do have to accept that it's happening and face it as it is, not how you would wish it to be.

And that's all the slack I'm ever cut you on this topic.

El Vaquero

Serious question: Do you support a war with Russia? Because that is a very real danger with the kind of geopolitics being played today.

Element

Of course not.

That:t appears one key Russian does support war with NATO, given actions speak louder than words. It won't take long to find out if Putin is effectively suicidal. I think he's certainly become erratic over the past year, and made unexpectedly bad choices and extraordinary mistakes. I've been amazed by how badly he's done. So if this goes pear-shaped his recent judgement and decision-making under pressure doesn't inspire confidence.

There's a moderate to reasonably good chance we're stuffed.

The_Prisoner

That's very magnanimous of you.

You must have patience with us peons. Not all of us went to Duntroon and had the honor of serving the Empire.

Thanks again, milord.

Calmyourself

Yanukovych pivoted to Russia for a saving loan and then what happened when he did not take money from EU bankers to prolong their party, that's right Nuland showed up to kick his ass out.. Get with the everlasting gobstopper of debt program or get "destabilized"

Volkodav

Yanuk was only thief, not open murderer... He also Ukrainian, not outsider alien passport gang

Hefar lesser heavy handed than the "Red" mafia now in Kiev..who prove themselves killers.

schadenfreude

With all the propaganda dished out to the people it's difficult to know who staged what. But at least there are some facts, where eyerybody can draw conclusions.

  • French, German and Polish foreign ministers negotiated a deal with Yanukovich to have elections in September 2014. In the evening after this deal people on Maidan Sq. got shot. This caused the putsch against the government.
  • So the trigger was the shooting on Maidan Sq. which was never really investigated.
  • All actions afterwards was reaction and counter-reaction by the involved parties.
  • Nulands phone call is fact as well. This is an evidence of US involvement. Whether they initiated the shootings or Yanukovichs people for me is not proven, but likely. Why should Yanukovich do this, a couple of hours after he signed a deal with EU?

Chupacabra-322

Let's also not forget Criminal Psychopath / Sociopath Nuland's 5 Billion Dollar Fascist investment

Victoria Nuland - Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs

US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Nuland:Since the declaration of Ukrainian independence in 1991, the United States supported the Ukrainians in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good form of government - all that is necessary to achieve the objectives of Ukraine's European. We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. " Nuland:e United States will continue to "promote Ukraine to the future it deserves."

HowdyDoody

Not to mention the repeated strange coincidence that the Nazi violence ramps up after visits from major US/CIA gov actors.

geno-econ

Nuland has admitted publicaly that State Dept has spent $ 5 Billion influencing Kiev regime change over last several years. Granted much of this was in form of encouraging ex-patriots here in States, propaganda directed towards Ukrainian citizens and aide money. Only people in government know how much was allocated for actual arms but everyone knows the activities of Neocons in Washington.

The point is the US encourages regime change and recently has had a dismal record of failure and huge wasteful spending.

Just look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Georgia, Yeman and now Ukraine. Ron Paul is correct.

nailgunnin4you

Joining eurasian union was a coup d'etat by Putin and Yanukovych.

I think coup d'état is a little strong here, which American talking head has you recycling this verbal diarrhoea? Only a war-mongering murrican would say establishing a better trade deal for your country is a coup d'état.

Yanuk did not camapaign on joing eurasian union.

So, in your bubble, a country's leader can only establish trade deals/policies/legislature et cetera that he campaigned on, and anything else he did not take to a previous election is a coup d'état even if it is a simple trade deal benefitting the people?

You're not this stupid, please stop.

JustObserving
Ron Paul: Ukraine Coup Planned By Nato And EU

Of course. Maidan terrorists were trained months before in Poland:

Ukraine: Poland trained putchists two months in advance

http://www.voltairenet.org/article183373.html

And now USA and Ukraine are destroying the new ceasefire:

US and Ukrainian officials seek to torpedo Minsk cease-fire agreement

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/14/ukra-f14.html

q99x2

If the NWO is successful in killing Ukranian's it won't be long before they start killing Americans. Globalists are traitors against all nations.

Element

Great sentiments and rhetoric, not much else, as what he's calling for is the end of US involvement in NATO. OK, what then?

US forces have to leave Europe ... completely, the lot. But Europe is most definitely not going to butt-out of the changing of borders in Ukraine using Russian force and support.

He seems to want to ignore that Russia is in fact attacking Ukraine, has stolen its navy, has taken Crimea, and has tried to carve off more and more of Eastern Ukraine, even in the past couple of days.

"I'm pro-facts."

OK, but are you also prepared to accept the implications and imperatives that those facts, Ron?

SMC

OK, what then?

PEACE

Element

Peace since WWII involved the "balance of terror" of MAD. It is a BALANCE of forces and strategy and position.

Change the balance radically and the strategic game changes radically, i.e. not-peace. And it happens in multiple locations.

rejected

Fact: Crimea was 'gifted' to Ukraine in the 1950's by crazy Khrushchev without a plebiscite.

Fact: Crimea voted for reunification when given the chance.

Fact: Ukraine only owned the Sevastopol Navel base by the graciousness of Russia.Russia even paid for a lease.

Fact: The Ukrainian Navy was allowed to exit Sevastopol after the reunification vote. Why would Russia want their junk?

Fact: Sevastopol would never have been given up by Russia regardless of the reunification vote just as the USSA refuses to leave Guantanamo.

Fact: Russia has given Ukraine control of all the borders including the break away provinces with the new Minsk agreement.

Fact: You are full of shit.

Element

Fact: Crimea is the UN recognized Sovereign territory of Ukraine in law.

Fact: Crimea being Ukrainian territory is recognized by the overwhelming majority of countries on Earth.

Deal with it.

angel_of_joy

UN does not recognize the Kosovo entity, but it still exists. UN din't sanction the entire war against Serbia, but it still took place.

Reality is different than UN's view of the world, and the realities on the ground in Ukraine are changing as we speak. Deal with it !

rejected

Fact: The UN is not a sovereign state.

Fact: The UN is funded mainly by the U.S

Fact: The UN has no authority to recognize any state.

Fact: The UN 'supposedly' supports self determination by it's very charter.

Fact: You are still full of shit.

Element

Chancellor Merkel: (a few days ago)
"One particular priority was given to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia this morning. We stand up for the same principles of inviolability of territorial integrity. For somebody who comes from Europe, I can only say if we give up this principle of territorial integrity of countries, then we will not be able to maintain the peaceful order of Europe that we've been able to achieve. This is not just any old point, it's an essential, a crucial point, and we have to stand by it. And Russia has violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine in two respects: in Crimea, and also in Donetsk and Luhansk.

So we are called upon now to come up with solutions, but not in the sense of a mediator, but we also stand up for the interests of the European peaceful order. And this is what the French President and I have been trying to do over the past few days. We're going to continue those efforts.

And I'm very grateful that throughout the Ukraine crisis, we have been in very, very close contact with the United States of America and Europe on sanctions, on diplomatic initiatives. And this is going to be continued. And I think that's, indeed, one of the most important messages we can send to Russia, and need to send to Russia.

We continue to pursue a diplomatic solution, although we have suffered a lot of setbacks. These days we will see whether all sides are ready and willing to come to a negotiated settlement. I've always:don't see a military solution to this conflict, but we have to put all our efforts in bringing about a diplomatic solution. ..."

i.e. Europe doesn't want the US to leave, and Washington does not want the US to leave either.

SO THE USA IS NOT LEAVING EUROPE

Get it?

Both consider this to be in their vital interests.

So these also are the facts of the situation, and you can try to ignore these facts, because you do not like them, you do not like the ugliness of geopolitics, but that changes nothing about geopolitics.

All I'm doing here is pointing that out.

So cry a river of tears if you think it changes anything, or that if merely I changed my mind, it would make you less pissy and aggrieved.

But those facts of this situation, will remain.

That's where Ron Paul, and people like you, have your heads rammed firmly up your butts, screaming to mother to make it all go away.

And I understand (perfectly) why you would want the world to be different than it is, but it simply isn't going to be.

Now seriously, grow up and try to cope with that, rhetorical fantasies don't help.

Volkodav

bored. Chancellor Merkel sang differently about Kosovo.

Victory_Garden

"Both consider this to be in their vital interests."

Good sir, who's interests? Certainly you do not refer to the average American.

From this heart, how does the extreme waste of manpower and money and MIC profit pumping for moar bankster profits become a "vital interest" to we, the average Americans? How is that "in their vital interest" to the rest of the world? All the warmongering for profits, world domination, and population elimination is NOT interesting, or in the better "interests" of America and the world's people at all.

How can you justify the out right blatant murder of innocents, women, and children for the moneygod? Whose really vitally interested in that? Constant never ending warmongering in foreign lands is NOT the choice of real truth following Americans at all, nor in their best interests. It is ONLY for evil zionist/luciferian/sataninc interests and NO covering up that FACT will change this truth.

Darn, never thought about disagree with you before, for your truth really lit the Way for many here once ago.

From this perspective, if they were to go after the evil bankster empire of chaotic dust in Europe, THAT would be of "vital interest" to the freedom loving American people. In fact, the world would rejoice if ALL these evil things were rounded up and placed on an island in the middle of the ocean to do what they will. Good riddance say we all! War is of NO vital interest to anyone. It just does not work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGpwKQo5_Z0

Ventnor

Element,

Yes, but in Ukraine, things are going Putin's way, not yours. He will play his long game and he will prevail.

It could mean the end of your beloved NATO, which will have no viable purpose if it cannot dragoon Ukraine into its ranks so as to encircle and ultimately destroy Russia.

It could also mean the end of the the EU, but that appears to be coming apart at the seams anyway.

You say Europe is dead keen on having the US remain in Europe. That's true of the elite -- largely because Paris and Berlin are terrified of the vacuum that would be created by US withdrawal. Paris knows Germany would have the whip hand; Germany is afraid of being alone at the top.

Nevertheless, our murderous and immoral Ukraine policy is earning us lots of new enemies among European populations. We are playing with fire. Not sure if we don't know that, or just don't care.

Element

Yes, but in Ukraine, things are going Putin's way, not yours.

  • I am not taking a side.
  • I am totally non-partisan.
  • I am pointing out what is going to happen.
  • Not what people want to happen.
  • I am pointing it out to >>95% partisans. You are one of them.

Partisans usually do not like how things will develop to be stated plainly, as it often goes against the way they want things to develop.

So partisans then shoot the messenger, rather than take the warning, on its face value.

Miffed Microbiologist

Element, I happen to agree with you though it does bother me personally. Sometimes hard facts are unpleasant to truly face and hopes of alternative choices are seductive though not likely relevant in these games of power.

My only grief is this is being played with a participant that is rotting from within. Given up its manufacturing base. Economically in the crapper and showering many with money just to live day to day. An aging sick population. We see this farce play out everyday. We are being drained dry internally and will soon be unable to fill this role losing our strong foundation. And when it ends, another will assume the role as it always has been throughout history. Can you blame us for wanting an end to this?

As a small player in this, one who will be likely swept away when the power shifts, I can only watch it unfold. And this gives me no pleasure to admit such a thing.

Miffed

YHC-FTSE

Mrs.M, if you examine his post it's quite easy to see that he is suffering from a condition called, "Fatalism".

"Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine stressing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate. Fatalism generally refers to any of the following ideas: The view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do."

His argument that the convolutions of geopolitics are a natural result of survival and therefore beyond the scope of our control or wishful thinking is both wrong and indifferent to the real crimes being committed in our name.

  • We know who is involved in supporting the neo-nazis and zionists in Ukraine: Victoria Nuland of the US State Dept.
  • We know thousands of innocent people have died as a result. We know wholesale looting is taking place by the Israeli oligarchs.
  • We know, from their own words, from the mouth of the current Ukrainian Prime Minister that those who oppose the coup are being threatened with being burnt alive - in fact many Russian language speaking Ukrainians in Odessa and Mariupol have actually been murdered in this way.

What else could they do but fight against the nutjobs in Kiev and ask for help from Russia? Be burnt alive or become refugees?

Yet to brush all this aside with glib remarks about geopolitics and national survival with quite insane philosophies on death lacking in any depth of analysis or empathy for the victims of these horrendous crimes is, I think, quite revolting. Yes, control of our fate is an illusion, but we are also the cumulative sum of all of our decisions.

So, Mrs.M, you keep your compassion alive. Your empathy and reason do you credit in a world full of cold sociopaths. Without such sweet and bitter experiences to guide our moral values in life, life would be very dull and useless indeed.

YHC-FTSE

"I am not taking a side.
I am totally non-partisan."

For a guy who believes he is non-partisan you sure do have a LOT to say about it for one side.

"I am pointing out what is going to happen."

For a guy who thinks he is a realist or pragmatist, you sure are delusional about being able to tell what is going to happen. Newsflash: NOBODY knows the future. Not even you.

What's wrong with you? There's nothing coherent in your "message" at all - perhaps that's why you're getting junked.

angel_of_joy

Americans shouldn't leave, but stay there and keep paying for (and subsidizing with manpower and equipment) the European "security".

That would be a sure way toward self-destruction of contemporary US, which is already practically bankrupt (and not only from a moral point of view...).

LocalBoy

Ukraine's government was functioning under a Constitution. Within the Constitution was allowances for Crimea to remain autonomous. The Ukrainian Constitution was trashed when the overthrow occurred allowing Crimea to vote for independence.

How can you argue rule of law when the existing government is outside the rule of law while Crimea is within the law ?

Good point about stealing your Navy - and the fact is there is very little that CAN be done about it. Russia took it and nothing will change that. Destroying Russia to give Crimea back to an illegitimate government will not fly - its all about price discovery. What price CAN be forced on Russia........so far very little.

What price has the US already paid

Red Lenin

Fact: Crimea is the UN recognized Sovereign territory of Ukraine in law.

Fact: Yugoslavia was recognized by the UN as a sovereign country. It no longer exists.

Volkodav

UN is worthless except for fill pockets with US taxpayer $.

same as your opinion:

  • Crimea seceded
  • Crimea is peaceful
  • Crimea is free

The_Prisoner

Now you're fronting. Next thing you'll say Israel is legitimate

Urban Roman

"... and has tried to carve off more and more .."

Really? The Russian Army has been fighting a random bunch of warmed-over nazi skinheads for almost a whole year, and can't manage to take a couple of oblasts west of the Don?

Whatchoo smokin' over dere? Login or register to post comments

angel_of_joy

There was no Ukraine prior to 1991. Contemporary Ukraine is an artificially induced state, created in a moment of maximum weakness of the Russian state. As a result, it has no future, and no amount of US propping will change the facts on the ground. Crimea is populated by Russians in vast majority, who decided they don't want to be rulled by Kiev after the US led coup. More so, the Ukrainian "fleet" was built during USSR so it represents a Russian asset too. Your narrative is as dumb as this entire war... which will end badly for US.

Volkodav

Ukraine has never been a sovereign nation.

Victory_Garden

Darn Element, what happened to you?

In the past, you were so spot on about all the fuckyoushima tragedy and offered much light for many who listened intently to your truth. We are grateful for all that light.

Now, it seems as if you have been co-opted, or banned and someone else is using your handle to put out the same trash the organized criminal lame stream media propagandists are putting out for public consumption. It's ONLY regurgitation of the filthiest yukkity-muck ever.

We all miss the truth bearing Element and wonder, are you really another dis-informationist? It would be a shame and big loss to find this out, as your great intelligence is needed to combat the evil that has run rampant over the planet for centuries. Is it money or love you quest after, dear One?

Ask, would you rather have a Ron Paul for president, or the evil illegal usurping alien bushonian bankster puppet we have now? Truly, the puppet soterobama is absolutely the most vile evil and destructive worst president America has ever had.. History will reflect this fact. We may not see another righteous president ever again in America's coming to an end history. Sad to ponder that, eh!

WE WANT GOD BACK IN AMERICA NOW!

(Side-swiping truth, God is Love. Period!)

new game

hmmm, then silence...

schadenfreude

You are correct. All germans I spoke to:hat they should leave Russia with Crimea and the Donbass region.

You are incorrect, that Ukraine is Russia. It is not. After WWII Stalin made the deal that he could enlarge Russia to the West. So he deported the polish to what was once Germany. This artificial enlargement divides Ukraine and is a rated break point that runs through the country. So both sides have a legitimate claim.

Victory_Garden

The latest rant on the GW story.

Ron Paul WAS America's last chance to remain free from the horridness of the banksteronian evil that runs rampant over the land like diarrhea running out of a goose's arse.

HowdyDoody

NATO was created to force the USSR to target two widely separated entities (Europe and continental US) before the time of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This was to keep the USSR focused on Europe. In any envisioned war, Europe and USSR would be destroyed or severely weakened, strengthening the US position.

steelhead23

There is but one thing in all of this that is perfectly clear to me. The situation is quite confusing, lying is rampant, and unnecessarily provoking the Russian Bear is about the most dangerous thing anyone could do.

My preference for U.S. policy is neither isolationism nor militarism. It's diplomacy. Further, the U.S. should abandon its use of economic sanctions against the Bear for his annexation of Crimea because Putin would never leave Crimea, meaning this economic cattle prod will continue to annoy the Bear.

Instead, the U.S. and NATO should be willing to trade some form of recognition of Russian presence in Crimea for ending the war in eastern Ukraine. I would also hope that Kiev and Washington would be willing to see an autonomous region, perhaps more aligned with Moscow than Kiev and agreement not to place NATO troops or materiel in Ukraine.

But of course, none of this is likely - everyone is lying and the trust needed for real diplomacy is nil.

Herdee

I guess that the CIA Director,Stephen Harper, Victoria Wench Nuland were only in Ukraine for a nice vacation?

It shows anyone with a grade 2 education how the world still works.

Bunga Bunga

We couped some folks.

655321

RP gives me the impression he a form of controlled opposition, almost like a pressure release valve, giving people false hope and at same giving people false conclusions on key issues such as 9/11.

Savyindallas

You can't take on too many issues. Paul knows 911 was an inside job. His supporters know. Someday he will go public. I don't agree with the way he handles this, just as I don't like the politics of rand paul on many issues. TPTB would have loved RP to come out as a Truther - they would have detroyed him and his credibility as the sheeple just have no idea what is really going on.

LeftyGoldblatt

LiveLeak.com

Ross Kemp Extreme World. Ukraine

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=98d_1423931054

Berspankme

Watched it. The nazi's are taking over west ukraine. Porkoshenko better watch his back.

HowdyDoody

Dmitry Yarosh, the leader of the far right Pravy Sektor group (financed by Kolomoisky) has brought together the remnants of the Nazi volunteer battalions as one entity, under his control. He has also stated that they (again) will not comply with the ceasefire. These will be the shock troops in the next stage of this saga.

Victory_Garden

Yup!

(use subtitles)

TeaClipper

This is how they do business in Ukraine parliament, whichever government is in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9c7HbeKpeM

gcjohns1971

If the US were isolationist, a lot of Dead Ukrainians would likely be alive right now.

With that:here are plenty of intrigues to go around even the US were somehow frozen.

There are many powerful entities who have their fingers in the Ukraine. Not the least of them are the Ukrainians themselves, both Eastern and Western variety.

Neither the West's position, that everyone should account all Ukrainians both East and West to be homogenous, nor the East's position, that the East Ukraine is Russia, and the West Ukraine is an illegitimate province of Poland or LIthuania and therefore unworthy of self rule, is workable.

Both of those positions lead to dead ends. The Ukrainians are Ukrainians because they are the descendants of those who followed the Kiev 'Rus' (Russians). The Russians are those who followed the Prince of Moscow. All of Russia and part of Ukraine was conquered by the Mongols. The part not conquered are the West Ukrainians. The part conquered are the East Ukrainians...plus many soviet era Russian imports.

Russia's stake is control of the Black Sea Basin...which will cement Russia as mandatory near monopoly energy supplier to Europe. Europe's stake is to have access to non-Russian energy. The US's and NATO's stake is to prevent the re-arming of Europe by ensuring they have no REASON to re-arm.

Pick your outcome:

If Russia gets both Crimea and East Ukrainian land routes to Ukraine, then they decisively control energy to Europe. Europe's choices are then to EITHER a) Trust the US to ensure their economies and access to energy b) Ensure European access to energy themselves - militarily c) Become Russian colonies.

Russia's choices are: a) Commit Russia to militarily conquering Ukraine and then use the economic benefit of that position to arm themselves for the inevitable world war that will result b) Resign itself to open competition for energy by surrendering either East Ukraine or Crimea.

The US's choices are: a) Incrementally increase pressure on Russia via economic and/or military means until they allow Europe to have access to non-Russian energy b) Ignore Ukraine with the cost of later involvement in a world war in europe c) Ignore Ukraine and then withdraw from the transatlantic alliance.

The fact is that the US is over-extended and should not have given Putin a reason for overt involvement. The fact is that Europe is un-prepared to militarily deter Russia from turning them into energy-plantation slaves. The fact is that EUrope is too proud and powerful for Russia as currently composed to force into energy submission simultaneously detering Europe from contesting the matter militarily.

In the next 20 years there will be a major war in Europe, on the scale of WWII. Russia will be facing all of Western Europe.

Russia propaganda seems confused about the organization of Power in the West, presenting it as a US-led top-down organization. In fact it is led by powerful European interests who act through governments. This is all highly observable. What did you think the eminence of the CFR was all about? What did you think Bilderberg was for??? When the European governments were decimated after WWII those interests acted through the US government.

Europe is no longer decimated, and the shift of power from US to European entities has been historic and EASILY observable. What do you think the Eurozone and EU are all about??

There's a lot of high-time preference going on - on every side of this, as each side too heavily weights the desirability of the fruit they see before them, and overly discounts the later costs of that fruit - both Europe and Russia wanting the Ukrainian fruit for the energy power it gives them, and the US in underestimating the costs of their chosen course to placate Europe via meddling in Ukraine.

This is not going to end well for anyone in Europe no matter how it plays out. The stakes are too big for too many big powers.

The US would be better off isolationist, and preparing to re-open ellis island. A lot of war refugees will need a home soon.

China need only wait to inherit Eurasia from those who plan to foolishly decimate themselves.

Rusputin

So that would be a US/NATO/EU coup on a US/NATO/EU coup?

Isn't one coup normally enough for a few years? The first one lasted 12 months and obviously the backstops weren't placed carefully enough, me thinks the bribery money is running out (has run out)!

Catullus

Here's Ron Paul in 2002 asking why the US was meddling with Ukrainian elections...

http://antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=5688

Armed Resistance

Here you go: Victoria Nuland admitting that the US spent $5B to have regime change..

http://youtu.be/U2fYcHLouXY

Flybyknight

Off the wall? That is where anyone who does not believe that USA, EU and NATO are totally responsible for the violent mess Ukraine has become.

[Feb 15, 2015] The analogy between Yugoslavia and the Ukraine

Feb 15, 2015 |Czech Free Press
NejhoršíNejlepší
of the world / Europe | 15. February 2015 | Stephen Karganović |

The similarities in the ways, as it does the western coalition in connection with the Ukrainian crisis that has spawned and has exacerbated into the form of a fierce conflict, and the strategies that the same actors developed in the 90's. years to create the stage for a brutal civil war and provoked the conflict, which resulted in the destruction of the former Yugoslavia, are Russian experts analyzed in detail. The reasons for such a detailed examination is legion. First of all, if your not very imaginative or too arrogant enemy repeatedly acts according to the same schedule, provides you a significant strategic advantage. It allows you to to some extent to predict his actions and propose effective countermeasures.

Although the loftiness of western strategists undoubtedly lets face their intentions more easily, however, it is important - regardless of how they may be surprising - carefully portray the main similarities and differences in competing situations, we will not fall into the trap of warfare in the old war instead of the current.

analogy-between-jugoslavii-and-ukraine .

1. The ethnic and religious fragmentation. Identification of the usable social tensions and their systematic jitření serves as a detonator of the planned crisis. This means mutual divide constitutive of the community, with an emphasis on what sets them apart, and at the same time reducing the weight of what they have in common.

In Yugoslavia began this process be carried out long before the visible onset of the crisis, when konstruovaly new ethnic identity (muslim, montenegrin and Macedonian) and through the encouragement of separatist aspirations in the context of the existing ones (the Croats and Slovenians). The Ukrainian identity is also an artificial construction, which is defined not positively, but primarily in a militant contrast to the Russians. In Ukraine, as before, in Yugoslavia, is a religious cleft between the catholics and the orthodox busily used to incite the existing animosity.

2. The creation of deceptive material temptations to support the politically desired behavior.

In the former Yugoslavia, where there was by the end of the 80. years of a decent standard of living, has been used in the prospects for an even better life, which would have followed the dissolution of the socialist state, as a bait to encourage separatist tendencies. Catholic west Yugoslavia promised to increase the well-being, when you decide and do "civilizational choice" (nearly identical phrase was deleted in the context of Ukraine) in favor of the connection to the neighboring block of the western states. Muslims in Bosnia and in Kosovo, it was promised that will benefit from the links to the rich islamic countries. In Ukraine was again triggered by the illusion of rapid inclusion into the European union. The majority of the population in western and central Ukraine, who have responded positively to these fake prospects, you totally failed to realize the real economic and social situation, and more importantly, didn't realize you even current trends in the EU and to act on the basis of unfounded assumptions.

3. Control of information flow in the target countries for the purpose of influencing the perception and behavior of the masses.

The penetration of western influences in the media space in the former Yugoslavia, whose pioneer was Soros, started immediately as soon as the political liberalisation at the end of the 80. years allow. From the early 90's. years, when the conflict was the přikrmován from abroad, has been a big part of the local media in all of the yugoslav republics under the control of the western owners. A similar decline of media sphere occurred in Ukraine during the last two decades, where all the major news media under the firm control of the West supported the oligarchs. Promote the almost uniform and factually incorrect narativ about the benefits that would come from a political alliance with NATO and the EU, and of the alienation of Russia.

4. As in Ukraine, as in Yugoslavia, there was a certain core of the population, which continues to hold its own narrative. Radically reject these false ideas, which have been encouraged as a prelude to the acceptance of the new political arrangement under the baton of the West. In Ukraine, it was the Russian speaking east, in Yugoslavia the Serbs.

The rejection of these groups peacefully accept the loss of their own cultural identity and political autonomy has led in both cases to conflicts. A clear answer requires the question of whether an armed conflict (although he was in principle predictable) also the intended consequence of the processes that have been put into operation. In the case of Ukraine about it can be rather doubtful, because of the apparent intention of the podněcovatelů regime change was clear vřazení across the country to block NATO and the EU under the guidance of a subservient government in Kiev and not sheer political fragmentation. In the case of Yugoslavia, it can be argued that the conflict leading in the Serbian military defeat was clearly part of the plan. It is possible, however, that was originally expected that the campaign will be much faster and more successful. As it turned out, by the fact that the instigators of the yugoslav crisis reviews are written by free rein to their Croatian and muslim protecting, perhaps inadvertently, created a clear existential threat to the Serbs, who were scattered throughout the territory of the former Yugoslavia, which greatly project cemented their resistance and prolong the conflict longer than originally expected. In addition, it could lead to further unintentional result: a serious challenge to the Yeltsin's alliance with the West (although Russia played a role less significant partner). It has come to a critical stage in the time of the kosovo war. The result was the rise of Putin and his political vision as a response to the war.

Whether it was the original intention of the Ukraine anything (was probably only about the direction of cultural fragmentation while maintaining the overall political integrity of the country, albeit with a much more reliable western component, which would put to the untrusted east of the country), it seems that failed as soon as it was when podmaňování used brute force. As pointed out by informed analysts, power compromise between Kiev and ruskojazyčným the east, which was possible before two or three months ago [the article is from September 2014, nb%], is no longer possible because of the suffering and destruction they have caused power chunty. The situation is evolving rapidly, while the regions that are culturally focused mainly on Russia, more and more refuse to have anything to do with Kiev, irrespective of the details of the proposed arrangement were any. In this sense, today in Ukraine are getting a strong analogy with the spirit of the nepoddajného resistance, which powered the bosnian and Croatian Serbs during the yugoslav conflict. One can imagine that if the West backing of the players in both of the cases from the beginning to take a more subtle and a more flexible attitude towards the Serbian and the Russian population, whose dominant like to limit, much more effectively, it would prevent the radicalization of the opposition. And could it be truly successful, because in both cases, not the rebels, at least initially intend to resort to violence.

5. The west has felt free to make use of the most egregious elements that were up for grabs, as tools to achieve their goals. On the ďábelském pact of the West with Iran (ozvuk Iran-Contra) and other more or less fundamentalist islamic actors in order to strengthen the local muslim forces in Bosnia, which was in line with the interests of NATO and the EU and the fight for control of the whole country, there are a number of documents. To some extent has been tolerated by the participation of certain elements of the european far right in the war on the side of the right-of-center tudjmanovského regime in Croatia. A similar pattern can be observed in the Middle east, where the radical islamic faction become a means to undermine the secular regimes, which were regarded as hostile to the West.

In Ukraine there was a contract with the devil clearly concluded with some of the most egregious of the local fascist elements, literally relikviemi after the collaboration of the period 2. in world war ii. Their task was to provide a striking power, with the help of which would be the West supported the oligarchs and politicians in Kiev by opponents and consolidate his government. It seems that in the jugoslávském and the Ukrainian case was as follows: "Now we are going to use for the removal of our main opponent and them we will deal with later." The opportunity that was created monsters, which won't get rid of until the end of their usefulness, their creator apparently did not challenge. The post-war uhnízdění of radical islam in Bosnia, where previously never existed, and the consolidation of a strong fascist groundswell in Croatia is proof enough of that. In terms of the nazi-inspired movements and armed formations in Ukraine, it seems that there is no clear plan as to bring them back to obedience, once a conflict is over and they, presumably, will serve its purpose.

Those tools, which the West amorálně used to achieve their limited objectives, sow the grain of the long-term instability and long-term shows no tendency to remain against their stvořitelům in a subordinate position. For Russia, the Ukraine is a serious task, as the seeds of evil, which was sown oportunistickým interference of the West, bear bitter fruit. Undoubtedly, this will undermine the full integration of Ukraine into it and nejvolněji pojatého of the "Russian world", how he accounted for the current Russian politics.

6. Podloudná support minions of the West, while publicly proclaiming the policy of non-interference, which is in practice required only after the others.

Another important similarity lies in the fact that in the case of both the crisis of the West has initiated an embargo on the importation of weapons and logistical support to the válčícím parties, but on a regular basis is skirted in favor of their local clients. Rich evidentiary material, which was nashromážděn until after the end of the 90. years, leaves no doubt about the fact that the bosnian-muslim and Croatian forces in Yugoslavia were granted a huge amount of weapons and training.

Russia is the target of the process of demonization for increasing not only the military, but even humanitarian aid to russia-jazyčným regions in Ukraine. Western patrons insist on an almost unlimited right to support their clients, while Belgrade in the 90's. years, and Moscow now have similar privileges denied. Their insistence on a "level playing field" [level playing field] - which was the phrase that is often used at the time of the bosnian conflict, turned out not to be what was in fact: the naked hypocrisy.

7. A significant difference: Moscow has a clearly defined political objectives. You could say that one of the main reasons for the failure of the Serbian resistance in Croatia and only partial success in Bosnia was the lack of a clear political vision of how in our own ranks, and in Belgrade, which is supported.

The Russian analysis of this experience has played an important role in ensuring that Moscow and its východoukrajinští allies neuvíznou in the conflict without a clear definition of its goals and means to achieve them. No doubt that president , Putin does not want to imitate Slobodan Milosevic, who delivered a brilliant television speech, which contained a crucial insight about the machinations of his western opponents, but his timing couldn't be worse - was meant to only a few days before his overthrow.

It seems that the balkan events led to a sobering and self-reflection of Russian policy, and that in a double respect. First of all, the Kosovo war and the bombing of Yugoslavia at the end of the 90. years clearly give rise to substantial upheaval that has contributed to the change of leadership, which was taken by Vladimir Putin and his vision to the fore. However, the negative consequences of the tortuous policy of encouraging their protégés in Bosnia and Croatia, followed by Milosevic, have been for the Russians another huge lesson. This lies in the fact that if someone does not have a wider strategic vision and the ability of it to take place, it is better to avoid such a risky and complex entanglement completely avoided.

Source: vineyardsaker.blogspot.cz, translation: Charles Hyka

Taken from the www.kosovoonline.cz

[Feb 12, 2015] BBC send signals - It's not that simple with EuroMaidan snipergate events!

See also To whom EuroMaidan Sharp-shooters belong?
Feb 12, 2015 | annbeaker.livejournal.com

BBC staff now decided to play the role of "daughters of an officer" (NSA financed bots in social networks that assumes this identity and channel State Deportment talking points and trying to discredit opponents pretending that they write from the place of the event) and all the morning very emotionally told us that events on Maidan square was not that simple!

Really?

It turns out there are witnesses and facts which suggest that its not now Yanukovich who ordered those snipers to fire, but it was opposition people who were firing at demonstrators. There are even widows who claim that their statements about the death of loved ones were rejected first by junta and then by Fat Pig government.

Oh, Oh, what an affront! The British have always been shameless whores, you know.

It seems that the attempts were made, while sluggish, to disown Fat Pig and his camarilla. Let's see how things will develop next week, Washington Obcom did not provide final guidelines on this matter yet.

[Feb 11, 2015] Declassified diplomacy: Washington's hesitant plans for a military coup in pre-revolution Iran

The Guardian

The Huyser cable is part of a trove of declassified US government documents that relate to the so-called Huyser mission, undertaken by the Carter administration at the height of the Iranian revolution. Thirty-six years later, many Iranians still believe Huyser was sent to Tehran to neutralise the Iranian army as part of a deal to put Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in power. The Americans, they say, naively thought Khomeini, an anti-communist, would protect their interests in the Persian Gulf after the Shah's departure.

US officials from the time insist no such plot existed. They deny allegations of undermining the shah or that Huyser's mission constituted interference in Iran's sovereign affairs. But the absence of evidence has encouraged conspiracy theories.

Now, release of the Huyser cable allows us to read in the general's own words what he and his handlers believed were his orders. For the first time we can see what President Jimmy Carter and his national security team hoped to achieve. Far from showing evidence of a well-oiled conspiracy, the document reveals an astonishing lack of awareness on the part of US officials trying to manage events thousands of miles away that they had failed to understand from the start.

General Huyser arrived in Tehran on 7 January, four days after Carter decided to send an envoy. The president and his advisers had been shocked at the speed of events as a year of protests against the shah's 37-year reign had exploded into revolution. The Americans accepted the shah was finished, and supported his decision to transfer power to a new civilian administration, led by Shapour Bakhtiar, before leaving for a long "vacation" likely to mean exile.

The White House was also aware of nervousness in the ranks of the Iranian military. The shah's senior generals predicted the army would collapse in the absence of their commander-in-chief - so for many of them it seemed better to seize power quickly than wait for a revolutionary bloodbath.

President Carter had won election on a platform of support for human rights. Once in office he had pressed the shah to release political prisoners and liberalise his regime. With that in mind, he was hardly about to order a repeat of Operation Ajax, through which the CIA had in 1953 helped restore the shah to his throne after an earlier bout of civil unrest. But neither could Carter afford to "lose" the country that guarded the approaches to all the oil fields of the Persian Gulf.

As Huyser later put it in his memoir: "As long as there was a civilian government, President Carter felt it was urgently necessary to persuade the military to throw their whole weight behind that government after the Shah had left. How could this be done? It seemed that the President was thinking of dispatching a special emissary, and he was casting about for a senior military figure with diplomatic experience and extensive knowledge of Iran who could inspire the trust of Iran's military leaders."

Huyser, deputy commander of the Supreme Allied Command in Europe, was the obvious candidate. He had made several trips to Tehran over the previous year advising the shah and his generals on how to improve decision-making in the armed forces. Carter selected Huyser because he believed the general retained the confidence of both governments.

Such was the mission's sensitivity that US officials were reluctant to give Huyser written orders. When he protested - Nato commander General Alexander Haig had warned him the White House would scapegoat him if his mission failed - Huyser was given only what he later described in his memoir as a "draft" text whose instructions "were basic and incomplete." After four days in Iran, Huyser sought clarification.

In his 12 January cable, Huyser told Secretary Brown and General Jones he believed the president wanted him to relay six points to the Shah's generals. First, it was vital for the US and Iran "to have strong and stable government ties". Second, Carter was "deeply impressed" with the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces. Third, the president believed "the best interests of all can be realized by a strong and stable civilian government".

Fourth, Bakhtiar's new civilian government "must have the full support of the military". Fifth, this support "can only be achieved if military leaders stick to their jobs": they should not leave the country and they should "work as one team". Sixth, the US government "from the president on down remain strongly behind them".

But Huyser knew Carter and his advisers had not ruled out US support for a coup. Within the cabinet there had been a split between Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor, who supported immediate action and Cyrus Vance, the secretary of state, who opposed a coup at all costs.

Carter split the difference in opposing a coup unless certain conditions were met. "Brzezinski wanted [his order] to convey to the Iranian military a green light to stage a military coup," Huyser wrote in this memoir, "and considered that it did so. President Carter intended it to convey such a meaning only as a last resort."


In his cable, Huyser explained to Brown and Jones that he had already reiterated to the generals that US support for a future coup was contingent on their prior support for Bakhtiar: "I have told them that I consider a military coup as an absolutely last resort. I have explained to them that there are degrees before that action..."

Support for a coup depended on three conditions. First, Bakhtiar had to be given a chance to exert his authority. Second, if the internal situation worsened he might declare martial law and call out the army to restore basic services like running the oil fields or maintaining the power grid.

Only if steps one and two failed would the US endorse a military takeover. Towards the end of his cable, Huyser summed up his instructions this way: "I'll do my best to …give full support to Bakhtiar, and not jump into a military coup."

Huyser's mission was doomed, not least because the White House had failed to inform the shah that an American general had been dispatched to provide unsolicited advice to Iran's senior command. This astonishing breach of protocol enraged Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran's ambassador to the US, who told me in 2012 he urged the Shah to have Huyser arrested and deported.

The shah had good reason to be alarmed. He knew US ambassador William Sullivan had made discrete contact with Khomeini's representatives in Tehran and was involved in negotiations for the ayatollah's return from exile. Sullivan's failure to consult the White House before taking this drastic step led to confusion among the Iranians over US goals.

The shah saw this not as evidence of incompetence but as proof of an American conspiracy to depose him. His senior officers wanted to put an end to the American games right away. "The generals came to me and offered to shoot Huyser," Zahedi told me. "The fear was that the Americans were about to repeat their involvement in the 1967 coup in Greece against King Constantine."

The Americans were oblivious to these concerns, just as they had missed the earlier signs of looming unrest. Just eight weeks before Huyser set out on his mission, but ten months after street protests first erupted in Iran, Brzezinski, the national security advisor, sent Carter a cheerful note that opened: "Good news! According to a CIA assessment, issued in August, Iran 'is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation. There is dissatisfaction with the Shah's tight control of the political process, but this does not at present threaten the government."

How close were the shah's generals to taking action?

On 13 January 1979, Lieutenant General Amir Hossein Rabii, commander of the Imperial Iranian Air Force, met General Huyser to report on his meeting earlier in the day with the heads of the army, navy and gendarmerie. According to Huyser - who immediately briefed his superiors in Washington – Rabii: had spoken in favour of a coup as soon as the shah's plane would leave the ground because, as Brown put it in a memo for president Carter, "the military could come apart rapidly otherwise".

Rabii and the other generals were distressed at the thought of what might happen to them if Khomeini took power. Unlike the Americans, they were well aware of Khomeini's threats of vengeance.

At this critical moment, Huyser strongly advised Rabii not to proceed with his plan. As Brown told Carter, "[Huyser] held firmly to the line that the military must give Bakhtiar a chance to form an effective government and to try to get the country in order again. Rabii reluctantly indicated that they would follow this course."

Even while the two generals were in conference, the shah telephoned Rabii to request that his plane be made ready for departure, though he gave no specific date. Rabii played for time, Brown's account continued, telling the shah that "country clearance for the aircraft had not been arranged, but the Shah: could if necessary fly out via Saudi Arabia."

Brown assured Carter that the generals had backed down from their threat. With the shah's departure looming, and no US support for a coup forthcoming, they felt they had no choice but to seek an accommodation with opposition groups to prevent a collapse of order. Rabii still held out. In his note to Carter, Brown explained that "there was extensive discussion of the military working more closely with some of the religious leadership, with Huyser pressing it and Rabii not inclined to do so."

The end caught everyone by surprise. On 10 February fighting erupted at Tehran's Doshan Tappeh air force base and within 24 hours the revolutionaries held important government installations around the capital. Royal resistance collapsed when the shah's senior generals declared their neutrality and ordered their troops back to base.

At 1.10pm on 11 February the White House Situation Room received the shattering news that Tehran had fallen to a coalition of Muslim fundamentalists and left-wing guerrilla groups financed and armed by Libya, the PLO and the east bloc. The final communication sent out from the US embassy read: "Army surrenders Khomeini wins destroying all classified."

The Americans realised they had left it too late. The delay proved fatal for General Rabii and his colleagues. They were seized, tortured and later shot.

Andrew Scott Cooper is writing a book on the fall of the Shah and the 1979 Iranian revolution. He is the author of The Oil Kings: How the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East. You can follow him on Twitter @aascooper

Ak Shi

This is a few of coups usa conducted to install dictators around the world

1953
Iran – CIA overthrows the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police
1954 Guatamala the CIA are worth all that democratically elected government.
1954-1958 Vietnam The CIA overthrow the communist Government to install a puppet government
1956 Hungary
1957-1973 Laos and who does not know the American atrocity and Laos
Pay of pigs
Ecuador.
Dominican Republic.

Congo Zaire
Brazil
Indonesia
Greece
Bolivia
Uruguay
Compodia
Haiti
Chili
L Salvador
Australia

Each coup done by the CIA either Done by assassination or coupe cost atrocities and hundrands thousands civilians dead.

The source is the global how do you search Canada

MingBaakMei

The USA has never understood the politics of the Middle East. It has based its policy on three things, the protection of :

- Israel
- the Christian Holy Sites, and
- the uninterrupted flow of oil.

None of those accept the reality of the history and the tribal nature of the Middle East, nor the presence of other religions and sects.


George Welbeck MingBaakMei

"The tribal nature of middle east" only applies to Arabic countries not iran

Gulonogamma atillazenun

Not true at all. "Global terrorism" is almost entirely Salafi/Wahabi/Tafriki and is funded and supported by Saudi Arabia. It is also fiercely anti Shia.

Iran support the Hezbollah which is a purely local and regional player and resistance movement and which is locked in a life and death fight with ISIS

George Welbeck -> atillazenun

Terrorist attacks are done by Sunnis supported by Saudi Arabia and persian gulft arab states. Iran doesn't support "global terrorism" they only fund Hezbollah

Andrew Nichols

What other country on the planet today has the gall to think it can so blatantly interfere in others affairs where they have absolutely no legitimate interest? Yet further resons for the Iranians not to trust the USA.

[Feb 11, 2015] Poroshenko: Ukraine conflict risks spiralling out of control

Quote: Ironically (and rather disingenuously), US talking heads, media parrots and politicians in Washington – are still recycling their worn-out sound bites: "Russia is invading the Ukraine", "Moscow is responsible for the destabilization of the Ukraine", and it goes on.
Military industrial lobbyists like US State Dept. Euro Secretary Victoria Nuland, and US Senator John McCain have played a key role in the Kiev's Nazi renaissance from the beginning – a new low point in international racketeering…
Feb 11, 2015 |theguardian.com

Ian56789

War by media and the triumph of propaganda by John Pilger

Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?

Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what's called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war - with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an "invisible government". It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies.

The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media - a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.

This power to create a new "reality" has building for a long time. Forty-five years ago, a book entitled The Greening of America caused a sensation. On the cover were these words: "There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual."

I was a correspondent in the United States at the time and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of the author, a young Yale academic, Charles Reich. His message was that truth-telling and political action had failed and only "culture" and introspection could change the world.

Within a few years, driven by the forces of profit, the cult of "me-ism" had all but overwhelmed our sense of acting together, our sense of social justice and internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated. The personal was the political, and the media was the message.

Read more at :- http://johnpilger.com/articles/war-by-media-and-the-triumph-of-propaganda

centerline

The Minsk talks a n the arduous task of watching FOX (and it is incredibly arduous) or repeating whatever dribble comes out of the BBC

Ian56789

Nato's action plan in Ukraine is right out of Dr Strangelove by John Pilger

(Extract)

The genius of Stanley Kubrick's film is that it accurately represents the cold war's lunacy and dangers. Most of the characters are based on real people and real maniacs. There is no equivalent to Strangelove today because popular culture is directed almost entirely at our interior lives, as if identity is the moral zeitgeist and true satire is redundant, yet the dangers are the same. The nuclear clock has remained at five minutes to midnight; the same false flags are hoisted above the same targets by the same "invisible government", as Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations, described modern propaganda.

In 1964, the year Dr Strangelove was made, "the missile gap" was the false flag. To build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue an undeclared policy of domination, President John F Kennedy approved the CIA's propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This filled front pages as the "Russian threat". In fact, the Americans were so far ahead in production of the missiles, the Russians never approached them. The cold war was based largely on this lie.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato enlargement project. Reneging on a US promise to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand "one inch to the east", Nato has all but taken over eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato's military build-up is the most extensive since the second world war.

In February, the US mounted one of its proxy "colour" coups against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were fascists. For the first time since 1945, a pro-Nazi, openly antisemitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism on the border of Russia. Some 30 million Russians died in the invasion of their country by Hitler's Nazis, who were supported by the infamous Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the UPA) which was responsible for numerous Jewish and Polish massacres. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, of which the UPA was the military wing, inspires today's Svoboda party.

Since Washington's putsch in Kiev – and Moscow's inevitable response in Russian Crimea to protect its Black Sea fleet – the provocation and isolation of Russia have been inverted in the news to the "Russian threat". This is fossilised propaganda. The US air force general who runs Nato forces in Europe – General Philip Breedlove, no less – claimed more than two weeks ago to have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops "massing" on the border with Ukraine. So did Colin Powell claim to have pictures proving there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is certain is that Barack Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.

Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan well after Osama bin Laden had fled, then destroyed Iraq beneath a false flag, invented a "nuclear rogue" in Iran, dispatched Libya to a Hobbesian anarchy and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror by drone.

Read more at:- http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strangelove-china-us

HisRume

Lets be clear. Kiev must answer for their crimes when this is settled:

On June 2nd 2014 a Ukraine jet fighter attacked the central administrative building in Lugansk city killing seven civilians. It was a gross act of state terrorism It was not a military target.

Immediately the US and the Ukraine UN Representative lied, saying it was a misfiring rebel anti-aircraft manpad device that struck the buildings air con.

Yet, when the osce investigation pronounced it had been a jet fighter attack, Kiev and Washington still denied it.

They have still not answered to this war crime - the first terrorist act of this crisis incidentally.

Lets not forget WHO is responsible for the appalling, criminal deaths in the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk and who started the "terror".

Hermius

GreatMountainEagle

'The one constant here is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the leader of the free and thinking world who has not changed from the beginning and is to the people of Earth as the North star has been to sailors on the oceans for centuries.'

This has to be the funniest thing ever posted on here (and saddest for those trapped in the PutinSSR)

Ian56789 -> GreatMountainEagle

Why do you get off on being a Goldman Sachs / Neocon troll?

Ian56789 -> GreatMountainEagle

Putin currently has an 86% approval rating in Russia. Primarily this is because they were ruled by Goldman Sachs and the US under Yeltsin in the 1990's. Yeltsin caused the collapse of the Russian economy and a 40% drop in people's living standards. Russia was a total mess by the late 1990's.

Putin enjoys a very high approval rating because they do NOT want to be ruled by Goldman Sachs again and they see Putin as the only guy that can stop it from happening.

Americans and Europeans haven't done so well living under Goldman Sachs rule for the last circa 15 years either. People's real standards of living in the developed countries has declined significantly.

richiep40

Forgetting all the name calling, who started it etc. what I don't get is how anyone can think this will work.

The only premise where this will be possible is if the West will reign in Kiev's wish to obliterate the East of Ukraine and Russia can persuade the rebels that this is true.

Without at least some assurances from the West about the safety of the East, the rebels will fight on, even if Putin removed his support (which he won't do if he thinks there will be a bloodbath, it would be political suicide for him).

You can't ask Russia to get out of the situation if they think the Lunatics in charge of Kiev will do what they want to do.

NormVan

The US always attacking Putin. Russia has a functioning, united government of which Putin is one part. When the US decides to attack, the first thing they create is an evil dictator. They can bring freedom to the masses. US freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose.

Obama having a hissy fit with Putin is childish. Obama got a start working for Henry Kissinger and rumored to work for the CIA.
If he wants to do something useful he could send Mrs Nuland back to Kiev with some of her delicious cookies

Goodthanx -> NormVan

To gain a nomination of Presidency, you are prescreened by the Cia. Meaning, are you willing to be a lacky for the Cia, and the Military industrialists?
No president has a long future without the support of both. JFK case in point.

Nickel07

Once the peace agreement is signed...what are you lot on the dark side going to do just come here and try to push back the tide of the investigations that will surely follow? What are you going to do try to scream Putin is a Nazi like kindergarten kids?

I think you are about to lose big time and not just in Ukraine, but also by losing the little credibility you still have with some countries as demonstrated by the approach taken by Hollande and Merkel.
And, to compound it all:

"the reality of "American leadership" at times entails "twisting the arms" of states which "don't do what we need them to do," and that the US relied on its military strength and other leverage to achieve its goals."

Translation : We coerce some folk.


Mulefish

Why tell us what Poro thinks, Guardian; he always lies, wasting our time and Guardian outdated reporters ink.

Why tell us what Obama thinks, mass murderer. evil, inadequate, coward, fool, and the cause of all this. He is out of his depth; this is not any of his business; he should butt out He will have to.

Merkel is just finding her voice and her brains and cutting loose the Yankee Nazi twits.

The one constant here is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the leader of the free and thinking world who has not changed from the beginning and is to the people of Earth as the North star has been to sailors on the oceans for centuries.

Ian56789

NATO's Nazis: Ethnic Cleansing Their Opposition in East Ukraine
November 17, 2014

Nearly one year on from the US-backed faux 'colour revolution' in Maidan Square, the Ukraine has been violently ripped into pieces by the new CIA-backed government in Kiev.

What began with pro-EU colour mobs and far right-wing neo-Nazi gangs in Kiev, has escalated to ethnic cleansing in the eastern half of the country. The horrors are unspeakable, as detailed in the report below (with video). NATO, led by the US and Britain, are actively backing Kiev's military brutal campaign of collective punishment and ethnic cleansing against Russian-speaking people in the east of that country.

Ironically (and rather disingenuously), US talking heads, media parrots and politicians in Washington – are still recycling their worn-out sound bites: "Russia is invading the Ukraine", "Moscow is responsible for the destabilization of the Ukraine", and it goes on.

Military industrial lobbyists like US State Dept. Euro Secretary Victoria Nuland, and US Senator John McCain have played a key role in the Kiev's Nazi renaissance from the beginning – a new low point in international racketeering…

Read more at:- http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/11/17/natos-nazis-ethnic-cleansing-their-opposition-in-east-ukraine/

richiep40

Interesting Newsnight on the Maidan shootings, perhaps it wasn't so black and white.

The much more devastating ARD (German TV) report (from about a year ago) seems to have been removed from the Internet. It used to be on YouTube.

The only place I can find it is

http://potentnews.com/2014/04/29/german-tv-10-4-14-who-were-the-maidan-snipers-ukraine/

But don't bother ARD has removed the right to broadcast it for 'licencing' reasons.

For a textual analysis of ARD's report try this, it about two pages down

http://www.bne.eu/content/story/snipergate-who-ordered-shootings-kyivs-maidan

Ian56789 richiep40

The sniper shootings in Maidan

The sniper fire came from the upper floors and roofs of buildings controlled by the protestors
(Other pictures show the Berkut Police firing - but they are firing downwards in front of the protestors to try and stop their advance NOT firing at them.)

The sniper's massacre in Maidan Feb 18th to 20th, that directly led to the Coup in Ukraine:-
An academic analysis by a Canadian http://www.academia.edu/8776021/The_Snipers_Massacre_on_the_Maidan_in_Ukraine

Kiev snipers were hired by Maidan leaders - the leaked EU's Ashton phone tape http://rt.com/news/ashton-maidan-snipers-estonia-946/

Full Videoproof of Maidan snipers killing Ukraine Civilians Shooting From Behind! warning GRAPHIC 18+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnBa0Uj3Ijw&feature=youtu.be

​'No evidence of Berkut police behind mass killing in Kiev' – probe head
There is no forensic evidence linking the victims of mass killings in Kiev on February 20 with officers from the Berkut police unit, the head of the parliamentary commission investigating the murders told journalists.

"This will be yet another case, like the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which is still being investigated today," Gennady Moskal reported.

The MP made the statements at a media conference on Tuesday gathered to announce preliminary results of his commission's probe. He assured that despite the Ukrainian General Prosecutor's office having arrested 12 Berkut officers on allegations of committing the mass killings, forensic evidence suggests their innocence.

He:e bullets that killed people in Kiev on the bloodies day of confrontation between protesters seeking to oust President Viktor Yanukovich and riot police didn't match any of the firearms issued to Berkut's special unit, which, unlike the majority of riot police, was allowed to carry lethal weapons.

http://rt.com/news/158864-kiev-snipers-not-berkut/

The man in charge of those controlling the buildings from which the snipers fired was Andrey Parubiy who after the Coup was appointed head of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.

Read more at:- http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/how-february-coup-in-kiev-was-plotted.html

Mulefish -> Ian56789

This was all reported on R.T.V. at the time.

They had reporters on the ground when this was happening. They showed us the remarkable restraint shown by the Berkut in the face of being in the face of being viciously assailed by infused, probably drug fuelled, certainly Yankee pie and five billion fuelled, Nazi thugs, and the illogical directions from which the sniper bullets came. (~This type of third party sniping is typical Yank false flag trickery. They probably provided the snipers too.)

They also broadcast the transcript of the Ashton phone call and her goofy, coward, reaction, not taken up, indeed studiously ignored, by the Western so-called press.

In like vein, Putin offered up his radar records for the downing of MH17, including records of the presence of Ukrainian fighter planes present at the time, an offer not matched by the Kiev Junta or the mouthy U.S. deep in the throes of lying about the incident , all the same, with typical foul mouthedness.

So easy to fool the common denizens of the West, especially the "exceptional" Yankees and their British government ass lickers.

richiep40 -> Ian56789

Thanks for all the info, I wouldn't say I knew all about all the research, but I definitely got the drift.

I was really just commenting that the BBC Newsnight report was the first time that any of the British Media have come even slightly off message.

For instance there were some reports from Donetsk on the horrible conditions there and the civilian casualties on BBC Radio this morning, but not once did they mention these were all in the City Centre held by the rebels and the only conceivable people launching the attacks were the Ukrainian forces.

Now to anyone who takes an interest it is obvious, but for the casual listener who doesn't have an interest, I doubt it.

centerline coober

One small hitch. It is the Murdoch type that make the taxes. They put people in power who will tax the poor so the government can subside the Murdochs.

Murdoch moved his Australian accounting office offshore a few years ago so the Australian tax office paid Murdoch three quarters of a billion dollars.

Bud Peart

"Obama rounded unusually personally on Putin. "He has a foot very much in the Soviet past. That's how he came of age. He ran the KGB,"

He ran the FSB, is he stupid or was this a planned lie to ratchet up cold war hysteria?

[Feb 08, 2015] Lavrov Russia ready to restore NATO contacts as soon as bloc is

February 08, 2015 | RT News

Russia is ready to restore contacts with the NATO, when the alliance itself is ready to do the same, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:fore leaving the Munich Security Conference.

World leaders gathered in Munich this weekend to discuss the most pressing security issues. During the conference NATO members expressed interest in continuing dialogue with Russia, Lavrov told reporters on Sunday, adding that their interest included military contacts and air space coordination.

However, the most pressing topic of the conference was the Ukrainian crisis in the eastern regions, which has escalated since January. Regarding Kiev's aspirations to join NATO, Lavrov expressed hope that the US-led bloc's ardent support would not do the Ukrainian government a disservice.

"As for Ukraine in the context of its relations with NATO and the parallels between Ukraine and Georgia, I'd rather refrain from drawing a parallel of this kind," he:It was drawn by NATO members in April 2008 when they: a declaration at the bloc's summit in Bucharest that Georgia and Ukraine would have its membership someday."

Lavrov: has no doubt this declaration "played an improper role in the decisions that were made by [then-President] Mikhail Saakashvili when he began a military venture in South Ossetia, including against peacekeepers."

In 2008, the pro-Western Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili attempted to take South Ossetia by military force, starting the operation with an attack on Russian peacekeepers. The Russian army had to intervene to repel the Georgian attack and re-establish peace. After the 2008 conflict, Russia and a few other countries recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.

"I very much hope, and I:is in my speech at the conference that such reckless support does not blind the current Ukrainian government," he added.

West sees it's time to abandon groundless accusations

The West is starting to see that it's high time to abandon unsubstantiated accusations and talk of punishment over the Ukraine crisis, and instead look at creating a stable system of European security,:vrov.

During his many meetings at the Munich conference, Lavrov says: "I felt other moods, as well as understanding that fanning emotions in public, unsubstantiated accusations and calls for punishment are a path to nowhere." Lavrov gave quite a list of contacts who shared that mood naming leaders and ministers from Germany, Italy, Austria, Serbia and Slovenia among them.

On Saturday, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko presented several "Russian passports" thathe alleged were taken from Russian soldiers found on Ukrainian territory. Poroshenko: was "best evidence" of aggression.

However, following a query made by Moscow, Kiev failed to provide copies of the passports,:ssia's Foreign Ministry as quoted by RIA Novosti on Sunday.

"Citing 'mountains of (Russian) lies and propaganda,' the Ukrainian president stood on a German stage and, well, lied," Irish journalist and media commentator Bryan MacDonald told RT.

"Russian soldiers cannot use their passports while on active service – they must hand them in. Everybody who has ever lived in Russia knows this. Indeed, even contract soldiers are forced to hand in theirs while on army business and, like the troops, they get a replacement military ID," he said.

US and EU divided over weapons supply to Ukraine

Washington has been backing Kiev up in their accusations about the Russian military's presence in Ukraine, which have been rebuffed by Moscow on numerous occasions.

READ MORE: Munich conference: Russia 'hate fest' or split between Western allies?

Washington is mulling sending lethal aid to the Ukrainian army currently engaged in a military assault on the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions. US Secretary John Kerry: Thursday while visiting Kiev that President Barack Obama's administration will decide on issue next week.

The divide between the EU and US in their policy towards Ukraine has been increasing of late, Marcus Papadopoulos, publisher and editor of Politics First UK magazine, told RT.

"There is certainly division between the Americans and the Europeans about how to proceed in regard to Ukraine. But it's very important to note this: Europe is a strategic ally to America, and when push comes to shove, allies will back each other. So if we take the sanctions that were imposed last year in Russia, the Europeans were very reluctant to impose sanctions for economic reasons, but they were fought into it by the Americans," he:Now we are hearing that the US is seriously considering supplying arms to the Ukrainian army and paramilitaries, which would pour more petrol into the fire in Ukraine. But the Europeans are hesitant about that."

Papadopoulos believes that the long-term solution to the crisis would lie in Washington's decision to abandon the objective of trying to bring Ukraine into the West's orbit and into NATO.

"That's why there is a crisis in Ukraine today. Ever since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the American government has spent billions of dollars trying to lure Ukraine away from Russia into the EU, into NATO in order to weaken Russia on its western borders," he:That would be a severe threat to Russia's security and Russia will not tolerate it."

[Feb 08, 2015] Remarks at the Congress of Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia

Russia revolt against neoliberal empire with the capital is Washington...
[Feb 07, 2015] President of Russia

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN:

... ... ...

Finally, about a war waged against this country. Fortunately, there is no war. Let us not pay too much attention to this. There is, however, an attempt to restrain our development by different means, an attempt to freeze the world order that has taken shape in the past decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with one single leader at its head, who wants to remain an absolute leader, thinking he can do whatever he likes, while others can only do what they are allowed to do and only if it is in this leader's interests. Russia would never agree to such a world order.

Maybe some like it, they want to live in a semi-occupied state, but we will not do it. However, we will not go to war with anyone either, we intend to cooperate with everyone. The attempts made, including through the so-called sanctions, do not make anyone happy in the final count, I believe. They cannot be effective when applied to such a country as ours, though they are doing us certain harm. We have to understand this and enhance our sovereignty, including economic sovereignty. Therefore, I would like to call on you to show understanding of what is going on and to cooperate with the state and the Government.

... ... ...

Someone also:'spectre of recession' is roaming the world. As we all know, it used to be the 'spectre of communism', and now it is a 'spectre of recession'. Representatives of our traditional confessions say it is enough to turn to God and we would not fear any spectres. However, a popular saying tells us that God helps him who helps himself. Therefore, if we work hard and retain a responsible attitude to our job, we will succeed.

Thank you very much.

[Feb 06, 2015] Recognition by Obama and Americals as "players" in Ukranian conflict

Feb 3, 2015 | valery-pavlov.livejournal.com

American political and economic language has the notion of "player". It is beyond morality (as well as U.S. foreign policy in General). The player in the financial market or political player in the middle East, etc. Well, if you play chess or a shoot-and-kill videogame game of some kind, the murder of a pawn, knight, or military unit is not subject to moral evaluation. That's what game requires.

Recognition made by Obama that the USA has prepared a coup in Ukraine, is the recognition of a smug "player". Which slightly opened the card for psychological pressure signaling something to rebels or political opponents, or voters within the US.

Classic moral definitions have been substituted by the USA neoliberal elite with the concepts, which they call "legitimacy". On this planet they now reserved for themselves that right to define what is "legitimate" and what is not.

The problem is that directly or indirectly Americans kill not pawns and not units in videogame. But human beings. After ww2 toll of Americans victims is already on millions. Collapse of indigenous cultures, of the states, of established international contacts and relations, etc.. And they propose nothing in return for destroyed lives, cultures and states other then neoliberal order. Which is not a worthy replacement. Or offer of Washington consensus which was applied to several states-victims and destroyed all of them. All those IMF reforms does not work, because they were designed not to work and benefit countries in question but the USA and international corporations. Now those "gamers" face certain difficulties. Because the whole world is not the USA. Which remembers who caused suffering to many millions of people.

But I digress. We are discussion Obama admission of the organization of year another coup d'état in another banana revolution (in this case - European county called Ukraine) and he provided some interesting details. Now about details.

For example, I am sure that the group thugs in masks on the Maidan which brutally attacked f law-enforcement officers, which threw burning petrol at police and hit police with chains were iether of non-Ukrainian origin or specially brainwashed and trained by West units. Where they were trained? Who are these people? Who financed and built-up racist, anti-Russian hysteria in the media and on the Internet, in social networks? Who on the American side was negotiating with Putin and Yanukovich, how they cheated and they had expected? Give us names !

Well, since Obama opened the card, then I wonder - what's next? And it would be nice to know the details of this dirty operation not after 50 years, but now. Were those methods, using which the USA essentially started civil war in Ukraine, legitimate? Are similar dirty method of overthrowing legitimate government now OK to everybody?

[Feb 05, 2015] What caused such officials as Kerry, Merkel and Hollande to leave their warm places and fly to cold Kiev and Moscow in the depth of the winter

Looks like EuroMaidan color revolution turns in full scale Libyan style crisis with West holding the bad -- it now need to support impoverished Poroshenko regime with dollars instead of getting those dollars from Ukraine as the winners of EuroMaidan coup. Russia also overestimated their capabilities and now is paying a huge price for confronting world neoliberal order with the headquarters in Washington.

The establishment of fire control of highway M-103 still does not mean that formed right encirclement of Ukrainian troupes in Debaltsevo. But even what already happened, has caused a diplomatic consequences.

The capture of Uglegorsk put rebels at the distance of artillery fire to key supply lines of Ukrainian troops, which not only caused a serious operational crisis of the Ukrainian army, which Ukrainian commanders try to solve by local counterattacks which do not change for grave situation of semi-encircled troops.

In addition, the we see "spontaneous" of activity of the OSCE and the UN directed on halting advancement of the rebels and encirclement of Debaltsevo which would happen with the capture of the only road that currently exists for evacuation of civilian and retreat of the Ukrainian army for this this semi-encirclement.

In this regard, we see how the fights for the little-known towns and height are directly affecting Great states politics, when dangerous narrowing of the neck Develasco encirclement, forced such officials as Kerry, Merkel and Hollande to leave their warm places and fly to cold Kiev and Moscow in the depth of the winter.

[Feb 05, 2015] France and Germany Enter Last Call Ukraine Peace Talks With Russia

Feb 05, 2015 | Forbes

In east Ukraine, renewed fighting has cost the lives of dozens of soldiers and civilians and killed a five-months old truce. The United States is considering supplying arms to the Ukraine regular army in order to push back the separatist rebels which, according to NATO, are supported by Russia.

Both the Russian economy and western firms are smarting from the fall out of economic sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, which started with the absorption of the Crimea region, and the Russian counter sanctions. In Russia some goods are getting scarce while in Europe firms from European fruit and vegetable exporters, French ski resorts to automobile firms and ship yards are suffering from the sanctions.

In Ukraine, the economy is in shatters and the central bank raise the interest rates and eased its management of the hryvnia currency that is being hit by a "panic mood"

[Feb 05, 2015] Ukraine Crisis Calls For Peacekeepers, Not Arms Supplies by Marcel Michelson

Quote: "There is a civil war in the east of the Ukraine and it is up to the international community to try and defuse the situation instead of fanning the flames of hate and war."
Forbes

In other countries and conflicts, the United Nations sent blue helmet soldiers into the disputed zones with a mission of restoring and maintaining the peace.

The same should be applied to Ukraine – an international operation of peacekeeping troops should be deployed to silence the guns, protect the civilians and create conditions for negotiations between the fighting parties.

... ... ...

There is a civil war in the east of the Ukraine and it is up to the international community to try and defuse the situation instead of fanning the flames of hate and war.

[Feb 05, 2015] Former Ukranian Prime minister Azarov opinion about who organized EuroMaidan color revolution

Feb 05, 2015 | matveychev-oleg.livejournal.com

Revolution in Kiev was led by Biden and the U.S. Embassy

The former Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov in his book "Ukraine at the crossroads":e USA was behind the coup d'état in the country. They simultaneously controlled both President Viktor Yanukovich and his enemies in the winter of 2013-2014.

"Ten days with 1 on 10 December was the most severe in the first phase of the revolution. The conspirators thought that if they put a little more effort they will be able to capture all government agencies. Yanukovich, paralyzed by numerous calls from Western leaders, did not give any decisive orders about restoration of law and order. He went to China on a state visit. During this period, the conspirators captured the building of the Kyiv city administration, the House of trade unions, building on the European square, completely surrounded by buildings of the Government and the Verchonaya Rada", - he recollect the events in the book.

Azarov says that the Ukrainian authorities had information about the upcoming provocations against representatives of AntiMaidan:

"It was necessary to separate these two meetings, to put between them a police cordon. Ukrainian law enforcement did exactly that during the night from 9 to 10 December. It should be noted that this was the first and last active operation by law enforcement officers, " adds the author of the book. The chain of command : "American Embassy - Biden - President Yanukovich" work perfectly reliably

After threats by Biden Yanukovich gave the command to stop the operation. It became clear that the United States control the EuroMaidan protest. Deputy Secretary Nuland flew in Kiev, while the militants started building barricades around the perimeter, and to arm themselves without any look back on law enforcement".

Former Prime Minister of Ukraine writes that citizens of country were surprised by the inaction of the authorities. But during this time he was unable event to contact President Viktor Yanukovich.

"He was fully immersed in the negotiation process with Western leaders, which, in my opinion, was a cover for the accumulation of forces by militants, demoralization of the law enforcement and the implementation of a coup. When I analyze available to me facts now, I can clearly see that the coordination of the actions of the opposition and the rebels was completely controlled by the group of senior officials of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

It was to them opposition leaders drive each like as if this was their job place, and it is from them opposition leaders went to talks with Yanukovich. After which they got full information about the content of these negotiations,":kola Azarov.

Anonimous:

What Azarov announced, was clear as a day to any sober person a year ago. Any police officer knew by heart how to act during the riots on the square or in any other place. And if such an officer was given the command of the Ukrainian security forces and acted according to the existing instruction, all the heroism of Maidan protesters would have been ended after 15 minutes.

What we now see is the fact the betrayal in the Ukrainian elite including some persons at the top of the government.

Ukrainians, as always, where thrown under the bus..

[Feb 05, 2015] Financial Warfare As The New Regime Change Instrument

Just two weeks ago some idiot published this on "War Is Boring":

After six years of massive expenditures and lurid propaganda, on Jan. 9 Tehran shut down its troubled space program. The unceremonious cancellation occurred without notice in the Iranian press.

Authorities are spreading the space agency's manpower and assets across four ministries including the telecoms ministry and the ministry of defense.

That story was likely planted to instigate some riffs within Iranian politics. That did not work well. Here is notice in the Iranian press:

Tehran, Feb 2, IRNA - Manager of Electronic Industries Space Projects Mehdi Sarvi on Monday declared that Fajr satellite has established its contact with ground station, hours after it was launched and put into the orbit.
...
During the ceremony, Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan:e project was accomplished only thanks to the sincere endeavors of the Iranian scientists.

Developed by indigenous technology and know-how, he noted, the satellite which is called 'Fajr' indicated the high capabilities of Iran's satellite-carriers.
...
The minister referred to the chance to develop and design a new generation of satellite-carriers and also enter the world market of space services, using domestic potential and planning complicated space missions as some of the achievements of the project.

Congrats to Iran for this successful launch.

The above just demonstrates again that one can not trust any "news" on countries not liked by Washington. Consider this headline by NBC: Ex-Los Alamos Scientist Gets 5 Years in Venezuelan Nuclear Bomb Plot. A headline fitting the story would be something like "Crazy old scientist falls for FBI sting". The story has nothing to do with Venezuela and the whole "nuclear bomb" stuff was just phantasies an FBI agent used to entrap some poor old person. But Venezuela is on Washington's shit list and the CIA is currently busy instigating another coup against the elected Venezuelan government.

The CIA and the State Department are also involved in instigating the current demonstrations in Hungary. Another attack on an elected government that does not walk the line the U.S. administration orders it to walk. Next in line is likely the new government of Greece.

But instigating color revolutions, protests and coups is often not enough to destroy a government that the U.S. dislikes. In a recent interview Alastair Crooke points to the newest weapon in Washington's regime change arsenal - financial warfare:

The International Order depends more on control by the US Treasury and Federal Reserve than on the UN as before.

It started principally with Iran and it has been developed subsequently. In a book, "Treasury's War," the tool of exclusion from the dollar-denominated global financial system is described as a "neutron bomb." When a country is to be isolated, a "scarlet letter" is issued by the US Treasury that asserts that such-and-such bank is somehow suspected of being linked to a terrorist movement -- or of being involved in money laundering. The author of "Treasury's War" [Juan Zarate], who was the chief architect of modern financial warfare and a former senior Treasury and White House official, says this scarlet letter constitutes a more potent bomb than any military weapon.

This system of reliance on dollar hegemony no longer requires American dependency on the UN and hands control to the US Treasury overseen by Steve Cohen -- a reflection of the fact that the military tools have become less available to the US administration, for domestic political reasons.

Crooke believes that the drop in the Russian ruble a few weeks ago was engineered by the U.S. Treasury. He is not completely right though about David S. Cohen, the U.S.Treasury man who has implemented the financial warfare instruments against Iran and Russia. That man is no longer with the U.S. Treasury but is the new number 2 in the CIA. That tells you all you need to know about the intensity with which the U.S. plans to use these new weapons.

Any country that does not do do what Washington wants is now threatened with financial ruin. China and Russia are preparing defenses against such a threat but smaller countries have little chances to escape such attacks.

The media though will not delve into that. Should some country's economy drown (see Venezuela) because of U.S. financial marked manipulations all blame will be put on the foreign government and its "irresponsible economic policies" and the media will again call for and support "regime change".

Posted by b at 02:14 PM | Comments (28)

Yul | Feb 2, 2015 4:32:10 PM | 9

@ b

Interesting pieces :

Cohen will also visit Israel for regular consultations on issues of shared interest.

We know about shared interest

"For the last five years, he's been diligently focusing at Treasury on terrorism financial issues, and that is particularly important to our community," Daroff:oting the existential threat to Israel posed by Iran. Cohen, according to Daroff, strives to make sure sanctions against Iran "are in place and strong." Daroff credited Cohen with making sure those sanctions are "written with a smart, enforceable mechanism" that has pushed Iran to the negotiating table.

So will he make himself available to the Jewish community, AIPAC , JINSA et al.

brian | Feb 2, 2015 4:33:51 PM | 10

The CIA and the State Department are also involved in instigating the current demonstrations in Hungary. Another attack on an elected government that does not walk the line the U.S. administration orders it to walk. Next in line is likely the new government of Greece.'

Govts that dont want to be unceremoniously removed need to close the local US embassy. Bolivia did ad sleep better at night now.

Lochearn | Feb 2, 2015 4:39:24 PM | 12

@b: "The CIA and the State Department are also involved in instigating the current demonstrations in Hungary."
The man behind it is Andre Goodfriend, who was a good friend to ISIS when he was US ambassador to Syria from 2009 to 2012 (key dates those). He then was sent to Budapest to stir up some more shit (three Maidan style demos in three months) with cash allegedly from the "Norwegian Fund." Of the November demonstration Vladislav Gulevich wrote:

"Other signs of a 'Hungarian Maidan' were also evident: demonstrators defiantly jumped around chanting "He who does not jump pays the tax" (the Ukrainian version of this standard spectacle is "He who does not jump is a Moskal"). See full article at http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/11/12/viktor-orban-threatened-by-maidan-style-protest-movement.html.

Goodfriend managed to rile the Hungarian government to the extent that he was demoted to senior advisor and is now Chief of Mission pending the arrival of the new ambassador, Colleen Bell, a soap opera producer. John McCain was furious:

"We're about to vote on a totally unqualified individual to be ambassador to a nation which is very important to our national security interest," McCain: the Senate floor. "Her qualifications are as a producer of the television soap opera 'The Bold and The Beautiful,' contributed 800,000 [dollars] to Obama in the last election and bundled more than $2.1 million for President Obama's re-election effort." McCain had in December called Hungary's PM Viktor Orban a "neo-fascist dictator."

somebody | Feb 2, 2015 4:59:13 PM | 13

That pretty much sums up Germany.

Merkel in Hungary talking democracy is crazy. It sure smells color revolution. She needs it now as Orban will hate her.

She has been harping on about Russia's influence in South East Europe for the last few weeks.

It sounds like refighting WW1 all over again.

Willy2 | Feb 2, 2015 5:20:59 PM | 15

Several related thoughts/facts:
- Venezuela has implemented a disastrous financial policy from the day Hugo Chavez took office. And now with oil at ~ $ 50 "the chickens are coming home to roost". In that regard the "Evil Empire" doesn't have to do anything. Just wait & see how Venezuela blows itself up.
- Remember the coup in april 2002 ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d'%C3%A9tat_attempt
http://www.globalresearch.ca/venezuela-coup-and-countercoup-revolution/18618
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela

- Chavez wanted to improve relations with the US in 2009 (after G.W.Bush was gone) but it seems that was rebuffed by the US.

For those who "dislike" the US Empire, I can say that the Empire is on the precipice of a financial collapse as well. From 1981 onwards the US federal debt has increased from ~ $ 1 trillion to over ~ $ 18 trillion now in 2014/2015. The interest payments remained "manageable" because US interest rates went down from over 15% in 1981 to ~ 1.7% in very late 2014. But when I look at the charts then I think US interest rates will/could rise/explode higher in the near future and that WILL kill the US housing market & the US economy.

In that regard, I am surprised to see that the US Empire continues to "double down".

Matt | Feb 2, 2015 5:28:52 PM | 16

"In that regard, I am surprised to see that the US Empire continues to "double down""

The entire course of U.S. history has been one double-down piled upon another.

Gareth | Feb 2, 2015 6:12:13 PM | 18

The US should think twice about weaponizing the financial system when Wall Street is sitting on top of a smoldering volcano of derivatives, just waiting for the next unexpected crisis to trigger an eruption. Who is to say that others can't play the financial warfare game?

Posted by: guest77 | Feb 2, 2015 8:41:40 PM | 22

@Willy2 - More and more you're just pushing out US government claptrap.


"Venezuela has implemented a disastrous financial policy from the day Hugo Chavez took office. And now with oil at ~ $ 50 "'the chickens are coming home to roost'. In that regard the "Evil Empire" doesn't have to do anything. Just wait & see how Venezuela blows itself up."


Sorry, but Venezuelan revolution has not survived two decades in the crosshairs of the United States by following "disastrous policies".

Yes, the Venezuelan economy has ups and down - but it always has, and in this regard, the Chavista era is one of remarkably (relative) low inflation and economic growth. Not to mention the major facts that will help the country survive and thrive in the future - the massive reduction of poverty and the spreading of education to all sectors of the society. Not to mention the $250 billion that China has committed to invest in Latin America will certainly help shore up the weak sectors.

Venezuela has not only avoided becoming a neo-liberal dumping ground through this "disastrous policy", it has lead the entirety of South America and the Caribbean into a remarkable era of independence from the United States. Those like Willy here who want to join in the constant put downs of Venezuela and lay out the next predictions of its downfall (we've heard them since day one) ought to consider that that flock of chickens they keep waiting to scratch their way to Venezuela - might be bound for their country instead.

guest77 | Feb 2, 2015 8:58:51 PM | 23

Thanks for that NBC piece b. I hadn't heard that. Reminds one, of course, of the case of Wen Ho Lee, another nuclear scientist the US government tried to railroad using the basest racism (but eventually had to pay $1.6 million to him). Looks like this time they "got their (80 year old) man". Similar to how they convince mentally defective teenagers (is there any other kind) to blow up Christmas celebrations and then declare they've "saved America" from another Terror plot.

The FBI, it seems, picks on the very young and the very old and the slow - in this regard they are hardly better than people running email scams out of Nigeria.

That NBC News picks up on this and puffs up its headlines with the only part of the story which is a fiction in its entirety: that the Venezuelan government had anything at all to do with this - is a perfect of how manipulative the US media.

The US media, like the US economy and our pop culture and, well, like every other aspect of US society, has been converted away from our benign national traditions, into dangerous weapons with one purpose - to be yielded by the US elite in their quest for power.

It is the very definition of totalitarian.

guest77 | Feb 2, 2015 9:38:40 PM | 25

No doubt that b is right, the US uses its tightly controlled economy in the same way it might use its military - as a weapon. And that is one of the reasons that it prefers to maintain an economy which is by far the most imbalanced and unequal in the world - for the control it gives them in wielding it as such.

Though they are struggling to come to grips with how to manage the effects of such aggressive US actions, the rest of the world is not simply accepting this status quo. China's pumping $250 Billion into Latin America, as well as China's pledges to shore up the Russian economy - should this be required - is evidence that they are not resigned to the whims of the United States.

In Xinhua today, one can read The full text of joint communique of Russian, Indian, Chinese foreign ministers' meeting that was held today, and it has some very telling passages. The main take away is this: the US is fooling itself if it believes for a second - as you'll often hear in its media - that it can turn any of the BRICS against each other. The US is clearly the isolated nation - its tactics are a danger to everyone across the globe.

The Ministers noted the significant and rapid changes underway in the world and underlined that the international community should remain committed to democratization of international relations and multi-polarity. They expressed their support to the idea of adopting a UN General Assembly resolution on the inadmissibility of intervention and interference in the internal affairs of states. They opposed forced regime change in any country from the outside, or imposition of unilateral sanctions based on domestic laws.

The Ministers recognized that the year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations and the victory in the Second World War, and paid tribute to all those who fought against Fascism and for freedom.

Acknowledging India's important role in driving global economic growth, and supporting the openness of APEC, China and Russia would welcome India's participation in APEC...China and India shared the plans of Russia's Chairmanship in the SCO... China and Russia welcomed India's application for full membership of SCO and supported India to join the SCO after completing all necessary negotiations and legal processes.

The Ministers affirmed the need for all countries to join efforts in combating terrorism under the auspices of the United Nations...They underlined the need to bring to justice perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of terrorist acts. Highly alarmed by the new trends in international terrorist acts...

They expressed support for the efforts of the Syrian Government to combat terrorism....

The Ministers stressed that an independent, objective, fair and transparent international investigation should be carried out for the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17....

called for immediate reform of the international financial system ...[they] reject protectionism as well as all forms of unilateral measures of economic pressure taken without relevant decisions of the UN Security Council...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-02/02/c_133965412.htm

ben | Feb 2, 2015 11:27:40 PM | 29

War by other means - IMF - World Bank are weapons of war, by John Pilger:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017242138

[Feb 02, 2015] Obama May Have Been Kept in Dark Over Planned Ukraine Coup

Feb 02, 2015 | Sputnik International

There is a possibility that US President Barack Obama wasn't informed about the plan to overthrow the Yanukovych government in Ukraine, according to former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts.

WASHINGTON, February 2 (Sputnik) - US President Barack Obama might not have been informed by his foreign policy officials about a plot to overthrow the Yanukovych government in Ukraine, but he is definitely behind the approval of the post-February 2014 coup decisions, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts told Sputnik.

"It is possible that Obama was told that Yanukovych was corrupt and a Russian stooge and that the Ukrainian people rose up against him and drove him out of office," Roberts:dding that such an explanation more or less coincides with the Western media reports. "So, Obama could have been caught off guard by events, but the neoconservatives in control of Obama's government's foreign policy were not caught off guard."

Roberts noted that neoconservatives occupying powerful positions in the executive branch of the US government can impose their agenda regardless of the views of the president.

''While Russia was preoccupied with the Olympics, the neoconservatives launched their coup in Ukraine," he asserted. "I do not know whether Obama knew about the coup. I do know that it was not necessary for him to know about it, because the neoconservatives control the information flow."

In a recent interview with CNN, Obama claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin made his decisions on Crimea after being caught off-guard by mass anti-government protests on Kiev's Independence Square, as well as by then-President Viktor Yanukovich fleeing, after the West "had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine."

"What is the meaning of Obama's CNN interview? Obama cannot help but know of the US government's involvement once the coup occurred," Roberts stressed, reminding the intercepted telephone call in which Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador in Kiev discussed who they intend to install as the new Ukrainian government. "Certainly Obama knows it, because once the coup occurs, post-coup decisions have to be made that cannot be made without the president."

The former US official:at the information that reached Obama was that by overthrowing the Yanukovych regime, the Ukrainian people created an unstable situation that the Russians are exploiting, and in order to stop an alleged Russian takeover of Ukraine, his government had to take action.

"This kind of approach to Obama guarantees his approval. Otherwise, the neoconservative beat the drums against him," he explained.

Roberts thinks that the point of the neoconservatives' coup in Ukraine was "to take Russia down a peg or two."

"Under Putin's leadership, Russia had reappeared as a constraint on the unipower's power," Roberts:utin found diplomatic solutions that blocked Washington's planned invasion of Syria and Washington's planned bombing of Iran. In the neoconservative ideology, no country is permitted to rise to the capability of blocking Washington's will."

The former US official claimed that the neoconservatives' plan was to take control over Ukraine evicting Russia from its major naval base in Crimea, thus cutting it from the Mediterranean and its naval base in Tartus, Syria.

Mass protests erupted in Ukraine after Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union. Weeks of violent protests resulted in his ouster and the installation of a pro-Western government backed by Brussels and Washington.

[Feb 02, 2015] US Sticks to Tried and True Policy of Supporting Coups

Feb 02, 2015 | Sputnik International

US President Barack Obama revealed the United States' involvement in the Ukrainian crisis from its outset and admitted that the United States "had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine."

MOSCOW, February 2 (Sputnik) - US President Barack Obama's recent interview with CNN's Fareed Zakiria reveals the United States' involvement in the Ukrainian crisis from its outset and that the country worked directly with Ukrainian right-wing fascist groups, experts told Sputnik.

On Sunday, in his interview with CNN, Obama admitted that the United States "had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine."

"Obama's statement is reiterating something that the world public opinion already knew - the US was involved in the coup of [ex-Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych from the start. History shows us that the US has overthrown numerous governments in Latin America, Asia and Africa and replaced them with leaders that ruled with a fascist ideology that proved useful for Washington's geopolitical interests," independent researcher and writer Timothy Alexander Guzman told Sputnik.

Yanukovych's decision to not sign an association agreement with the European Union in late 2013 triggered a mass wave of protests across Ukraine, culminating in the February 2014 coup. Following the transition of power, Kiev forces launched military operation against those who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new government.

Guzman claimed that during the Ukrainian conflict, Washington and its NATO allies worked directly with right-wing Ukrainian Fascist groups, including the neo-Nazi inspired Right Sector militia.

International law professor at the University of Illinois College of Law Francis Boyle shares a similar opinion, also arguing also that Obama's approach to Ukraine is no different to the neoconservative approach of former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, or political scientist Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" philosophy.

"I think he [Obama] has made it very clear that he is going to continue to take a Brzezinski hard-lined approach toward Ukraine and Russia and that there are not going to be any compromises at all, and effectively he expects President Putin to throw in a towel, capitulate, whatever, it does not appear to me there is any ground for negotiations in light of what President Obama at least:blicly," he: an email to Sputnik.

Boyle also stated that the United States may already be sending covert offensive military equipment to Ukraine, despite Washington's claims that it provides Kiev only with non-lethal aid.

The expert also claimed that Obama's ignorance of the Minsk agreements and of Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposals to negotiate the conflict peacefully, indicates that Washington is going to continue with its aggressive policy in Ukraine.

"How can Russia tolerate this gang of Nazis in Kyiv [Kiev] setting up shop right there on the borders of Russia, and being armed, equipped and supplied by NATO? Of course, Russia cannot tolerate that,"

Boyle concluded, adding that the Unites States itself would not tolerate such threats close to its borders.

"The very fact that Obama feels he needs to comment on [the] US direct role in the regime change [in Ukraine] and on Putin's response over Crimea in this manner, rather than calling Putin a Hitler with well thought out expansionist designs, as has become the norm in the US, speaks for itself: perhaps, the White House is finally coming to the view that it needs to come to its senses and negotiate with Moscow," Vlad Sobell, a professor at New York University's Prague campus stated.

On Sunday, US President Barack Obama, in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakiria, explained that the United States "brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine." The US President:at Russian President Vladimir Putin made his decision to legally annex Crimea "not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off-balance by the protests in the Maidan."

In late 2013 a decision by Ukraine then-President Viktor Yanukovych to avoid signing an association agreement with the European Union triggered mass protests across Ukraine, dubbed Maidan, culminating in the February coup. Following the coup and a rise in aggressive nationalism in the country, Crimea seceded by referendum from Ukraine and rejoined Russia in March 2014.

Pepe Escobar, a correspondent for Asia Times, Hong Kong, who has closely followed developments in Ukraine, told Sputnik of his belief that every independent observer, including himself, "had known from the beginning those $5 billion, [US Assistant Secretary of State] Victoria Nuland's number, over the years unleashed to boost 'freedom' in Ukraine one day would come to fruition."

"And Putin was not 'caught off-balance'," Escobar added. "Russian intelligence knew in a few hours that Maidan would be replicated in Crimea, so the Kremlin acted swiftly," he stated.

Professor Sobell claims that "Mr President [Obama] should be aware that Yanukovych fled [Ukraine] because he had solid reasons to fear for his life. The hallowed Maidan was not a peaceful democratic regime change, as it was presented in Western media, but a violent putch complete with murderous acts by hired assassins."

Sobell states that unnamed EU officials affirm that on February 20 snipers shot both demonstrators and police dead, in order to provoke chaos. These crimes, he continued, are not being investigated by Kiev's "democratic - Western values" regime or its Western sponsors, as "today it is ok to install a Nazi-driven regime by these means and then demand that Western tax- payers support it."

According to Escobar, the way the Ukrainian coup will be perceived "all across the Global South is […] another US regime change operation, using local patsies."

Commenting on the recent increase in hostilities between Kiev and independence supporters in the southeast of Ukraine, Sobell:e situation has changed in favor of the Donbas militia.

"Washington knows it and knows that they must either compromise, start genuine negotiations with Moscow and separatists, or escalate support for the Nazi regime by supplying it with arms. This would lead to major escalation of the conflict – at this point we cannot rule out that Obama will opt of this," Sobell insisted.

Russia's relations with the West deteriorated sharply in 2014, following Crimea's reunification with Russia and the start of the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine. The United States and its allies accused Moscow of interfering in Ukraine's internal affairs and imposed several rounds of economic sanctions, targeting Russia's energy, banking and military sectors, as well as several high-ranking individuals.

[Jan 31, 2015] Le couvercle de la marmite commence ŕ sautiller by Oscar Fortin

Slightly edited Google translation
January 29, 2015 | AgoraVox

The lid of the pot begins to hop

One may ask how far will the patience of Putin and the Russian People, the victims just as much an aggressive sanctions of the West (Washington and NATO) that the misinformation in the guilty of everything that is happening in the Ukraine. For that closely follows the true frame of events and decode the scenarios that all have a same goal, it is enough to ask whether the West can do is simply not to trigger the Great War, the elimination of all his enemies, real and potential.

Three months before the overthrow of the legitimate President of Ukraine, specifically in November 2003, a member took the floor to the Parliament to sound the alarm on the actions concern the u.s. Embassy in Ukraine. An intervention is now complete. His speech begins with the following words :

"In my role, as a representative of the Ukrainian people, activists of the public organization "Volya" addressed to me and have provided clear evidence that on our territory, with the support and direct involvement of the US embassy in Kiev, the project "TechCamp" is put in place under which preparations are being made for a civil war in Ukraine.

The project "TechCamp" prepares specialists in the information war using modern media to discredit the institutions of the state, in order to create conditions to organize violent demonstrations and the overthrow of the rule of law. "

There is no doubt that everything that is currently happening in Ukraine corresponds to a scenario coldly prepared months in advance. The offensive is of the size and proportion that there are many who think that it can lead up to nuclear confrontation. The ex-president Gorbachev worried about the fate that awaits Europe if she lets herself be drawn into that conflict. I refer you to this excellent article by Paul Craig Roberts.

One may ask what can justify such an offensive against Russia through Ukraine, which serves as cover for sanctions and a campaign of misinformation of diabolical proportions against Putin and Russia. Allow me to offer a few consideration regading this potencially life and death scenario.

Putin, supported unconditionally by people of Russia, is the bearer of a vision multi-polar world that substitutes for a unipolar world dominated by the neoliberal Empire, led by United States. This vision of a multipolar world intersects with the concerns and interests of many countries that do not want to be vassals of the Empire, but exist as independent sovereign nations, all equal in their rights. Already, this trend is visible among countries that are grouped under acronym BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) who already made this choice and have laid the first stone in the construction of this multi-polar world, when they met in South America, last June.

Putin is the one who voiced his opposition to the neoliberal Empire, refusing to submit to attempts of conquest and domination of West over Russia. His position strengthened after the invasion of Libya, he was able to draw lessons from this experience and understood that West neve accepts his people as equals. The West adventure of the conquest of Syria on the basis of a scenario similar to the one used for the conquest of Libya has encountered a conscientious objector in the person of Vladimir Putin. Supported by his people and a large majority of the international community, he with intelligence and determination pursued his position about necessity of a multi-polar world where the nations can regain their dignity and the respect of other nations.

The Empire is hit hte wall with the head and its only honorable exit would be to return to the respect of international law, which does not grant any special prerogative to any empire. This path does not seem to suit the ego of US elite and that means that the empire must deploy his muscles of great military power to make a clean sweep of the undisciplined vassals.

However, this is not her custom to present himself as the bad light, who just attack and hurt other nations. His approach is rather to present themselves as the great saviour who is the rescue mission for the oppressed. In this sense, and in this case, he will be able to transform Putin in a real "devil" as some of its allies, such as the Prince Charles (who already compated Putin with Hitler), and that an orthodox patriarch of Ukraine has compared him with devil.

Ukraine as a strategic boder between the Russia and NATO, became the ideal choice to cause harm to Putin and the Russian People. They are betting that Putin will not tolerate that Washington coup in Kiev and NATO attempt to install their military junta in Ukraine. How could Russian allow that Washington and NATO have come to take full control of this strategic territory and set up a military base ?

Since last February, nothing is left to chance : the change of government, the aggressive policies against the people desire for independence in the south-east of Ukraine, discrimination in the language and culture of Russians. The new government has taken legislative measures, among other things, to dismiss the Russian language as an official language of Ukraine. The main cities of this region are the object of armed attacks indiscriminate killing of civilians and bombings,

In July, a plane to Malaysia Air Line is shot down by a missile. Immediately, Obama, and the government of Kiev accuse the pro-independence fighters and Russia to be the authors. The facts will demonstrate to 99% that it was an action planned by Kiev and NATO. Moreover, the country responsible for the investigation, including Kiev, have signed an agreement between them to the effect, but only give them the information with which they would all agree. This agreement goes against the resolution 2166 of the Security Council of the United Nations, which had called for transparency and independence. It must be:at the government of Kiev is part of this group. To this day, Putin has withstood the taunts and has maintained a moderate position, making use of political means to solve the problems that arise in the Ukraine. Although he was accused of invading the Ukraine and that Russian army participated in the fight for the separatists, he denies that the Russian army is present in this conflict and its opponents, Washington and the OSCE report that they do not have direct evidence of this presence.

However, we must not forget that red lines have been set, the lines not to cross. One of these lines is that NATO must not settle in Ukraine. The second is that the cold war is no longer an option. As reported recently, the minister of external Relations of Russia : We will not allow the repetition of the cold war.

Some of the important personalities in the United States are starting to ask serious questions about Obama and his principal advisors. A senior u.s. official speaks of the need to purge the White House. There is also this recent article by Thierry Meyssan "Washington revolt against Obama," which discusses the same topic.

Ukraine can become the spark that can ignite our world.

Oscar Fortin

January 29, 2015

[Jan 30, 2015] Notes for Vienna 2015 Com.Sult Congress: It Is Time to Look at the Ukrainian Crisis in a Broader Context

Ukraine EuroMaidan was organized and financed by the West using standard "color revolution" script. So EuroMaidan and subsequent civil war is definitely more about Western neocolonialism that Ukranian nationalism or Russian encirclement by NATO concerns. Quote: "The current Ukrainian crisis turned into a problem heavily influenced if not dominantly masterminded from abroad.[1] Due to this, an initially domestic problem has been gradually transformed into a fight about the dominance in Europe (and the world) and into a conflict between the West and a more and more self-assured Russia. The Ukrainians have been trapped in a situation where they are only instrumental and in many respects passive objects. Are they aware of it? At least its politicians and intellectual elites? I am not sure about it.
Jan 20, 2015 | klaus.cz

When I was asked by David Ungar-Klein to speak here today on Ukraine, I hesitated. My knowledge of Ukraine is rather limited and I don t pretend to be an expert on this sorely tried country. I am not someone who follows the day by day developments there. I also know that my views on that topic are against the mainstream and that they would not be much welcome. I know as well that there are real experts on Ukraine here in this audience (not only foreign observers but insiders), President Yushchenko being one of them.

In spite of all that, I accepted the invitation to address this gathering because with the passing of time I have become more and more convinced that the so called Ukrainian crisis is only mistakenly considered to be an Ukrainian crisis or Ukrainian-Russian conflict. It is not so. Ukraine is -- to my great regret -- only a place where the much more general crisis manifests itself most visibly. I have in mind an evident crisis of the West, which we experience but are not ready to admit. We try to hide it. One of its manifestations is an intensive and widespread dissemination of Western values all over the world which creates new seeds of tension. Ukraine is one of them.

Let me develop this point. On the one hand, the current crisis in Ukraine is undoubtedly originally home-made. It is basically the consequence of the evident failure of this country to make a successful transition from communism to the system of freedom, pluralistic parliamentary democracy and market economy, from passive role in Soviet imperium to its own statehood and sovereignty. Ukraine probably failed in this respect more than almost any other Central and East European country. It can't be denied. To be fair, however, it would be worth seriously discussing whether this was -- considering the circumstances -- inevitable, or at least excusable, or not. The indisputable fact is that the country was artificially created, was and is deeply divided, and used to have and had even before November 2013 very weak internal coherence. This was an evident obstacle in the difficult transformation process.

On the other hand, the current Ukrainian crisis turned into a problem heavily influenced if not dominantly masterminded from abroad.[1] Due to this, an initially domestic problem has been gradually transformed into a fight about the dominance in Europe (and the world) and into a conflict between the West and a more and more self-assured Russia. The Ukrainians have been trapped in a situation where they are only instrumental and in many respects passive objects. Are they aware of it? At least its politicians and intellectual elites? I am not sure about it.

I was -- while attending various EU and NATO summits -- always nervous when the debate about Ukrainian EU or NATO membership started. I had the unpleasant feeling that to force Ukraine into making a premature decision whether the country belongs to the West or to the East is a certain and guaranteed way how to destroy it. I formulated it year ago, in February 2014, quite resolutely: "Giving Ukraine a choice between the East and the West means destroying it" It leads the country into an insolvable conflict that cannot have but a tragic ending."[2] This is exactly what we see developing in front of our eyes right now.

The current geopolitical game started with "colored" revolutions in the post-Soviet Union as well as some Arab countries, with attempts to export democracy and Western concept of human rights into unprepared and geographically remote territories and different cultural and civilizational areas. I must admit that I saw the birth of today s problem already in the -- for me unclear and unpersuasive -- "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine ten years ago. As I see it, it was only partly a genuine domestic political uprising. It was more importantly an externally organized export of democracy in an attempt to increase the geopolitical position of one country or another or hide some daunting domestic problems, if not a gradual loss of its own identity.

Ukraine has been lowered to the role of an instrument in this much bigger game. The question is how to get out of it. The developments in the last 15 months have proved that a continuation of this dangerous game only increases the costs of the crisis, deepens the division of the country and leads to a further destabilization. If we look at the developments in Ukraine with open and not a priori distorted eyes, we have to come to the conclusion that Ukraine was trapped in the historical shift of geopolitical positions, and that Russia -- on the contrary -- due to it, found its new identity, or at least strengthened its old one. This changing geopolitical setting is the product of the West's loss of identity, of its cultural and civilizational demise, and its economic stagnation.

To my great disappointment, the dominant political forces in Ukraine keep relying on some future external intervention and are not searching for an internal political solution. They haven't come up with any compromise proposal they could offer to the people of the Eastern part of their country to win their confidence. They rely on repression and on unrealistic expectations of Western economic and military aid. It will not come.

There is no other way out of the current stalemate than negotiations and a compromise. It must be done soon. Preserving the current state of affairs can be neither in the interest of Ukraine, nor in the interest of the West or Russia. In the long run, all of us will be losing.

The recent developments in Ukraine also contribute to the destruction of the existing system of international relations which means that we are losing some proven, however shabby procedures to tackle other threatening issues -- the Middle East problem or terrorist s attacks in Europe.

Let me summarize my today s message. Instead of discussing Ukraine or Russia, we should discuss Europe and the West. Thank you for your attention.

[1] See my hearings in the House of Lords about Ukraine, London, November 10, 2014, http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/3656.

[2] "Václav Klaus Institute's public statement on the situation in the Ukraine", February 25, 2014, www.klaus.cz/clanky/3528. More in the publication of the Václav Klaus Institute (in Czech language) "ZámÄ?rnÄ? plochá diskuse o ukrajinske krizi", No. 12/2014. The English shorter version is V. Klaus, J. Weigl: "Let's start a real Ukrainian debate", April 22, 2014, www.klaus.cz/clanky/3553.

Václav Klaus, Presentation at the panel "Europe, the Ukraine and Russia", Vienna Com.Sult Congress, House of Industry, Vienna, January 20, 2015.

http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/3690

Comments from https://marknesop.wordpress.com
Tim Owen, January 29, 2015 at 5:24 pm
Vaclav Klaus's latest:

http://www.opednews.com/populum/pagem.php?f=A-Right-Wing-Former-Czech-by-Vaclav-Klaus-Conflict_Congress_Crisis_Debate-150127-565.html

On a quick read I'd say that's a masterful mix of honesty and realism. He also skates over very real grievances that come with the civil war in the pursuit of making constructive comments. I think he's spot on.

marknesop, January 29, 2015 at 8:11 pm
Yes, that is a very good piece. The author is aware his views are not mainstream, but he defends them well and they are lent the persuasive weight of unfolding events.
Warren, January 29, 2015 at 8:26 pm
Vaclav Klaus has gone off the Atlantcist reservation and subsequently he has become a hate figure for the pro-US hegemony Atlanticist crow.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9322652/europe-needs-systemic-change/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/22/vaclav-klaus-libertarian-hero-has-his-wings-clipped-by-cato-institute.html

[Jan 30, 2015] Greece delays EU agreement on Russia sanctions

Jan 30, 2015 | The Guardian

centerline -> AstheticTheory 30 Jan 2015 01:17

I'm sure the relevant american destabilization apparatus is beginning the work of fermenting trouble and strikes

The articles about Greece being authoritarian and undemocratic will start soon. Perhaps well trained part time extremists will attack, or perhaps these Greek politicians that do not toe the US line will blow another MH17 out of the sky. Never can tell what people will do when they are not under the spell of the US.

[Jan 28, 2015] Must watch: Ukrainian Deputy: US to stage a civil war in Ukraine! This was 20.11.2013!! BEFORE Maidan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9hOl8TuBUM

–––––TRANSCRIPT–––––

Deputy Oleg Tsarov has the word

Honourable Colleagues
Honourable Vladimir Vasiljevitch

In my role as a representative of the Ukrainian people…
…activists of the public organisation "Volya" turned to me…
…providing clear evidence…
…that within our territory…
…with support and direct participation
…of the US Embassy in Kiev…
…the "TechCamp" project is realised…
…under which preparations are being made for a civil war in Ukraine.

The "TechCamp" project prepares specialists for information warfare…
…and the discrediting of state institutions using modern media…
…potential revolutionaries…
…for organising protests…
… and the toppling of the State Order.

The project is currently overseen and under the responsibility…
…of the US ambassador to Ukraine…
…Geoffrey R. Pyatt.

After the conversation with the organisation "Volya"…
… I have learned…
…that they succeeded to access Facilities in the project "TechCamp"…
…disguising as a team of IT specialists.

To their surprise, briefings on peculiarities of modern media were held.

American instructors explained how social networks and Internet technologies…
…can be used for targeted manipulation of public opinion…
…as well as to activate protest potential…
…to provoke violent unrest on the territory of Ukraine…
…Radicalisation of the population and triggering of infighting.

American instructors show examples of successful use of social networks…
…used to organise protests
…in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.

"TechCamp" representatives currently hold conferences throughout Ukraine.

A total of five events have been held so far.

About 300 people were trained as operatives, which are now active throughout Ukraine.

The last conference "TechCamp" took place on 14 and 15 November 2013…
…in the Heart of Kiev on the territory of the US Embassy!

You tell me which country in the world would allow…
…a NGO to operate out of the ​ US Embassy?

This is disrespectful to the Ukrainian government, and against the Ukrainian People!

I appeal to the Constitutional Authorities of Ukraine with the following question:

Is it conceivable that representatives of the US Embassy…
…which organise the "TechCamp" Conferences…
…misuse their diplomatic mission?

–– Let him speak ––

Carry On

UN Resolution of 21 December 1965 regulates…
…inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of a state…
…to protect its independence and its sovereignty…
…in accordance with paragraphs one, two and five.

I ask you to consider this as an official beseech…
…to pursue an investigation of this case
Thank You!

Anonymous:

Ihor Kolomoisky offers $ 1 million to murder Oleg Tsarev

http://www.voltairenet.org/article183839.html

Anonymous:

more on this can be found on US Embassy website
http://ukraine.usembassy.gov/events/techcamp-2013-kyiv.html

MJ:

Just a note on the dates. At the top of the video, it claims to be a year before Maidan. That is incorrect. Maidan started end of November 2013. This video was therefore 10 days before Maidan not a year.

Mats:

Lucky guess.

Putin started it all.

It's those damn Russians who want nothing but Communist domination over the entire planet. They'll do anything in their godless pursuits.

The western press might need some help with covering this story. So I pitched in.

Anonymous:

Greece Begins The Great Pivot Toward Russia
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/27/2015 - 21:50

"Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias is due in Brussels on Thursday to discuss possible additional sanctions on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. Before the cabinet even meets for the first time tomorrow, the Greek government:at it disagreed with an EU statement in which President Donald Tusk raised the prospect of "further restrictive measures" on Russia." The punchline: In recent months, Kotzias wrote on Twitter that sanctions against Russia weren't in Greece's interests. He: a blog that a new foreign policy for Greece should be focused on stopping the ongoing transformation of the EU "into an idiosyncratic empire, under the rule of Germany." And when it comes to the natural adversary of any German imperial ambitions in recent history, Europe has been able to produce only one answer...

woogs:

Ukrinform ran an article on this when it happened. TechCamps were part of Hillary Clinton's Civil Society initiative.

Here's the Ukrinform piece:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tsariov accuses US Embassy of preparations for inciting civil war in Ukraine Ukrinform

November 20 /Ukrinform/. A member of the Party of Regions faction in parliament, Oleh Tsariov, has sent a deputy's request to the Ukrainian authorities to take measures to stop and prevent representatives of foreign countries from interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine. He:at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv is promoting preparations for inciting a civil war in Ukraine.

He:is from the parliament's rostrum on Wednesday, the press service of the Party of Regions reported.

"Activists of the Volia public organization addressed me as a people's deputy of Ukraine and provided strong evidence that the TechCamp project is being implemented in our state with the support and direct participation of the U.S. Embassy, as part of which preparations for inciting a civil war in Ukraine are underway. The TechCamp project is aimed at training information war experts and potential revolutionaries to organize protests and overthrow the regime. The project is being implemented under the patronage of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt," the politician said.

Tsariov:at under the guise of teaching the peculiarities of the use of modern media, U.S. instructors are talking about the use of social networking and Internet technologies for purposeful influence on public opinion and the intensification of the protest potential n order to organize protests and radicalize the struggle for power. "As examples American instructors provided the use of social networks for the organization and management of street riots in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya," he said.

He:at TechCamp graduates are conducting subversive activities in Ukraine, openly recruiting like-minded people on the Internet for organizing riots, protests and provocations, while citing the support of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

Tsariov demanded that law enforcement agencies find out whether representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv violate the United Nations Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States.

Anonymous:

One more nail in the coffin of Western denial of plotting the coup.We've all known for a year what they did.Its a violation of international law and the UN Charter.But they continue to get away with these crimes.In past ages countries went to war over that type of meddling in their affairs.I firmly believe that was/is the proper response. The Russian FM minister should have privately informed the US that they risked full scale war if they went ahead with their plot.

And put their nuclear force on alert. Only when the Empire is fully aware they risk their own personal deaths will they stop their evil deeds.It must be made 100% clear that they will face annihilation in their homeland itself to stop them and make the world safe.

There is a saying that stands the test of time,"if you want peace, be prepared for war".

Paul II:

This raises the question of what Russia's strategy was for handling the problem? One imagines that they had a plan for protecting the Crimean bases, but is what we have seen over the last year the best that the Kremlin could come up with?

A cynic could make the argument that cynical politicians/oligarchs in the Ukraine and cynical politicians/oligarchs in Russia only saw nationalism as a tool to be used on the suckers, and never imagined what the outcome might be. This is because they have no ideology, and come out of the late stage of the USSR. They only pretend to believe in things.

Anonymous:

To me the most interesting part is the crowd booing Tsarev and trying to shut him up.

This illustrates the holistic approach to subversion of the US. Organising a colour revolution can only happen when you have a presence in the crucial institution, in this case the Rada. It would be surprising if the booing deputies were not US puppets.

Rose-Marie Mukarutabana:

The cells created by those 300 are only waiting for the mot d'ordre to get into action.Biletsky's message may be such an order: "This war cannot be a war of generals and politicians. They already lost their war. This is a war of an armed people."
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/01/azov-commander-freaks-out-calls-war.html

HadEnough:

They had intelligence for the US plans for war in Ukraine back then but we all knew of the AZ's geopolitical plans long before maiden...

Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his book The Grand Chessboard, revealed that to weaken Russia, the US must first control Ukraine.

General Wesley Clark revealed the AZs plans "We're going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran" just after the 911 hoax.

In other words, the wars today and of recent times were scripted a long time back even though the MSM are spinning these wars any way they can.

Yes, they blatantly lie to us sheeples because they believe we are idiots, incapable of critical thinking.

Anonymous:

300 operatives in kiev, in nov 2013.

The empire had just been defeated in front of the syrian beaches. And their fleet forced by russia to retreat home without attacking Assad.
Then there was maidan.
There was the explosion of Victoria Nuland´s deepest feelings..remember?
There was the outright outspoken preference for the dear "Yats" to replace the former government.
All the rest is history.

Kevin:

And for trying to save his own country Tsarov is on the run. Disgusting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Tsarov

Anonymous:

Back in 2011 Ukrainian nazis have already threatened to attack Donetsk because a court ruled that Bandera is no longer "Hero of Ukraine". The nazi uprising was called "maidan" back then, too. People were afraid that this could lead to a civil war.

"Yesterday near the monument to Bandera was a big rally. All Western Ukraine has risen. I'm afraid, as if all this has not led to civil war"
http://translate.yandex.net/tr-url/ru-en.en/www.segodnya.ua/politics/power/za-banderu-tjahnibokovtsy-hrozjat-forcirovat-dnepr-i-atakovat-donetsk.html

And in 2009 German military circles debated NATO's continued eastward expansion and the partitioning of the Ukraine. Also it was Germany to be first to publicly declare that NATO should expand eastward in 1993.

"As a former advisor in the Amt für Studien und Übungen (Bureau for Research and Training) of the German Bundeswehr writes, the question of expanding the western war alliance to the territory of the Ukraine is still on the table. If this step is taken, "probably only the western Ukraine" will join NATO. The "eastern Ukraine" would "in this case, become independent or a de facto nation like Abkhazia." The author, a lieutenant colonel of the reserves, presented his ideas in a military magazine, embedding them in a retrospective on the entire past twenty years of NATO's eastward expansion. According to the author, a "cordon sanitaire" separating this war alliance from Russia, conceded by the allies of World War II to the Soviet Union, has, for the most part, been absorbed into NATO, essentially crossing every "red line" drawn by Moscow.
...
In March 1993, Bonn's Minister of Defense at the time, Volker Ruehe, was the first to publicly declare that the war alliance should be expanded to include several East European nations, says Brill."
http://german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56303
http://german-foreign-policy.com/pics/spaltungukrainegross.jpg
Original source:
http://www.bmlv.gv.at/pdf_pool/omz/oemz2009_06.pdf

Mats:

Ukrainian Nationalism, a brief history by South Front.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422411861&x-yt-cl=84924572&v=ndEaDCQNjbk#t=22

Anonymous:

So? Everyone paying attention already knows this.

When is Russia going to do something? That's the real quesion.

They are completely cornered. Putin is completely immobilized. He does not know what to do.

Those negotiations over Easter Ukraine are completely worthless because that's not the main issue. The main issue is that the West will never accept to have an independent Russia.

So, even if the current Kiev regime was toppled and a pro-Russia government took its place, nothing would be resolved. The west would find something else.

Also, you have to understand that when the west talks about the territorial integrity of Ukraine, they mean that they want Russia to give back Crimea. Anything falling short of that demand will not do.

Finally, all it takes is to visit the Russian media today to see that things are not good. The situation is actually terrible. The fact the Medvedev made those comments about SWIFT is a huge sign of weakness: it shows that Russia is extremely worried about that (by the way, whatever happened to Orlov's "Russians don't threaten, they act" comment... clearly Medvedev's comments prove it's not true).

Also, this new "Crisis Budget" measure is so freaking stupid. They basically advertise to everybody that the western sanctions are working extremely well (despite months of denial by Saker, Orlov and others).

On top of that, they announce that things will get better once the price of oil gets back to $70. How freaking stupid can you be? The west must be laughing so hard. That tells them, "Oh ok, let's keep oil in the 40s for as long as it takes, then."

And don't for a second think they can't do it. There's a reason Obama and a massive U.S. delegation was in Saudi Arabia yesterday.

At this point it would take a miracle for Russia to prevail.

Anonymous:

This is the same guy who was beaten when he ran for the Presidency of Ukraine....

http://rt.com/news/ukraine-presidential-candidates-attacked-516/

Anonymous:

Well, Oleg Tsarov was from the beginning of the crises my favorite guy in the Ukraine!

It's a pitty that he somehow disappeared from the scene...pushed away by the developments (the war).

I was thinking that he would be a perfect person for the leader of Novorussia. Who knows, maybe one day? In a year or two perhaps.

But anyway, going back to the very beginning of the crises, it was clear even then that Americans will prevail. I was reading Kyiv Post from November to the coup (they even attacked my computer with viruses because of my comments I was posting there), and I was in absolute disbelief that such obvious American propaganda-machine can be the leading Ukrainian news-portal or online newspaper... Yanukovich didn't stand a chance! Everything was prepared thoroughly, and Kyiv Post was the main indicator to me about what will happen.

The Wend.

Alien Tech:

The Ukrainian Government's problem is that there just aren't enough nazis, and there's also not enough money, to do the amounts of killing that need to be done in order to enable Obama's Ukrainian regime to retain the land in Donbass while eliminating the people there.

Also on January 26th, the Fort Russ blog bannered, "Azov Commander Freaks Out, Calls the War 'Lost'. Blames Everybody," and reported that, "Ukrainian politicians and generals 'already lost the war,' and 'the West did not help.' That's the core of the statement by Azov punitive [meaning: to 'punish' the residents in the anti-Government region, for their not supporting the Government] battalion commander's, and currently also Rada [Parliament] Deputy's, Andrey Biletsky, in his 'Address to the Nation.'" According to Biletsky, after the fictitious "thousands of supposedly killed enemies and burned out tanks, the wake-up can be very painful," because of disappointment felt from the Government's lies.

The Ukrainian news agency RIAN headlined on January 26th, "Mobilization in Dnipropetrovsk Almost Drowned," and reported, "In Dnipropetrovsk region [which is run by the U.S. White House's friend, the Ukrainian-Swiss-Israeli billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky, whose longstanding personal mercenary army has, alone, more than 5,000 fighters], thousands of men are hiding from the draft. Enforcement officers recognize that accomplishing their task will be very difficult." More than 2,000 people there who were drafted "did not show up, they evaporated."

Consequently, the Government is dragooning-in, or "ambushing" (as the article says), virtually anyone who seeks help from the Government, "mobilizing the unemployed" and other "desperate" people. "Military enlistment offices complain" that some draftees are too sick to be able to fight at all.

Whereas Ukrainian conscript soldiers are not eager to risk their lives in order to impose the current Ukrainian Government (which had resulted from Obama's coup in Ukraine in February 2014), upon the residents in Ukraine's Donbass region, which had voted 90% for the man whom Obama overthrew, the residents who still survive there are very eager not to allow this new regime to kill them; and, so, the motivation on the part of the people whom Obama's forces are trying to kill, is vastly higher than is the motivation on the part of conscript troops, from the rest of Ukraine, to kill them. The only troops who are that eager to kill them are supporters of Ukraine's two nazi (or racist-fascist) parties, the "Freedom" (renamed by the CIA from their former "Social Nationalist") and the Right Sector, Parties. Those parties have always gotten only a small percentage of the popular vote in Ukraine, though Obama's people have placed them into power. Once in power, they passed laws to lock-in that power.

And that's the real reason why Obama's war in Ukraine is failing: there's just not enough blood-lust for the task, either in Ukraine, or in "the West."

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/ukraines-government-losing-war.html

woogs:

Would you take the word of a two time medal of honor winner?

~~~~~~~~~~

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

GrandmaR:

Read all about it. Here's the "story." Find Ukraine at the wiki tab.

http://techcampglobal.org/learn-about-techcamp.php

Anonymous:

And in 2009 German military circles debated NATO's continued eastward expansion and the partitioning of the Ukraine. Also it was Germany to be first to publicly declare that NATO should expand eastward in 1993.
"As a former advisor in the Amt für Studien und Übungen (Bureau for Research and Training) of the German Bundeswehr writes, the question of expanding the western war alliance to the territory of the Ukraine is still on the table. If this step is taken, "probably only the western Ukraine" will join NATO. The "eastern Ukraine" would "in this case, become independent or a de facto nation like Abkhazia." The author, a lieutenant colonel of the reserves, presented his ideas in a military magazine, embedding them in a retrospective on the entire past twenty years of NATO's eastward expansion. According to the author, a "cordon sanitaire" separating this war alliance from Russia, conceded by the allies of World War II to the Soviet Union, has, for the most part, been absorbed into NATO, essentially crossing every "red line" drawn by Moscow."

Thank you for this. This is what I talked about before (but lost the link to). NATO has gamed for and known since 2009 Ukraine would break up under pressure. And from the maps, they even figured out the right areas (Novorossia in full). All this talk of them sending troops is only trash talking. They knew it would happen. Once its complete they will accept it (with bad grace,certainly). Novorossia just needs to be liberated to end this crisis.Because right now is the scramble for territory.Whoever holds what areas of the former Ukraine will be decided this year.

Uncle Bob

Anonymous:

Additional details about mercenaries in Ukraina:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.ca/2015/01/email-from-us-special-forces-veteran.html

Anonymous:

The disruptions one hears in the background of the speech remind of tactics used by the nazi party in the Reichstag to disrupt legislative proceeding. This was bef H. gained full power and when the nazis were still in a minority. Works great...

elsi:

trailer of the documentary Maidan Sergei Loznitsa, I endured yesterday.
See for yourselves. A real propaganda pamphlet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSv0Ug4G0UA

P.S: Guys, someone, Russian or Ucrainian can provide me the title of the funeral song that you can hear a littel at the end? Yesterday, whnw was going on the soundtrack in the credits I was talking to a gentleman on the "curious presentation" and the absence of discussion.

The nd with this lovely funeral song is the best on this documentary, and evokes the disaster and destruction that has taken the Ukrainian people.
More than "Maidan", should carry the most appropiate title of "Funeral song for The Ukraine"

donald eugene1

This is more evidence of the US gov'ts destabilization efforts towards a NWO. Those behind the curtains pulling the strings of world leaders are getting excited because they are close to their goals of world domination. These societies of the elite have been planning this for hundreds of years now, if not thousands. It makes me wonder where they get this power of deception? Could it be demonic? I am American, and yes, we are deceived by MSM and our leaders, but, not all of us.

And most of you that live in the East know what's going on. I ask again, are these global elite people using some kind of supernatural deception power given to them by Satan? Do they worship him? And do they do rituals of human sacrifice?

John Brown

Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Right Sector activists and drunk mob beating up Presidential Candidate Oleg Tsarev at the exit from ICTV studio in Kiev on Monday, April 14, 2014. He was transfered to a hospital afterwards. Sponsored by Kholomoisky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzvzpn13Ig

M vD

Proof. And Putin was supposed to allow the AMERICANS to get covert control over CRIMEA ? And the ONLY RUSSIAN warm water port ? 

Mandems96

The whole world should see this
Ukriane libya syria Egypt all a planned coup
It'd funny how when the western backed muslim brotherhood were kicked out of Egypt they stopped all of s a sudden funding them. .
Stop arming terrorists usa uk saudi turkey Qatar nato france 

bdiscer88

All the chanters in the back are mentally ill sociopaths. If a normal person sees someone is going to speak on a subject they have no interest in or don't agree with, they simply don't go to it. If a sociopath sees the same thing they feel they are entitled to try and stop it from happening. This displays several of the delusions from which sociopaths suffer. Namely delusions of importance, superiority, expertise and authority. They falsely believe their opinions are more valid than anyone else's and they have the right to dictate the behavior of others.

[Jan 23, 2015] False flags and how to start a 'colour revolution' in Argentina

The Vineyard of the Saker

by Mario

How it starts:

1987–88 Iran signed three agreements with Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission. The first Iranian-Argentine agreement involved help in converting the U.S. supplied Tehran Nuclear Research Centre (TNRC) reactor from highly enriched fuel to 19.75% low-enriched uranium, and to supply the low-enriched uranium to Iran.

December 1992: The US Embassy in Buenos Aires informs the Argentine government that a continuation of the Iran-Argentine nuclear cooperation agreement is not acceptable to Washington.

In March 1992 the Israel Embassy and in July 1994 the Jewish AMIA building blew up, allegedly caused by car bombs.

Independent Argentine investigations and the initial Charles Hunter (FBI) report shows that both explosions, based on the surrounding damage, is inconsistent with the alleged car bomb theory.

Contrary to all material evidence, the Israeli government and thereafter Washington pressure President Carlos Saul Menem to insist that the alleged car bombs were placed by Iranians in cooperation with Hezbollah.

The judicial process ends nowhere until President Nestor Kirchner appoints judge Nisman in 2005 to start a fresh investigation. Nisman has close contacts with the US Embassy, US attorneys dealing with anti-terrorism investigations and some members of Argentine's SIDE (Intelligence Secretariat).

In 2013 Nisman instructs Interpol to issue warrants against a myriad of notable Iranians and a Lebanese:

- Hashemi Rafsanjani, then President of Iran
- Ali Akbar Velayati, then Foreign Minister
- Ali Fallahijan, then Chief of Intelligence
- Mohsen Rezai, then Commander of the Revolutionary Guard
- Imad Mougnieh, Chief of the External Security Service of Hezbollah
- Ahmed Vahidi, then Commander of the "Al Quds" (Jerusalem) Forces
- Mohsen Rabbani, former diplomatic representative in Argentina
- Ahmad Ashagri, former diplomatic representative in Argentina
- Hadi Soleimanpour, former Ambassador of Iran in Argentina."

President Cristina de Kirchner expressed several times her disbelieve in the Iranian connection (some US officials have publicly questioned whether there was evidence for Iranian involvement [James Cheek]) and used Washington's recent opening of consultations with Iran as an opportunity to negotiate an Iran-Argentine "truth commission" to be made up of five independent judges, none of whom will be from the two countries.

The opposition and the Jewish lobby challenged this agreement.

Finishing touch:

There will be elections in Argentina soon and Cristina de Kirchner cannot be re-elected and there is a wide polarization of candidates contesting the mandate, but the polls show that Kirchner's supported Scioli could win on the second round.

Enter Judge Nisman: He files a complaint that President Cristina de Kirchner had conducted secret negotiations with Iran through non-diplomatic channels, offering to cover up the involvement of Iranian officials (dropping the Interpol warrants) so Argentina could start swapping grain for much-needed oil from Iran. He orders the freezing of all assets of Cristina de Kirchner.

The complaint is based on "alleged evidence" given by (Stiuso who allegedly had good contacts with MOSSAD) the recently fired boss of counter-intelligence of SIDE and other obscure agents.

The opposition media circulates this complaint widely, ignoring the official statement of Interpol that there was never a request from the Argentine government to drop warrants against the Iranians.

The complaint has no legal base if there was an "intend" to cover up. Argentine law penalizes the act and not the intend, this is being ignored again by the opposition media.

The day judge Nisman is invited by the opposition to appear in Congress, he is found dead in his apartment.

While Nisman's complaint would not have lasted few days, his death (suicide or not) will elevate him as a victim of Government conspiracy, the media will insist on this.

Social networks did quickly convert the "Je suis Charlie" to 'Yo soy Nisman' and public demonstrations are being organized daily and numbers are increasing.

Missing still is somebody from the US Embassy distributing cookies.
-------
Note from the Saker:
For context, please see:

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2008/01/hezbollah-didnt-do-argentine-bombing.html

[Jan 22, 2015] SOTU An Annual Monarchist Ritual To Acclaim U.S. Hypocrisy

Jan 21, 2015 | moonofalabama.org
Jen | Jan 21, 2015 4:15:15 PM | 26

There's an interesting post by Eric Draitser over at Tony Cartalucci's Land Destroyer blog on Russian Duma representative Ilya Ponomarev's PowerPoint presentation hosted by US think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Ponomarev provides his analysis of the current political situation in Russia and an outline of how to oust or overthrow the Russian government.

In a nutshell, here is Ponomarev's outline on regime change in Russia:

1/ Organized street protest (versus spontaneous one)
2/ Appealing vision of the future presented to the majority of Russians
3/ Leader, acceptable for all protesters and the elites
4/ Access to some financial resources
5/ Part of the elites should support the revolution
6/ Trigger event

Look familiar? This was the outline followed by the EuroMaidan protests leading to the Feb 22 sniper attacks that forced Ukrainian President Yanukovych to flee his country.

Quite apart from whether Ponomarev stepped out of line as a Russian politician and committed treason, the fact that CSIS would even host such an event with little media fanfare at this time when tensions between the US and Russia are running high speaks volumes about Washington being a rogue government living in a parallel universe to ours.

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/did-russian-parliamentarian-just-commit.html

The presentation in full here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIJEXaXuxeE&feature=youtu.be

http://www.smarternootropics.com/2014/01/captagon-the-smart-drug-fuelling-syrias-civil-war/

So what is Captagon? In the end, Captagon could be considered to be a time-release pill containing Theophylline and Amphetamine. The effects subjectively would be very similar to taking Adderall XR and drinking tea or coffee. The effects are going to be milder than the same dose of Adderall, because half of the molecule being a Xanthine. There are some interesting effects on blood pressure, as Theophylline is a vasodilator while Amphetamine is a vasoconstrictor.

What was Captagon originally intended for? Captagon was originally designed by Degussa AG, a German pharmaceutical company infamous for being the inventors of Zyklon B, used to gas people during the Holocaust. Captagon was invented in 1961 as an alternative to straight Amphetamine to treat ADHD, to work as an antidepressant, and to treat narcolepsy. It is of lower abuse potential than Amphetamine, and is actually quite comparable to Vyvanse in terms of effects. Essentially while not a nootropic, Captagon was designed to be a "smart drug" with a lower side effect and abuse potential than Adderall.

Why is Captagon currently the drug of choice for the Syrian Civil War? Captagon allows soldiers to fight longer hours without fatigue. It doesn't give the same level of rush or euphoria or mania that straight amphetamine would, but it allows soldiers to function for extended periods of time on little sleep and without significant decreases in alertness or performance. Eventually these soldiers are going to burn out, but it allows them to keep fighting, and potentially even to stay alive.

http://ru-facts.com/news/view/41870.html

Laquo; Muslim Brotherhood & raquo; war on drugs
2014-12-07

Italian journalist conducted its own investigation and found out that Islamists were given "elixir" of amphetamine and Captagon, which gave them the courage and physical endurance

The Europeans found an explanation brutality with which the thugs LIH cut anyone who gets their hands on. Italian newspaper claims that the Middle East is already saturated with "elixir of horror", which Dubai and Qatar provided for the Islamists .

According to the source of the newspaper in the "elixi " includes amphetamin Captagon, which give the "Muslim Brotherhood" fighter courage, physical stamina, and most importantly - the dependence of the hand that feeds them drug.

The author of the material says that the "elixir" became widespread in the Middle East immediately after "Arab Spring " in 2011. Dope introduces additional ardor into the ranks of the demonstrators who are ready to sacrifice themselves under the blows of the police and military, from Tunisia to Egypt, from Libya to Syria. When detaned by the police demonstrators became sober, and stated that they were taking the substance, which was given to them by the organizers of the demonstrations. This drug allowed "Muslim brothers" fighters not only a burst of energy, but also the opportunity to not feel the blows of police batons.

The Kurds suggest that found similar drugs in the pockets of hundreds of militants killed in Cobán - writes iL Giornale, - A conducted by US intelligence analysis of the record on which filmed Jihadi John (British thriller penalty Western hostages -Auto.) proves that the executioner was under the influence of amphetamine.

This information was also confirmed by a study of the Italian carabinieri, who were trying to create a self-defense units in Libya. A blood test cadets gave a shocking result: 30 percent of Libyans were drug addicts.

A similar situation was on the Kiev Maidan according to the testimony of a number of independent observers of those unfortunate events, the protesters have used synthetic drugs with hot tea and food, which were handed out free at the barricades. They were sitrobuted by a girl with traditional Ukrainian wreath on his head. After receiving the drug revolutionaries could provide hours of fierce resistance to the police.

By the way, according to Crimea imam Hanafi drug trafficking in south-eastern Ukraine and Crimea before EuroMaidan was conducted by Wahhabis and adherents of "Hizb-ut-Tahrir". Where their " Universities " were opened the number of deaths from drug addiction dramatically increased . After opening in Donetsk Ukrainian Islamic University they began to sell drugs in the halal food stores under the guise of seasonings and spices. The university was closed in 2004, but its adherents have already put a root in Ukraine.

http://pdfbretagne.blogspot.com/2014/12/djihadistes-et-amphetamines.html

Real engine for revolution from Arab spring to Kiev's maidan announced

abc.az

Real engine for revolution from Arab spring to Kiev's maidan has been announced. It's of drug and not political character.

Thus, Gian Micalessin in his article published last week in Il Giornale says that the real engine for all those processes was captagon drug supplied to Middle East countries from Qatar and UAE since 2011. It's known as "anti-horror potion" in the countries of Arab Spring and makes it possible to kill, slaughter and cut off heads without thinking. According to Gian Micalessin, this drug was found in pockets of ISIS gunmen killed near Syrian city of Kobani.

This drug has addicting properties and people cannot get off it.

Some sources mention that famous tea from Kiev's maidan (2013-2014) also contained captagon.

It's very likely that free spread of captagon will become a borderline to divide the postindustrial world into "prosperity enclaves" and zone of "cyberpank" as it often forecasted in the west and former USSR.

Captagon: The drug behind the Syrian bloodshed

January 16, 2014 | news.com.au

THE Syrian civil war is hardcore. It is bloody, desperate and deadly.

It's been ongoing since 2011, after an uprising by protesters during the period of the Arab Spring. As the people begged for democracy, the Syrian army shot at them. From here the country, under President Assad's regime, descended into a nationwide war between government and anti-government groups .

Two years later, more than 120,000 people are dead, four million are displaced and tens of thousands have been imprisoned. The country is in ruin with some citizens forced to starve due to army blockades. In one town, Muadamiyat al-Sham, 12,000 are expected to die from starvation by the winter of 2013.

On August 21, 2013, the nerve agent sarin was used to slaughter citizens - including children. It drew worldwide condemnation, with the UN calling it the "most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them".

So with an expensive war on the bloody hands of Syrian fighters, it is claimed they have turned to drugs for funding and relief from the horrors of war, Reuters reported.

Syria is now the number one exporter and producer of the stimulant drug Fenethylline, marketed under the brand name Captagon. Drug experts say the Middle Eastern country has overtaken production from regional players such as Lebanon - who has encountered a 90 per cent drop in production from 2011.

The stimulant drug, created in the 1960s and once used to treat ADHD, is cheap to manufacture and has allegedly been used by government and anti-government forces to fund weapons for the civil war.

There are reports the drug generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and consumption by Syrian fighters helps them endure long battles. These claims have not been independently verified, yet experts told Reuters it is highly likely.

State media often documents the seizure of Captagon pills when rebel fighters bases are raided and the Islamic militant group, Hezbollah, which backs Syria's Assad regime, "has a long history of dabbling in the drug trade to help with funding", according a former US Treasury official, Matthew Levitt.

A drug control officer in the city of Homs told Reuters of the effects of the drug on fighters held for questioning: "We would beat them, and they wouldn't feel the pain. Many of them would laugh while we were dealing them heavy blows," he said.

The drug is now seen as a major contributor to the functioning of the Syrian war, as all other economic activities have slowed in the country. The destruction of infrastructure, weakened borders and control by armed forces has turned the war-torn country into the Captagon capital.

Although Syria has long been a transit point for drugs coming from Europe, Turkey and Lebanon and destined for the wealthy Gulf states, the country now finds itself the major producer of Ceptagon, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Not only are Syrian fighters using the pills to stay awake, ordinary citizens have also turned to the drug to endure the every day horrors.

"The use of Captagon and other pills increased after the revolution even among civilians because of psychological and economic pressures," a psychiatrist named George told Reuters.

With effects of Captagon ranging from euphoria, increased energy and lack of appetite, and the drug selling for $5 and $20, it is easy to see why the drug has become popular in bloody, desperate and deadly Syria.

[Jan 19, 2015] "Arab spring" and the coup in Kiev done on the tablets of anti-horror potion

Note: this is a questionable source. Take this information with a grain of salt.
Politikus.ru

Behind the extreme cruelty of thugs ISIS and Ukrainian death sqards one can see effects of " "anti-horror potion" -- a powerful amphetamine "Captagon", which kills pity and increases physical stamina. It's well known in the countries of Arab Spring and makes it possible to kill, slaughter and cut off heads without thinking.

Il Giornale published an article by Jan Michalissin, which:at for the first time Captagon was used in Arab Spring event in Egypt. "The pills" was distributed together with the "Arab spring" as the elixir of extension and hardening of the revolutionaries, giving the frenzy of the crowd, ready to sacrifice themselves from Tunisia to Egypt, from Libya to Syria.

This deadly amphetamine became a nightmare for the Middle East: in the ecstasy of people cut and kill with a smile on her face and the emptiness in my head. Kurd fighters testify that they found those tablets in the pockets of militants killed in Kobani. The audio analysis of speech of Jihadi John, who beheaded western hostages, conducted by American intelligence suggests that the executioner might be under the influence of amphetamine.

First information about this drag came from protesters, detained by the Egipcial police in 2011. Many of them confessed that they had received the "miracle pill" from the organizers of the demonstrations and this such pills gave them "courage and strength". This drag was supplied for "Muslim brothers" from Dubai and Qatar.

The first chemical tests were conducted by the Italian carabinieri. after this arrival in Libya in 2013 in training mission to convert militant groups into the "regular army", they took blood samples of recruits and discovered that at least 30% of potential cadets were drug addicts.

Today Captagon helps to convert the fanaticism of militants ISIS into animal ferocity. These tablets are produced now in areas controlled ISIS and they turned into a real fuel of war and terror, the author concludes the article.

The suspicion that not only Suras of the Koran, but also amphetamine is the force stimulating the militants to commit crimes. there is a some evidence about how this amphetamine arrived to Qatar and Dubai. Ideologists of its application were financial oligarchy controlling the West and the East European satellites.

Made in 2011, in the NATO laboratory in Bulgaria, Captagon now is produced in many countries of the middle East, including Syria. In early April 2014 Syrian Arab army captured the car, full of Captagon tablets and containers containing a ton of Captagon (hydrochloride fenetylline) - amphetamine that causes euphoria and inhibits pain. Mixed with other drugs, such as hashish, it became a "staple" diet for "jihadists". Who no longer feel their own and others ' suffering, doing their evil deeds "laughing".

In February 2014 in the article "Psychotropic drugs as tools of manipulation of public consciousness in general, and EuroMaidan in particular", we not only reviewed the use of artificial stimulants in wars, but also noted that "the ex-boxer Klitschko under the guise of sports drugs brought bags of tablets to the "Maidan" which were combat stimulants U.S. army, which are included in the special forces kits. Some sources mention that famous tea from Kiev's Maidan (2013-2014) also contained captagon. It's very likely that free spread of captagon will become a borderline to divide the postindustrial world into "prosperity enclaves" and zone of "cyberpank" as it often forecasted in the west and former USSR.

These drugs are giving not only an increased sense of confidence, but also greatly diminish the need in rest and sleep. In high doses, they produce such an intense mental stimulation that people can perform without sleeping for up to 3 days. From long-term use causes psychosis, often accompanied by hallucinations and delusions, and causing extreme aggression (which is still observed in Ukraine).

We also wrote that "the men of the Maidan" received from abroad not only money, but also drugs that are as freely and cheaply sold at euroMaidan. In April 2014, acting mayor of Kiev Century Bondarenko admitted that in a captured city hall during EuroMaidan was a laboratory for manufacturing of the drug. There is some evidence that it was also distributed to far right gangs in Odessa on may 2.

[Jan 16, 2015] Don't worry. The authorities will quickly explain to you what "freedom of speech" means but putting you in jail, if you uttered something stupid by Olga Tukhanina

vz.ru

Neoliberal Empire is so close in spirit to late USSR that closeness of event strikes everybody. As in cult soviet satirical film "Kin-DZA-DZA: "You now find yourselves in cells, because you say things without thinking, and think about things that you should not think at all". If Kafka were alive, these days he would have definitely died again. The only thing unclear whether from laughing or from envy. Although it can be both.

"No respectable publication in the citadel of the free world reprinted the cartoons"

The Associated Press reported from Paris that after the most massive in the history of mankind demonstrations in defense of freedom of speech, 54 people were arrested for wrong words which supposedly demonstrate hate and support of terrorism. Then the arrests continued, and now the number of arrested exceeded sixty people.

Among them is the famous comedian Dieudonne Mbala Mbala. The funny thing is that this comic was ideologically close ally of cartoonists from Charlie Hebdo . It now looks as if cartoonists, who were perished were Communists, they would be so left to the Chairman of Communist Party of Russia Gennady Zyuganov, that he on their background looks like obnoxious right-wing conservative.

The absurdity of what is happening, when in support of freedom of speech government can immediately arrest the person just saying something politically incorrect, and put him in jail for six months, it has become evident even for selected Russian neoliberals. They, however, try to ignore the obvious concern by saying that those events happened in backward France, and that's why Obama did not fly to the largest demonstration of the freedom of speed in world history.

However, in the citadel of the free world, where freedom of speech is protected by a separate amendment to the Constitution, for some reason no respectable publication reprinted the cartoons.

Talking about large multinationals, it's funny that on the English version of the Apple website, for example, there were no words in support of the victims, but on the French page sacramental Je suis Charlie was hanging. Looks like variant of support of Freedom of expression with severely restricted export channels

Within the neoliberal worlds almost nobody is supposed by those inconsistencies. They explain that freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize and make fun of all religions. And believers must bow their heads and endure. But hate speech is a completely different matter; it is about inciting hatred and ethnic strife. and you can be jailed for such an action.

Let's try to give a Russian example of such a behaviour. It looks like this: when satirist Shenderovich rhetorically asks the priest why he did not learned anything from the events of the twenties, this is a freedom of speech. But when the Shenderovich asked why Jews learned nothing from events of 30th, this is hate speech and anti-Semitism. Here Article 282 of Russian Criminal codex might be applicable.

For a normal person it is extremely difficult to understand nuances of interpretation of the subtle difference between "free speech" and "hate speech" in the neoliberal world. But neoliberals suck the right interpretation with their genetically modified neoliberal milk. Such an interpretation looks as following "Freedom only for the free men, and all the barbarians mouth should better be shut".

For anybody who lived in Brezhnev's USSR it looks like ideological poles of modern world just reversed and West happily adopted the model used in the USSR 40 years ago. Now we can understand why the US and Western European citizens were so stunned by absurdity of Soviet propaganda and millions of people who on May 1 come to street to march for Freedom of people from exploitation, against oppression and for personal liberties including the Freedom of expression. Under the strict guidance of the party and government and watchful eyes of KGB.

There were also a lot of talk about the "freedom of expression" in late USSR, and you really can criticize decadent West as much as you can, but openly criticizing Soviet regime could sometimes get you a jail term for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. However, I will make a special reservation: the Soviet Union was my homeland. and despite all the shortcomings and broken economic model life for ordinary people in late USSR was very good. We have had something that today can be found nowhere - there was no unemployment, no homeless children, no crime, and for children especially it was a great environment to grow up with state provided free education (including university education) and medicine.

However, I repeat, to Western public Communist rituals looked f*cking ridiculous. But at the same time Soviet people have perfect understanding of of this situation and nobody took them seriously; everybody felt that the system was completely rotten from inside and that communist ideology is no longer viable. In the 70s the Soviet ideology lost any hold of people minds. Ideology of Neoliberal Empire in Europe is still relatively new and smell with flesh layer of "free markets" utopia paint and new level of neoliberal hypocrisy after the events of 2008. It still hold minds of a lot of Western European lemmings.

It's pretty telling that Neoliberal Empire strikes former citizens of the USSR as ideological reincarnation of "Brezhnev USSR" in all its rotten ideological glory and absurdity. But it's still relatively clean on the streets of Western capitals (but not New York). And infrastructure is still relatively in order. And people have rather high standard of living. But the real situation with the "freedom of expression" is exactly like in the cult Soviet satirical film "Kin-DZA-DZA": "You now find yourselves in cells, because you say things without thinking, and think about things that you should not think at all". And it is this parade of hypocrisy that we observe right now. There are powerful and corrupt guys who define in what cases "Freedom of expression" is applicable and when it is not. And you need to obey. Or...

But, of course, what Russian people living under authoritarianism can understand in Western European events. Those savages in work robes as neoliberal journalists from "Echo of Moscow" would characterize us. And after such a characterization, the journalist from "Echo of Moscow" will go to have one or two Americano, and is not afraid of being arrested and jailed for some time for inciting hatred and enmity. He is serving the right boss, for the right convertible currency, so why should he/she? Exactly like in "Kin-DZA-DZA". In other words, not everybody can pretend that "We are Charlie" in this neoliberal world. Only selected few.

[Jan 15, 2015] US to ease restrictions on travel to Cuba as countries seek to normalise relations

The default assumption is that "regime change" is what change in relations with Cuba is all about.
Jan 15, 2015 | The Guardian

KoreyD 15 Jan 2015 17:01

Wow. Isn't that nice of the US. After 55 years of trying to strangle Cuba's economy and it's citizens. All because Cuba embarrassed the US at the Bay of Pigs fiasco and wanting it's own form of government which was not to America's liking. America: biggest bully in the schoolyard. Way to go Cuba.


prairdog -> peacefulmilitant 15 Jan 2015 16:07

I wish Obama were really a progressive. Agreed, corporations are pushing this opening, and I do wish he'd drop the US assumption that "regime change" is still what relations with Cuba are all about. Plus, Cuba will define the terms of this opening as much as the US. I'd like to see more mutual respect from the US side.


KoreyD -> guylaroche 15 Jan 2015 18:44

No it wasn't. America just fined a French bank 10 billion dollars last year for circumventing Cuban sanctions. That's just one example of America's bullying tactics. there many others you can find by doing some research

CaptainWillard -> zelazny 15 Jan 2015 17:52

"...History teaches that the majority of English passively accept the removal of their rights, and that when some protest, the government totally ignores them..."

There.
Fixed that for you.

[Jan 11, 2015] Alternatives to Russian to oil and gas are non existant - so Maidan goes to Moscow by Alexander Zapolski

regnum.ru
"This year an interesting trend has been established in Europe. After acute political confrontation with Russia, European countries suddenly made an unpleasant discovery. Their economy is extremly dependent on Russian exports and imports. First of all, in terms of energy. All Europe consumes about 480 billion cubic meters of gas per year. One third of this amount (about 137 billion cubic meters) Europe produces itself, another third (150 billion cubic meters) buys from Russia, the rest gets from other regions (Africa, the Americas and the middle East).

On the agenda was the question of increasing the energy independence from Russia. Here everybody counted on Norway.

Why Norway? Because of the 27 countries of the EU only three have substantial oil and gas are: the UK, Netherlands and Norway. Total volume of produced gas is 137 billion cubic metres per year. Te peak of production in the UK and the Netherlands have already passed. The reserves are depleted, the volumes are declining, and this trend is difficult to reverse. So all hopes are on Norway gas. And hope for large and long-term stable volumes.

For example, all Baltic countries is going in the next few years to completely abandon the Russian gas and change in Norwegian. Finland has similar, though not so radical plans. Brussels hopes for Norwegian gas are are very high too. In all their forecasts, the EU believes that the expansion of production in the Norwegian sector of the continental shelf will be able to compensate for the decline of the British and Dutch energy fields. Ukraine also announced about their plans to transition to the Norwegian gas .

At the beginning of this year such hope were more or less realistic. Well if not totally realistic at least not too much detached from the ground. Moreover on their deposits Norway produces not only gas, but also oil. More precisely, it all started with the oil, which in 2000 produced 1.13 billion barrels, while gas - only 47.3 billion cubic meters Over time, the oil production fell, but the Directorate of oil (a division of the Ministry of petroleum and energy Norway) gave a soothing forecasts. Yes, oil production decreases. In 2011 it was produced only 664 million barrels, i.e. almost twice less. But at the same time he volume of gas increased dramatically -- With 47.3 billion cubic meters in 2000 to 106 billion cubic meters in 2011) One easily makes up for the other. The hope was that gas will replace oil and will be for many years growing source of national income.

In a sense it was. Oil production forecast fell to 595 million barrels by 2014. Total European oil consumption is 5.3 billion barrels so Norwegian slice now is around 10% and as such falls under the radar. It is clear that 90% of the oil needs to be imported. Russia's share in imports is small around 480-500 million barrels. Assuming that the growth of gas production volumes continue (from to 112 billion cubic meters in 2014) not only formed a rosy picture of satisfying EU energy needs in this type of fuel, but created in some countries outright illusion that Norwegian gas will suffice for all.

It caused euphoria, particularly in Latvia and Lithuania. Further - as in a fairy tale: "And then the evil wolf came". In 2014, oil prices collapsed, revealing a number of serious problems with Norwegian industry. Which previously were hidden behind the beautiful forecast charts. Firstly, it was found that they main Norwegian gas field are already past peak. Fresh figures for the current year's nowhere to be found, but to draw conclusions about their possible value we can trace changes in the major areas of production in the period from the date of their inception until 2003.

  • District "Place". Production starts in 1971, its explored reserves amounted to 669 million cubic meters of oil equivalent (ad). By the end of 2003 reserves were less than 216 million cubic meters A.D. 30 years of operation developed for 67.7% of the resource.
  • District Statfjord". Production - 1979. Explored reserves - 647 million cubic meters of BC... In 2003 there were already a total of 51 million cubic meters, D.C. For 24 years developed to 92.1% of the estimated depositis.
  • Area "Gullfaks". Production - 1986. Explored reserves - 361 million cubic meters A.D. In 2003, there are only 43 million cubic meters A.D. For 17 years produced 88% of the estimated depositis.
  • The Area Oseberg. Production - 1988. Explored reserves - 438 million cubic meters A.D. In 2003 the stock was already only 125 million cubic meters of A.D. 15 years developed 73,1% of the estimated depositis.

In 1995, Norway started the development of the large deposits found on the Norwegian continental shelf, an area of "Troll". Its explored reserves amounted 1612 million cubic meters A.D. In 2003 there were only 1,355 million cubic meters A.D. on the one hand, it would be many more. But on the other... just 8 years already deflated to 15.9%.
Since then, Norway shock rapidly increased production volumes. So even "Troll" deposits are probably now much less than that if you count just on a linear relationship. Some experts generally say that there remained no more than 6-8 years of production. Similarly exhasted are other fields. And some of them, as, for example, the area "Frigg" can be consited "done with".

The second important point is the fact that since the end of last century in the North and Barents seas (and not only on the Norwegian shelf) there was never found any really large deposits of energy. This is not to say that new deposits of oil and gas in this area does not exist. But they are smaller. probably much smaller. Explored reserves of only Norway is estimated in the amount of 3.7 billion cubic meters A.D. in existing fields. However, the new, as yet undiscovered, found only 676 million cubic meters. Moreover, the average size of the deposits in a single area does not exceed 32 million cubic meters - if we assume them evenly distributed, dividing the total number by the number of districts (21). And if you look at the real picture, in 13 districts proved reserves do not exceed 10 million cubic meters including 9 districts which do not exceed 5 million cubic meters

In plain English this means that, as before, recovery will be more costly. Time when you just need to drip qa well and then recover emormous anout of oil andgas are gone. It stocks like "Troll" are at least semi-exhosted there is a a wide range figures as for the cost of production of a barrel. At the beginning you can set any price you wish -- oil and gas flowed and you eventually recovered the cost of exploration and drilling no matter what the price is. With small fields situation is compley different and fixed costs can make them uneconomical to explore if cost of oil is low.

This means the Norwegia is highly exposed the the fall of oil prices. The fairy tale ended. As the Norwegians say - "Snipp, snapp'snute, sĺ er eventyret ute" (that fairy tales end, and who listened is a good boy).

Moreover the depletion of old fields cause the inevitable environmental consequences. Drawdown of soil. The destruction of wells. The pressure drop in the reservoir. This requires accelerating the transition from extensive to intensive production technologies. For example, if the original oil and gas was flowing up under internal pressure, now the liques or stream need to be used to push it up. The most common is injection of water. It came to that one produced cubic meter of oil consumed up to 5 cubic meters of water, and one cube of gas up to 16 cubic metres of water. this all means additional costs. With costs constantly increasing each year. Water, inserted into the chalk bags, destroys the walls of the reservuar. This occasionally leads to ecological disasters. In recent times due to the destruction of the reservoir was thrown in the sea over 126 thousand tons of crude oil. You need to dril more wells. That means repeated exploration. You need to undertake repair work on oil wells. Or relace old wells to new in old field were return is already low. In the end, spending more and more money.

In August this year Bente Nylund, the General Director of tNorway's Petroleum Directorate stated that the country plans to dramatically reduce investments in the oil and gas sector. "We are talking about fiscal discipline". The possition is perfectly easy to understand -- recovery costs might be too high in the current price environment. For ten years, from 2004 to 2014, the annual cost of exploration and organization of production has increased from 70 to 230 billion NOK. I.e., three times. And this despite the fact that 2014 was the year of the maximum size of investment in the industry. Already in 2015 this figure is planned to be $182 billion kroons, which corresponds to the level of 2012. This is confirmed by the statements of the largest Norwegian oil and gas companies lincluding Statoil - they all plan radically revise their investment plans for the next 5-7 years. Its negative contribution contribute to the growing technical problems in the fields "Valhall", "Stroke", "Ula" and "Tamar" running BP. And the Statoil in areas "Njord", "Asgard" and "Troy" things are not going better.

Will be very interesting to read the next analytical report of the Petroleum Directorate, which will be published in January 2015. Especially the forecasts. I guess there will be some unexpected and interesting news. However, most likely, he already confirm conclusions made by analysts.

In any case it looks like Norway has passed both the peak oil and gas production. Stocks still there, and quite a lot of them. They might last until 2020-2021. However, even in this case, the total output will be gradually reduced. But slowly. Drastic changes will come after the specified "point of no return". That means that now Europe is becoming more sensitive to fluctuations in world energy prices.

And, curiously, multidirectionally sensitive. It needs a low gas prices along with high oil prices. High, as it turns out, this means not below 60-62 dollars per barrel. Otherwise the whole Europian oil and gas extraction industry goes belly up. And low gas prices means below 450-500 dollars per thousand cubic meters. That means that Qatari gas which costw around 600-630 dollars per thousand cubic meters and out of reach.

Another important point is the structure of exports of Norwegian energy.

The structure of Norwegian exports is as following: Germany - 42,4%; France - 21,3%; the Netherlands 9.7%; Belgium 8.3 per cent; Italy is 6.7%; Czech Republic - 3.9 per cent; Spain - 3.7%; and in all the other countries of 4.0%. It is easy to understand that for deliveries to, say, the Ukraine, there is no Norway gas available. The question is not even in the absence of transport infrastructure in Europe or the money to pay for it in Ukraine. There is no extra gas. As in word "none".

Moreover, in the medium term it will become from year to year even less. I would not be mistaken if I say that the first from a list of buyers will be kicked all those "other countries", which includes, by the way, all three Baltic States. When there, according to the plans of Lithuania, must come to its gas independence from Russia in 2021? I strongly believe that the Baltic States got into a trap with these projects. And not because of the machinations of "Gazprom".

In fact, the picture is as follows. In the long term to 2021, i.e. after 7 years, Europe will begin to form a new gas deficit in the amount of up to one third of the total annual demand. And not on any natural gas but of cheap natural gas. No one but Russia not to supply such gas. Apparently, this is the missing reason that forced US to implement the project "Ukraine, Maidan 2.0" project to force Europe to accept the US prices.

Europe understands this perspective. In 7 years, the share of Russia in the European gas consumption might reach 50%. Because now Brussels has begun forming a new system of European gas purchases. Its main aim is to create instead of individual countries the European single buyer of gas, which Gazprom will have to deal with in Europe. And not with each individual country as it is today. On the one hand, this should improve the overall political stability of the EU. Another is to allow us to align the gas prices for all EU countries and to lower their overall value. For today, every country its contract with Russia concludes individually. Because Macedonia 1 thousand cube made 564.3 buys at dollar, Poland - 525,5, Bosnia - 515, Czech Republic - 503, Bulgaria - 501, Greece - 427, UK - 313, France - 393, Germany - 379.

However, if Brussels will succeed, for US, this scenario means the collapse of the idea of Transatlantic trade Union. Washington will not be able to offer energy prices are lower than in Russia. Unless Europeans are kicked out of their traditional European centric view of the world, with 50-60% dependence on Russian gas acceleration drift all over Europe in the direction of Moscow is inevitable. Moreover, the natural consequence of this convergence will be the expansion of mutual trade, and hence the consolidation of all the different "not only economic ties. Hence the inevitable separation of Europe from the United States. The gap, which might lead to weakening of American influence on the entire Euro-Asian continent. For US, it actually means the global geopolitical funeral.

To stop a script America needs total destruction of Russia with the aim of taking under their own control of our oil and gas fields. Or, alternatively, the creation on the territory of the Russian Federation such a level of instability that Russia like in Ukraine experience the destruction of infrastructure which lead into an unrecoverable reduction in supply volumes. Then Europe simply will be nowhere to go. It explains the whole American strategy, as well as the sharp turn the U.S. toward Russian confrontation.

The US simply have little time. Approximately 7 years. And the countdown is already underway. So in the next year in Russia, we should expect the most fierce, desperate attempts to organize Maidan. Well for Russia's to face aggression of the West is not something new. Importantly, we now know the answers to all key questions: who, what and why."

[Jan 11, 2015] There is no fortress that can not be captured by the donkey loaded with gold

Dec 17, 2015 | annbeaker.livejournal.com

This was recently once again proved by Americans in Cuba. After seven years at most in Cuba, Russia will face another rabid anti-Russian regime, only in the Caribbean. They, of course can wait for Castro's death, as such a wait can't be too long. There is not much sense to drag his body ob the streets as they did with one Libyan Colonel Those are different people. But as soon as he dies period of Castro rule will be immediately declared black page in country history. And Cubans will get their three hundred varieties of sausage that they can no longer afford and healthy living under palm trees.

In principle, it all gradually cone to this end, as it is clear that the last "Communist bastions" will soon be extinct as mammoths. But I would give Americans due: they demonstrated their political ingenuity once again.

Against the background when for the whole world it is already clear that they were able to firmly shit over Russia economically, they will additionally show the world again that they are able to take control of the country which was so closely looked after and cherished by the USSR . And with which recently flirted Russia. That is to say they will pick up the last crumbs of the Soviet legacy. and, in addition, insure themselves against the Russian military bases in the event of a hot conflict.

American Guantanamo base will be expanded, of course.

What did Ballssniffer really say on German TV?

Moscow Exile, January 8, 2015 at 11:06 pm
What did Ballssniffer really say on German TV?

(reposted from above)

What did Nudelmann's "Yats" actually say in the interview?

"Российская агрессия на Украине – нападение на мировой порядок и на порядок в Европе. Все мы хорошо помним советское вторжение на Украину и в Германию. Этого надо избежать, и ни у кого нет права переписывать итоги Второй мировой войны. Но российский президент, господин Путин, именно это стремится сделать."

That is in Russian, of course: Yatsenyuk was speaking in one of the Ukrainian dialects that he prefers to use.

See: kuzian's Journal

translation

"Call a friend"

Asked a friend to comment on a very important video and post by Putnik. The friend was born in the DDR. His mother tongues are German and Russian. Here is his answer:

"The German translation is not quite correct, because, you see, it was done in a hurry. The translation of what Yatsenyuk:es word for word like this:

(starting from 01:05) "Die russische Aggression in der Ukraine – das ist der Angriff auf die Weltordnung und auf die Ordnung in Europa. Wir können uns alle sehr gut auf den sowjetischen Anmarsch in die Ukraine und nach Deutschland erinnern. Das muss man vermeiden, und keiner hat das Recht, die Ergebnisse des Zweiten Weltkrieges neu zu schreiben. Und das versucht der russische Präsident, Herr Putin, zu machen. (…)"

The thick print marks some bits that sound clumsy, and which rather point out the haste made in translating or in reading out a translation. These words do not alter the meaning by and large, but they sound wrong. The word "Anmarsch", for example, means "arrival", but in this context it is not appropriate; clearly "Einmarsch" (invasion) was meant. So, making grammatical corrections:

"Die russische Aggression in der Ukraine – das ist der Angriff auf die und Weltordnung auf die Ordnung in Europa. Wir you uns alle sehr gut an den sowjetischen Einmarsch in die Ukraine und nach Deutschland erinnern. Das muss man vermeiden, und any hat das Recht, die Ergebnisse des Zweiten Weltkrieges neu zu schreiben. Und versucht das der russische Präsident, Herr Putin, zu machen. (…)"

Translating this more competent version of the German translation into Russian:

""Российская агрессия на Украине – нападение на мировой порядок и на порядок в Европе. Все мы хорошо помним советское вторжение на Украину и в Германию. Этого надо избежать, и ни у кого нет права переписывать итоги Второй мировой войны. Но российский президент, господин Путин, именно это стремится сделать".

[Translation of above Russian translated from the German translation of what Yatsenyuk: Ukrainian:

Russian aggression in the Ukraine is an attack on the world order and the order in Europe. We all remember the Soviet invasion of the Ukraine and Germany. This should be avoided. No one has the right to rewrite the outcome of the Second World War, but the Russian President, Mr Putin, intends to do just that. – Moscow Exile]

It is clear that for a literal translation into Russian the translation has to be smartened up.

"Putnik's" translation I consider to be unacceptable. It goes in the right direction, of course but the idea expressed by it is still quite different.

This does not undo the, forgive me, deeply embedded stupidity of what might have been an attempt, broadcast by this character, to awaken a kind of hostility towards Russians, who in the DDR had been really regarded by some as occupiers."

A little later, the friend added some more:

"in one, so to say, satirical piece in the online version of the "Spiegel" there is a comment about what Yatsenyuk:And I quote him there, as I have done above, with corrections.)

Link: http://www.spiegel.de/spam/satire-spiegel-online-jazenjuk-sowjetischer-einmarsch-a-1011915.html

[Translation from Russian]

"Democrats talking amongst themselves.

Yatsenyuk exposes Soviet Russia

The Prime Minister of the Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in "Topics of the Day" (Tagesthemen) reminded us about Soviet aggression (sic) more than 60 years ago.

"We all remember", Yatsenyuk told the studio presenter Pinar Atalay, "the Soviet invasion of the Ukraine and Germany".

Indeed, in 1942, Soviet troops ruthlessly moved West. They did not hesitate in pursuing the army of the democratically elected Chancellor, A. Hitler, including across Ukrainian territory. Probably a longer route along the southern coast of the Black Sea, bypassing the Ukraine, seemed too difficult for them.

In the end, the Soviets (sic) broke through the eastern borders of Germany and moved into German territory, as we all, together with Mr. Yatsenyuk, remember. We don't know whether this is true as regards Mrs. Atalay. Anyway, she did not raise any issues concerning this small digression into the history of Russian aggression".

The satire may be a little weak in its criticism of a studio presenter who made no comment about this obvious stupidity and barely concealed aggression.

And der Spiegel, in spite of all its talk of the "system", is still part of it."

The presenter of the show, Pinar Atalay, is, by the way, the daughter of Turkish Gastarbeiter.

Perhaps she really does know fuck all about German/Soviet history?

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/30/slus-d30.html

Another regime change, this time in Sri Lanka.
Terje, January 8, 2015 at 10:07 pm
Blink and you miss them .. Another regime change, this time in Sri Lanka. All the codewords are there in the MSM. "unexpectedly well-organised opposition campaign."

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/30/slus-d30.html

A featured article last week in the Financial Times-a prominent mouthpiece for the British financial elite-on the January 8 presidential election in Sri Lanka highlights the very close attention being paid in London, and Washington, to the poll.
The report published on December 22 is fully in line with US intrigues to lever President Mahinda Rajapakse from office in favour of the common opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena, who is backed by a pro-American coalition of parties and organisations.
The article's partisan character is indicated in the headline "Sri Lanka's leader pledges peaceful handover should he lose the election"-a promise extracted from Rajapakse during an interview with the Financial Times correspondent.

For obvious reasons, the article did not dwell on how and who organised Sirisena's candidacy so well.While Sirisena's sudden defection from the government might have come as a surprise to Rajapakse, the top US and British diplomats had been informed weeks before.

The article also hints at the real reason behind US hostility to Rajapakse. It notes that he has pledged a new drive for investment should he win, "including forging deeper economic ties with China." The US and its allies began targeting Rajapakse over "human rights" in the wake of the LTTE's defeat in 2009 in a bid to force him to end Sri Lanka's growing dependence on Chinese arms, financial aid, investment and political support.
As the co-author of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report in 2009, US Secretary of State John Kerry made clear that Washington could "not afford to lose" Sri Lanka-a reference to the island's key strategic position in the Indian Ocean. Washington's intervention in the Sri Lankan presidential election signals that regime-change in Colombo, rather than long-term pressure on Rajapakse, has now become the priority.
The Financial Times gives an ominous indication of what is to come should the election not produce the result desired in Washington. It cited unnamed "local analysts [who] describe the contest as too close to call, raising fears that a narrow defeat could prompt instability and violence if Mr Rajapakse's family-dominated regime attempted to maintain its hold on power."
The US and its allies are not so worried about a narrow loss by Rajapakse, but the fact that he could win, despite all of Washington's machinations. The Financial Times article is a sign that the US, Britain and other allies are willing to prompt "instability and violence" should Rajapakse defeat the opposition candidate.

The pattern is all too evident in the many US sponsored "colour revolutions" in the former Soviet republics and countries like Lebanon and Iran. The opposition candidate will challenge the "rigged" result and launch protests of disenchanted middle class layers, with covert support from various US foundations and a global media blitzkrieg demonizing the election winner.

yalensis, January 9, 2015 at 2:48 am
Dear Terje:
I saw the follow-up in the Grauniad: Rajapakse conceded defeat and already cleared out of his prez palace. I guess he knew what would happen to him if he didn't "bow to the wishes" of the United States I mean the people.

According to Grauniad, the first official guest of the new Prez Sirisena will be the Pope:
The first big official guest the new president is likely to welcome is the Pope who will arrive in the country on the 13th. Here is his official timetable as tweeted by the Vatican an hour ago.

They don't lose any time, do they? Gots to sprinkle the holy water and bless the new colour rev!

So…. in geopolitical terms, I guess this was a defeat for China?

marknesop, January 9, 2015 at 7:58 am
They do love their dog-whistle phrasing. For example, does it occur to nobody in the media that the government of the United States is "family-dominated"? Obama is the first president in 25 years not to be a Bush or a Clinton, and Hillary Clinton contested him for the presidency and was his Secretary of State, while the buzz suggests she will take another crack at it when Obama leaves office.

The west is lucky, for now, that China does not respond in kind – thus far it does not appear to be hungry for territory and the global dominance the United States sees as its ordained reward. If China ever begins to stir up colour revolutions of its own in traditionally U.S-dominated regions, they are going to have their hands full, but at present they enjoy pretty consistent success because they are running mostly unopposed. It's not as if nobody but the USA understands how it works, and China has money to burn.

[Jan 09, 2015] How it was organized in Hong Kong... How can it be organized everywhere... by Ruslan Karmanov

December 26 2014 | marina-yudenich.livejournal.com

First of all they announced the "we have no leader, we are self-organizing movement, we are high-tech, dynamic and independent." In reality for everybody a s special messenger was installed in smartphone (FireChat was used in Hong Kong), which allows phones to communicate in the crowd with each other directly and send messages through the chain of participants, even with switched off cellular towers.

In fact all their claimed are blatant lie.

In the Hong Kong crowd of students was coordinated by elderly aunts and uncles with walkie-talkies, normal Kenwood. And via those walkie-talkie orders what to slogan to scream were distributed. First it was screamed by the key participant. On the second repeat it was followed with his assistants (approximately five persons located at the edges of the crowd), then the crowd was mindlessly repeating the slogan for a minute or two.

That means that it is important to suppress not smartphone communication by walkie-talkie. Left to themselves creakles are stupid mass that panic very easily on any occasions. Without a shepherd, they will become bored and demotivated. Typically the quietly dispersed by themselves pretty soon.

Special messenger FireChat is very simple. It just gives all participants a unique identifier and is using all communications protocols of the smartphone (Bluetooth, GSM/3G/4G, WiFi). It tries to identifies neighbors and tries to build a graph using the Protocol just like OSPF.

The specifics of that when crowd moving this problem cannot be solved in such a way because there are hundreds of reconnects per second, and topology fluctuates to the extant of "boiling"; no convergence is achieved. Scheme of work is trying to cram the data packet not via the best route, but suboptimal, to most plausible target in a hope that via few hops at lease one packet will reach the destination, the recipient.

That means that a person with FireChat installed on the mobile phone and with network packet sniffer will show a bunch of different messages from different subscribers all of which are trying to reach their destinations. A couple of such observers in the middle of the crowd will give a coverage of about 100% (Hong Kong the Chinese did on the second day of protest).

Additionally, continuous scan on all channels WiFi, attempts to send data to multiple instances through several different interfaces, always-on Bluetooth is a very heavy load for a mobile phone load, and the battery goes down quickly (it's a stress test with "always on" screen, running an active application active processor, all network interfaces are enabled and all are receiving transmitting something.

Cutting off the possibility of charging the battery turns the crowd (within a couple of hours) in the dust. All promptly run home or to nearby internet cafee to read in comfort and with fast Internet, what happens there and, from experience, most will not return. Psychology of an infantile office loser (aka creakle -- the key participant of such protests) doesn't see the difference between "personal involvement" and "the ability to like and comment on facebook" and it is easier to do from your house when you battery is dead.

To prevent carrying batteries and charging them "in place" is easy to implement. Batteries most of the owners of advanced modern mobile phones are fixed. To the mass to charge in a reasonable time (at 1A to the outlet, and the new iPhones and more) you need generator or a large battery. The generator cannot be present at the protest site as there fuel in it (gasoline), the battery should be inspected for a long time as it can have an explosive device. Allowing to carry only staff that is allowed to the plane is a good policy here. That means only one small battery can be carried with each person..

All those measures are legal and all represent established international practice of dealing with such protests. As for the cellular network you do not need to shut it down. It might be enough like as did humorous Chinese hackers to send personalized SMS. Something like "Student BJ, we learned that You expelled from the University for 5 absences in a row. This is not a problem - our site will help You to find your calling. Jobs for construction workers, waiters, drivers are avaible. Terrible full of desperation cry young creakle produces when he/she is seeing such a message is typical reaction. now he/she remembers that he/she got in the university winning the contest of 280 people in one place just a year ago. And sometimes this cry can be can be heard as far as Madagascar ;-)

Supplies for making barricades and such

People need water and hot drinks. Without the organization of such supplied in walking distance from the demonstrators, long rally will disperse pretty soon. This is how the Chinese put pressure on creakles --- all within the letter of the law. If this is a trade then the license is necessary. Certificate about sanitary condition of the cart. And information who are judicial persons who pay for all this.

Again this is all with the existing law framework. Is vendor an illegal worker? Then the question is whether he/she has working visa? if no, then good by my love -- this person can be deported immediately. and those who financed him/her can be investigated for attempt of tax evasion and the use of illegals. Immediately, i.e., quickly find who the owner immediately came at the place of registration of the firm. If the firm is not located at the given address you have all right to open criminal investigation. You won't believe how fast "voluntary funds for the development of democracy" which paid in Hong Kong the delivery of water to the places of protest burst under such pressure, when to them the same day came officials and checked all who bought, when, why. Amazing things about financing of protest by respectable people from the UK and US were uncovered.

I already mentioned the important of blocking the possibility to recharge the smartphones batteries at the rally talkie but I will repeat it again: contemporary protesters are the terminology of A. Navalny "fucking sheep" which is standing reading and sending messages on their smartphones and phablets, and wait for commands. It looks like "meeting successful young, dynamic effective active people with their own businesses, IQ=160, 3 high educations and 4 spoken languages". HiTech-lumpens, in short. that mean that will disperse is they will not be able to recharge their phones.

The toilets

An important point to supply the biotoilets. Without them too anywhere, especially in the cold protesting is a very tough, even painful job. Modern creakles are able to give advice on how to organize military operations and what sniper rifle is better to buy (he's say in the game some cute American models), but to shit on the road on a cold, he can find very unappealing. Accordingly, for any unauthorized meeting, city should not supply any toilets. And if the meeting is approved makes only as much as needed for the stated number of participants. Standing a long time to visit the cabin usually draw down revolutionary enthusiasm of this canon fodder of color revolutions pretty quickly. If someone decided to relieve himself in a place not designed for this purpose, this is a clear administrative offence, the penalty should be given and the person should be transported to the police department immediately. This is also a good time to check the documents - if it is not the citizen of the Russian Federation, there must be a visa or tickets, if another from another city, then registration. This is all according to the law, because you wouldn't be surprised if those who do it at the bus stop will be approached a policeman and asked for documents? It's just "as in normal countries", in any county citizens do not like such behaviour no matter how lofty political ideals are behind them.

About the food.

This is the item that should be controlled in a way similar to water. Sanitary inspection certificates and like are a must. Proper equipment and correspondence of the products to documents is also very important.

After all, if someone will be poisoned on such an event all blame falls not on organizers but on the government. and municipal authorities.

They are just children

If someone brings a child (we saw such cases two years ago, when a joyful mother explained to the camera that is police starts to beat protesters the child (5 years old) will see the country in which he lives). In such cases n immediately video recording is warranted and all documents about the child should be checked. Documents are required from all parents - it is quite possible that the mother is divorced. In such cases if the father don't know, and id not gave a written permission to drag the child to places of additional danger, then sorry. It is the responsibility of the authorities to protect the child. If there are no documents that proves that child is her own then additional checks should be performed in Police station. It can be that Gypsies gave her " a child for rent" or some shady orphan organization tries to earn money this way). All parents should be iether present or aware where the child is. if not, you should call the absent parents to find out their attitude, to inform that the citizen so-and-so took the child and brought him to an unauthorized rally, highlighting the danger and risks. Relatives usually a on the phone usually find a proper words to explain this "mother" all her behaviour. All of this is within the law, everything you need to record on video. Again, if the citizen who brought the child has stamp of divorce in the passport it can't bring the child without the written permission of the other parent not only on a rally. but also on the plane, for a visit to the steel mill, to ride a homemade airplane, and other similar events. It is just that law enforcement usually do not care. and this is big mistake. Yes, we need to care guys.

Minors at such events also fall under all that usual - i.e. needs to install their identity, contact with parents, check on alcohol and drug intoxication, fixation results. In case of failure - detention to establish, because the child is in danger - it is unclear who and how I came across illegal mass event, it is necessary to protect against possible risks. Sleep on a narrow bench until the morning, the sound of steps of the guard on duty is a great way not to get into serious trouble. Parents of stupid ass will be pleased that he is now on recorded at the police department, and if in his district somebody will rape a senior, then in door of their apartment at night might come square tired people with long questions about their son whereabouts

Artists performances

To support those who have no leader, dynamic and modern structure, one in the center to put the scene with clowns, otherwise modern and independent protesters are bored and leave. Clowns must combine action (goal - keeping the public the maximum amount of time and political propaganda. Clowns need money and electricity, as well as the mounting of the scene, perhaps some kind of hand

Now, here are the things that we need to establish. Who collects the scene whether it has the right and license (remember how at the Swamp when mounting the scene design was broke and killed the worker, who was guilty? a minute after medics removed the corpse some jerk from the scene:at this is not the last victim of Putin's regime). For electricity - what is the wiring diagram, what is consistent, what power, what with fire protection and the wire to the ground. Remember, any force majeure will be announced by the dirty tricks of the Authorities, even if drunk creakle just stick in his ass power cable. All MSM will describe the event in the framework of the struggle against the Terrible Regime of This Country.

If not - sorry guys, but this time you need to enjoy yourself without clowns.

Aggression and militants

Of course, there will be fighters - those that aim to undermine the situation. Serious money were invested in their training; for many it is a full time job. They are easily detectable, especially due to the difference of their behaviour and the behaviour of the office creakles. They associate between themselves differently, communicate differently, and have a clear plan of action with each "order arrived. Now it's time for ... ". Here, of course, the experience of Hong Kong can be taken without any modification -- fighters are immediately packed into police cars. If someone tries to make barricades from local items, this is the vandalism, the damage to the city property, i.e., video this episode should be documented, because there is a crime. In Hong Kong they did barricaded from the police barriers, binding them with plastic binders using in construction and adhesive tape. In Russia people are stronger. I confess - I broke two barricades in Hong Kong purely to try how strong local ties are, and all sitting in tents creakles something between 30 and 40 did is to protest with the words "What are you doing", but did not even move closer then ten meters. Probably in their package there was no a paid item for " a fight with a strong white foreigner who is twice bigger them me".

All onstuction materials can be easily blocked - you need just to conduct the examination on entrance to the rally and not to miss the materials that can be used for such purposes. Let leave then outside, if brought. After meeting you can return them Within the protest zone such building materials are not needed, right?

Some random tips and observations

In winter conditions, you can add several things at the same time remaining within the letter of the law.

For example, to pump water at the aggressive crows at the temperature below freezing is a bad idea. But in advance of the meeting, to fill the area with water is not. it prevents destruction of pavement BTW. This is very cool - in fact, to protest at the ice rink work. But to attack police on ice ring is much less convenient. They will stand laugh at the attackers falling one over the other.

You also need to patrol the retail outlets near the meeting. If people come in there to warm up, EN masse, you have to ask the owner does his license allow such services as temporary stay, whether the visitors paid for these services. Checks should be on the table for each participant, otherwise this is not a honest commercial outlet (i.e., people sit, do something, consume services - cell phones charged, drink-eat, and pay nothing). Such measures are typically applied to homeless. Want to warm up - make an order to buy something, even a bottle of water and pay.

Inspection of documents all participants is another key "cooling" measure. Unauthorized rally gives the law of total freedom for this action - "We received the statement that there are planned riots. Show, please, passport". this is the law.

Maximum recording what is happening is warranted just of have an official version of events which can be contrasted with MSM coverage.

In Hong Kong there is still the active work of checking "who did what' and as a result many respected people who receiving generous grants for the development of "Normal non-Chinese Democracy" (this is when the citizens of the UK control all the financial flows), lost the positions of professors, advisors, etc. Some case about corruption were opened too. There can be a lot of fun here as typically on such realized it is government that is accused of corruption. but getting foreign money for got know what services is a clear corruption too.

And then the same will recall, two years ago, 1.5 million Euros in cash was seized from the citizen Sobchak (despite the fact that she, as an entrepreneur, received exactly the minimum is 8 thousand rubles a month, judging by her tax reports). K. Sobchak began to yell that it was her, honest money, and that she's going to prove that they earned. "Proves":e investigator. After a week of Sobchak changed his mind and:at that this were s honest money, who were given to her. "And who?" "asked the investigator. "Good man! He himself will say!" cried Sobchak, and then completely deflated. Because people who are able to donate 1.5 million Euros in cash to some woman, do not like to go to the investigator. At this place some skeleton from the closet can abruptly appear. And everybody has history. No one wants to sit in jail for crazy, eccentric girl who is dancing on the tables for rich. This is how business always reacts on such revelations. Smart people do not go to Bolotnaya Square - they explain the fools that they are independent, free, geniuses, admirer of Europe's History. They just send anonymous e-mail with the text of the poster for the protest really, and the coordinates where each participant need to stand, and from what time until what.

Something like that... This overview, I stress, is only based on my presence in Hong Kong and the study of local color revolution experience, No claims for perfection and completeness. Sill I hope this might help.

The key observation is that the workbook of color revolutions is becoming old, and several precedents of breaking color revolution plots are already here. But in Hong Cong they lost the key part of color revolution playbook - the technological superiority. They proved to be outdated and outgunned -- they simply can't match technical sophistication of the opponents. Which in general, is reflecting the situation with the United States on a global scale.

The world is changing.

hrono61

"the crowd of students coordinated old aunts and uncles with walkie-talkies, normal Kenwood radios from which the order when and what to scream were coming. The slogans were fist screamed by the key participant, then repeated by his assistants (approximately five persons located at the edges of the crowd), then the crowd mindlessly repeating the slogan for a minute or two."

Actually, this is exactly how they organized crowd at all EuroMaidan events in the Ruin:

This was how Maidan was organized: using unobtrusive radio and foremen in red jackets. Each foreman controls the core of 10 associates.

30:00 Как был организован майдан: с помощью малозаметных рации и бригадиров в красных куртках. Каждый бригадир удерживает ядро в 10 человек.

The last appearance of the "red jackets" was in Simferopol - the next day "polite" appeared.

[Jan 08, 2015] The Second Age of Imperialism

It is true that neoliberal extraction is essentially neocolonialism. "Agreed that today we have a different kind of imperialism. Today foreign powers don't need slave labor. Instead, they have oil to power extractive industries. The foot print is lighter. All they need is a quisling regime in place to allow unregulated, tax-free extraction."
Dec 29, 2014 | economistsview.typepad.com

Branko Milanovic:

The second age of imperialism: As we enter 2015, it is not useless to look backwards in order to try to guess the trends of the future. I would argue that the age that we are, to some extent exiting now, and which extended from the early 1980s, can be called the "second age of imperialism"--the first one, in the modern history, having been the age of high imperialism 1870-1914. I will focus here on some of its key manifestations in the ideological sphere, in the areas I know, history and economics.

But it should be obvious that ideology is but a manifestation of the underlying real forces, which were twofold:

  • i) the failure of most developing countries by 1980 to become economically successful and self-sustaining after decolonization and the end of Communism as an alternative global ideology, and
  • (ii) the relatively solid economic record of Western countries (masked by the expansion of borrowing for the lower classes), and regained self-confidence of the elites in the wake of the Reagan-Thatcher (counter-) revolutions and the fall of Communism.

The violent manifestations of the second age of imperialism were invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, brutal war in Libya...

anne

As we enter 2015, it is not useless to look backwards in order to try to guess the trends of the future. I would argue that the age that we are, to some extent exiting now, and which extended from the early 1980s, can be called the "second age of imperialism"--the first one, in the modern history, having been the age of high imperialism 1870-1914....

-- Branko Milanovic

JohnH: reply to anne...

I would argue that the second age of colonialism started right after WWII. Starting then, the US launched a three pronged effort: 1) containing communism, 2) prying British and French colonies loose, and 3) installing American approved regimes in the former colonies and everywhere else it could.

During that period, the mantra "freedom and democracy" had some legitimacy, since America had just freed Europe from fascism and was now trying to free colonies from European tyranny and from the threat of Stalinism. American approved regimes differed from European colonies in that they were ostensibly ruled by locals, less brutal and racist, and operated under the guise of "preventing communism," not American hegemony.

However, as the coups against Mohammad Mosaddegh, Patrice Lumumba, Kwami Nkrumah, Jacobo Arbenz, and Salvador Allende show, the US was actively engaged in regime change throughout this supposedly quiescent period. The war in Vietnam, where the US supplanted French colonialists, was another manifestation.

I would agree that beginning in the 1980s, the US began a more aggressive period, focusing on propping up brutal, military dictatorships in Latin American. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, reasons for restraint disappeared as did the guise of "fighting communism."

Now the US pursues regime change along with it European junior partners wherever it sees a regime that is not sufficiently subservient.

JohnH: reply to Lafayette...

Agreed that today we have a different kind of imperialism. Today foreign powers don't need slave labor. Instead, they have oil to power extractive industries. The foot print is lighter. All they need is a quisling regime in place to allow unregulated, tax-free extraction.

The other expectation is that the quisling leaders open their markets to foreign investments and foreign goods. For Mexico, this meant getting flooded with subsidized American corn, destroying livelihoods of Mexican farmers. For Haiti, that meant getting flooded with subsidized American rice, again destroying the livelihood of Haitian farmers. In both cases, the farmers were too marginalized and dispersed to block the destruction of their livelihoods.

anne:

http://glineq.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-second-age-of-imperialism.html

December 29, 2014

The second age of imperialism

No matter how strongly Fukuyamistas and Acemoglu-Robinson (FAR) either deny that China represents an example showing that different institutions can deliver an even superior growth, or vociferously call for the inevitable end to the Chinese miracle, the success of China stands singly as a great refutation of the FAR view of economics and politics....

-- Branko Milanovic

ilsm: reply to bob mcmanus...

Ukraine may be repeat of: Teutonic order moving east, or Polish empire moving east (which took place in the same territory), Ludendorf in 1916, Hitler in 1941, and US demanding to brreak up Serbia........

While US ensuring little country independence from the great Russian bear follows Serbia, ensuring unified Ukraine is opposite breaking up Serbia.

Does US get the same result when the enemy has nukes and are not NGO terrorists?

bakho: reply to ilsm...

Not the Polish empire. Russia and Ukrainian Nationalists "cleaned" the Poles out of Kiev at the end of WWII. Kiev went from majority Pole to majority Ukrainian in 1945.

Ukraine conflict is ethnic nationalists back by the Neocons fighting to expand western markets against the Russian Mafia. The Neocons are agitating for markets. The Ukrainians are fighting for ethnic dominance.

The Neocons have made a bargain with the ethnic Nationalists who want ethnic dominance and will not work for a multi-ethnic state. The ethnic minorities in East Ukraine can "clean out" and leave or stay and fight. Georgia had the same problem with Ethnic Nationalists fomenting minority uprising.

ilsm: reply to bob mcmanus...

Definite WOW!!

liberal capitalism. "The end of history", in turn, justified (whether its author would have approved or not) the military adventures as Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya where this final form of human organization were to be imposed on the heathens.

[Neo]Liberal capitalism is "stability" which means more Vietnam, Iraghistan syndrome activity.

The race between nuclear winter and climate change to end the liberal capitalism as a theme for agression aka imperialism.

anne:

http://glineq.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-economics-of-niall-ferguson-in-pity.html

September 16, 2014

The economics of Niall Ferguson in "The Pity of War": Unwittingly back to Marx?

For the centenary of the World War I, many new books were published. The ones that I have read, especially Margaret McMillan's "The War that Ended Peace", were so disappointing and superficial that I remembered the one that I read in parts, some ten years ago: Niall Ferguson's "The Pity of War." It was a good idea. It is indeed a book worth reading, especially for an economist because (unlike other books on WW1) it deals extensively with economic issues.

But it is also an unusual book. Although well-written and erudite, it shows all the defects of somebody who, perhaps in order to attract attention, is dead-set to be revisionist, nor in one of two areas, but in most. And when on top of it, it is heavily influenced by an ideology which is a combination of British imperialism (yet very heavily critical of British policies prior to the War), empathy for the German aristocracy except when it comes to post-War economic management (where Germany is shown to have been able to pay reparations-but there the dislike of Keynes seems to dominate all other concerns), and a strong dislike of anything that smacks of Marxism, well, one could say that we are clearly not in the presence of an ordinary book....

-- Branko Milanovic

anne: reply to anne...

http://glineq.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-second-age-of-imperialism.html

December 29, 2014

The second age of imperialism

Now consider the new books published recently, and especially in 2014 on the occasion of the centenary of the Great War. I wrote here about one of them, Niall Ferguson's "Pity of War", written 10 years ago, but which I think is the best among the "revisionist" literature. The remarkable feature of these books is that they are unable to offer any theory as to why the War happened at all. In lieu of imperialism, they propose a series of useless contingences: one minister failed to reply to the telegraph, another was travelling in the North Sea, a politician went on vacation. The title of Christopher Clark's book "The sleepwalkers" says it all: just if a few good man paid more attention. The explanations represent the ultimate in nothingness: they support neither a theory of great men, nor of great ideas, nor of social forces. It is a puerile "theory" of trivial events piled upon each other which is offered as the explanation for the most momentous event in the past two centuries. It represents the bankruptcy of alternative or "revisinist" theories to engage with the fact of the War.

As part of the same agenda, colonialism has made a comeback, most notably in the works of Niall Ferguson where we learn of "la mission civilisatrice" of England and France and such interesting and false factoids that the British colonized area was a free trade zone, while of course India was forced to sell, in what Paul Bairoch aptly termed "the colonial diktat", all of its raw materials to the metropolis. The latter was thus a monopsonist. It is indeed easy to pretend that you are a free trader if all that you buy from others is at the discount....

-- Branko Milanovic

ilsm: reply to anne...

On January 1st I watch Gunga Din.

And remember Kipling's great observation about the White Man's burden.

Only in European/US imperial models the burden is on the masses while the oligarchs profit.

Policing the burden is secured by unwarranted influence of all the good money off bad contracts (>$400B in pentagon alone).

anne: reply to ilsm...

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/five/#section22

1899

(The United States and the Philippine Islands)

The White Man's Burden
By Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Nelsen Nielsen Nelsen Nielsen: reply to anne...

A Kipling poem is worth a thousand photos.

To read the direction of colonialism you must watch the direction of commodity exports, coal, oil, potassium, and phosphorus.

... ... ...

Roger Gathmann: reply to am...

Actually, the soviet union was exceedingly cautious. It took being invaded by the Germans, Romanians and assorted fascist allies and the deaths of 14 million Soviet citizens to make the Soviet Union move in an expansionistic way. That, and of course the rapid establishment, in Western Europe, of NATO, which was soon discussing putting nuclear weapons in Germany and rapidly shifted from de-Nazification to using the old Nazi intelligence apparatus, under Gehlen, against the Soviets.

Under Khruschev and his successors there was a shift to supporting third world anti-colonial movements, such as in Vietnam, but the Soviets didn't have troops in Vietnam. The Americans, on the other hand, were putting troops everywhere.

There are many ways to tell that history, but on the whole, the Soviets seem to me much less aggressive, even in Eastern Europe, than the Americans, whose Eastern Europe was Latin America, where interference, the subversion of "anti-American" governments, and the support of an oligarchy that visibly underfunded all the primary pillars of civil society while making out like bandits, thieving resources, left Latin America behind Eastern Europe economically.

The Soviet foreign policy was often obnoxious and, in Afghanistan, genocidal, but in this they were paralleled and often outdone by the Americans. foreign policy had those same qualities.

Roger Gathmann: reply to am...

The wall was not built by the soviet union, but by East Germany. As for the thirties, the Soviet Union tried in vain to rouse the Western powers to fight fascism, and did so physically in Spain in 1936, while France and Britain watched. In 1938, after France and Britain abandoned Czechoslovakia, Stalin shifted - and he did take the opportunity, after the swift defeat of Poland, of taking Poland and Finland. But this was not a huge expansionary bulge - compared to other revolutionary states (France in the 1790s, the US in the 19th century), the Soviet Union was very non-expansionary, especially considering that Marxist-Leninism called for it to be. Stalin reversed this with the doctrine of socialism in one country. Nobody, from Solzhenitsyn to Annie Applebaum, has ever written that the Gulag was connected to an expansionary foreign policy, because it wasn't.
I like that line about the Wall. It is often:obody, for instance, says, well, they walled in Germans, and the US walled in Indians in reservations. No east German would trade his or her life for the life of, say, a Sioux Indian on the Pine Ridge reservation, where the median income today is 3 to 4 thousand dollars per year. During the time of Stalin's terror, the US was settling comfortably into an apartheid regime in the South. And so on. The US was a far more aggressive power on the world wide stage, and continues to be - with a military budget that is the wonder of the world.

Ukraine From the spirits that I called ... - Part II

From comments: "The language of the Post opinion piece is very reminiscent of similar works appearing in the 1980s supporting the leadership of the so-called fledgling democracies in Central America. The key is the careful separation of the regime from the repressive security apparatus. In the 80s, there was a deliberate effort to maintain a mask of uncertainty over the identity and support for the death squads - which were portrayed as mysterious entities whose sponsorship could not be known. Here, while acknowledging the fascist militias as allies to the Kiev regime, the talking point is carefully developed that the nazis are independent and politically negligible. The author counts on a reader who processes the talking point while missing the detail - i.e. the obvious and odious presence of Avakov and his acknowledged association with Yatsenyuk.
January 02, 2015 | M of A

Published here on February 22 2014: Ukraine: "From the spirits that I called - Sir, deliver me!"

The opposition in the Ukraine and its paymasters in the U.S. and EU called up the spirits of the right, the fascist, to wage a coup against the elected president and to push their selfish objectives onto the Ukrainian public.

Now those spirits won't go away ...

Parts of the Ukraine will soon show signs of anarchy with those that protested and rioted without having any real aim moving towards criminal activities. The opposition, which is now empowered and will have to deliver results, will soon squabble and will again fall apart. The fascist forces, euphemistically called "nationalists" in "western" media, will win more power.

Those predictions have turned into reality and even those who arranged the coup against the legal government of Ukraine can no longer deny the dangers.

On Tuesday a member of the imperialists Atlantic Council wrote in the Washington Post about a "new threat" to Ukraine which is not Russia but are "independently operating warlords and armed groups"

[N]ow several of these units, especially those linked to oligarchs or the far right, are revealing a dark side. In recent months, they have threatened and kidnapped government officials, boasted that they will take power if Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fails to defeat Russia, and they served as armed muscle in illegal attempts to take over businesses or seize local governments.

Yesterday thousand of fascists marched with torches (vid) in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities to remember the birth of the fascist mass murderer of Poles and Jews and Nazi collaborator Stephan Bandera. Those forces will not go away and they will drag Ukraine further to the right and further apart.

Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice marshaled the spirits to help clean the house. But he could not control them:

O, you ugly child of Hades!
The entire house will drown!
Everywhere I look, I see
water, water, running down.
Be you damned, old broom,
why won't you obey?
Be a stick once more,
please, I beg you, stay!

This spring and summer the fighting in east Ukraine will again flare up in earnest. The coup government in Kiev will likely falter and Ukrainian state will be declared bankrupt.

The Washington Post OpEd is the first glimpse of realization of these dangers. More will follow. It will be a rude awakening and after much gnashing of teeth the apprentices will call for help:

What a deluge! What a flood!
Lord and master, hear my call!
Ah, here comes the master!
I have need of Thee!
from the spirits that I called
Sir, deliver me!

As I wrote in the February piece:

The sorcerer's apprentices in Washington and Brussels will come to understand that they can not control the spirits they called upon. They will need to call the master to put the spirits they awoke back into their holes. The international number they will need to call starts with 007 495.

Anyone with a bit of knowledge about the social history of Ukraine could have predicted this. The Kremlin knew that this would happen and it warned of the dangers again and again.

It will be waiting for the call.

b at 03:49 AM | Comments (96) Posted by: x | Jan 2, 2015 6:34:33 AM | 2

Just look at what's left of Libya for the next Ukraine phase.

Well done DC, you've really brought the plague to Europe. It'll fester on Russia's western borderlands but the disease will seep deep into the European heartlands where 40% plus youth unemployment (and loss of Russian consumer market) will see the emergence of a violent fascist agenda.

Meanwhile, oil economies will recalibrate to c. $50 p.b. and China+Russia will take the next step towards SCO expansion and BRICS economic development. The usd$ sticking out like dog's nuts will have to do something other than print, print, print, ...

The question is what and when is going to undermine the public confidence. Major war is unlikely but opportunities to shift war warehouse inventory stocks (the main economic driver) to borderland hostilities will be exploited.

fairleft | Jan 2, 2015 7:10:48 AM | 3

Excellent b, and I'm noticing how Kiev Nazi-style New Year's march is being mostly ignored by the Western imperial media.

Posted this in the previous thread, but much better here. What a great comment by 'Jack', below the AFP 'news' report sympathetic to the marching Bandera lovers:

This US imperialist propaganda piece must be written by one of the staff comedians! Bandera is Che Guevara! Chocolate king Poroshenko fought on the barricades!

Notice the backhanded support to these n@zis? Our propaganda machine wants you to think that only "Moscow" says Bandera fought on the side of Hitler and the N@zis. Notice how the article tries to justify Bandera's fighting with the n@zis by blaming the 1930s famine -- but not mentioning the famine affected the whole USSR and was made worse by US economic embargo (just like today!)

These are the n@zis on whom our US government of hypocrites spent 5 billion of our tax dollars to bring to power and overthrow an elected government. These n@zis have attacked all media and parties in Ukraine that oppose the US puppet junta.

The people of the east are overwhelmingly Russian speaking working class people, miners and factory workers, who refused their appointed oligarch governors and declared their independence of the junta.

Our US government wants to turn Ukraine into a low wage colony and establish first-strike nuclear missile bases in Ukraine directed against Russia. The restoration of capitalism in Ukraine has brought disaster.

No surprise that some US politicians mingle with N@zis in Louisiana!

guest77 | Jan 2, 2015 8:51:53 AM | 6

This come directly from US post-war policy of working with some of the worst Nazi war criminals who fought against the Allies, like the torture master Reinhard Gehlen.

It is obscene. I think events Ukraine sting particularly bad to many in the US because it is the fruition of that policy of embracing the Nazis - a complete betrayal of everything the American people believed in and fought for during the war, the "Greatest Generation". As obscene as seeing the right-wing Israelis support the new Ukrainian government: the Israel who once chased down their Nazi enemies to the ends of the earth, now choosing to hold hands with them to appease the USA and fulfill their Jabotinsky-ite (thanks bevin) dreams of Greater Israel.

US support for the Ukrainian coup government represents a total betrayal of the World War Two generation. Those who worked and fought and died on all fronts.

guest77 | Jan 2, 2015 8:56:18 AM | 7

There is an episode of Alternative Views TV has an interview with Phil Agee where he gives and overview of US post-war policy - including a bit on the US support for the far-right in Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfeOF0tiPPE&feature=youtu.be&t=33m15s

I haven't read it, but I believe some more on this topic might appear in the book he wrote with Louis Wolf in the 1980s called "Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe". This can be downloaded here: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-9MwmH_nnJ4eOmL66

Mike Maloney | Jan 2, 2015 12:26:35 PM | 13

NYT is doubling down of late on demonizing Putin. It has started this series called "Putin's Way" which is designed to tar Russia as a kleptocracy like the United States. So far there have been four installments: 1) on Rossiya Bank, 2) the shakeout in schoolbook publishers, 3) the government's seizure of oligarch Yevtushenkov Bashneft shares, and 4) the collapse of South Stream.

U.S. liberals have to be hoodwinked into becoming Russophobes. None of the stories so far come close to the kind of corruption on display in Washington D.C. For instance, the recent Citigroup-dictated gutting of Dodd-Frank.

james | Jan 2, 2015 12:57:14 PM | 15

aside from the typical propaganda talking points in the wapo opinion piece i note the following.. not sure how the local fascists want to interpret this as it comes directly from the pages of the WAPO, lol.

"Most alarming, however, is the role of Ukraine's interior minister, Arsen Avakov. Instead of reining in these fighters, conducting background checks on their records and reassigning those who pass muster, he instead has offered them new heavy weapons, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, and given them enhanced brigade status. Amazingly, in September he even named a leader of the neo-Nazi Azov brigade to head the police in the Kiev region."

i guess arsen avakov is taking orders from brennan, or some wise person inside the cia..

RUKidding | Jan 2, 2015 1:00:38 PM | 16

To MM @13 - but the hoodwinking of USA "liberals" is pretty complete at this point. I'm at the point of mostly not contributing to "political" discussions at parties (can do so sometimes in one on one conversations) bc the sheer utter lack of real knowledge & true understanding of what's actually happening anymore is beyond pathetic, disgusting & gob-smacking. I'm just used to USians parroting out the latest nonsensical propaganda clap-trap, no matter which "nooz" network they favor. Might as well all watch Fox, as far as I'm concerned, bc everything on M$M is a bald-faced lie. People think listening to and/or watching BBC (whether the one in the UK or the "America" version) is somehow "more insightful" or some nonsense.

At a party yesterday where everyone was all in for dissing Putin and cheering on the downfall of Russia who "deserved it." I asked why? And got the usual blather about how Putin had "attacked" Ukraine/Crimea; Putin started it; Putin's this terrible dictator; blah de blah...

I have to give up and throw in the towel. To attempt to educate people who are this thoroughly brainwashed is a daunting task and nigh onto impossible. Don't let's get started about the NYPD and DiBlasio is treating them so appallingly or something.

I give up. Uncle!


Posted by: jayc | Jan 2, 2015 1:42:17 PM | 21

The language of the Post opinion piece is very reminiscent of similar works appearing in the 1980s supporting the leadership of the so-called fledgling democracies in Central America. The key is the careful separation of the regime from the repressive security apparatus. In the 80s, there was a deliberate effort to maintain a mask of uncertainty over the identity and support for the death squads - which were portrayed as mysterious entities whose sponsorship could not be known. Here, while acknowledging the fascist militias as allies to the Kiev regime, the talking point is carefully developed that the nazis are independent and politically negligible. The author counts on a reader who processes the talking point while missing the detail - i.e. the obvious and odious presence of Avakov and his acknowledged association with Yatsenyuk.

@16 same here. Funny how the "educated elites" exhibit ignorance. Endless quotes from the NYT, from Charlie Rose, Forbes, Bloomberg, etc...Not one ounce of original logical thought. I dread the future of our country (USA). Where have all the "facts gone" ???.....

Posted by: georgeg | Jan 2, 2015 1:59:23 PM | 22

@17 Turkey's primary allegiance to either Eurasia or the West will determine the global future, I believe. If Gezi Park protests were a US attempt at regime change (as I believe it was), the failed coup and Turkey's replacement of the South Stream project indicates the US has already lost. Should there be economic strife in Turkey in 2015, we can be sure that the US is trying to create maximum chaos as it withdraws in defeat.

Posted by: yellowsnapdragon | Jan 2, 2015 2:03:16 PM | 23

Hmm, looks like US efforts to surround Russia with our military bases and drive a wedge between Russia and China through central Asia has hit a major bump in the road. azerbaijan

Azeri authorities just raided the offices of Radio Free Europe in Baku. It seems just a couple of years ago that neocons were talking about the growth of a strong alliance between the US and Azerbaijan. Even the Israelis were thinking of using Azeri air bases to support an air war against Iran. I noticed in recent years that talk about such collaboration had died down considerably but had not seen any evidence that the relationship with the US was souring. This has to be very good news for those interested in stopping the expansion of the US empire.

I would be interested in knowing the back story here. Did the Azeris finally notice the geographical reality of being stuck between Russia, Armenia and Iran? Time to mend fences with their neighbors? Perhaps they gained a lesson from Ukrainian events -- i.e. maybe it is not a good idea to be a pawn in the great chess game when the US is so willing to play pawn's gambits? It was heartening to see Kyrgyzstan asking the US to leave so I guess Uzbekistan should be next.

Posted by: ToivoS | Jan 2, 2015 2:07:11 PM | 24

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 2, 2015 8:51:53 AM | @6
As obscene as seeing the right-wing Israelis support the new Ukrainian government: the Israel who once chased down their Nazi enemies to the ends of the earth, now choosing to hold hands with them to appease the USA and fulfill their Jabotinsky-ite (thanks bevin) dreams of Greater Israel.

This is about money. The fighting started as soon as the elected Prez refused to make efforts to join the EU.

Joining the EU means that the Ukraine gives up its currency for the Euro. The instant that happens, the bond vISISantes--no doubt friends of Nuland's and her husband Kagan--will advance them money with the valuable eastern Ukrainian resources as collateral. Since we all know they can't pay, the bond vISISantes will own the resources. In 1989, they had the Economic Hitmen technique. As soon as the Euro came into existence, bond vISISantes used that.

You will note that even though Japan has a credit rating below Botswana, and its debt-to-GDP is over the moon, it is a monetarily sovereign nation. It can pay all debt in its own currency, it doesn't need to borrow from bond vISISantes. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, etc, cannot. They're screwed.

Posted by: MRW | Jan 2, 2015 3:18:32 PM | 25

To MM@20 - it's really hard to talk to anyone about what's really going on due to the intensity of the bald-faced lies and propaganda. At yesterday's party, one of the big themes was, yes, you guessed: Nothing is Obama's fault bc he "can't do anything bc the GOP won't let him."

To ggg @22 - indeed, people think that if they watch "intellectual" Charlie Rose that they're getting "fair & balanced" information - ditto for "extremely lefwing" NPR (if only).

I DO try to talk to any citizen - I don't care what alleged political persuasion - about what's going on, but most citizens are so deeply bought into their Team Sports Political parties - and so deeply authoritarian and so deeply into Us v Them - that it's a real Sysiphean task to get them to really HEAR what you're saying.

Any shades of nuance are a lost cause, or at least that's my experience. USians, esp, are very bought into the myth of the Evil Empire USSR, which has been transformed into the Evil Empire Russia. Whether they loved or hated Sarah Palin, most citizens pretty much agree with her viewpoint of Russia & Putin as these evil evil nasty villains who are out to "get" us. Based on nothing factual, of course, but Sarah Palin might as well have won the election bc her viewpoints are all pervasive even amongst the intelligentsia who, in theory, should know better.

Don't get me started about friends who praise Susan Rice and Samantha Powers as these great leaders. Talk about puke-making.

I do try, but I am finding it ever more difficult to get through, and frankly, I don't see so-called "liberals" as any more open-minded or aware or whatever than the putative "average conservative." The only differences between the two allegedly "different" viewpoints these days are marginal shades of grey.

Frankly I think most white Americans (I am one of those) are still extremely racist, no matter that they like to think they're not, and many, including women, are quite sexist, no matter how they vote (that's my opinion & observation). IMO, we've really gone many many steps backwards from the '70s and early '80s. What a mess.

Posted by: RUKidding | Jan 2, 2015 3:48:25 PM | 27

barflies at 15 through 21, 24 --

I share your worries and concerns about Poroshenko, the whole exchange is most fruitful. He is an increasingly weak figurehead. If I might paraphrase a great pop song covered by the Clash, "Will stay or will he now? If stays there will be trouble, in not maybe double."

Most interesting -- jayc @ 21, parallels to El Salvador back in the 80's. Lyashko as the new "Blowtorch Bob" Daubisson? Or one of the "volunteer battalion" commanders?

RUK at 26 --

I feel your pain, I've been trying to wise up libs. & progs. on the USSR since the 80's. You can tell what luck I've had....

Posted by: rufus magister | Jan 2, 2015 6:28:13 PM | 33

@RUKidding #26:
I am finding it ever more difficult to get through, and frankly, I don't see so-called "liberals" as any more open-minded or aware or whatever than the putative "average conservative." The only differences between the two allegedly "different" viewpoints these days are marginal shades of grey.
Yeah, the liberals have totally lost any connection with civilized values with their fawning allegiance to Obama, who has just intensified the fascist policies that Bush 2 started, the only exception being that Obama makes gay-friendly noises. (Since Obama was willing to compromise with the reactionaries with respect to how health insurance pays for birth control, one cannot even say that Democrats distinguish themselves from Republicans when it comes to women's rights anymore: the only way the Democrats now distinguish themselves from the Republicans is that they are more tolerant of gay people.) I have as much good will towards American Republicans and "conservatives" as I do for Democrats and "liberals" now. One now sees exactly the same kind of demented zombie thinking in liberals as one previously saw in "conservatives".

Posted by: Demian | Jan 2, 2015 6:37:45 PM | 34

#26 RUkidding

I suffer the same predicament that you described. I have - what I will refer to as liberal bourgeois intellectuals - as Friends who regard me as from another planet; and not to be seriously regarded. In fact, to them, I am a "conspiracy theorist". Little do they know that most conspiracy theorist (whether or not you agree with what their views) are typically a little bit better informed, than the general lot of citizens who consider themselves well-informed from a steady diet of MSM propaganda. You know, I am actually going to play out this theme whenever the discussion gets into many of the serious matters which this site, and many of its commentators, take very seriously - Coldfield's contribution notwithstanding. From now on, I will state from the get go that I am a conspiracy theorist, or that I am of alien origin; and that my views are understandably out of the "norm". I don't know if that will work any differently than the Sisyphean task of overturning some deeply ingrained opinions (which people of all political stripes deem as their own self-created "original" ideas), and which in reality are the product of being completely immersed in a highly effective propaganda apparatus, I can at least establish a grounding outside of the (status quo) arena where discourse on any matter must adhere to specific rules, norms and so-called "conventional wisdom".

Completely on to another subject, in view of this link:

http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/439/641

do any of you know of a search engine that is not "infiltrated" by the corporate elite?

Posted by: bjmaclac | Jan 3, 2015 12:44:09 AM | 50

[Jan 05, 2015] 2014: The Year Propaganda Came Of Age by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

"Ukraine defines 2014 as the year western propaganda came into its". In a sense exceeding the achiventb of Nazy Germany and the USSR.
December 27, 2014 | www.ronpaulinstitute.org

From just about as early in my life as I can remember, growing up as a child in Holland, there were stories about World War II, and not just about Anne Frank and the huge amounts of people who, like her, had been dragged off to camps in eastern Europe never to come back, but also about the thousands who had risked their lives to hide Jewish and other refugees, and the scores who had been executed for doing so, often betrayed by their own neighbors.

And then there were those who had risked their lives in equally courageous ways to get news out to people, putting out newspapers and radio broadcasts just so there would be a version of events out there that was real, and not just what the Germans wanted one to believe. This happened in all Nazi - and Nazi friendly - occupied European nations.

The courage of these people is hard to gauge for us today, and I'm convinced there's no way to say whom amongst us would show that kind of bravery if we were put to the test. I certainly wouldn't be sure about myself.

Still, without wanting to put myself anywhere near the level of those very real heroes - please don't get me wrong about that - that's not what I mean, I was thinking about them with regards to what is happening in our media today. I've mentioned before that I don't think Joseph Goebbels had anything on US and European media today.

That propaganda as a strategic and political instrument has been refined to a huge extent over the past 70-odd years since Goebbels first picked up on Freud's lessons on how to influence the unconscious mind, and the "mass-mind," as a way to "steer" an entire people, not just as a means to make them buy detergent. These days, the media can make people believe just about anything, and they have the added benefit that they can pose as friends of the people, not the enemy.

But there is a reason why such a large "industry" has developed on the web with people writing articles that don't say what the mass media say. That reason is, obviously, first and foremost that not everybody believes whatever they are told. The problem is equally obvious: not nearly enough people are being reached to make a true difference, and to question the official narratives.

I have no claim to fame outside of the appreciation I get from, first, my readers and, second, from my colleagues and peers. I get a lot of both, and I thank you for that, but this certainly is not about me. If anything, it's about trying to live up to the desire for truth in the face of odds squarely stacked against it, and against the people I try to reach out to. Trying to do just 0.1 percent of what the WWII underground press was about.

A few days ago, I wrote in About That Interview :

The FBI claims they are certain the hackers are North Korean, but they have provided no proof of that claim. We have to trust them on their beautiful blue eyes. I think if anything defines 2014 for me, it's the advent of incessant claims for which no proof - apparently - needs to be provided. Everything related to Ukraine over the past year carries that trait. The year of 'beautiful blue eyes', in other words. Never no proof, you just have to believe what your government says.
And that truly defines 2014 for me. A level of propaganda I don't recognize, and I don't think I've ever seen before. 2014 has for me been the year of utter nonsense. To wit, it just finished in fine form with a 5 percent US GDP growth number, just to name one example. Really, guys? 5 percent? Really? With all the numbers presented lately, the negative Thanksgiving sales data - minus 11 percent from what I remember - the so-so at best Christmas store numbers to date, shrinking durable goods in November and all? Plus 5 percent?

It really doesn't matter what I say, does it? You have enough people believing ridiculous numbers like that to make it worth your while. After all, that's all that counts. It's a democracy, isn't it? If a majority believes something, it becomes true. If you can get more than 50 percent of people to believe whatever you say, that's case closed.

With well over 90 million working age Americans counted as being out of the labor force, and with 43 million on food stamps, you can still present a 5 percent GDP growth number, if only you can get a sufficiently large number of people to believe. And you do, I'll give you that. As far as the media goes, we have achieved the change we can believe in. We may not have that change, but we sure do believe we have, don't we? And isn't that what counts? Are congratulations in order?

Well, not where I'm at, they're not. I should do a shout out to the likes of Zero Hedge, Yves Smith, David Stockman, Wolf Richter, Mish, Steve Keen, Jim Kunstler, and so many others, we're a solid crowd by now even if we're neglected, and please don't feel left out if you're not in that list, I know who you are. The problem is, we're all completely neglected by the mass media, even though there are a ton of very sharp minds in this "finance blogosphere." And perhaps we should make it a point to break through that ridiculous black-out in 2015.

2014, in my eyes, has been the year of propaganda outdoing even its own very purpose, and succeeding too. We are supposed to be living in a time of the best educated people in the history of mankind, and everyone thinks (s)he's mighty smart, but precious few have even an inkling of a clue of what transpires in the world they live in. Talk about a lost generation. Or two.

We really need to question the value of higher education, if all we get for it is a generation of people so easily duped by utter blubber. What do they teach people at our universities these days? Certainly not to think for themselves, that much is clear. And then what is the use? Why spend all that time raising an entire generation of highly educated pawns, sheep, and robots? I can think of some people liking that, but for society as a whole, it's devastating if that's all higher education is.

And if you would like to raise doubts here, the very existence of finance blogosphere I mentioned before is proof that we indeed have raised a generation of sheep. If we had functioning media, there'd be no need for that blogosphere. We are the people who keep on pointing out where the mass media fail, let alone the politicians, simply by being there and being supported to the extent we are by the few people who escape the sheep mentality.

But that's not nearly enough. Journalists, reporters, whatever they call themselves, working for Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC, etc. should at the very least quote Zero Hedge on a daily basis, and Mish, and Steve, and Yves, and perhaps even me - though it's fine if they continue to ignore me, as long as they give the rest their rightful place.

There are many people in the blogosphere who are many times smarter than the people who write for the mass media, and that's a very simple and hardly disputable fact that needs to be recognized. When you read something in your paper or at your online news provider, it should be second nature to ask yourself: but what would Tyler Durden say, or the Automatic Earth, or Naked Capitalism, or David Stockman?

But we're nowhere near that, are we? We've been fooled with economic stats for years, not just in the US, not even just in the west, but all over, they all grabbed on to the potential of providing people with numbers that have little to do with reality, but that simply feel good. Or even just look good.

Still, boy, have we been, and are being, fooled. Then again, most of you wouldn't know, would you? We people tend to discount the future, to see today as more important than tomorrow, and in the same manner we find our children's future much less important than our own. Because that feels good too. If we are comfy right now, screw them. Not that we'd ever put it into those terms.

But you know, that's really all old hack by now. 2014 brought us a whole other class of nonsense. And we swallowed it all hook line and entire sinker.

2014 gave us Ukraine. And you just try and find anyone today who doesn't think Vladimir Putin is and was the evil genius mind behind the whole thing, including the 4500+ people who died there over the past 10 months. Why is it so hard to anyone who doubts that narrative? Because our media told us Putin is the bogeyman. And "we" never asked for any proof. That is, except for those of us in that same blogosphere.

Meanwhile, round after round of sanctions against Russia have been set up and activated by EU and US, causing hardship for both Russian people and European businesses. But why, what exactly is Putin allegedly guilty of?

The US/EU installed a government in Kiev in February (yeah, yap about it), which is still in place, with a bunch of US citizens recently added for good measure - and for profit. The chocolate prince president was indeed elected months later, but the prime minister - "Yats" - was handpicked by America, and is still, amazingly, in place. That's the same government that had it own army murder thousands of its own citizens, and not a thing has been resolved so far.

The whole thing came to a head when MH17 was shot down over the summer. That too was blamed on Putin. Or was it? Well, not directly, nobody:tin ordered that plane to be shot. Nor did anyone say Russia shot it. There is the accusation that Russian speaking Ukrainian "rebels" did it, but proof for that was never provided in the six months since the incident. And there must be a "best before" date in there somewhere.

Is it possible the "rebels" did it? We can't exclude it, but that's for the same reason we can't exclude the option that little green Martians did it: we don't know. But even then, even if they did, there's the question whether that would have been on purpose. Which seems really stretching it: nothing they want would be served by shooting down a plane full of European, Malaysian and Australian holiday goers.

But here we are: no proof and layer upon layer of sanctions. And nary a voice is raised in the west. If one is, it's to denounce the Russians as bloodthirsty barbarians. Even though there is no proof they did anything other than protecting what they see as their own people. Something we all would do too, no questions asked.

Ukraine defines 2014 as the year western propaganda came into its own. Not just fictional stories about an economic recovery anymore, no, we had our politico-media establishment ram an entire new cold war down our throats. And we swallowed it whole. We may have had a million more years of higher education than our parents and grandparents, but we sure don't seem to have gotten any smarter than them.

There is a lot of information out there, written by people inspired by things other than monetary incentives or job security or anything like that -people who simply want to get information out that your trusted media won't give you anymore than Goebbels' media did in occupied Europe in the 1940s. And you don't even have to risk your lives to access that information. All you have to do is to get off your couch.

The Automatic Earth is but a small part of a very valuable and fast growing resource that warrants a lot more attention than it's been receiving to date. A reported 5 percent US GDP growth print is one reason why, the entire Ukraine fantasy story is another. The blogosphere is full of functioning neurons, which is more than you can say for your papers and online MSM.

As far as media is concerned, 2014 has been downright scary in its distortion of reality. Let's try and move 2015 a little bit closer towards what's actually happening.

Reprinted with permission from The Automatic Earth.

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[Nov 14, 2018] Nationalism vs partiotism

[Nov 12, 2018] The Best Way To Honor War Veterans Is To Stop Creating Them by Caitlin Johnstone

[Nov 12, 2018] Obama s CIA Secretly Intercepted Congressional Communications About Whistleblowers

[Nov 09, 2018] Globalism Vs Nationalism in Trump's America by Joe Quinn

[Oct 25, 2018] DNC Emails--A Seth Attack Not a Russian Hack by Publius Tacitus

[Oct 02, 2018] Recovered memory is a Freudian voodoo. Notice how carefully manicured these charges are such that they can never be falsified? This is the actual proof she is a liar and this whole thing is staged

[Oct 02, 2018] I m puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?

[Sep 29, 2018] The Schizophrenic Deep State is a Symptom, Not the Disease by Charles Hugh Smith

[Sep 24, 2018] Given Trumps kneeling to the British Skripal poisoning 'hate russia' hoax I suspect there is no chance he will go after Christopher Steele or any of the senior demoncrat conspirers no matter how much he would love to sucker punch Theresa May and her nasty colleagues.

[Sep 16, 2018] Looks like the key players in Steele dossier were CIA assets

[Sep 16, 2018] I m delighted we can see the true face of American exceptionalism on display everyday. The last thing I want to see is back to normal.

[Sep 11, 2018] Is Donald Trump Going to Do the Syria Backflip by Publius Tacitus

[Sep 11, 2018] If you believe Trump is trying to remove neocons(Deep State) from the government, explain Bolton and many other Deep State denizens Trump has appointed

[Sep 07, 2018] New York Times Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion by Diana Johnstone

[Sep 07, 2018] Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a legitimate request to neoliberal MSM - Stop Bugging Me About The New York Times' Trump Op-Ed

[Sep 02, 2018] Open letter to President Trump concerning the consequences of 11 September 2001 by Thierry Meyssan

[Aug 24, 2018] The priorities of the deep state and its public face the MSM

[Aug 22, 2018] The CIA Owns the US and European Media by Paul Craig Roberts

[Aug 18, 2018] MoA - John Brennan Is No Match For Trump

[Aug 14, 2018] I think one of Mueller s deeply embedded character flaw is that once he decides on burying someone he becomes possessed

[Aug 13, 2018] Imperialism Is Alive and Kicking A Marxist Analysis of Neoliberal Capitalism by C.J. Polychroniou

[Aug 08, 2018] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus

[Aug 08, 2018] Ten Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh's New Autobiography

[Aug 05, 2018] Cooper was equally as unhinged as Boot: Neoliberal MSM is a real 1984 remake.

[Aug 05, 2018] How identity politics makes the Left lose its collective identity by Tomasz Pierscionek

[Jul 31, 2018] Is not the Awan affair a grave insult to the US "Intelligence Community?

[Jul 28, 2018] American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp

[Jul 23, 2018] Chickens with Their Heads Cut Off, Coming Home to Roost. The "Treason Narrative" by Helen Buyniski

[Jul 22, 2018] Tucker Carlson SLAMS Intelligence Community On Russia

[Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer

[Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax

[Jul 20, 2018] Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace With Russia by Paul Craig Roberts

[Jul 16, 2018] Putin Claims U.S. Intelligence Agents Funneled $400K To Clinton Campaign Zero Hedge

[Jul 16, 2018] Five Things That Would Make The CIA-CNN Russia Narrative More Believable

[Jul 15, 2018] Sic Semper Tyrannis HILLARY CLINTON S COMPROMISED EMAILS WERE GOING TO A FOREIGN ENTITY – NOT RUSSIA! FBI Agent Ignored Evide

[Jul 15, 2018] Peter Strzok Ignored Evidence Of Clinton Server Breach

[Jul 15, 2018] Something Rotten About the DOJ Indictment of the GRU by Publius Tacitus

[Jul 13, 2018] False flag operation covering DNC leaks now involves Mueller and his team

[Jul 03, 2018] Russia has a lot of information about Lybia that could dig a political grave for Hillary. They did not release it

[Jul 03, 2018] Corruption Allegations are one of the classic tools in the color revolution toolbox

[Jun 09, 2018] Still Waiting for Evidence of a Russian Hack by Ray McGovern

[May 27, 2018] America's Fifth Column Will Destroy Russia by Paul Craig Roberts

[May 27, 2018] Northwestern University roundtable discusses regime change in Russia Defend Democracy Press

[May 24, 2018] The diversion of Russia Gate is a continuation of former diversions such as the Tea Party which was invented by the banksters to turn public anger over the big banking collapse and the resulting recession into a movement to gain more deregulation for tax breaks for the wealthy

[May 23, 2018] If the Trump-Russia set up began in spring 2016 or earlier, presumably it was undertaken on the assumption that HRC would win the election. (I say "presumably" because you never can tell..) If so, then the operation would have been an MI6 / Ukrainian / CIA coordinated op intended to frame Putin, not Trump

[May 22, 2018] Cat fight within the US elite getting more intense

[May 09, 2018] Trotskyist Delusions, by Diana Johnstone

[Apr 24, 2018] The Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice

[Apr 22, 2018] The American ruling class loves Identity Politics, because Identity Politics divides the people into hostile groups and prevents any resistance to the ruling elite

[Apr 21, 2018] On the Criminal Referral of Comey, Clinton et al by Ray McGovern

[Apr 17, 2018] Poor Alex

[Apr 11, 2018] Female neocon warmongers from Fox look like plastered brick walls – heartless and brainless.

[Apr 10, 2018] The Ghouta Massacre near Damascus on Aug 21, 2013 was not a sarin rocket attack carried out by Assad or his supporters. It was a false-flag stunt carried out by the insurgents using carbon monoxide or cyanide to murder children and use their corpses as bait to lure the Americans into attacking Assad.

[Apr 09, 2018] Ghouta is Arabic for Reichstag Fire by Publius Tacitus

[Apr 02, 2018] Russophobia Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy by A. Tsygankov

[Apr 01, 2018] Big American Money, Not Russia, Put Trump in the White House: Reflections on a Recent Report by Paul Street

[Mar 27, 2018] The Stormy Daniels scandal Political warfare in Washington hits a new low by Patrick Martin

[Mar 25, 2018] Cambridge Analytica Scandal Rockets to Watergate Proportions and Beyond by Adam Garrie

[Mar 21, 2018] Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared by Ray McGovern

[Mar 21, 2018] Washington's Invasion of Iraq at Fifteen

[Mar 21, 2018] How They Sold the Iraq War by Jeffrey St. Clair

[Mar 16, 2018] Are We Living Under a Military Coup ?

[Mar 14, 2018] Jefferson Morley on the CIA and Mossad Tradeoffs in the Formation of the US-Israel Strategic Relationship

[Mar 13, 2018] The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party by Patrick Martin

[Mar 12, 2018] State Department's War on Political Dissent

[Mar 11, 2018] Reality Check: The Guardian Restarts Push for Regime Change in Russia by Kit

[Mar 10, 2018] Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in Obama policy and HRC campaign long before any Steele s Dossier. This was a program ofunleashing cold War II

[Mar 10, 2018] They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.

[Mar 08, 2018] Mueller determines the US foreign policy toward Russia; The Intel Community Lies About Russian Meddling by Publius Tacitus

[Mar 06, 2018] Is MSNBC Now the Most Dangerous Warmonger Network by Norman Solomon

[Mar 06, 2018] The current anti-Russian sentiment in the West as hysterical. But this hysteria is concentrated at the top level of media elite and neocons. Behind it is no deep sense of unity or national resolve. In fact we see the reverse - most Western countries are deeply divided within themselves due to the crisis of neolineralism.

[Feb 25, 2018] Russia would not do anything nearing the level of self-harm inflicted by the US elites.

[Feb 20, 2018] Russophobia is a futile bid to conceal US, European demise by Finian Cunningham

[Feb 19, 2018] The Russiagate Intelligence Wars What We Do and Don't Know

[Feb 18, 2018] Had Hillary Won What Now by Andrew Levine

[Feb 15, 2018] Trump's War on the Deep State by Conrad Black

[Feb 14, 2018] The Anti-Trump Coup by Michael S. Rozeff

[Feb 10, 2018] More on neoliberal newspeak of US propaganda machine

[Jan 30, 2018] The Unseen Wars of America the Empire The American Conservative

[Jan 28, 2018] Russiagate Isn t About Trump, And It Isn t Even Ultimately About Russia by Caitlyn Johnstone

[Jan 28, 2018] The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Russiagate Isn't About Trump, And It Isn't Even Ultimately About Russia by Caitlyn Johnstone

[Jan 27, 2018] In a Trump Hunt, Beware the Perjury Trap by Pat Buchanan

[Jan 26, 2018] Warns The Russiagate Stakes Are Extreme by Paul Craig Roberts

[Jan 25, 2018] Russiagate as Kafka 2.0

[Jan 24, 2018] The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate by Ray McGovern

[Jan 24, 2018] Brazen Plot To Exonerate Hillary Clinton And Frame Trump Unraveling, Says Former Fed Prosecutor

[Jan 19, 2018] #ReleaseTheMemo Extensive FISA abuse memo could destroy the entire Mueller Russia investigation by Alex Christoforou

[Jan 14, 2018] Sic Semper Tyrannis The Trump Dossier Timeline, A Democrat Disaster Looming by Publius Tacitus

[Jan 06, 2018] Russia-gate Breeds Establishment McCarthyism by Robert Parry

[Jan 02, 2018] What We Don t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking by Jackson Lears

[Jan 02, 2018] Who Is the Real Enemy by Philip Giraldi

[Dec 31, 2017] Is [neo]Liberalism a Dying Faith by Pat Buchanan

[Dec 31, 2017] What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater

[Dec 31, 2017] Is [neo]Liberalism a Dying Faith by Pat Buchanan

[Jan 19, 2019] Coincidence - Chief Nurse Of British Army Was First Person To Arrive At Novichoked Skripal Scene

[Jan 13, 2019] As FBI Ramped Up Witch Hunt When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion Investigation A Joke

[Jan 11, 2019] How President Trump Normalized Neoconservatism by Ilana Mercer

[Jan 11, 2019] Facts does not matter in the current propoganda environment, the narrative is everything

[Jan 02, 2019] That madness of the US neocons comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of groupthink, and manipulating the language. Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies.

Sites



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

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Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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Last modified: March, 29, 2020