| Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers | |
| May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) | |||||||
Future Prime Minister – Arseniy Yatsenyuk (rechristened to “Yats”) with his patron Victoria Nuland. Two statists -- Taygibok (Co-founder of far right Socialist-National Party, later renamed into Svoboda party) and Klitschko (leader of pro-Germany, Merkel-financed Udar Party who was just thrown under the bus) are present
Due to the size an introduction was converted to a separate page State Department neocons show EU its real place
|
|
Switchboard | ||||
| Latest | |||||
| Past week | |||||
| Past month | |||||
| July 2014 | June 2014 | May 2014 | April 2014 | March 2014 | February 2014 | January 2014 | December 2013 |
 |
 |
 |
Aug 06, 2018 | www.globalresearch.ca
Robert Kagan. William Kristol. Paul Wolfowitz. Richard Perle. John Bolton. Elliott Abrams. Gary Schmitt. These are a few of the names generally associated with a strain of far-right political thought called neoconservatism. [1][2]
Politically, the neocons favour a world in which the United States adopts a much more aggressive military posture, and utilizes its military might to not only contain terrorist and related threats to its security, but force regime change in regions like the Middle East. They further take on the task of 'nation-building' all in the name of creating a safer world for 'democracy.' It was the neocons who promoted the stratagem of pre-emptive military action. [3]
The neocons enjoyed a robust period of influence under the Bush-Cheney administration. The 9/11 attacks and the triggering of a 'war on terrorism' enabled a series of foreign policy choices, most notably the War on Afghanistan and the War on Iraq, which aligned with the aims and aspirations of the group once referred to by President George Bush Sr. as the 'crazies in the basement.'[4]
The neocons did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Republicans from office, and the rise of Obama . Indeed, the clout of this group and their grip on power is arguably as strong as ever. Not only did they continue to shape the U.S. foreign policy establishment, but they have managed to alter what constitutes acceptable public and media discourse within the world's remaining superpower. The trajectory of neocon influence in Washington is explored in depth in the documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda, by independent journalist and film-maker Robbie Martin.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/9kHHR_yy9CE
In part one of a special two part interview by Global Research News Hour guest contributor Scott Price , Martin describes the inspiration behind making the film, the post 9/11 atmosphere in which the neocons flourished, and the neocons' role in fostering the new Cold War mentality which contributed to the smearing of his better-known sister, former RT host Abby Martin .
This feature is followed by an interview with writer, ecological campaigner, and Deep State researcher Mark Robinowitz . Originally recorded and aired in January 2018, Robinowitz helps delineate the factions of power shaping the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, as well as the players within the National Security State, including the neocons, that appear to be manipulating him and his presidency, possibly maneuvering him towards an impeachment within the next year.
Robbie Martin is a journalist, musician and documentary film-maker. He is co-host with his sister Abby Martin of Media Roots Radio. A Very Heavy Agenda can be streamed or purchased here . Soundtrack for Film and music for these series from Fluorescent Grey (Robbie Martin).
Mark Robinowitz is a writer, political activist, ecological campaigner and permaculture practitioner and publisher of oilempire.us as well as jfkmoon.org . He is based in Eugene, Oregon.
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
Transcript – Interview with Robbie Martin, July 2018
... ... ...
And of course, right after the Sochi Olympics, is when the Euromaidan protest in Ukraine, it kind of boiled over to the point where there were, you know, walls of flaming tires all over Euromaidan – basically a war zone. And of course the Ukrainian government fell due to a coup which many believe, including myself, was partially U.S. sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
And then things from there, Scott, just started to spiral out of contro , and from the period between 2014 to 2018, it was like an exponentially rising climate of propaganda against Russia coming from the U.S. media, and when I made my film series, I didn't I made it before the election, s o I didn't realize how hysterical it was going to get after the election, and frankly, I had no idea it was going to get this bad, to the point that it's got now.
I know that doesn't quite answer your question about my inspiration, but it 's kind of a long answer to your question is my film itself is essentially.. was tracking the neocon influence and how the neoconservatives from the Bush era that pushed the Iraq war, that constructed the blueprints to the Iraq war, how they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality.
Neocon 101: What do neoconservatives believe?.And how it only took, you know, certain nudges and pushes and policy papers , and here we are. They essentially got their way, and Russia has never been more demonized since the fall of communism and the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. So that's I don't know if that was too long of an answer for your question , but that's what was sort of my inspiration for how I made it. My sister was also kind of a part of the story because some of these neocons actually tried to smear her while she was working for RT.
... ... ...
RM: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think at first, I was really fascinated by the psychology of these key neoconservatives. I was watching, at first I didn't even know I was going to make a film. I was kind of in this weird place mentally, my sister had just been put through the wringer, she had over 200 basically hit piece stories written about her within the span of a week, and I was just in this kind of depressed place checking in with her making sure she was doing okay, and not basically getting too stressed out from all this media pressure and this barrage of negative stories. So I was just watching these videos basically from the neocon think-tank that I believe was behind the smear campaign against her.
So I was watching videos from this think tank, they were called the Foreign Policy Initiative, and I quickly learned maybe over 48 hour period, oh, the Foreign Policy Initiative is actually a re-branded, reopened version of the Project for The New American Century think tank, which was the most infamous neocon think tank that was behind the Iraq War. Once I realized that, then I just then I was obsessed with watching these videos. I watched probably every single video on their YouTube channel, and the majority of them were incredibly boring, very dry. And I was already in a depressed place, so, you know, it was kind of just putting me into this weird state where I was watching nothing but these dry foreign policy think tank videos for weeks on end.
Finally I got to Robert Kagan. And I was listening to him, and it struck me differently from the way that most other neoconservatives would talk, because I perceived him as being more candid about the way American foreign policy has actually conducted itself, and also more clever with the way that I perceived him as, re-branding, repackaging neocon rhetoric for the Obama era. Once I saw this, I became fascinated with his psychology. And I was already sort of fascinated with Bill Kristol's psychology, you know , going back to when I was a young man when I would watch Fox News you know during the Iraq War, I would watch Bill Kristol, and I found him fascinating back then because he seemed on a different level than most other, you know, war hawks that would go on Fox News.
But it was really Robert Kagan though that made me think, you know, his own words are so fascinating and so candid and so revealing without adding any editorial content that I wonder if this will work, if I present it just simply in his own words.
... ... ...
But I think one way to describe why they're so important and they're still so influential is because they managed to, a very small handful of them, maybe less than a dozen figures, managed to convince the rest of, what people describe as the DC blob, the sort of foreign policy consensus in DC overall, the neocons managed to rebrand themselves, massage their rhetoric, and make themselves seem less crazy in order to influence the larger DC foreign policy community into basically accepting and going along with almost all their foreign policy platforms, with the exception of overtly wanting to invade Iran which arguably that is the neocon prize but see, a lot of these smarter neocons like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, and a lot of these neocons who managed to convince the blob, they have hidden, and not been open about the fact that they want to overthrow the regime of Iran.
That's one of their foreign policy platforms they've sort of brushed under the rug, because that's one of The reason I'm giving that example is because that's how they have managed to cross the aisle, so to speak, in DC and put a hand out to the neoliberal think tanks and say, hey we're kind of on the same side in this, and we all think Putin's bad, and let's really go after him. Let's overthrow Assad. So these are things that the neocons managed to essentially convince and influence the rest of the DC foreign policy community to believe.
So yes, it's true that there are not that many actual literal neocons, but a lot of people now who are sort of anti-war, do work in anti-war or do foreign policy critique, they don't see much of a difference any more between sort of the neoliberal foreign policy group in DC, which is most of it, and the actual neocons anymore. Because they have essentially merged in a non-partisan fashion, and it's been very surreal to watch, especially after the 2016 election when you actually saw neocons saying well you should vote for Hillary. For the first time ever they all said that you shouldn't vote for a R epublican.
That's so I don't know that fully answers your question, but I think to su m it up it's because the neocons have influenced everybody. So now that they've been able to do that you don't really need that many of them around you know making that much trouble because everybody is carrying out their agenda essentially. In this DC foreign policy think-tank.
GR: Yeah I think the way you kind of describe it in maybe it's I don't know if you personally describe it, but I wrote it down in my notes about how neoconservatism is almost like a species and it kind of evolved over the last 20 years in a way? So I think what you're talking about how there's a shift to Hillary, and, but I mean that shift is more that the neoconservative line really became the mainstream line, whereas, you know, maybe in the early 2000s, like, there was a larger perception, yes, they were in the White House, but these people are also crazy, whereas now is kind of like the mainstream, which is quite scary. Which is something I think we'll talk about in a little bit. But kind of what I was talking about a bit before what I referenced was that I was a teenager when 9/11 happened, and it really shaped my generation and the world that I'm living in now
But as I was watching the 3-part documentary, there were several things that I was like kind of blown away by how these things kind of just went down the memory hole, and I want to talk about those things because several of these things I vaguely kind of remember now but for some odd reason I had totally forgotten about them, and they're not really within the wider narrative of 9/11 and the war on terror.
So the first one is that how right after 9/11, several of these neocons, I think it's Don and Fred Kagan, went on TV and radio kind of immediately after for at least a 24-hour 48-hour period after 9/11 and basically blamed Palestinians for the attack, and were basically outright calling for the U.S. to attack Palestine. And even saying that they had no evidence but we should just go and attack them. So could you talk about what happened there, and what was the effect there? Everyone kind of forgets about this but what happened there, and what do you think the effect of that was?
RM: You just opened up a really big can of worms with that question. Well, to fully answer that it would require a totally separate interview, but I'll do my best to answer it in this short time that we have. What you're describing is, what I would say, is the neocons flipping up and revealing too much of an early iteration of their script, than the rest of the consensus was ready to reveal or get on board with. And perhaps, even, they jumped ahead with something that the rest of the neocons already decided, we can't go there. Because, and this is important to know, that Don Kagan is one of the only three authors credited as writing Rebuilding America's Defenses, the infamous paper that PNAC released that says we need a new Pearl Harbor, a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.
Don Kagan is someone who just, mostly an obscure figure in this, but I'd like to believe that if he was saying that on the radio within 24 hours of 9/11, that it was something being heavily discussed within that community behind the scenes. And h e and his son Fred Kagan are two of the most intellectual, influential neoconservatives in DC. Fred Kagan is behind the Iraq surge, he is also behind the Afghanistan s urge for Obama, directly working under David Petraeus. So these are not just like random neocons. It's important to stress that they are some of the most influential neocon brain-trust type people in DC even though they're so relatively obscure They're not household names.
So to hear both of them saying that we need to clean out Palestine with the U.S. Delta Force raids and the full panoply of U.S. military tools and arsenal, it's a very shocking thing to hear. Even though I've long believed that neocons are some of the most evil people on the planet, that was even surprising for me to hear. That they went ahead and openly said that the U.S. military should do that, and actually, in their broadcast they make it clear that they don't even care who's behind 9/11. Which is strange. They say that if we run around tracing the actual perpetrators, we're just going to be wasting our time and we won't get anywhere. So what they are saying is that we should just go attack all these countries anyways because even if they're behind it or not, they hate us and want to kill us.
And Palestine was one of their primary targets to retaliate against in response to 9/11. Now that's very strange when you look at the day of 9/11, and I've actually done a podcast on this, I call it the Palestinian Frame-up, on 9/11, there were four separate incidences that were run throughout U.S. media throughout the day of 9/11 that were attempting to blame Palestinians for the attacks before Bin Laden became the primary culprit that the U.S. media latched on to. So I find that very strange.
And I'm not going to try to explain it here during this interview, but you can look into that. It's all documented. The news media played footage of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attacks in the middle of a national emergency at 12 p.m. while thousands of people were still missing during the World Trade Center attacks. So this is the kind of stuff that U.S. media was doing.
So it's very interesting for me to see neocons actually piggy-backing on that and saying we should attack Palestine. And that's a rare thing, I think, to find neocons slipping up that badly. And I guess I find that clip particularly fascinating because it's really one of the only ones like that out there, and to my knowledge, I'm the first one to find it by combing through all these archives. I've never heard of it before, never even heard of any neocon s saying that before on record.
And then also something else interesting Don Kagan brings up in the recording, and maybe you were going to mention this next, but I'll just say it because it's so weird, as he says what would have happened, and keep in mind this is 9/12-01, one day after 9/11. He says, what would have happened if the terrorists had Anthrax on that plane?
GR: Right. Yeah.
RM: And on October 5, weaponized anthrax was sent through the U.S. mail. While the Bush Administration was already inoculated with Cipro. the antibiotic taken to prevent Anthrax infection. So there's a lot of interesting and very scary questions that are raised just by that single clip. and I'm to this day it's still a mystery to me.
GR: That was Part 1 of the Global Research News Hour special with Robbie Martin on his documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda that explores the rise and continued influence of the neoconservatives. Part 2 will air next week where we will explore the anthrax attacks, the role of Vice in spreading U.S. propaganda. You can buy or stream A Very Heavy Agenda at averyheavyagenda.com. Music for this special provided by Fluorescent Grey, AKA Robbie Martin. For the Global Research News Hour, I'm Scott Price.
-end of transcript-
Global Research News Hour Summer 2018 Series Part 5
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2018 | www.rt.com
Photo (omitted): Geoffrey R. Pyatt (L) and Samantha Power on Maidan square, in Kiev on June 10, 2015 © YURY KIRNICHNY / AFP
On the world's Grand Chessboard, the US is fighting for control and influence. And there are countries where its ambassadors are perceived more as imperial governors than simple channels of communication. At the height of the Maidan protests in Kiev in early 2014, a conversation was leaked between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the then-Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Victoria Nuland. The conversation gained notoriety because Nuland said to Pyatt, "F**k the EU" and the recording was almost instantly available on Youtube .
More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The US government officials were discussing how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans.
Read more American meddling is bad too, except when it isn't, says ex-ambassador to RussiaWhat few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government.
This has been going on for decades, although the levels of control exercised by the United States increased as it rushed to fill the political vacuum created by the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe after 1989. In earlier times, such control, especially regime change operations, had to be conducted either covertly, as with the overthrow of Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953, or by financing and arming an anti-government militia, such as in Nicaragua and elsewhere in central and South America, or by encouraging the army itself, most famously in Chile in 1973. There is a huge body of literature on this vast subject (for the coup against Mosaddegh, see especially 'All the Shah's Men' by Stephen Kinzer, 2003) and there is no possibility of denying that such operations took place. Indeed, former CIA director, James Woolsey, recently admitted that they continue to this day.
Many of the ambassadors who engineered or attempted regime change operations in Eastern Europe and the former USSR had cut their teeth in Latin America in 1980s and 1990s. One of them, Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, even boasted in a letter to The Guardian in 2001 that he was doing the same thing in Minsk as he had done in Managua. He wrote: "As regards parallels between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective and to some degree methodology are the same."
Read more US fingerprints all over Nicaragua's bloody unrestKozak did not mention that he also played a key role in the overthrow of General Noriega in Panama in 1989 but he is far from alone. The experience accumulated by the Americans during the Cold War, including in major European countries like Italy where US interference was key to preventing Communist victories in elections, spawned a whole generation of Kermit Roosevelts (the architect of the coup against Mosaddegh) who have made their careers over decades in the State Department. Some names, such as that of Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia who made no secret of his opposition to the president of the state to which he was accredited, will be familiar to RT readers.
Two years after the violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, which he helped coordinate, Geoffrey Pyatt was appointed US ambassador to Greece. He remains in that post to this day - which is why some are asking whether his hand might be behind last week's expulsion of Russian diplomats from Athens. Greece and Russia have customarily had good relations but they differ on the Macedonian issue. Now, the Greek government headed by the "pseudo-Euroskeptic" Alexis Tsipras, claims that four Russian diplomats were engaged in covert operations in Greece to lobby against forcing Macedonia to change its official name.
Like almost every other political issue these days, this relatively arcane one is regarded through the distorting prism of alleged Russian " interference " : any decision which does not consolidate the power of American-dominated supranational structures like the US or the EU is now routinely attributed to all-pervasive Russian influence, as if all dissidents were foreign agents. Western discussion of this subject now resembles the paranoia of the old Soviet regime, and of its satellites in Eastern Europe, which similarly attacked anti-Communists for being "fifth columnists" - the very phrase used by a prominent European politician last month to lambast all his enemies as Russian stooges.
Europe has a fifth column in its ranks: Putin's cheerleaders who want to destroy Europe & liberal democracy from within: Le Pen, Wilders, Farage, Orbàn, Kaczynski, Salvini use Kremlin money & intel. Like Farage's friend Arron Banks, who colluded w/ Russians to deliver #Brexit
-- Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) 13 juin 2018US influence is suspected in this case between Greece and Macedonia because the Americans are pushing to bring the whole of the Balkan peninsula under Western control. This has been policy for nearly thirty years - at least since the Yugoslav wars led to a US-brokered peace deal in Bosnia in 1995. In recent years the tempo has quickened, with the accession of Montenegro to NATO last year leaving only Macedonia and Serbia as missing pieces of the puzzle. The Greek victory over the name of Macedonia removes the last obstacle to that country's accession to NATO and other "Euro-Atlantic structures" like the EU and soon only Serbia will be left. Will she last long?
One of the most notorious anecdotes of the Second World War was told by Churchill. While in Moscow in 1944, he and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe and the Balkans into spheres of influence, putting percentage figures to show the respective weight of the West and the USSR - 10:90 in Greece, 50:50 Yugoslavia, 25:75 in Bulgaria, and so on. Churchill recalls how this so-called Percentages Agreement was concluded in a few minutes, and how he scribbled a note of their verbal agreement on a piece of paper which Stalin glanced at for a second and then ticked off. Churchill wrote, "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down."
Churchill then reflected that it might seem cynical to decide the fate of millions of people in such an offhand manner. Later generations have generally agreed with his self-criticism. Today's West would certainly never conclude such an agreement - but not because of any squeamishness or lack of cynicism on its part. Instead, the West, especially the US, could not conclude any agreement because in every case the only acceptable outcome would be 100% influence for itself. That is what Geoffrey Pyatt and his colleagues spend their entire careers trying to achieve - and, to a large extent, they succeed.
Like this story? Share it with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
John Laughland, who has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and who has taught at universities in Paris and Rome, is a historian and specialist in international affairs.
|
|
|
Jul 20, 2018 | ronpaulinstitute.org
national governments by John Laughland
July 19, 2018
On the world's Grand Chessboard, the US is fighting for control and influence. And there are countries where its ambassadors are perceived more as imperial governors than simple channels of communication.
At the height of the Maidan protests in Kiev in early 2014, a conversation was leaked between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the then-Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Victoria Nuland. The conversation gained notoriety because Nuland said to Pyatt, "F**k the EU" and the recording was almost instantly available on Youtube .
More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The US government officials were discussing how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans.
What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government.
This has been going on for decades, although the levels of control exercised by the United States increased as it rushed to fill the political vacuum created by the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe after 1989. In earlier times, such control, especially regime change operations, had to be conducted either covertly, as with the overthrow of Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953, or by financing and arming an anti-government militia, such as in Nicaragua and elsewhere in central and South America, or by encouraging the army itself, most famously in Chile in 1973. There is a huge body of literature on this vast subject (for the coup against Mosaddegh, see especially "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer, 2003) and there is no possibility of denying that such operations took place. Indeed, former CIA director, James Woolsey, recently admitted that they continue to this day.
Many of the ambassadors who engineered or attempted regime change operations in Eastern Europe and the former USSR had cut their teeth in Latin America in 1980s and 1990s. One of them, Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, even boasted in a letter to The Guardian in 2001 that he was doing the same thing in Minsk as he had done in Managua. He wrote: "As regards parallels between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective and to some degree methodology are the same."
Kozak did not mention that he also played a key role in the overthrow of General Noriega in Panama in 1989 but he is far from alone. The experience accumulated by the Americans during the Cold War, including in major European countries like Italy where US interference was key to preventing Communist victories in elections, spawned a whole generation of Kermit Roosevelts (the architect of the coup against Mosaddegh) who have made their careers over decades in the State Department. Some names, such as that of Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia who made no secret of his opposition to the president of the state to which he was accredited, will be familiar to RT readers.
Two years after the violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, which he helped coordinate, Geoffrey Pyatt was appointed US ambassador to Greece. He remains in that post to this day - which is why some are asking whether his hand might be behind last week's expulsion of Russian diplomats from Athens. Greece and Russia have customarily had good relations but they differ on the Macedonian issue. Now, the Greek government headed by the "pseudo-Euroskeptic" Alexis Tsipras, claims that four Russian diplomats were engaged in covert operations in Greece to lobby against forcing Macedonia to change its official name.
Like almost every other political issue these days, this relatively arcane one is regarded through the distorting prism of alleged Russian " interference ": any decision which does not consolidate the power of American-dominated supranational structures like the US or the EU is now routinely attributed to all-pervasive Russian influence, as if all dissidents were foreign agents. Western discussion of this subject now resembles the paranoia of the old Soviet regime, and of its satellites in Eastern Europe, which similarly attacked anti-Communists for being "fifth columnists" - the very phrase used by a prominent European politician last month to lambast all his enemies as Russian stooges.US influence is suspected in this case between Greece and Macedonia because the Americans are pushing to bring the whole of the Balkan peninsula under Western control. This has been policy for nearly thirty years - at least since the Yugoslav wars led to a US-brokered peace deal in Bosnia in 1995. In recent years the tempo has quickened, with the accession of Montenegro to NATO last year leaving only Macedonia and Serbia as missing pieces of the puzzle. The Greek victory over the name of Macedonia removes the last obstacle to that country's accession to NATO and other "Euro-Atlantic structures" like the EU and soon only Serbia will be left. Will she last long?
One of the most notorious anecdotes of the Second World War was told by Churchill. While in Moscow in 1944, he and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe and the Balkans into spheres of influence, putting percentage figures to show the respective weight of the West and the USSR - 10:90 in Greece, 50:50 Yugoslavia, 25:75 in Bulgaria, and so on. Churchill recalls how this so-called Percentages Agreement was concluded in a few minutes, and how he scribbled a note of their verbal agreement on a piece of paper which Stalin glanced at for a second and then ticked off. Churchill wrote, "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down."
Churchill then reflected that it might seem cynical to decide the fate of millions of people in such an offhand manner. Later generations have generally agreed with his self-criticism. Today's West would certainly never conclude such an agreement - but not because of any squeamishness or lack of cynicism on its part. Instead, the West, especially the US, could not conclude any agreement because in every case the only acceptable outcome would be 100% influence for itself. That is what Geoffrey Pyatt and his colleagues spend their entire careers trying to achieve - and, to a large extent, they succeed.
Reprinted with permission from RT .
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Joe Tedesky , July 14, 2018 at 10:00 pm
Miranda Keefe , July 14, 2018 at 11:31 pmHere is Rachel Maddow interviewing Victoria Nuland . now they bring out the big guns.
Rachel is disgusting. She brings on the architect of a coup as an expert? Was she always a NeoCon and just upset with W. because he was not on the Blue Team?
|
|
|
Jul 15, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Peter AU 1 , Jul 14, 2018 9:26:21 PM | 120
Daniel , Jul 14, 2018 8:20:45 PM | 113Daniel.
Energy was a part of it, but I think MH17 was more to do with keeping Russia separated from Europe. Russia and Europe coming together according to the grand chessboard as something that must not be allowed to occur under any circumstance.
The US was trying to get EU to sanction Russia for some time. MH17 was what was required to push EU to sanction Russia. I have the timeline of events.
From the 17th we were swamped with propaganda, victims bodies left laying in the sun, nasty Russia not letting anyone to the site, bellingcrap tracking how the Russians brought the launcher in, ect ect.This went on for two weeks, all this time US pushing EU to sanction Russia. Around the 29th-30th EU agreed to sanction Russia. On the 30th, the Ukrainian rada passed a law allowing the Australian and Dutch official teams to go to the site. On the night of the 30th, possibly on the 31st, before the official teams got to the site, the Ukies pushed an armored column up through Torez and into the crash zone. Sporadic fight occurred in and around the crash site from that time, until the Ukies were cleaned up at the Debaltseve cauldron. It was only then the the wreckage was lifted and carried away for reconstruction. For the last few months the Ukies had intermittently shelled the site from Debaltseve. No complaints to the Ukies from Australia nor Netherlands. It was all called Russian aggression.
Have read a bit of the Grand Chessboard now. The section titled Eurasia and also much of the conclusion section.
My takeaway at the moment is that was the era of Economic hegemony backed up by the export of US style democracy. Energy under that system was used if required to keep nations down, stop groups of nations forming together, basically prevent challenges to US economic hegemony. Wars were fought, countries destroyed to ensure the usage of the US dollar. Energy was just one of a number of tools used.
What I think the US is attempting for the coming era - Global energy dominance - is to simply squat on a major source of oil and hold much of Eurasia to ransom.
Doing it this way, the massive US military deployed throughout the world is no longer required, just small covert ops to sabotage competitors. Most of the old institutions needed to manage hegemony no longer required.Peter et al. I don't remember who posted the link to this wonderful article by KEES VAN DER PIJL Why Was Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 Shot Down?
It is well worth the read, in general, and it directly discusses your Global Energy Dominance thesis. It also brings it up to date compared to my tracing it back to the 1990s, if not the 1940s."In 2009 the EU had introduced a new energy policy, dubbed a 'Third Energy Package' . effectively forcing Gazprom to sell even the gas piped through the Ukrainian grid to other companies before it could enter the EU."Obviously, this raised the price of Russian gas to European countries.
"Even at the time of the Kiev coup, commentators wondered to what extent shale gas from the US might be used to offset Russian deliveries. LNG facilities planned in Florida and Maryland were projected to serve the European market at Gazprom's expense, a prospect meanwhile far more realistic.""As Mark Leonard, founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted in a newspaper interview a year later, 'without MH17 it would have been pretty difficult to find sufficient support for the increased sanctions on the Russian economy'."
And these sanctions were specifically aimed at the Russian energy industry.
"The downing of Flight MH17 also definitively sealed the fate of South Stream. Russian banks financing the project, led by Gazprombank, were hit by new sanctions, so that the necessary capital could no longer be raised internationally."So here we have a concerted program, from at least 2009, intended to reduce Russia's role in the Global Energy market, and set up US LNG to compete directly with the RF.
|
|
|
Jul 12, 2018 | www.unz.com
But to not only ignore the February 2014 coup in Ukraine that initiated recent hostilities between the U.S. and Russia, but to also put the blame on the latter's "aggressive behavior," is at best laughable and at worst dishonest. In February of 2014 the democratically elected government of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the United States government, an event Chait and his peers do their best to forget . Russia's subsequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula (containing the Russian naval base at Sevastopol) was a wholly reactive measure. To say the recent estrangement was triggered by anything else than western aggressive behavior is factually inaccurate.
Quartermaster , July 12, 2018 at 12:48 pm GMT
hyperbola , Next New Comment July 12, 2018 at 6:21 pm GMTBut to not only ignore the February 2014 coup in Ukraine that initiated recent hostilities between the U.S. and Russia, but to also put the blame on the latter's "aggressive behavior," is at best laughable and at worst dishonest.
You lost me at that point. There was no coup in 2014. That's simply a Putinist lie. Yanukovich ran when he was going to be brought to book for the murders he ordered on the Maidan. He was interviewed last year and was completely evasive when it came to questions about the killings he ordered. He's now a fugitive from justice and was righteously removed from office when he ran for asylum in Russia.
It's long past time for idiots like yourself to get the facts and quit parroting Putin's lies.
@QuartermasterWhy I Quit the Democratic Party Yesterday
I left the Democratic Party yesterday, because I cannot support the first American President who ever installed anywhere in the world a nazi regime -- it has never happened before, not even under a Republican President; and, until Obama, I had always assumed that if it ever would happen, it could come only under a Republican President, never under any Democratic one. But I was wrong -- mortifyingly wrong -- because Barack Obama did this in Ukraine (see here and here for the evidence); he is the first-ever U.S. President to install a nazi regime anywhere, and so I wrote to my Representative seeking Obama's impeachment by the Democrats in Congress; and, yesterday, that person, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, told me that, notwithstanding Barack Obama's having unquestionably done this, this Democratic Representative will not introduce on the floor of the U.S. House (which is the only place where a bill of impeachment can be introduced) a bill of impeachment against this -- what is the appropriate term for such a person, if not a -- nazi U.S. President. (That's nazi as an ideology, racist fascist, not as a party designation, which is merely a party's name.) Simply because Obama calls himself a 'Democrat,' that Representative in the House will not introduce a bill to impeach him. There was no argument on the facts; the facts weren't at issue here at all; it's just that Obama calls himself a 'Democrat.' That's all ..
Ukraine's Pres. Poroshenko Says Overthrow of Yanukovych Was a Coup
Participants in 2014 Ukrainian coup confess
http://washingtonsblog.com/2017/11/participants-2014-ukrainian-cup-confess.html
.. The Italian newspaper Il Giornale, and Italian Mediaset Matrix TV, Chanel 5, issued, on November 15th, confessions by a few of the snipers who on 20 February 2014 fired down into the crowd of "Maidan" demonstrators and police, in order "to sow chaos," as they say that they had been instructed to do.
The Georgian mercenary Alexander Revazishvilli said: "Everyone started shooting two or three shots at a time. It went on for fifteen, twenty minutes. We had no choice. We were ordered to shoot both on the police and the demonstrators, without any difference." This account is entirely consistent with the leaked phone-conversation on 26 February 2014 in which Urmas Paet, the investigator whom the EU had assigned to determine whom to blame for the snipers and their massive bloodshed during the overthrow, informed the EU's Foreign Affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, that the anti-Yanukovych, pro-U.S. and pro-EU side, were to blame, and that Paet had just been informed of this by Petro Poroshenko (who shortly thereafter became elected as Ukraine's figurehead President). Paet said: ..
Oliver Stone Exposes US Coup d'etat In Ukraine
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/01/17/oliver-stone-exposes-us-coup-detat-ukraine/
How and Why the US Government Perpetrated the 2014 Coup in Ukraine
|
|
|
Jul 09, 2018 | www.unz.com
ALCvA , July 9, 2018 at 5:11 am GMT
I don't know what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on 17 July 2014 nor do I know what happed to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370/MAS370 on 8 March 2014. Except that my suspicion is aroused that there is a connection with these events and the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal which was established to oversee and investigate complaints from victims of wars and armed conflict in relation to crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other like offences as recognized under International Law.Kees van der Pijl , Website July 9, 2018 at 6:35 am GMTIn November 2011 the tribunal purportedly exercised universal jurisdiction to try in absentia former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, convicting both for crimes against peace because of what the tribunal concluded was the unlawful invasion of Iraq.
In May 2012 after hearing testimony for a week from victims of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the tribunal unanimously convicted in absentia former President Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Deputy Assistant Attorneys General John Yoo and Jay Bybee, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former counsellors David Addington and William Haynes II of conspiracy to commit war crimes, specifically torture. The tribunal referred their findings to the chief prosecutor at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
In November 2013, the tribunal convicted State of Israel guilty of genocide of the Palestinian people and convicted former Israeli general Amos Yaron for crimes against humanity and genocide for his involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
Thus, my conspiratorial mind suspects that there is a connection between the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal's convictions and the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370/MAS370 and Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.
The problem is that the convictions by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunals are little known and were never reported by the mainstream media.
@ALCvAjilles dykstra , July 9, 2018 at 6:41 am GMTI also have this in the book, with the same details, and after a discussion that also includes Malaysia's arms purchases in Russia, I write 'But we should be reminded that we are looking at a 'systems event', a conditional structure of great complexity, in which even factors that are highly unlikely to have been the cause (such as punishing Malaysia or killing Putin) may yet have played a role, at some point, in overcoming moral or other barriers.'
" However, irrespective of the actual perpetrator, and whether it was an intentional act or an accident, there is no doubt about the West's intent to exploit the event to the maximum. "jilles dykstra , July 9, 2018 at 6:51 am GMTThe key sentence.
Dutch vice first minister Asscher at the time of the disaster was on vacation in the south of France.
This fool, in a Dutch tv show, explained the need for secrecy, in the afternoon of the day of the MH17 disaster prime minister Rutte called Asscher on his mobile, and asked him to call back on a land line 'so that the Russians could not listen in'.
Until now no Dutch people's representative dared to ask Rutte what was so secret then that the Russians had tobe prevented from listening in.
The only thing I can think of is that Rutte told Asscher 'we want the Russians to get the blame'.It is interesting to see how the MH17 propaganda follows the example of the holocaust propaganda.
Monuments, remembrances, accusations, but never any concrete facts.
One might also say 'follows the Sept 11 propaganda'.
As a USA politician said 'MH17 is the Dutch Sept 11′.I did not read the article carefully, so I do not know if it mentions that suspect Ukraine is part of the investigation organisation, or that Ukraine spied on the investigation.
But the essential question remains, except for an accident, why would Russia shoot down a passenger plane ?
Putin is not stupid, he does not do things that just harm him.@ALCvAWizard of Oz , July 9, 2018 at 9:04 am GMTIn a Dutch talkshow the chairman of the Dutch airline pilots organisation Benno Baksteen mentioned casually that aboard MH370 there were two groups of Chinese technicians specialised in making planes invisible for radar.
Nowhere in the media this was picked up, Benno Baksteen never again was on tv, and, as far as I know, he's no longer chairman.
My theory on MH17: control of the plane was taken from the crew from outside, this is possible since early 2001.
It was directed direction Antarctica, until is crashed, lack of fuel.
The second pilot tried to use his mobile phone to make contact, however, this is not possible, a passenger plane flies simply to fast, there was a connection, but before he could say anything the plane was too far away.
Also one of the Sept 11 problems.
So, following the old question 'who benefitted', it is clear for me who the suspect is.@anonjilles dykstra , July 9, 2018 at 11:24 am GMTIndeed, after noting the Marxistish approach I wondered how reliable he would be on key facts if tested. It wasn't encouraging to find him writing that the Dutch Safety Board's report could be "conveniently [sic] dismissed". As the critical account of a presentation by him that I shall post below notes he doesn't seem to know the difference between the Dutch Safety Board's technical investigation and report and the Joint Investigation Team's work on the criminal aspects of the case. That is pretty elementary and leaves him looking like someone who could only wave his hands when it is pointed out that the DSB made a compelling case that MH17 was brought down by a BUK missile fired by someone not named.
He seems to be a retired professor keen to be noticed so his air fares will be paid and his book with a title which also mentions MH17 will sell.
Anyway here is a useful critique slightly truncated from
http://www.whathappenedtoflightmh17.com/presentation-van-kees-van-der-pijl-on-ukraine-and-mh17/
showing pretty well what a BS artist the author is
What happened to flight MH17?
Presentation van Kees van der Pijl on Ukraine and MH17
Posted on September 23, 2017 by admin in Uncategorized // 4 Comments@Wizard of OzTom Welsh , July 9, 2018 at 11:55 am GMT" DSB made a compelling case that MH17 was brought down by a BUK missile fired by someone not named. "
A weird compelling case.
They say they know who did it, a Russian officer, name and photograph have been publicised here, but they've been unable to ask him why he did it.
Any normal criminal investigation begins with motive, here at the end the motive still is lacking.
I am not in the least convinced.
The motive, except when it was an accident, lies in the west, the Netherlands objected most to sanctions.
About a possible accident, Ukraine seems to have misused overflying passenger planes as shield for its bombers.
But, the Ukrainian pilot said to have shot down MH17 committed suicide.
If he did it, he did what a fighter pilot on a illegal mission would have done, target the cockpit from behind, no possibility of an emergency signal.
If it was a BUK, it did what a fighter pilot would have done.
But a BUk flies vertical at a speed of 4500 kmh, a passenger plane at some 900.
Why did not the BUK hit from beneath ?
All in all, indeed a very compelling case, as the murder of Kennedy, Sept 11, Diana, etc"In February 2016 that assertion had still been dismissed as unfit for evidence by the Dutch chief prosecutor on the JIT, Fred Westerbeke, in a letter to victims' relatives. How can it possibly have become the core component of the case for the prosecution two years and two months later?"FB , July 9, 2018 at 11:56 am GMTThat is extremely puzzling – indeed, inexplicable – if you believe that the object of the exercise is to determine the truth and to see justice done. But it isn't.
As long ago as Plato's "Politeia" ("Republic"), a widely-held view was that "justice is the will of the stronger", as Thrasybulos argues in that dialogue. As far as I can see, that is still the most popular view, and it is certainly the one supported by Western governments. (The Skripal affair is another prominent case in point: the UK government declared who was guilty without the tedious formalities of investigation, indictment, and trial).
The real object of the Western elites – as embodied in the statements of their servants in government and the media – is to control public opinion. In this endeavour, precise accuracy, consistency and objective truth are not only unnecessary hindrances – they are positive handicaps. The purpose is to imprint on the dim public consciousness some desired certainties, such as that Russia is aggressive and barbarous, that Mr Putin is a wicked soulless murderer, and so on.
That is not done by proving a case to courtroom standards. It is done by loudly repeating memorable and emotional slogans, over and over, until everyone vaguely internalizes them and anyone who dares to disagree is attacked for disloyalty.
Hence the change in value of the Bellingcat assertions referred to by the quoted passage is not only unsurprising – it is exactly what we should expect. Yesterday's completely unproven allegation is today's generally known fact.
Wow what a tremendous article from a bona fide scholarI have not yet seen anywhere such an accurate and succinct overview of the geopolitical history of the post-1991 era anywhere
There is something that is not clear though the author mentions a 'land for gas' deal discussed by Putin and Merkel on the sidelines of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil
' Its tentative provisions included normalising the status of Crimea in exchange for a massive economic rehabilitation plan and a gas price rebate for Ukraine '
I have no idea what this actually means an 'economic rehabilitation plan for whom ? and what does 'normalization' of Crimea's status mean recognition of Crimea's rejoining the Russian Federation ?
I look forward to reading the author's book
|
|
|
Jul 09, 2018 | www.unz.com
Four years ago, on 17 July 2014, in the midst of a civil war raging in eastern Ukraine, Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was destroyed with all 298 passengers and crew. On 25 May last, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) entrusted with the criminal investigation of the downing and composed of the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and paradoxically, given its possible involvement, Ukraine, presented its second progress report. Like the first report in September 2016, it took the form of a press conference, with video animations supporting the investigation's findings. This time there was even less to report; the main conclusion was that elements from the Russian 53rd Buk missile brigade were the culprits, a claim already made by the London-based investigative group Bellingcat two years before. In February 2016 that assertion had still been dismissed as unfit for evidence by the Dutch chief prosecutor on the JIT, Fred Westerbeke, in a letter to victims' relatives. How can it possibly have become the core component of the case for the prosecution two years and two months later?
The JIT press conference was immediately followed by a formal declaration on the part of the Dutch and Australian governments that held Russia responsible. However, JIT member Malaysia dissociated itself from the accusation, whilst Belgium has remained silent. The obviously over-hasty conclusion, on the heels of the alleged Skripal nerve gas incident in Salisbury and the likewise contested Syrian government gas attack on jihadist positions in Douma, all point in the same direction: Putin's Russia must be kept under fire and there is no time to wait for a court verdict.
ORDER IT NOW
In my book Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War. Prism of Disaster (Manchester University Press), I have refrained from entering the slippery terrain of making claims about who pulled the trigger, intentionally or by accident, in the late afternoon of 17 July, or even which type of weapon was used. For the downing of the Malaysian plane has become part of a propaganda war that was already heating up prior to the catastrophe. Instead the book is about what we do know about the events surrounding it, in the preceding months, weeks, and days, indeed even on the day itself. Subsequent events have only underlined that it is this context that lends meaning to the tragedy.
Refocusing US Supremacy After the Soviet Collapse
Today, Western imperialism projects its global power, as far as capital is concerned, primarily from the perspective of speculative, financial asset investment. Long gone are the days of class and international compromise forced upon it after World War Two. Instead, the predatory instincts of dominant financial capital require forcibly opening up all states for commodification and exploitation. Given the global spread of product and commodity chains, the continued flow of profits to the West cannot be taken for granted as long as effective state sovereignty elsewhere persists. For the liberal, Anglophone heartland of capital, 'defence' is therefore not merely, or even primarily, a matter of upholding the territorial integrity of the states constituting it, but keeping open the arterial system of the global economy and maintaining the centrality of the West. Regime change is a logical corollary, and from this perspective we must view the coup in Ukraine in February 2014 and all ensuing events, including the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17.
Right from the Soviet collapse in 1991, the US global perspective was articulated in several new strategic doctrines. The first and perhaps foundational one is the Wolfowitz Doctrine, named after Paul Wolfowitz, undersecretary of defence in the Bush Sr. administration, who commissioned a Defence Planning Guidance for Fiscal 1994-'99 (DPG) of 1992. It proclaims the United States the world's sole superpower, which must remain ahead of all possible contenders in arms technology and never again accept military parity, as with the USSR during the Cold War. The newly self-confident European Union, too, was obliquely warned that the US alone would handle global policing.
Additional doctrines, specifying on which grounds armed US intervention might be undertaken and justified, added elements such as humanitarian intervention (a Carnegie Endowment report of 1992, Self-Determination in the New World Order ); it was applied in Yugoslavia and again in Libya. Next, the'War on Terror', originally floated at Israeli Likud/US Neocon conferences between 1979 and 1984, was revived after the collapse of the USSR as the 'Clash of Civilizations' by Cold War strategist Samuel Huntington; Afghanistan and Iraq stand as monuments of the application of this doctrine. Finally, Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard of 1997 specifically dealt with reorganising the former USSR, including Ukraine.
Through the different episodes, NATO was transformed into a global policing structure serving the interests of Atlantic capital. 'Out of area operations', unthinkable in the Yalta epoch, were first tried out against the Bosnian Serbs in the mid-1990s. The enlargement of the alliance into the former Soviet bloc, which began around that time too, was obviously motivated to prevent European departures from US tutelage, hence its bold forward surge. Already in 1994, Ukraine became the first former Soviet republic to join the Partnership for Peace, the newly created waiting room for NATO membership. To quell Russian concerns about the advancing West, the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 laid down that no nuclear weapons and permanent troop deployments would take place in new member states. Yet Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova not long afterwards joined a low-key organisation of former Soviet republics (after the initials, GUAM), another oblique link up with NATO.
Mobilising Georgia and Ukraine against Resurgent Russia
Russia under Yeltsin had effectively surrendered its sovereignty to transnational capital and the West and as a result was left a social and economic disaster zone. Under his successor, Vladimir Putin, the country began to mutate back to a society led by a directive state, assisted by rising oil prices. After the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and announced a missile defence system deployed in the CzechRepublic, Poland, and Rumania, Russia shifted to a more robust international position. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq on a false pretext made abundantly clear that the West was abandoning the rules of the post-war international order. 'Democracy promotion' intended to prevent national sovereignty from being mobilised against Western global governance, was now made a priority. The 'Rose Revolution' in Georgia in 2003 and the 'Orange Revolution' a year later in Ukraine, marked the lengths to which the United States was willing to go.
Yet even a colour revolution means little if there is no accompanying make-over of the fundamental state/society relation. Hence, the incoming policy planning director at the US State Department, Stanford professor Stephen Krasner, and Carlos Pascual, former US ambassador in Kiev, developed a comprehensive regime change doctrine in 2004. This would prove a key element in the subsequent Ukraine intervention. To ensure that countries incorporated into the US-NATO sphere of influence, really became neoliberal client states, Pascual and Krasner devised a strategy for preventive intervention with a rulebook listing the measures by which 'market democracy' was to be established. Ukraine was a key target and battleground, because by now, Russia was beginning to contest Western forward pressure.
At the Munich Security Conference in January 2007, Putin reminded his audience of the promises made to Gorbachev in 1991 not to expand the Atlantic alliance and warned that further attempts at enlargement (the Baltic states having been included in 2004) would imply great risks. Yet NATO and the EU were inexorably pressing forward. At the Bucharest NATO summit in April 2008 the Americans made the offer of NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine, only to have the offer vetoed by Germany and France. Possibly to force the issue, the pro-Western president brought to power by the Rose Revolution in Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, armed and encouraged by the US and Israel, later that year embarked on a military adventure to recapture the breakaway province of South Ossetia. It ended in a complete debacle, as a Russian army stood ready in North Ossetia to deal the invaders a major, if very costly, blow. This, then, was what Richard Sakwa calls, 'the war to stop NATO enlargement'. From now on, every post-Soviet republic tempted to join the Atlantic alliance would have to reckon with Russian protection for groups resisting such integration, irrespective of whether it concerned actual Russians or any other of the almost two hundred nationalities of the former USSR.
The EU-Russian Energy Equation and Ukraine
The gas from Russia that feeds Europe today was discovered back in the 1960s; the Friendship oil pipeline was built in 1964 and the Soyuz, Urengoi and Yamal pipelines followed after West Germany started purchasing Soviet gas. The link-up culminated in 1980 with the contract for a gas pipeline from Urengoi in north Siberia to Bavaria, signed by a heavy-industry consortium headed by Deutsche Bank.
After the collapse of the USSR, Russian gas had to pass through the pipeline grid of independent Ukraine, which in the meantime had become the prey of rival clans of oligarchs. For most of them, gas was the key source of rapid enrichment -- directly, as in the case of subsequent prime minister Yuliya Timoshenko, 'the Gas Princess', or indirectly, by supplying steel pipes for gas transport, as in the case of president Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law, Victor Pinchuk, the 'Pipeline King'. The economic mismanagement and infighting of the different oligarchic clans in Ukraine led to payment arrears and repeated shutdowns of the gas supply from Russia, and Gazprom, the state-owned Russian gas company, early on began to look for ways to bypass the Ukrainian grid.
After Putin had come to power, he disciplined the Russian oligarchs as part of the restoration of state sovereignty. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the energy oligarch and richest of all Russian billionaires at the time, at the time was buying support in the Duma to build a trans-Siberian pipeline to China; whilst negotiating with ExxonMobil and Chevron about US participation in his Yukos concern, which he planned to merge with Sibneft into the world's largest oil company. In 2005 he was convicted to a long prison sentence. Yukos was brought back into the Russian patrimony via a proxy construction involving state-owned Rosneft and Gazprom, as part of broader subordination of the economy to the state.
Gazprom meanwhile began building alliances to avoid future disruption of supplies via Ukraine and secure its European market. In 2005 it agreed with the outgoing government of Gerhard Schröder to build a pipeline across the Baltic directly to Germany, 'Nord Stream', with a consortium of German companies. Schröder was made the chairman of the board of the joint venture, Achimgaz, and two years later, a South Stream pipeline across the Black Sea to Bulgaria was contracted with ENI of Italy. It was to be extended into south-eastern Europe as far as Austria. In this way Gazprom and the Russian state were outmanoeuvring various EU projects for pipelines aimed at by-passing Russia. Indeed it was the EU's plan to use a Nabucco pipeline across Turkey to connect to the Caspian energy reserves that prompted the $40 billion South Stream project. Romano Prodi, prime minister of Italy, who first discussed South Stream with Putin in late 2006, was offered the chairmanship, which he declined, perhaps in the knowledge the project would become highly contested.
The Eurasian connection by now posed a direct threat to the cohesion of the enlarged Atlantic bloc. Besides Nord Stream and South Stream, Gazprom's collaboration with NIOC of Iran and a joint venture with ENI in Libya set all alarm bells ringing in Washington. Already in May 2006, a few months after the gas shutdown to Ukraine, the US Senate unanimously adopted a resolution calling on NATO to protect the energy security of its members and have it develop a diversification strategy away from Russia. Senator Richard Lugar in a much-noted speech prior to the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, in November 2006, argued in favour of designating the manipulation of the energy supply as a 'weapon' that can activate Article 5 of the NATO treaty (common defence).
In a report to the European Parliament in 2008, the director of the EurasianPolicyCenter of the Hudson Institute in the US recommended that the EU should assist in liberalising and modernising the Ukrainian grid instead of supporting South Stream. Tension in the Black Sea area, her report noted candidly, might serve the purpose of blocking that pipeline altogether. However, after the 2010 election of president Victor Yanukovych, the front man of the powerful eastern and southern oligarchs, the lease of Russia's Crimean naval base at Sebastopol, home of its Black Sea fleet, had been extended to 2042, so the prospects for stirring up unrest there were mitigated by Moscow's enduring naval preponderance.
Regime Change in Kiev
One aspect of the resurgence of a sovereign Russia was the plan for a Eurasian economic union to rebuild relations with former Soviet republics (Ukraine obtained observer status early on). The EU's Eastern Partnership was a direct response. It was offered to former Soviet republics in 2008, in a gesture that signalled that Europe now effectively acted as a subcontractor to the larger anti-Russian design drafted in Washington. Concretely, the EU offered Ukraine and other former Soviet republics an Association Agreement that also included provisions for the country's alignment on NATO security policy, besides a neoliberal make-over in the spirit of the Krasner-Pascual doctrine. The envisaged reforms would be devastating for the country's existing power structure, not least for the Donbass oligarchs whose front man was Yanukovych. Their heavy industry assets would be swept away by EU competition, the country turned into an agricultural supplier, and Russian gas cut off.
Hence, when both the EU and Russia sought to win over Yanukovych to join their respective blocs and Brussels ruled out the triangular arrangement by which the Ukrainian president had hoped to postpone the choice, he could not but step back from signing the EU Association Agreement in November 2013 and accept a Russian counteroffer. By then, 'Europe' had become a code word for an end to oligarchic rapaciousness, in which Yanukovych and his sons had become involved as well. The president's decision triggered mass demonstrations and occupations, which this time included an armed insurrection by Ukrainian ultra-nationalists in the historically anti-Russian west of the country. It created the space for actual fascists to hijack the protests and prepare a coup. By their use of deadly force at the Maidan central square (ascribed by the coup plotters and in the West to the riot police), the Ukrainian ultras demonstrated they were ready to kill their own compatriots to achieve their aims.
To prevent the situation from getting out of hand completely, the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland flew to Kiev on 20 February 2014. However, whilst they negotiated a deal with Yanukovych and the opposition, the US and other NATO ambassadors met with Andriy Parubiy, the co-founder of the fascist party of Ukraine and former head of its militia, Patriot of Ukraine . Parubiy, today the speaker of the Kiev parliament, was in command of the armed gangs at the Maidan; two days later these took power in the capital, installing a government of Ukrainian nationalist stripe, selected by US diplomats. Parubiy was appointed secretary of the National Security and Defence Council (NSDC), a key post overseeing all military and intelligence operations, which he continued to hold until three weeks after the downing of MH17. With the Russian-Ukrainian half of the country effectively disenfranchised, the coup was responded to by the secession of Crimea and an armed insurrection in the Donbass. Stirrings of revolt in Odessa and Mariupol would be suppressed with deadly violence, in which Parubiy and other far right figures were directly involved.
Confronting the BRICS in Ukraine
From late March onwards the war party in the United States and NATO began to elaborate a strategy that would make Ukraine the testing ground for a trial of strength with Russia and China. The secession of Crimea and its re-incorporation into the Russian Federation was exploited to evoke the spectre of an impending Russian invasion on several fronts. General Philip Breedlove, commander of US Eucom (European Command, one of nine regional US military commands spanning the globe) and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (Saceur), coordinated the Western position with General Wesley Clark, a former NATO Saceur at the time of the Yugoslavia wars. Clark was already advising Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine before the Donbass had actually risen in revolt. On 12April he asked Breedlove whether the NATO commander could not arrange a statement blaming Moscow for the violence because ' if the Ukrainians lose control of the narrative , the Russians will see it as an open door'. Clark then elaborated on the general geopolitical situation, giving further insights into why the war party in the US believed that Ukraine was to be 'held' and chosen as a battle ground to confront Russia and China. No time was wasted on market democracy here. Claiming that 'Putin has read US inaction in Georgia and Syria as US "weakness",' Clark went on to explain that
China is watching closely. China will have four aircraft carriers and airspace dominance in the Western Pacific within 5 years, if current trends continue. And if we let Ukraine slide away, it definitely raises the risks of conflict in the Pacific. For, China will ask, would the US then assert itself for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, the South China Sea? If Russia takes Ukraine, Belarus will join the Eurasian Union, and, presto, the Soviet Union (in another name) will be back. Neither the Baltics nor the Balkans will easily resist the political disruptions empowered by a resurgent Russia. And what good is a NATO "security guarantee" against internal subversion? And then the US will face a much stronger Russia, a crumbling NATO, and [a] major challenge in the Western Pacific. Far easier to [hold] the line now, in Ukraine than elsewhere, later .
On the weekend of 13 to 14 April, CIA Director John Brennan was in the Ukrainian capital. The Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO, so called because the use of military force within the country is only warranted under that label) began right after Brennan's visit; Parubiy sent out a Twitter message on the 15th that veterans of the Maidan uprising were poised to join the fight. Since NATO had earlier implored Yanukovych not to use force against (armed) demonstrators, Moscow now asked the alliance to restrain the coup leaders in turn. But according to foreign minister Lavrov, the answer they got was that 'NATO would ask them to use force proportionately'.
In fact even the oligarch, Petro Poroshenko, elected president on 25 May 2014 to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the coup regime, proved unable to restrain the hardliners. On 30 June, following a four-hour NSDC meeting with Parubiy, interior minister Avakov, and others whose armed followers were demonstrating outside, Poroshenko declared that the ceasefire would be lifted and a new offensive launched. Three days later NATO naval manoeuvres in the Black Sea commenced with US participation and with electronic warfare a key component. On the ground, Kiev's forces made rapid progress, apparently drawing a ring around the large rebel city of Donetsk. NATO had its own concerns: an upcoming summit in Wales in September was expected to capitalise on the trope of a 'Russian invasion', vital after the Afghanistan debacle, and dovetailing with the emerging contest with the BRICS bloc.
The BRICS, coined first as a banker's gimmick, were never more than a loose collection of '(re-) emerging economies', but from Washington's perspective, sovereign entities not submitting to neoliberal global governance are unacceptable. So when on 16 July, the BRICS heads of state, hosted by the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff (removed by a rightwing conspiracy in May 2016), signed the statute establishing a New Development Bank, or BRICS bank, as a direct challenge to the US and Western-dominated World Bank and IMF, the US imposed new sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, specifically targeting the energy link with the EU. The creation of an equivalent of the World Bank with a capital of $100 billion with a reserve currency pool of the same size (an equivalent of the IMF), laid the groundwork of a contender pole in the global political economy challenging the West's austerity regime frontally -- or so it seemed at the time.
Still in Brazil before flying back to Moscow, Russian president Putin on the fringes of the football world cup finals also agreed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to pursue a comprehensive Land for gas deal. Its tentative provisions included normalising the status of Crimea in exchange for a massive economic rehabilitation plan and a gas price rebate for Ukraine. However, a special European Council meeting convened on the 16th could not reach agreement on whether the EU should follow the American lead this time, since countries with export interests to Russia and dependent on its gas, were balking. Instead, the Council stressed the EU's commitment 'to pursue trilateral talks on the conditions of gas supply from the Russian Federation to Ukraine' in order to 'safeguard the security of supply and transit of natural gas through Ukraine.'
The Downing of Flight MH17 and South Stream
The downing of MH17 on 17 July changed all that. As I said above, who did it and how remains obscure, although there are several pursued by people familiar with local circumstances, or revealed by insiders who know who which military assets were operating that day -- but all that remains inconclusive. The official reports by the Dutch Safety Board and the JIT may be conveniently dismissed although the DSB rightly pointed at the questionable decision by Kiev to allow civilian planes to fly over a war zone. However, irrespective of the actual perpetrator, and whether it was an intentional act or an accident, there is no doubt about the West's intent to exploit the event to the maximum.
Former secretary of state and then-presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in a TV interview on the 18th called for making 'Russia pay the price' once its culpability had been established. Her to-do list for the EU included, one, 'toughen sanctions'; two, find alternatives to Gazprom, and third, 'do more in concert with us to support the Ukrainians'. The 'Land for gas' negotiations were shelved and on the 22nd Europe dropped the remaining hesitations when it underwrote the US sanctions targeting Russia's role as an energy supplier. As Mark Leonard, founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted in a newspaper interview a year later, 'without MH17 it would have been pretty difficult to find sufficient support for the increased sanctions on the Russian economy' .
In 2009 the EU had introduced a new energy policy, dubbed a 'Third Energy Package'. It does not permit gas to be transported to the EU by the company producing it, effectively forcing Gazprom to sell even the gas piped through the Ukrainian grid to other companies before it could enter the EU. Nord Stream had still been exempted from EU competition rules, but the projected South Stream was not, never mind that most contracts with Gazprom had been signed before the Third Energy Package came into force. Even at the time of the Kiev coup, commentators wondered to what extent shale gas from the US might be used to offset Russian deliveries. LNG facilities planned in Florida and Maryland were projected to serve the European market at Gazprom's expense, a prospect meanwhile far more realistic.
The Crimean secession and incorporation into the Russian Federation obviously played its own role here. Crimea is a historically Russian region; having been assigned to Ukraine by a whim of Soviet party leader Khrushchev in 1954, it never reconciled itself to being part of an independent Ukraine. After the nationalist coup in late February, the status of the Russian naval base in Sebastopol was in the balance. In 1991, the Black Sea had been a Soviet/bloc inland sea, with one NATO country (Turkey) bordering it. Now there were two more NATO/EU countries and two pro-Western, aspiring NATO members on its littoral. So when one week after the coup, three former Ukrainian Presidents, Kravchuk, Kuchma, and Yushchenko, called on the coup government in Kiev to cancel the agreement under which the lease of Sebastopol, home to the Russian Black Sea fleet, had been extended to 2042, the question of who would be able to project naval power over the Black Sea became acute. The question now was whether Russia would be able to provide cover for a large-scale project such as South Stream, or not.
South Stream itself came into the firing line directly. The European Parliament, which never raised the issue of why the February agreement with Yanukovych the EU brokered had been sidelined by the coup, on 17 April 2014 adopted a non-binding resolution opposing the South Stream gas pipeline and recommended a search for alternative sources of gas. On 28 April, the United States imposed a ban on business transactions within its territory on seven Russian officials, including Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, as well as Gennady Timchenko, whose Volga Group controls Stroytransgaz, the company entrusted with building the Bulgarian section of South Stream. Nevertheless the Bulgarian parliament approved South Stream two weeks after the reincorporation of Crimea, circumventing the EU's anti-trust legislation by renaming the pipeline a 'sea-land connection'.The European Commission then instructed Bulgaria to stop work on South Stream and proceeded to cut off tens of millions of much-needed regional development funds, whilst the US ambassador warned Bulgarian companies against working with Timchenko. A final visit of US Senators John McCain and Ron Johnson, in combination with other punitive measures then led to the cancellation in early June. As Eric Draitser commented at the time, 'South Stream has become one of the primary battlegrounds in the economic war that the West is waging against Russia'.
The downing of Flight MH17 also definitively sealed the fate of South Stream. Russian banks financing the project, led by Gazprombank, were hit by new sanctions, so that the necessary capital could no longer be raised internationally. Putin earlier had hinted at moving the transit of gas for the EU to non-European countries; in August, it was reported there was a Plan B in the works to export via Turkey. On 1 December 2014, during a state visit to Ankara, the Russian president announced that in light of Western sanctions and the refusal of construction permits in the EU, South Stream would be replaced by a 'Turkish Stream' pipeline, besides the existing Blue Stream link. However, in November 2015, a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian fighter jet over northern Syria, throwing relations between Moscow and Ankara into a deep crisis and entailing the cancellation of Turkish Stream. This was only overcome after the July 2016 coup attempt against Erdoğan, in which Russia sided with the Turkish president, possibly even warning him in advance. Since the F-16 that shot down the Russian jet was part of a pro-NATO unit based at Inçirlik airbase that took part in the coup attempt, the incident over Syria would appear to fit in a framework that may also have decided the fate of Flight MH17: a provocation to throw relations with Russia into disarray, but we don't know for sure.
Regime Change in Moscow?
The MH17 disaster occurred in the context of a deep crisis, in which capitalist discipline as imposed from its historic epicentre in the West, has become primarily predatory, relying to an ever-greater extent on violence. Speculative financial operations in combination with the 'War on Terror' have spread economic risk and repression at home, war and regime change abroad. Human survival itself has been turned into a global gamble played out over the head of the affected populations for private gain. The West, led by the effectively bankrupt United States, increasingly relies on force to sabotage the formation of any alternative, something its own social formation can no longer bring forth. Even the most promising, potentially revolutionary IT and media developments coming out of Silicon Valley have been mortgaged by a planetary project of communications surveillance to safeguard US imperial positions.
Back in the 1980s, when it launched the second Cold War, the Reagan administration intended to destabilise the Soviet bloc and bring about regime change in Moscow. This is also the aim of the current, new Cold War. A 2015 Chatham House report, 'The Russian Challenge', discusses this in some detail. Although it concedes that the West cannot have an interest in Russia sliding into complete anarchy, neither should the Putin presidency be protected 'against change, whether managed or violent '. Therefore, 'whether Putin was ousted by an internal coup, by illness or by popular unrest , it would nevertheless be sensible for the West to give further thought to how it might deal with the consequences of regime change in Russia.'
Effective communication with the Russian people and the defence of human values beforehand would be essential for Western credibility Planning for the future ought, lastly, to cover the scenarios from changes of leadership within the current structures, to the emergence of a group ready to pursue structural reform in some sort of accountable dialogue with the Russian population, to regime collapse .
The president of the National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman, in a piece for the Washington Post in October 2016 suggested launching a new, sustained anti-Putin campaign, for which the contract killing of the journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, ten years earlier, might be used as a vignette.
For such a campaign, George Soros' Open Society Foundation can be trusted to have elaborated the 'civil society'/colour revolution scenarios, whilst identifying the groups that might be mobilised for their execution. The OSF plan of action for 2014-17, titled Russia Project Strategy , identifies Russian intellectuals active in Western academic and opinion networks, the Russian gay movement, and others as potential levers for civil society protest against the conservative bloc in power in Moscow. From the OSF documents hacked by the CyberBerkut collective, Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation emerges as the key beneficiary, and discussion portals and liberal media such as Echo of Moscow radio station, RBK news agency, and the newspaper Vedomosti, as the preferred channels to disseminate content.
There is no need to repeat that all this is part a powerful offensive to derail the loose contender bloc around China and Russia, which had constituted itself in the face of Western aggressiveness and crisis. The seizure of power in Ukraine as well as the secession of Crimea and the civil war in the east, which has meanwhile cost the lives of more than 13,000 people and displaced a million, as well as economic warfare against Russia by the US and the EU, have brought the danger of a large European war several steps closer. Whether the actual downing of Flight MH17 was an intentional, premeditated act or an accident, whether it involved a jet attack, an anti-aircraft missile, or both, ultimately cannot be established with certainty. Yet both the NATO war party and the coup regime in Kiev, which on many occasions has demonstrated that its ultra-nationalist and fascist antecedents are very much alive, would have been perfectly capable of such an act and had the means for it. Most importantly, they had the motive. Those in power in Kiev had several times already attempted to draw Moscow into the civil war, directly and through a NATO intervention. If this indeed was their aim, it would also have served the Atlantic bloc's determined and long-standing commitment to force continental Europe into an antagonistic relation with Russia.
In the current global conjuncture, even the tentative contender coalition combining the Eurasian Union, the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, constitutes an acute danger to a capitalist West in crisis. Whether the United States and NATO would therefore also be willing to take even greater risks than they are doing now is a prospect too frightening to contemplate. However, it must be confronted, or the fate of the 298 people on Flight MH17 may become that of humanity at large.
Kees van der Pijl is a Fellow, Centre for Global Political Economy and Professor Emeritus of the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex.
|
|
|
Jul 06, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Francis Lee , July 6, 2018 at 5:49 amMike Morrison , July 6, 2018 at 5:25 amUkraine: Fascism's toe-hold in Europe.
The tacit support given by the centre-left to the installation of the regime in Kiev should give them cause for concern.
Politics in the Ukraine can only be understood by reference to its history and ethnic and cultural make-up -- a make-up criss-crossed by lasting and entrenched ethnic, cultural and political differences. The country has long been split into the northern and western Ukraine, where Ukrainian is the official and everyday lingua franca, and the more industrialised regions of the east and south where a mixture of Russian speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians reside. Additionally, there has long been Hungarian and Romanian settlement in the west of the country, and a particularly important Polish presence, whose unofficial capital, Lviv, was once the Polish city of Lwow. The Russian Orthodox Church is the predominant form of Christianity in the East, whilst in the west the Christian tradition tends towards Roman Catholicism.
Politically the Eastern and Southern Oblasts (Regions) which includes the cities and centres of heavy industry, Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhe, Nikolayev, Kherson, Simferopol and Odessa, have tended to tilt towards Russia whilst the western regions have had a more western orientation. This has traditionally been reflected in the electoral division of the country. There is no party which can be considered 'national' in this respect, except ironically, the old Communist party, which of course is now banned. The major regional parties have been the Fatherland party of Yulia Tymoshenko (since renamed) and the former head of government, Arseniy Yatsenyuk as well as the ultra-nationalists predominantly in the west of the country, and the deposed Victor Yanukovich's Party of the Regions in the East (now defunct) along with its junior partner in the coalition, the Ukrainian Communist Party.
However, what is new since the coup in February 2014 there has been the emergence from the shadows of ultra-nationalist (fascist) parties and movements, with both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary (i.e.,military) wings. In the main 'Svoboda' or Freedom Party, and the paramilitaries of 'Right Sector' (Fuhrer: Dimitry Yarosh) who spearheaded the coup in Kiev; these have been joined or changed their names to inter alia the Radical Party, and Patriots of the Ukraine; this in addition to the punitive right-wing militias, such as the Azov Regiment responsible for numerous atrocities in the Don Bas.Suffice it to say, however, that these political movements and parties did not emerge from nowhere.
This far-right tradition has been historically very strong in the western Ukraine. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was first established in 1929 and brought together, war veterans, student fraternities, far-right groups and various other disoriented socially and political flotsam and jetsam under its banner. The OUN took its ideological position from the writings of one, Dymtro Dontsov, who, like Mussolini had been a socialist, and who was instrumental in creating an indigenous Ukrainian fascism based upon the usual mish-mash of writings and theories including Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, and Charles Maurras. Dontsov also translated the works of Hitler and Mussolini into Ukrainian.
The OUN was committed to ethnic purity, and relied on violence, assassination and terrorism, not least against other Ukrainians, to achieve its goal of a totalitarian and homogeneous nation-state. Assorted enemies and impediments to this goal were Communists, Russians, Poles, and of course -- Jews. Strongly oriented toward the Axis powers OUN founder Evhen Konovalets (1891-1938) stated that his movement was ''waging war against mixed marriages'', with Poles, Russians and Jews, the latter which he described as ''foes of our national rebirth''. Indeed, rabid anti-Semitism has been a leitmotif in the history of Ukrainian fascism, which we will return to below.
Konovelts himself was assassinated by a KGB hit-man in 1938 after which the movement split into two wings: (OUN-m) under Andrii Melnyk and, more importantly for our purposes (OUN-b) under Stepan Bandera. Both wings committed to a new fascist Europe. Upon the German invasion in June 1941, the OUN-b attempted to establish a Ukrainian satellite state loyal to Nazi Germany. Stepan Lenkavs'kyi the then chief propagandist of the OUN-b 'government' advocated the physical destruction of Ukrainian Jewry. OUN-b's 'Prime Minister' Yaroslav Stets'ko, and deputy to Bandera supported, ''the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the like.''
During the early days of the rapid German advance into the Soviet Union there were some 140 pogroms in the western Ukraine claiming the lives of between 13000-35000 people (Untermensch, in fascist terminology). In 1943-1944 OUN-b and its armed wing the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska povstanska armia -- UPA) carried out large scale ethnic cleansing resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands; this was a particularly gruesome affair in Volhynia where some 90000 Poles and thousands of Jews were murdered. The campaign of the UPA continued well into the 1950s until it was virtually wiped out by the Soviet forces.
It should be said that during this early period Bandera himself had been incarcerated by the German authorities up until his release in 1944, since unlike Bandera they were not enamoured of an independent Ukrainian state but wanted total control. Bandera was only released at this late date since the German high command was endeavouring to build up a pro-German Ukrainian quisling military force to hold up the remorseless advance of the Red Army. Also pursuant to this it is also worth noting that during this period the 14th Galizian Waffen SS Division, a military Ukrainian collaborationist formation established by Heinrich Himmler, was formed to fight the Soviet forces, and yet another being the Nachtingal brigade; (1) this unit was integrated into the 14th Galizian in due course. It is also interesting to note, that every year, and up to 2014 commemoration ceremony including veterans of this unit takes place with a march through Lviv in an evening torchlight parade -- genuine Nazi pastiche. The flag of this unit is not dissimilar to the Peugeot logo, the standing lion, and can be seen at ultra-nationalist rallies as well as football matches involving Lviv Karparti FC. There are also numerous statues of Bandera across Ukraine, and since the 2014 coup even street names bearing the same name. Significantly the UPA have now received political rehabilitation from the Kiev Junta, with Bandera declared a hero of the Ukraine and the UPA rebranded as 'freedom fighters.' One particularly splendid statue of Bandera stands proudly in Lviv and is usually adorned with flowers.
Other novel attractions the capital of Banderestan include 'Jewish themed restaurants' one such is Kryivka (Hideout or Lurking Hole) where guests have a choice of dishes and whose dinning walls are decorated with larger than life portraits of Bandera, the toilet with Russian and Jewish anecdotes. At another Jewish themed restaurant guests are offered black hats of the sort worn by Hasidim. The menu lists no prices for the dishes; instead, one is required to haggle over highly inflated prices ''in the Jewish fashion''. Yes, it's all good clean fun in Lviv. Anti-Semitism also sells. Out of 19 book vendors on the streets of central Lviv, 16 were openly selling anti-Semitic literature. About 70% of the anti-Semitic publications in Ukraine are being published by and educational institution called MUAP (The Inter-Regional Academy of Personnel Management). MAUP is a large, well-connected and increasingly powerful organization funded from outside anti-Semite sources, and also connected to White Supremacist groups in the USA and to the David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
(It is one of the ironies of history that if the Zionists in AIPAC and the Washington neo-con think tanks, and the Labour Party Friends of Israel, were so concerned about anti-Semitism, they might try looking for it in Lviv. They wouldn't have to search very far.)
Present day neo-Nazi groupings in Ukraine -- Svoboda (Freedom) party and Right Sector -- have been the direct descendants from the prior ideological cesspool. Heading Svoboda is Oleh Tyahnybok. Although these are separate organizations Tyahnybok's deputy Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn is the main link between Svoboda's official wing and neo-Nazi militias like Right Sector. The Social-Nationalist party as it was formerly known chose as its logo an amended version of the Wolfsangel, a symbol used by many SS divisions on the Eastern front during the war who in 2004 a celebration of the OUN-UPA, stated in 2004, that ''they fought against the Muscovite, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.'' And further that ''Ukraine was ruled by a Muscovite-Jewish mafia.'' Tyahnybok came under pressure from the then President, Yuschenko, to retract his inflammatory statements, which he did, but he then retracted the retraction!Given the fact that Svoboda was, apart from its stamping grounds in the west, making little national electoral headway, it was essential to clean up its image and deny its Nazi past. But this was always going to be difficult since the members of such groups cannot help the unscripted outbursts and faux pas which they tend to make and which reveals their true colours. For example, following the conviction and sentencing of John Demjanjuk to five years in jail for his role as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death camp, Tyahnybok travelled to Germany and met up with Demjanjuk's lawyer, presenting the death camp guard as a hero, a victim of persecution ''who is fighting for truth''.
And so it goes on. We can therefore infer that this organization is inveterate fascist. More disturbing Svoboda has links with the so-called Alliance of National European Movements, which includes: Nationaldemokraterna of Sweden, Front Nationale of France, Fiamma Tricolore in Italy, the Hungarian Jobbik and the Belgian National Front. More importantly Svoboda held several ministerial portfolios in the Kiev administration, and Right Sector swaggers around Kiev streets with impunity, and/or are being drafted into a National Guard to deal with the separatist movements in the east, or to beat down anyone who doesn't conform to their Ayran racial and political ideals.
One would have thought that this mutating revolution in the Ukraine would have drawn attention of the centre-left to the fact that fascism had gained a vital beachhead in Europe, and that the danger signals should be flashing. But not a bit of it; a perusal of the Guardian newspaper quickly reveals that their chief concern has been with a non-existent 'Russian threat'. One of their reporters -- or old friend, Luke Harding -described Right Sector as an ''eccentric group of people with unpleasant right-wing views.'' Priceless! This must rank as the political understatement of the century. In fact, the Guardian was simply reiterating the US-imposed neo-conservative foreign policy. But naturally, this is par for the course.
(1) The Nachtingal brigade, which was later incorporated into the SS Galizien, took part in a three-day massacre of the Jewish population of Lvov (now Lviv) from 30 June 1941. Roman Shukhevych was the commander of the Nachtingal and later, in 1943, became commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the "Banderivtsy", or UPA/UIA[5] ), armed henchmen of the fascist Stepan Bandera, who after the war pretended that they had fought both Nazis and Communists. Members of the division are also accused of having murdered some 800 residents of the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka and 44 civilians in the village of Ch?aniów.
KiwiAntz , July 6, 2018 at 4:29 amIsrael is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-arming-neo-nazis-ukraine/24876
mrtmbrnmn , July 6, 2018 at 12:19 amAnother successful US Coup to be ticked off the list by the American Govt, such as what happened in Ukraine! And US support of Nazi's to achieve this, no problem as we created ISIS & ISIL & we arm Terrorists to the teeth to fight Assad in Syria! It never ceases to amaze me how America has the absolute, bare faced cheek & hypocrisy to accuse other Countries such as Russia of election meddling! It's the pot calling the kettle black scenario! For decades America has meddled in other Nations affairs either by supporting Tyrants & Dictators or committing illegal Wars & coups to overthrow democratically elected Govts & their Leaders! Anyone who offers resistance to US tyranny such as Cuba, Iran, Venezuela etc are sanctioned with soft power means to overthrow them in order to force compliance with US demands or face economic ruin! Or hard power is used such as Military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan & Libya! Only Russia & China stand in the way to stop this illegal behaviour & are spearheading the way to a multipolar world & Trump is accelerating America's decline & isolation which will be a great thing for every Peace loving person on Earth who are sick to death of US interference & Warmongering in other Nations affairs! Make America mind it's own business again & stop waging war, should be Trump's motto!
MBeaver , July 6, 2018 at 5:01 amKudos to Daniel Lazare for continuing the truth-telling about the US-engineered (not-so neo) Nazi coup in Ukraine. The great Robert Perry never ceased to write that truth.
Every time I see the phrase "Putin invaded Crimea" (or something similar) in the MSM amen corner reporting on Ukraine or Putin, it is the "tell" that lies and propaganda are being spewed.
michael , July 6, 2018 at 12:48 amNot the first time either they used Nazis as their lackeys. Aside from the several Nazi helpers after the war, that they pardoned because they promised to help the USA instead, they also used them for what they do best in Gladio. I wouldnt be surprised if even the NSU is a new version of Gladio in Germany. Evidence points to that direction for sure.
David G , July 5, 2018 at 10:12 pmNot sure how this article could be written without the role of Victoria Nuland and the US State Department discussed. Without America propping up these NAZIs, Ukraine could not have been destabilized, and divided between an uncaring EU and a historic protector in Russia.
Demetri Politis , July 5, 2018 at 9:07 pmCohen got another piece on the topic published by the Atlantic Council. The droll headline reads:
"Ukraine's Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn't Write This Headline)"
So at least they're a little self-conscious about the about-face.
Jerry Alatalo , July 6, 2018 at 1:36 amThe Maidan affair was planned, organized and financed by the USA. This was not the first time we tried to have regime change in Ukraine. In 2004 we organized "the orange revolution", but it did not succeed. So this time we came better prepared. We brought in armed thugs. We used Sloboda and Right Sector, brought the paid scum to Hotel Ukraina and ordered them to shoot police and "demonstrators" to set the putch in motion to oust the elected president of Ukraine. These are proven facts. there are intercepted phone conversations that confirm them. The Foreing ministers of germany, France and Poland met with President Yanukovich and signed an agreement. He was going to form a new government and have early elections in December. But the USA did not like that. So Ms NUland, the Assistant Secretary for European Affairs called and told our Ambassador in Kiev "fuck the EU. We want Yatseniuk to be the Prime minister". So the putch was set in motion to make sure this time we will get what we wanted. Another phone call was intercepted. The EU Minister of Foreign Affairs called the Foreign Minister of Estonia who had just come back from a visit to Ukraine and asked him what learned. "I was told, he said, that all the shooting that killed civilians and policemen came fro the hotel Ukraina, which was occupied by Sloboda and Righe Sector", "I know", she replied. But as far as the US press and media, nothing reported. Really shameful.
Brad Owen , July 6, 2018 at 3:51 amDemetri,
People at the time of the bombshell leaked phone conversation -- between Estonia's Urmas Paet and the E.U.'s Catherine Ashton, (mistakenly and big time) believed the false flag coup blaming Yanukovich for the "Maidan Massacre" was totally blown out of the water. People in the West believed the propaganda Yanukovich massacred his own people, then Paet reveals it was "the opposition" responsible for the killings of both Ukraine police and civilians -- certainly THE story at that point in the unfolding development of the Ukraine turmoil -- , yet astonishingly not a single Western corporate media reported on the phone call.
Also astonishing was the (non)response during the call of Ms. Ashton after hearing Paet's facts. She un-energetically responded as if Paet had just told her he had a "wonderful breakfast this morning" instead of the whole Western narrative on Ukraine is dead wrong, something on the lines of "Oh, I didn't know that ", leaving it at that and without showing any (what would be expected) surprise, or curiosity by asking for much more detailed information. Ms. Ashton by her bizarre, completely unaffected response to what was absolutely shocking information at the time leads one to think she knew the truth about Maidan and the coup well before she took the call from Paet.
It was most certainly a profound lesson learned in the ability of the media and politicians to bury the largest, most important sets of facts imaginable -- intentionally and maliciously with respect to the people's right to know the fullest historical truth. Unfortunately, that capacity for "burying facts" has continued up until today, making Consortium News and other genuine truth-focused media platforms all the more necessary for exposing the lies.
Peace.
Frank Mintz , July 5, 2018 at 8:48 pmThe EU is just as complicit as the US; this is a Trans-Atlantic Empire cobbled together Post-WWII from newly acquired ( non-existent before WWII) American military might and the ruling classes from the former British, French, and Dutch Empires, and German and Italian ruling classes, shorn of overt fascism, now to be used for consolidating their power in cooperation rather than competition ( which only lead to nasty world wars), centered in a EU, commanding an American military as its Legions, to bring as much of the World (their former colonies) into their Global Empire as possible. The smart Ukrainians looked East, toward Russia and China and New Silk Road Policies of development. The less smart Ukrainians looked West to become an undeveloped, breadbasket Province of the Trans-Atlantic Empire of global dimensions. That is what launched the Regime change; to keep the Ukraine looking West, not East (where the future of the World is now being narrated Trump knows this too, and is looking East toward development, via resolving Korean crisis, meetings with Xi and with Putin on July 16th).
ToivoS , July 5, 2018 at 10:55 pmCan the whereabouts of Stepan Bandera be ascertained during the period 1924-1944, when his organization was involved in the massacres in Volhynia that are cited? I have read he was in German detention during that period as the Nazi's feared he was actually backing an independent Ukraine free of German control. Re: Wikipedia, the author of these killings is not Bandera, but one Mikola Lebed. Do the demonstrators march around with pictures of Lebed?
Sleak , July 5, 2018 at 8:28 pmWrong, Bandera was in german custody for about 12 months. He freely worked with the Nazis otherwise. The SS Galizian division consisted of 12,000 Ukrainians who saw him as their leader. Lebed was also a follower. Wikipedia for this story is not a good place to find out about the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators.
Joe Lauria , July 5, 2018 at 9:48 pmLook at the picture of the party's leader It might seem that he is emulating nazi's greeting or that he might merely pointing at somebody who is addressed to him with a question Speaking of neo nazis Yes its a dangerous precedent to revive those "traditions" but unlike red Khmers Commies or other affiliated organizations they didn't put to sleep millions of people and even though they are claiming something so far it's only a war with monuments not people See the difference Mr Cohen And btw passive aggressiveness is much more dangerous that stupid stunts
Cassandra Dean , July 5, 2018 at 8:17 pm>> so far it's only a war with monuments not people <<
" In the earlier stages of the civil war, for instance, the rightwing extremists burned more than 40 people alive in a labor union building in Odessa, a horrific incident downplayed by Western media."
F. G. Sanford , July 5, 2018 at 6:43 pmIt wasn't Right Sector it was Yatseniuk who ascribed World War II as the Soviet Union's invasion of Germany and Ukraine, and who criticized his own removal from office by comparing electoral politics to the Fuehrer Principle.
It was Dutch/American-owned TV channel Hromadske that broadcast a discussion of how many people in the south-east were "surplus to requirements" and would have to be killed.
Seamus Padraig , July 5, 2018 at 2:05 pmI'll keep this brief, because I already got blue in the face back in 2014 trying to point out many, if not more of the things covered in this article. Y'all need, first of all, to knock off that "neo" stuff. These people are not "neo" anything. They are bona fide originals. The leadership operating in Ukraine today exhibits an unbroken heritage of loyalty to and association with the OUN-B, Stepan Bandera, Yaroslav Stetsko and the Einsatzgruppen "death squads" of WWII.
Some of them, in their nineties now, still dress up in their Wehrmacht uniforms and participate in the rallies and torchlight parades. Poroshenko is no "innocent bystander", either.
Between Pravy Sektor, Svoboda, the Social Nationalist Party and Andrey Parubiy, what we're talking about here is re-activation of the old guard, not a new movement.
Now that they are openly conducting pogroms against Roma people and others, that should be fairly obvious. "Toria" Nuland and her neocon cronies put a Nazi regime in control of a country right on Russia's border. You gotta be nuttier than a family size jar of Skippy to pull off a stunt like that.
'The U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" uprising not only drove out former president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, who had won an OSCE-certified election, but tore the country in two, precisely because ultra-rightists like C14 were in the lead But if one had to choose the looniest story of all, one that best reflects the abject toadyism of the reporting classes, it would have to be "Why Jews and Ukrainians Have Become Unlikely Allies," a 1,400-word article that ran on the Post-owned Foreign Policy website in May 2014.'
Here's the thing though: however weird it may sound, there actually DOES seem to exist some sort of tacit alliance between (some, not all) Jews and Ukrainian Nazis. Even if their ultimate goals are completely at odds -- the Nazis hate the EU, but the Jews mostly want to join it -- they nearly always seem to work together against Russia. It has even been maintained that the Azov Battalion (one of the all-volunteer Neo-Nazi militias fighting against the Donbass rebels) was entirely financed for a time by Jewish oligarch Ihor Kholomoisky, at least until he did something to piss Poroshenko off and got sacked from his post as governor of Dniepropetrovsk. And in the beginning, Jews who tried to point out that Neo-Nazi groups were involved in overthrowing Yanukovych, like Dr. Stephen Cohen, were roundly denounced a 'Russia apologists' just for stating facts.
But now that Washington's whole Ukraine project has gone south, I guess the Nazis, having outlived their usefulness, are, as usual, to be the fall-guys and take all the blame.
Anna , July 5, 2018 at 2:39 pm
yeh, the Kaganat of Nuland has many veils.
The most stunning aspect of the banderite putsch in Kiev was the dead silence of nazi-hunters from Wiesenthal Center, the always oh-so-sensitive ADL, the main 52 (fifty-two!) American Jewish organizations, and the overall docility and compliance of the "righteous" Israel with the banderite-neo-Nazi ideology by Kagans-selected power structures in Ukraine.
Mr. Kolomojsky, a financier of neo-nazi battalion Azov, is still an Israeli citizen.
Mrs. Nuland-Kagan, the main machinator of the regime change in Kiev, has not been ostracized by the Jewish Community at large.
The deeply amoral and bloodthirsty Carl Gerschman from NED, who has been the main cheerleader for the putsch and for the installing the banderite-friendly government in Kiev, has not been ostracized by the Jewish Community at large either. What a stench!
https://medium.com/@gmochannel/us-staged-a-coup-in-ukraine-brief-history-and-facts-898c6d0007d6
|
|
|
Jul 06, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Gary Weglarz , July 5, 2018 at 1:01 pm
It used to be that the only things one could depend on were "death & taxes." Now of course we must add to that list the very dependable presence of CIA / State Dept lies parroted by MSM all over the West. Lies which are endlessly repeated in defiance of all physical reality and often in direct opposition to actual events in the actual world we live in.
From the Ukraine coup, to Russia-gate, to the "Assad's gassing his own people" regime change propaganda, to the totally surreal Alice in Wonderland Skripnal poisoning nonsense in the U.K, the Western MSM have been as dependable as the rising sun.
They can and do provide fact-free, evidence-free reporting directly from the bowels of the deep state in support of the neocolonial West, including unending support for the never ending resort to mass violence the West relies upon to keep the rest of the planet subjugated -- just as it has for the last 500+ years.
|
|
|
Jun 28, 2018 | www.unz.com
tac , June 6, 2018 at 6:49 pm GMT
@QuartermasterCarroll Price , June 12, 2018 at 12:07 am GMTRussian troops shot down MH-17. deal with it.
From Putin (in an earlier interview in Austria):
Putin said that Russia has been blocked from participating in the ongoing international investigation into the 2014 downing of flight MH17, which Russia has been recently blamed for. Russian experts "have been denied access to the investigation," said Putin, while Russia's arguments are "not taken into consideration" because nobody "is interested in hearing us out."
Truly sensational new document leak confirms Kiev's direct responsibility for shooting down the Malesian Airlines flight MH17 in Donbass on July 17, 2014. Ukrainian top secret official documents show us that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was ordered to hide all evidence from the Ukrainian responsibility and especially everything which could prove Ukrainian air forces involvement in executed secret state terrorism operation.
The documents are leaked by Ukrainian official to the Sovershenno Sekretno newspaper. Russian and English translations from the orginal articles are available with copies of the leaked documents, which show written orders given by Ukrainian top officials concerning concealing of the operation, shooting down the flight MH17 .This article first published on July 30, 2014 contradicts the substance of the recently released Dutch Safety Board Report. We are bringing it to the attention of our readers in view of the soon to be released BBC TV documentary, which suggests that the MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian jet fighter.
Although the Dutch report concluded that the Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile with a 9N314M warhead brought down the Boeing 777, it did not mention which side was responsible for firing the missile (International Business Times, March 8, 2016
The evidence amply confirms that Malaysian Airlines MH17 was not brought down by a surface to air missile. It was brought down by military aircraft .
Joint Investigation Team Includes, Excludes Surprising Members
With the Dutch leading the investigation, the logic being that the flight originated from the Netherlands and the majority of the passengers were Dutch, it has formed a Joint Investigation Team (JIT). At the onset of its creation it seemed obvious that Malaysia would too be included, considering it lost the second largest number of citizens to the disaster and the plane itself was registered in Malaysia. Instead, JIT would end up comprised of Belgium, Ukraine, and Australia, specifically excluding Malaysia.
Joint Investigation Team Includes, Excludes Surprising Members
With the Dutch leading the investigation, the logic being that the flight originated from the Netherlands and the majority of the passengers were Dutch, it has formed a Joint Investigation Team (JIT). At the onset of its creation it seemed obvious that Malaysia would too be included, considering it lost the second largest number of citizens to the disaster and the plane itself was registered in Malaysia. Instead, JIT would end up comprised of Belgium, Ukraine , and Australia, specifically excluding Malaysia.
Malaysia was both surprised and has protested its exclusion from JIT , and has repeatedly expressed a desire to be included directly in the investigation.
https://journal-neo.org/2014/11/28/mh17-malaysia-s-barring-from-investigation-reeks-of-cover-up/
@tacI will never understand why Russia was foolish enough to turn the plane's black box over (with no strings attached) to Dutch authorities. You would think they would have, at the minimum maintained physical possession, while allowing one or more neutral parties to examine and publish it's contents.
|
|
|
Jun 25, 2018 | www.unz.com
j2, June 25, 2018 at 7:59 am GMT
I have found that these "conspiracy theories" are usually quite simple to solve: verify that there was a conspiracy verify that there was a cover-up verify that mass media is in the cover-up
- verify that there was a conspiracy
- verify that there was a cover-up
- verify that mass media is in the cover-up
Then, who can make a cover-up in media?
- the mob, no - the CIA, can try but really cannot do it long - the US President, like for instance JFK, Nixon, Clinton, no - the ones, who control the media and suppress publications they do not like, yesThen only, why?
- the assassination of the president succeeded, so something major in the US politics changed - only one major thing changedSolving these problems is easy, but the opponents behave as lawyers in kangaroo courts: deny everything, play a moron, refer to judicial decision, start repeating childish mumble like wackawackaconspeeracy.. and so on.
jilles dykstra , June 25, 2018 at 10:49 am GMT
@j2Indeed, as with MH17.
Literally overnight EU sanctions against Russia were possible.
And, as with Kennedy, what exactly happened, we do not know, and, I fear, will never know.
On the afternoon of the day of the disaster prime minister Rutte phoned vice prime minister Asscher, who was on vacation in the south of France.
Rutte asked him to call back on a landline 'so that Russia could not listen in'.
Fool Asscher told this in a tv show.
Nobody has asked Asscher what was so secret a few hours after the disaster that the Russians should not know.Why was the Diana 'accident' ?
I suppose to prevent that the future British king would have a Muslim stepfather.Why was Anna Lyndh killed accidentally ?
She was to be the next Swedish prime minister, in favor of a EU economic boycott of IsraelWhy was the phoney Hess suicided ?
Had he talked WWII history would have to be rewritten.Why was Kelly suicided ?
He knew quite well Blair's nonsense about the 45 minutes WMD'sAnd so on and so forth
|
|
|
Jun 24, 2018 | www.unz.com
annamaria , May 23, 2017 at 1:15 pm GMT
The Saker publishes some interesting news re the MH17 tragedy:
"SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] orders to destroy all evidence of the conducted special operation MH17″ http://thesaker.is/sbu-orders-to-destroy-all-evidence-of-the-conducted-special-operation-mh17/
by Scott Humor: " If you want to know my opinion that hasn't changed since 2014. The Boeing flight MH17 was shot down by the Ukrainian air force fighter jets, but not necessarily piloted by Ukrainian pilots. It was a CIA and NATO operation to frame Russia. Most likely the Dutch government was a part of this operation. Now, they are trying to hang all the dogs on Waltzman -Poroshenko, because neither the Dutch monarchs, nor the CIA would fancy to be implicated in this crime."The whole edifice of sanctions against Russian federation was built on the MH17 case. A few people come to mind. First is the Secretary of State John Kerry who had proclaimed that Russians were guilty of the shooting before any investigation took place.
Then there is a Department of War Studies, King's College London, which became famous for inviting Eliot Higgins (an expert in selling ladies underwear) to lecture the College' students on Higgins' specialty – the russophobic stuff, which was debunked on numerous occasions but which is still dear to the hearts at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/aboutkings/principal/Indexnew.aspx https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/warstudies/people/professors/rainsborough.aspx
And then there is a circus of Dutch investigation: https://www.rt.com/news/375105-mh17-investigation-dutch-journalist/ and this http://www.whathappenedtoflightmh17.com/dutch-prosecutor-does-not-answer-questions-on-russian-supplied-radar-data/
The Dutch/Ukrainian scoundrels are now facing this (which is just a beginning): https://www.rt.com/news/374893-trump-letter-mh17-investigation/ "The open letter, signed by 25 journalists, former civil aviation pilots and researchers from Germany, the Netherlands and Australia, was posted on the website of Joost Niemoller – a Dutch journalist who publicly challenged the current investigation into the ill-fated Flight MH17, which was downed over Ukraine in July 2014. "
|
|
|
Jun 14, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
PROBLEMS WITH THE NARRATIVE. No conclusive evidence to blame Russia for MH17 says Malaysia Transport Minister ; no evidence that Russia poisoned Skripals says German int source. What does Malaysia know? It's been kept out of the inquiry . As to the Skripals, well the G(7-1) says " no plausible alternative explanation ". (Once you've dug the hole, I guess you have to plausibly live in it.)
|
|
|
Apr 26, 2018 | www.strategic-culture.org
False Flag is a concept that goes back centuries. It was considered to be a legitimate ploy by the Greeks and Romans, where a military force would pretend to be friendly to get close to an enemy before dropping the pretense and raising its banners to reveal its own affiliation just before launching an attack. In the sea battles of the eighteenth century among Spain, France and Britain hoisting an enemy flag instead of one's own to confuse the opponent was considered to be a legitimate ruse de guerre , but it was only "honorable" if one reverted to one's own flag before engaging in combat.
Today's false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. There is nothing honorable about them as their intention is to blame an innocent party for something that it did not do. There has been a lot of such activity lately and it was interesting to learn by way of a leak that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has developed a capability to mimic the internet fingerprints of other foreign intelligence services. That means that when the media is trumpeting news reports that the Russians or Chinese hacked into U.S. government websites or the sites of major corporations, it could actually have been the CIA carrying out the intrusion and making it look like it originated in Moscow or Beijing. Given that capability, there has been considerable speculation in the alternative media that it was actually the CIA that interfered in the 2016 national elections in the United States.
False flags can be involved in other sorts of activity as well. The past year's two major alleged chemical attacks carried out against Syrian civilians that resulted in President Donald Trump and associates launching 160 cruise missiles are pretty clearly false flag operations carried out by the rebels and terrorist groups that controlled the affected areas at the time. The most recent reported attack on April 7th might not have occurred at all according to doctors and other witnesses who were actually in Douma. Because the rebels succeeded in convincing much of the world that the Syrian government had carried out the attacks, one might consider their false flag efforts to have been extremely successful.
The remedy against false flag operations such as the recent one in Syria is, of course, to avoid taking the bait and instead waiting until a thorough and objective inspection of the evidence has taken place. The United States, Britain and France did not do that, preferring instead to respond to hysterical press reports by "doing something." If the U.N. investigation of the alleged attack turns up nothing, a distinct possibility, it is unlikely that they will apologize for having committed a war crime.
The other major false flag that has recently surfaced is the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury England on March 4th. Russia had no credible motive to carry out the attack and had, in fact, good reasons not to do so. The allegations made by British Prime Minister Theresa May about the claimed nerve agent being "very likely" Russian in origin have been debunked, in part through examination by the U.K.'s own chemical weapons lab. May, under attack even within her own party, needed a good story and a powerful enemy to solidify her own hold on power so false flagging something to Russia probably appeared to be just the ticket as Moscow would hardly be able to deny the "facts" being invented in London. Unfortunately, May proved wrong and the debate ignited over her actions, which included the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats, has done her severe damage. Few now believe that Russia actually carried out the poisoning and there is a growing body of opinion suggesting that it was actually a false flag executed by the British government or even by the CIA.
The lesson that should be learned from Syria and Skripal is that if "an incident" looks like it has no obvious motive behind it, there is a high probability that it is a false flag. A bit of caution in assigning blame is appropriate given that the alternative would be a precipitate and likely disproportionate response that could easily escalate into a shooting war.
Tags: CIA
|
|
|
Jun 05, 2018 | www.youtube.com
MH17 (from the transcript Interview with Austrian ORF television channel )
Armin Wolf: One of the most complicated issues with regard to Russia is Ukraine. In 2014, Flight MH17 was shot down in Ukraine, 290 people died. The international investigative commission announced a few days ago that the jet was shot down by a Russian army missile system, that it was a convoy from Russia that had come to the Ukrainian insurgents in eastern Ukraine. There is a video; there are telephone conversations and dozens of eyewitnesses. You have been saying that this is not true for about a year but practically nobody believes your words.Are you not thereby putting the veracity of Russian statements at stake? Maybe it is time to acknowledge that the insurgents in eastern Ukraine used Russian military equipment to commit that horrendous crime?
Vladimir Putin: I want to note that both sides to the conflict – the Ukrainian army and even Ukrainian volunteer battalions who are accountable to nobody save their commanders, and the Donbass militia, the armed units in Donbass – they all use Soviet and Russian-made weapons. All of them. The two sides have all sorts of systems – both firearms, aviation, and anti-aircraft systems. All of them were made in Russia.
Armin Wolf: But now they know what missile it was: a Buk system missile. It was a Russian army brigade in Kursk. This is known for a fact, yet you still deny it. Would it not be better to admit that the missile had indeed come from Russia? Would it not be better to officially acknowledge that Russia supported the insurgents in the east of Ukraine with weapons?
Vladimir Putin: If you collect all your patience and let me finish, you will find out my view on this issue.
As I said, both sides use Russian-made weapons, and the Russian army has exactly the same systems the experts are talking about, which were certainly manufactured in the former Soviet Union or in Russia. This is number one.
Number two. Russian experts have been denied access to the investigation, our arguments are not taken into consideration, and nobody in the commission is interested in hearing us out. Conversely, the Ukrainian side, which is a party interested in the results of the investigation, has access to it. Meanwhile, it is responsible at least for failing to prohibit civilian aircraft to fly in the conflict zone in violation of ICAO's international norms.
We are still unable to get answers to some questions regarding the activities of Ukrainian air forces in that region, at that place and at that time. The tragedy we are talking about is terrible, and I feel immensely sorry for the victims and their families, but this investigation must be objective and comprehensive.
Just a second, please, do not rush. Let me speak, otherwise we are going to have a monologue on your part instead of an interview.
Armin Wolf: Nevertheless, let me say briefly – yes, we know where the missile came from. But what do Holland, Australia or Malaysia have to gain by blaming Russia if it was not a Russian missile that belonged to the Russian army?
Vladimir Putin: We do not see it that way; we have a different point of view. You now listed countries that allegedly believe that it was a Russian missile and that Russia is implicated in that terrible tragedy. I regret to disappoint you. Quite recently, Malaysian officials declared that they do not see Russia's complicity in that tragic event; they have no proof that Russia is implicated. Are you really not aware of that? Did you not see the statements by Malaysian officials?
What do we think about this issue? If we really want to get to the bottom of things in that horrendous event and reveal all the factors that would allow us to render a final conclusion, all arguments should be taken into account, including the ones offered by Russia. And it would be entirely fair for Russian experts to have access to the investigation.
Armin Wolf: The international investigative commission now claims that they have in fact taken into account all arguments. Many people do not believe Russian arguments because a few years ago in Crimea you said that the famous "green men," the fighters in green uniforms without identifying insignia, were all local self-defense forces. But a little later it was revealed that they were indeed Russian soldiers. After that, you admitted many times that those were Russian army personnel even though you denied that earlier. Why should we believe you now?
Vladimir Putin: Now that you mentioned Crimea. Do you know that in the mid 2000s, right in the vicinity of Crimea, a Russian civilian jet was downed over the Black Sea? It was done by the Ukrainian army during a drill. And the first reaction of the Ukrainian officials was that Ukraine had nothing to do with it. A civilian plane was shot down en route from Israel to Russia. Everyone onboard died, of course. Ukraine flatly denied its involvement in that terrible incident but had to admit it later. And why should we believe Ukrainian officials? So in response to your question about Crimea, I put the ball back in your court.
Armin Wolf : I am not talking about Ukrainian officials, I am talking about you. You said many times in 2014 that you used the Armed Forces in Crimea to block Ukraine's interference. Later you admitted though that the Russian army was in Crimea, something you had denied before.
Vladimir Putin : Russian forces have always been stationed there. Look, I would like you to try to understand what was actually happening there, not just repeat these things mechanically. Russian forces have always been present in Crimea. Our military contingent was there.
One second, please, let me finish. Do you want to fire questions non-stop or hear my answers?
The first thing we did when the events in Ukraine began What kind of events? Let me tell you now, and you will say yes or no. It was an unconstitutional armed coup and seizure of power. Yes or no? Will you tell me?
Armin Wolf : I am not an expert on the Ukrainian Constitution.
Vladimir Putin : You do not have to be an expert on Ukraine; you just need to be an expert on law, on the constitutional law of any country.
Armin Wolf : I would not like to talk about Ukrainian politics, but about Russian politics. Allow me to phrase it differently. What should happen in order for Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin : There are no such conditions and there can never be.
I will tell you why. You interrupted me again, but if you actually let me finish, you would understand what I mean. I will still do it.
When the unconstitutional armed coup took place in Ukraine, and power changed hands by force, our army was legally deployed in Crimea – under the agreement on our military base there. The first thing we did was increase our contingent to guard our Armed Forces, our military facilities, because we immediately saw that they were being threatened. That is where it all began. I told you with confidence that there was no one else there, but our Armed Forces were there legally under an agreement.
Let me finish, for God's sake. ( Speaks German .) Seien Sie so nett, lassen Sie mich etwas sagen. [Please be so kind as to let me say something.]
Putin said that Russia has been blocked from participating in the ongoing international investigation into the 2014 downing of flight MH17, which Russia has been recently blamed for. Russian experts "have been denied access to the investigation," said Putin, while Russia's arguments are "not taken into consideration" because nobody "is interested in hearing us out."
Ukraine, meanwhile, has been given access to the probe.
|
|
|
May 28, 2018 | www.veteranstoday.com
By Gordon Duff with New Eastern Outlook, Moscow
...The airliner was being directed on the same path used by SU 25 and SU 27 jets hitting the cities in the Donbass and Lugansk pockets.
The date now is May 25, 2018. BBC and Reuters have just announced that Russia is "liable" for the events of July 17, 2014, based on an investigation no one understands.
Malaysia had asked for an independent investigation but was warned off by the United States, told to keep quiet. I was part of the team Malaysia had sought to investigate the downing of MH 17, along with VT editor, Washington attorney Thomas Mattingly and a group of former FBI agents under ISI Corp.
Instead, the investigation was done by a Dutch group. It is clear, more than clear, that the United States was aware Kiev had down the plane and was leading a coverup, protecting Kiev and planning to use the incident to blame Russia.
Recent events makes this abundantly clear.
Blaming Russia is a way of life in Washington. Let's look at Ukraine and try to understand what was going on at the time.
... ... ...
The Dutch now claim that Russia had "infiltrated" air defense groups into Ukraine and chose to shoot down a Malaysian airliner for no imaginable reason. That motive, "no imaginable reason," should be a problem for both governments and the media, not that I use the term "should."
However, there is evidence, considerable evidence, that MH17 was downed by aircraft. We are going to examine this hypothesis and the reaction to it when it was brought up back in 2014.
.... ... ...
Conclusion
MH 17 is simply another false flag operation, this one aimed at Russia as have so many recently. Russia's foreign ministry has begun addressing false flag terrorism and the US policy of staging terror attacks to blame on others after years of standing by silently.
|
|
|
May 27, 2018 | www.rt.com
Moscow has rejected any involvement in the crash of flight MH17 in Ukraine after the Netherlands and Australia declared Russia "responsible" for the deployment of a BUK missile system that downed the jet in 2014. Moscow neither accepts nor trusts the results of an international investigation into the MH17 crash as it was not allowed to take part in it, according to the Russian president's spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
"Of course, without being able to be a full participant, Russia does not know to what extent the results of this work can be trusted," he said.
Peskov echoed the position of the Russian president Vladimir Putin who earlier said that, although Ukraine was included in the probe, Russia was barred from participating in establishing the truth.
Asked if he can confirm that Russia vehemently denies any involvement in the MH17 downing, Peskov replied "absolutely."
Earlier on Friday, Amsterdam and Canberra said Russia is "responsible for its part in the downing of flight MH17" following a Thursday press conference of the Dutch-led International Investigation Team (JIT). The latter concluded that a BUK missile system from a Russian 53rd brigade was transported to eastern Ukraine and used to down the passenger plane with more than 300 people onboard. The system was then said to have returned to Russia.
"The [Dutch] government is now taking the next step by formally holding Russia accountable," Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Stef Blok said in a statement. However, the Russian military earlier said that not a single weapons system crossed the border.
The allegation that the missile belonged to the Russian military had earlier been debunked by the Buk manufacturer, Almaz-Antey. Its real-time experiment showed that the projectile which hit MH17 (Boeing 777) was from an earlier generation and is no longer in service with the Russian military. It was found that the plane was likely shot down using an old 9M38 missile, not the newer type 9M38M1 with distinct butterfly-shaped metal fragments, which were allegedly recovered by the Dutch Safety Board.
Moreover, Almaz-Antey's findings , which analyzed the angle from which the projectiles entered the cockpit of the ill-fated flight, showed that the most probable location of the launch site could be only on Kiev-controlled territory. Untampered Russian radar data provided by Moscow led to similar conclusions.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Ukrainian forces kept around 20 Buk systems, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The military also stressed that Moscow has not supplied any new missiles to Ukraine since then
|
|
|
May 25, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Quentin , May 24, 2018 10:58:32 AM | 30
This is all so delicious coming on or nearly on the same day as a 'conclusive' report was issued stating a BUK missile launcher belonging to Russia was escorted by Russian military from Russia into Ukraine and used to shoot down Malaysia flight MH 17. So there take that Russia even though you were not allowed to defend your version of events at the 'fair-and-balanced' international investigation. 'So what are you going to do about it?' Ukraine gets a free pass again.Coincidentally the World Football Cup begins in Russia in about three weeks. Who can honestly claim the West doesn't have all its ducks/dicks in a perfect row?
Julia Skripal's photo shoot was just embarrassing, so contrived and forced, a PR agency's hack piece.
'The mother and grandmother of Sergei and Julia Skripal aren't allowed to get in touch with them?', you say. 'Now you're really must think I'm stupid. In the West we are FREE.'
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Nuland mind was completely warped by serving first at NATO and then as the State Depratment spokeswoman. Appointing such a person as diplomat is worse then a crime, it is a blunder. But here it was done by Hillary who by is herself pathological warmonger with very little connections to reality even before her illness. She has a typical Mafiosi mentality. "Godmother", I would say.
Xenophon , 4 years agoDo Nuland and her ilk have any idea of chess; or even, more simply, the idea of setting up a winning shot in tennis through several preceding shots, rather than just one lunge for a winner? Do she or any of her kind have any comprehension of history? Do they know that effective propaganda is based in truth?
Bending the arc of history has more to do with gentle changes at very obtuse angles/arcs, not sharp changes that fly in the face of historical precedents.
Who sanctioned this Ukraine gambit/plan?? Who knew her plan and allowed her to act, perhaps endorsed her plan?? Do any decision makers in our foreign policy and governing circles read history?? Are there no longer responsible and educated actors in our foreign policy establishment? (One light of hope in this vein .CJCS Martin Dempsey.)
Perhaps the real problem may be that we no longer have a true foreign policy
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Tidewater , 4 years ago
I don't want to respond to such a fine philosophical essay like a police reporter hack--which I have been-- but I have just discovered that an airlines pilot named Peter Haisenko argues that the Malaysian flight was brought down by cannon fire. In a follow-up to his original blog post he reports that he has taken a look at the whole question of this ground attack plane's capabilities. By 1984 Jane's had evaluated the SU-25 as having a maximum flight altitude of 10,670 meters. All a pilot would need would be oxygen; which brings to mind that at 29,000 feet a climber on Everest can survive with an oxygen bottle. Global Research --which I read cheerfully but with caution-- has picked up on Peter Haisenko and on the Canadian investigator's remarks.zanzibar , 4 years agoThe photograph of the wing is particularly interesting to me. The impression I get is that the scoring along the wing towards the pilot's cabin seems to be cut by a projectile that is stable in flight and is smooth on its surface. I would guess that shrapnel would have left an entirely different marking line. It would cut more erratically and deeply. I have a piece of wood made into a small table that is a vivid reminder of what a projectile--a rifle bullet in this case--will do when the bullet hits one plane on almost exactly the same plane. Leaving an accident which is a little startling to see. My piece of wood is quite beautifully carved by design on most of it and with an ancient patina; it came from an Buddhist stupa in a temple in Burma that was destroyed in WWII, evidentally burned. It took me a while to figure out why that wing photo bothered me.
I think this thing is going to be as big as the JFK assassination.
DavidThanks for this very thoughtful note!
At the link below Pater Tenebrarum writes that an OSCE monitor notes the evidence of holes on the cockpit which seems like machine gun fire. This fits closely with TTGs note of an Ukrainian fighter trailing MH17. Apparently, there is a theory that the fighter aircraft and a missile launcher on the ground were coordinating to bring down an aircraft that had Putin returning from South America.
http://www.acting-man.com/?p=32159
With respect to the lead up to the Great War, I am glad you bring up Colingwood. I agree with two of his points - one, events spin out of control; two, "..the hard sciences had caused in man's ability to control nature, and the complete absence of any corresponding increase in man's ability to understand and control human affairs." I have noted for some time that while the human being has developed his intellect substantially, he himself has not "evolved" much in the past 5,000 years. There is an immense role that ambition, ego, greed, fear, jealousy, hate and other human traits
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
VietnamVet , 4 years ago
Anna-Marina,Anna-Marina , 4 years agoMy Dad worked for Boeing. I was shocked when I read that they were not sending representatives to the crash investigation. They're the real experts on the 777. As a major stakeholder they know everything the US government knows; maybe more. Either the corporate need to distance itself from the crash overrides their responsibility to help to find the truth and tell the families why their loved ones died and prevent it from occurring again or the US government told them to stay away. This and the muddled information released so far adds to my feeling of unease that the shoot down was a purposeful act in the rush to war with Russia instead of a terrible accident caused by Ukraine allowing commercial flights to fly over a combat zone.
This new article at CounterPunch suggests a new line of explanation for the MH17 tragedy.
"There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pock-marked. It almost looks like machine gun fire; very, very strong machine gun fire that has left these unique marks that we haven't seen anywhere else."
One of the questions that this article posts is why Boeing does not want to investigate the downing of its own plane. Yet the most puzzling part of the story is the US complete lack of cooperation re satellite images of the plane and its demise.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/04/was-malaysia-flight-17-shot-down/
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
MiKE , 4 years ago
"The Su25 and the shadowy companion plane which Russian claim exist"....az , 4 years agoare recorded on Russian military signals evidence (radar tracking). This is not some "he said she said" CNN equivalency. Also, I believe the (increasingly credible) air - air shoot-down hypothesis involving these two (tracked ,recorded, identified) Su25 aircraft, makes the claim that the crime was committed by at least 1 (Su25) firing its 30mm automatic cannons ("machine guns") and NOT a rocket or missile. Somehow you failed to mention that either in your report or in a reply to a comment that brought up the OSCE reps' "machine gun" statement - specifically. Also your constant insistence on characterizing all Russian media as "possibly state controlled" is, I think, a misleading strategy.
Is Russian media "state controlled" ? Is the Russian media that you refer to "state controlled" ? Moreover, after witnessing the staggering, sickening, completely unprofessional US/EU media propaganda storm being unleashed,I have no doubt at all that British and American corporate media are "state controlled". They have done nothing but widely disseminate prepared US state department accusations and PR releases .
Its very, very notable that the incessant drone of accusations coming from these western corporate media outlets are based on 0, none, Nil, No "evidence" at all -only more baseless accusations from the state department and nameless, faceless, "official" cited in corporate media reports, with the same TOTAL lack of substantiation.
Clearly, the US govt is leading this propaganda attack. If the US has evidence LET THEM PRESENT IT. The Russian have presented their evidence for inspection.
Thank you for this excellent post and discussion.David Habakkuk , 4 years ago"if indeed elements among the Kiev authorities are responsible, it will be very difficult to suppress the fact."
Here (
PlayTidewater,Ingolf , 4 years agoAs a sometimes television current affairs 'hack' who benefited enormous from having spent time as a graduate trainee on the Liverpool Echo, and later spent happy hours delving into the underworlds of local politics in London and Birmingham, the last thing I would be stupid enough to do would be to contemptuous of a 'police reporter hack.' A major problem with much of the MSM today is that those producing it are no longer down-to-earth, in the way that old-style newspaper reporters commonly were.
The piece to which 'Ingolf' links below, and also if I recall right an earlier comment he posted, argues that the impression that the patterns of damage match those one would expect from cannon is unfounded. It is also not clear to me whether an Su-25 operating at the limits of its altitude range, could use a cannon effectively (as distinct from a rocket.) That said, at the moment it seems to me sensible not to rule anything out until we have unambiguous evidence.
As to the scale of the furore which may be about to break, I think you could well be right. It may still be that I, and TTG, and others on this blog sceptical about the conventional wisdom about the MH17 affair are barking up the wrong tree. But if we are not, Western governments may have backed themselves into a corner. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that if indeed elements among the Kiev authorities are responsible, it will be very difficult to suppress the fact.
For those who haven't yet seen it, the Saker has a "detailed expert analysis" of the MH17 downing.I've only read some of it so far (it's a 25 page PDF report) but it looks useful.
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/detailed-expert-analysis-of-mh17-downing.html
walrus, 4 years ago
I second what VietVet said, I am totally surprised that Boeing would not send a representative to the crash site and be part of the investigative team. This omission smells to high heaven.Boeing advice would be needed for, among other things, the determination of the point or points of impact of the warhead, the failure modes of the various parts of the structure and the sequence in which they failed.
This information is needed to correlate the debris field with the point of impact of the missile and to determine the ultimate critical issue of the direction from which the missile was travelling when it detonated.
I am already suspicious that this was a Ukranian false flag operation because I believe that initial indications are that the missile may have come from behind the aircraft from Ukrainian territory. Shrapnel evidence suggests that the cockpit and nose took the brunt of the blast. Since the operating principle of the proximity fuze is to detonate at the point of closest approach to the target - identified when the range, as measured by the fuze radar, just starts to open, then the explosion near the front of the plane is consistent with an approach from the rear. If the missile approached from the front - rebel held territory, I would have expected the blast to be towards the rear of the aircraft.
I would hope that someone with more technical knowledge can disprove my speculation.
One thing I can be sure of, if there was any evidence supporting a shooot down by a fighter, it will vanish once the CIA and MI6 are through with it.
|
|
|
Apr 08, 2018 | www.unz.com
smellyoilandgas.com , April 5, 2018 at 7:49 pm GMT
@HeppI think the question of what is best for the world is best left to the 8 million that live in it; humanity should decide on its government every ten years.
The nation state system fosters uncontrolled capitalism. The nation state system is a middle man between the global wealth of a very few and the slave poverty of the mass of 8 billion.. The problem with capitalism is that it is such a powerful system of economics nothing can block its path.
Uncontrolled, capitalism is like the game of monopoly: in that game, payment is due to the capitalist owner at most landing spots on the playing board; unless the party landing on such spot already owns the spot landed on with each turn at play. In the end, the game of monopoly wipes out everyone; it transfers everyone's wealth to but one player, the winner. Everyone else is a broke worthless loser.
Without internationally enforced rules that prevent powerful, large mega monopolies corporations (the public is unable to vote to change the corporate nature or to restructure by voting those Board of Directors who mange the mega-corporation) to reach the size of nation states and to amass the much more capital to burn than most nation states, nothing is going to change. Bottom up insistence that nations write laws to control the mega-capitalist powered, monopoly secured corporations go unheeded because no politicians or group of politicians is strong enough to write laws that the nations can enforce, hence mega corporations are virtually operating in a completely lawless environment { meaning mega corporations can do whatever they want }. There is no nation powerful enough to reel in many very large corporations; those certain few corporations own and enjoy the security from competition that monopolies guarantee in most of the extremely profitable markets in the world.
No one, including Russia and China can expect to survive trying to compete against the masses of capital, the earning capacities and the wealth building power of monopolies. Monopolies rule the nation state law makers , not the other way around. If I were you, I would add to your list of possible MH-17 bashers several global corporations; the one's I have in mind, cannot be completely identified to a single nation in the world because they are so large they own the lawmakers, most of the assets and all of the earning power in many of the nations.
One the 9/11 clouds is the possible corporate involvement.
|
|
|
Apr 08, 2018 | www.unz.com
jilles dykstra , April 4, 2018 at 2:26 pm GMT
There are three possibilities: Rebels shot, our thought they shot, at an Ukrainian bomber, and hit a passenger plane A Ukrainian bomber used the passenger plane as shield, in the expectation that the rebels would not fire A western plane deliberately shot down the plane, possibly a stealth plane.That the plane was ordered to fly lower by Kiev air control might support the last two possibilities.
In any case, neither the rebels, nor the Russians had any interest in shooting down the plane. The western interest at the time was clear, the Netherlands objected most to sanctions, our export to Russia. The 300 deaths changed that literally overnight.
What never has been explained was the telephone call from prime minister Rutte to vice prime minister Asscher, at the time on holiday on vacation in the south of France.
Rutte phoned Asscher on his mobile, but asked him to call back on a land line 'so that the Russians could not listen in'.
What at the afternoon of the crash was so secret that the Russians were not allowed to hear, I have just the suspicion that Rutte told Asscher that the Russian had to be blamed.
The Dutch investigation, with suspect Ukraine, drags on until now.
... ... ...
|
|
|
Apr 08, 2018 | www.unz.com
Rurik , April 2, 2018 at 4:19 pm GMT
@AnonFromTNAnonFromTN , April 3, 2018 at 12:55 am GMTDon't they want to know who killed them?
no, not if you pay them enough money
(just like with 9/11)
http://www.latimes.com/la-110804compensation_lat-story.html
the wreckage of MH17 was obviously riddled with machine gun fire
only Ukraine could have done that
the way the zio-west immediately blamed Putin proved it was all a lie
it was the zio-west that foisted the political strife in Ukraine
it was the zio-west that allowed the Ukraine to have veto power over the "investigation" into the shooting down of MH17
the whole thing is a devil's farce
just like all the other atrocities and war crimes committed in this century by the zio-fiend
@RurikYou are even more cynical than I am. I have no doubt that the politicians, Dutch, US, Australian, Ukrainian, and all others, are totally amoral and unscrupulous. Naturally, they are all venal. As the US saying goes, "honest politician is the one who, once bought, stays bought".
But I thought that a person who lost someone in that crash would like to know the truth, rather than "official" US BS. It would be sad to think that none of almost 300 people on board had anyone who cared about them more than about money. If I were related to any of the victims, I'd feel vindictive. I'd want to kill whoever is responsible, not whoever the liars found it expedient to blame. And I'd make damn sure I know who planned this provocation and who executed it in cold blood.
|
|
|
Apr 08, 2018 | www.unz.com
Tom Van Meurs , Website March 31, 2018 at 3:36 am GMT
In my blog 'contraviews' http://www.contraviewing.blogspot.com post 148 you will find a recording of the conversation (mentioned in this article) between the Estonian Foreign Affairs Minister Urmas Paet and EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton. Go to the year 2014 in the margin and scroll down to post 148. One may find more interesting articles on MH17.
|
|
|
Apr 08, 2018 | www.unz.com
JR , March 26, 2018 at 7:18 am GMT
The lengths Dutch Prime Minister publicly went (serving quote 'geopolitical interests') to get the EU-Ukraine association agreement ratified the clear rejection by advisory referendum notwithstanding, ought to make any well informed reader suspicious of how far Rutte went out of public sight to serve those same 'geopolitical interests' by manipulating both the investigation and public opinion in relation to MH17.JR , March 27, 2018 at 6:40 am GMTRutte recently demonstrated his fealty to those 'geopolitical interests' again. When asked if new evidence was presented in the Skripal case to justify the Netherlands support for the UK, Rutte answered that 'such evidence wasn't necessary because May had stated that it was highly likely that Russia was responsible'.
The Dutch Government got a UN mandate to perform the investigation and as such that part of the investigation had to be transparent.
Clearly to serve those 'geopolitical interests' the Dutch separated the technical investigation from the legal liability investigation. The technical investigation was performed under the UN mandate and the second legal liability investigation was organized separate from any UN mandate.
The Dutch, Australian, Belgium government colluded with the Ukrainians to organize a 'Joint Investigation Team' which under the cover of performing a legal investigation refuses any transparency and at regular intervals hints that indictments are close but not there yet.
Also the Dutch Transport Safety Board technical investigation has concluded that the UkSATSE should have closed the Air Control area above Eastern Ukraine, but the Dutch government has thus far never taken any action to hold the Ukrainians responsible for that failure even when 3 days before MNH17 a AN-24 was downed from 6500m and UkSATSE (joint civil-military ATC) continued to control some 100 civil air liners a day over that area.
The Dutch simply accepted that the Ukraine lost all relevant radar data.
Actually this "Who shot down MH17?" is the wrong question.CanSpeccy , Website March 29, 2018 at 2:42 am GMTThe question is "Who is liable?".
Shooting down aircraft above a war zone is SOP. If a civilian air liner is guided and controlled over such war area where 3 days earlier an AN-24 has been downed from 6500m one really ought to question the competence and liability of the ATC involved. That ATC authority UkSATSE as a joint civil-military ATC was fully informed about the situation and still continued to guide some 100 civil air liners ad day for three days over that war zone.
Shooting down a civil air liner over a war zone is tragic but not necessarily always a crime. There was no motive for the East Ukrainians, but as shown by the relentless exploitation by the Kiev puppet regime this Kiev regime most definitely had a motive.
Any liability investigation with the Ukrainian secret service as an investigator like in the Dutch/Australian/Ukraine Joint investigation Team simply can't be trusted to even look for the truth. The JIT was set up with the intention of evading the transparency requirements associated with the UN mandated investigation.
@JRAnonFromTN , March 30, 2018 at 6:54 pm GMTActually this "Who shot down MH17?" is the wrong question.
The question is "Who is liable?".
In which connection, as may already have been noted:
Thinking people smelled a rat in the case of MH17 straight off. No sensible person can fail to smell it now. Just a few considerations:JR says: March 31, 2018 at 5:18 pm GMT • 100 Words1. Donbass freedom fighters (and, by extension, Russia) were blamed by the US, its vassals, and its client states like Ukraine even before the debris cooled down. Only the perpetrators could have known designated "guilty party" without any investigation.
2. Satellite pictures promised by Kerry four years ago never materialized. The only logical conclusion is that the perpetrators were not those accused by the US, and the pictures would have revealed real perpetrators, which the US did not want to happen.
3. Malaysia, the owner of that airplane, was not allowed to participate in the investigation. Apparently, someone was afraid that it might not play ball. This can only happen when the "investigators" meant to hide the truth, not to reveal it.
4. The UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and one of the suspects, Ukraine, signed a non-disclosure agreement. It makes no sense unless one or more of the signatories is guilty.
5. The "investigation" is going on for four years, longer than any investigation in the history of civil aviation. The experience shows that a lot less time is needed to uncover the truth. Thus, the length of this "investigation" shows that the real purpose is cover-up.
6. Ukraine never provided the records of pilots' communications with air traffic controllers, or any other air traffic control records. Thus, it must have had something to hide.
One can continue in this vein, but what's the point? Suffice it to say that all international airlines drew their conclusions: they fly over Russia, but avoid Ukrainian airspace, like they avoid Iranian and North Korean airspace. Sapienti sat.
@AnonFromTNRurik, April 2, 2018 at 4:19 pm GMT • 100 WordsThinking people smelled a rat in the case of MH17 straight off. No sensible person can fail to smell it now. Just a few considerations:
1. Donbass freedom fighters (and, by extension, Russia) were blamed by the US, its vassals, and its client states like Ukraine even before the debris cooled down. Only the perpetrators could have known designated "guilty party" without any investigation.
2. Satellite pictures promised by Kerry four years ago never materialized. The only logical conclusion is that the perpetrators were not those accused by the US, and the pictures would have revealed real perpetrators, which the US did not want to happen.
3. Malaysia, the owner of that airplane, was not allowed to participate in the investigation. Apparently, someone was afraid that it might not play ball. This can only happen when the "investigators" meant to hide the truth, not to reveal it.
4. The UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and one of the suspects, Ukraine, signed a non-disclosure agreement. It makes no sense unless one or more of the signatories is guilty.
5. The "investigation" is going on for four years, longer than any investigation in the history of civil aviation. The experience shows that a lot less time is needed to uncover the truth. Thus, the length of this "investigation" shows that the real purpose is cover-up.
6. Ukraine never provided the records of pilots' communications with air traffic controllers, or any other air traffic control records. Thus, it must have had something to hide.
One can continue in this vein, but what's the point? Suffice it to say that all international airlines drew their conclusions: they fly over Russia, but avoid Ukrainian airspace, like they avoid Iranian and North Korean airspace. Sapienti sat.See my comment nr 230: There is not one investigation. The Dutch manipulated this into two separate investigations. There was a technical UN mandated transparent Dutch Safety Board investigation. The Dutch organized a second criminal investigation together with Australia, Belgium and the Ukraine and instigated A Joint Investigation Team (JIT).
The manipulation and exploitation of the MH17 incident by the Dutch seems to rival that of Skripal incident by the UK.
@AnonFromTNYes. I can understand the Dutch government: they serve the US overlords first and foremost. They don't give a hoot about the lives of ordinary Dutch people. What I do not understand is the behavior of the people who lost loved ones in MH17 crash. Don't they want to know who killed them? Don't they object to being grist for the mill of amoral and cynical politicians?
Don't they want to know who killed them?
no, not if you pay them enough money
(just like with 9/11)
http://www.latimes.com/la-110804compensation_lat-story.html
the wreckage of MH17 was obviously riddled with machine gun fire
peterAUS , April 3, 2018 at 6:18 pm GMT
@AnonFromTNAnonFromTN , April 3, 2018 at 7:41 pm GMTWell, actually I believe that those points do not contradict my theory.
You:1. Donbass freedom fighters were blamed by the US, its vassals, and its client states like Ukraine even before the debris cooled down. Only the perpetrators could have known designated "guilty party" without any investigation
Me:
1. Donbass freedom fighters were blamed by the US, its vassals, and its client states like Ukraine even before the debris cooled down. They saw, on their monitors, what happened.
You:
2. Satellite pictures promised by Kerry four years ago never materialized. If they could prove that Donbass freedom fighters were the perpetrators, these pictures would have been publicized by the US more than any Hollywood movie. My conclusion is that the perpetrators were not those accused by the US, and the pictures would have revealed real perpetrators, which the US did not want to happen.
Me:
2. Satellite pictures promised by Kerry four years ago never materialized. They could've pointed to actual surveillance capabilities of the US, either way.
You:
3. Malaysia, the owner of that airplane, was not allowed to participate in the investigation. Apparently, someone was afraid that it might not play ball. This can only happen when the "investigators" meant to hide the truth, not to reveal it
Me:
3. Malaysia, the owner of that airplane, was not allowed to participate in the investigation. The investigation was supposed to be as impartial as possible. Interested parties were kept out as much as possible.
Etc .No need to keep see-sawing this. Being done plenty of times before and it is being done, as we speak, all over Internet.
You believe what you will; I do the same.
Moving on.
@peterAUSLaughable arguments.
1. If anyone on the US/Ukraine side saw on their screens anything that could place the blame on Donbass freedom fighters and/or Russia, they would have presented their evidence straight away. The US and its vassals (e.g., UK) go into lengthy hysterics even when they have no evidence whatsoever (US elections in 2016, Skripal affair, etc).
2. The US was so eager to hide its surveillance capabilities that Kerry blabbered about it from the get go. Then presented zilch. Very believable.
3. If Malaysia was excluded to make the investigation impartial, than Ukraine, Netherlands, Australia, and UK should have been excluded, as well. The investigation should have been conducted by a party who has no stake in the matter. Instead, it is conducted by one of the prime suspects and countries who lost citizens in that crash. For four years! With non-disclosure agreement, to boot. Inspires lots of confidence.
I am sure your responses to the rest would be just as "convincing".
expat47 , April 7, 2018 at 1:51 pm GMT
Why on earth would Russia gain anything from shooting down the plane? Western sanctions assault on the Russian Federation had been ongoing for some time before this incident. The US is willing to kill its own people, ala 9/11. The deep state is malicious and dangerous and it is the alt internet that makes our use of same to glean information that we would never to see in the MSM. The US has been trying to provoke Russia into a war and Putin hasn't taken the bait. The senseless idiots in the west don't seem to realise that Russian nuclear weaponry is supperia to our own and life on earth would surely end; except for the wealthy elites who run our country who would be safe in our D.U.M.B's
|
|
|
Apr 04, 2018 | russia-insider.com
AM Hants Bad boy!! Otto!! • 15 hours ago ,
Bad boy!! Otto!! AM Hants • 14 hours ago ,Have you seen this. Off topic, but, might interest you. How fast does a BUK fly? How fast does a python fly?
Missile Allegedly Used to Down MH17 Invisible Due to Speed – Dutch Prosecutors... https://sputniknews.com/eur...
AM Hants Bad boy!! Otto!! • 13 hours ago ,No clue how fast a BUK flies.....As for snakes, I can´t recall any that have developed the ability to fly, and I´m certain Pythons haven´t. I`m not saying they don´t, but I just never come across one that does....I´ll look into it.
Hmm an invisible BUK missile. Well it could be....There is yet anyone to come forward that has seen it taking off. Not a single person......No sound......No contrail......Nothing.....No surprises it wasn´t seen by radar. It wasn´t there.
Govert AM Hants • 4 hours ago ,Here is a flying python.
Russian aviation experts: 'Israeli-made Python air-to-air missile (fired from Israeli-upgraded Su-25 Scorpion) may have downed MH17'... https://www.sott.net/articl...
Bad boy!! Otto!! Govert • 3 hours ago ,Going off-topic, your hobby, isn't it, Anne-Marie? Anyway, as your quoted sputnik article writes:
"However, Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey, which developed the Buk missile system, has rejected these findings, saying that three simulations showed that the missile was launched from the Zaroshchenske area, which was controlled by Ukraine's army at the time of the downing"Clearly the (their, A-A's) discussion is not what type of missile system. They (or rather their bosses) only want the missile to have been launched from "Ukraine's army controlled" area. Why do you want to keep the fantasies and lies alive? Btw, here is the official news release: https://www.om.nl/actueel/n... Link to a more detailed report near the bottom.
Govert Bad boy!! Otto!! • an hour ago ,LMAO...How did I know I´d find you here trolling AM?
Anyway AA has always said IF it was a BUK missile, and as no Russian officials in any capacity has been allowed near the wreckage in the hands of the lying war criminal dutch government, It would be impossible for them to make a conclusive analysis.
Btw, We are familiar with your "reports"....Not worth the paper they are written on.
And finally banderite, as this case has yet to see the inside of a court of Law, it is all bullshit till it does.
Any dates for that court hearing yet?...And I do mean an open and transparent court hearing and not some kangaroo court favoured by the Brits when they "tried" the Litvenko case.
Bad boy!! Otto!! Govert • an hour ago ,"Banderite"? What or who is a "banderite"?
So A-A - that has co-operated with the DSB in their investigation into what downed the MH17- did an expensive research on their own, doing experiments, writing a report, giving presentations, came to their conclusions about the type of BUK and the launch location, and then would say "IF it was a BUK". Ha ha ha, now that is a ridiculous conditional statement! Only fools believe that. "If it was a BUK"... LMAO... It was a BUK, cockroach, and it came from Russia in the night before, with a Russian crew. They fired at what they thought to be a Ukrainian military aircraft and killed almost 300 innocent people, almost 200 from my country. IF the "case will not see the inside of a court of Law", it is due to the obstructions and the protection that these cowards get from your paradise that has already vetoed a UN tribunal and announced that it will not hand over any suspects, cockroach.
Govert Bad boy!! Otto!! • 7 minutes ago ,That´s more like it banderite...I do like a bit of a spirited debate.
However...:-( it does seem to be the case you have spent more time concentrating on calling me a "cockroach" than concentrating on what this debate is about....I did tell you many times you aren´t terribly bright, and as such I would suggest you concentrate on giving more thought to the question in hand rather than thinking of childish insults in order to get some sort of angry response from me...ain´t gonna happen banderite...you are nowhere near clever enough.
Any how banderite poofter...the main thrust of my argument, was the fact, no Russian official in any capacity was allowed anywhere near the wreckage in the possession of the lying war criminal dutch government to make an accurate analysis of what may have brought the aeroplane down.
Can you confirm this is the case? And try not to obfuscate...You will not be able to throw me off the scent. Oh, btw....How is russie russie?...Poor sod got banned the other day. :-(
LMAO!!!!
Didn´t slavko get banned as well?
Holy crap...we´re running out of trolls.Bad boy!! Otto!! AM Hants • 6 hours ago ,I would suggest you concentrate on giving more thought to the question in hand rather than thinking of childish insults You took the words right out of my mouth.... thanks, cockroach.
Russian officials? LMAO. Wasn't the area where the plane crashed controlled by "separatists" and vacationers? To whom did these bell boys want to hand over the "black boxes" initially? What were these bell boys doing with - and near the pieces of wreckage in those first days?
Again, no idea what or who a "banderite" is, nor what or who a "russie russie" is, but looking at the definition of what is seen as a "cockroach" here, you are exactly that, a cowardly cockroach even. However... it does seem to be the case you have spent more time concentrating on discussing banned commenters than concentrating on what this debate is about. (What happened to "Otto310" by the way?) Thanks.
ahhh, that sort of Python. I do so apologise, I must admit to feeling a little wary last night.It had been a long day. I thought you mean´t the wriggly hissing type of Python.
Well, it is now a new day, and feeling refreshed and ready for a this new day after a good nights sleep, I am now a little more compis mentis than last night.
I have seen that report.To me there is a flaw. It does not mention bullet holes, and there are definitely some holes in the aircraft that are perfectly round, depending from which angle the bullets were fired from, which could not have come from a BUK.
There are two reports that corroborate the other.
This one is probably the first to go against the official line, by Peter Haisenko.
https://www.anderweltonline...
and then there is this one.
https://cassad-eng.livejour...
Both are very good and seem to make a lot of sense.Btw, normally I would be bidding you a good night.
But not now...So...Good morning AM!
|
|
|
Apr 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
anon Disclaimer , January 5, 2015 at 10:57 am GMT
The Ukraine military shot down another airliner some years before when a missile aimed at a training drone missed and locked on to the airliner.Jonathan Revusky , December 6, 2014 at 7:42 am GMTI think the Kiev side had been directing airliners across the war zone along the path of planned bombing runs to allow Ukraine military jets to fly the same course *below* the airliner and use the airliner's much bigger radar signature (huge compared to a military jet) as protection i.e. if a missile was fired and missed it might lock on to the airliner instead.
I don't think the US side wants to admit their allies were using airliners as human shields and the Russians don't want to admit their surface to air missiles ignore civilian IFF (as they must in a war zone) hence why both side's stories feel unconvincing.
Apart from the politics it's important because if missiles treat civilian IFF as foe then it means airliners need to be kept a very long way from any mid-tech war zone.
@AlMillerThe parallels are pretty clear. In the case of both 9/11 and this Malaysian airliner, the western mainstream media had their story ready to go as soon as it happened. And then when all the evidence starts accumulating that this story is untrue, cannot possibly be true, they simply ignore all of it. In fact anybody who brings it up is immediately tarred as a "conspiracy theorist".
That's what about it. (Shrug)
|
|
|
Apr 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
MarkU , February 8, 2015 at 1:07 pm GMT
@AnonymousCaptain John Charity Spring MA , February 8, 2015 at 10:56 pm GMTRe: "The Ukraine would have no need to shoot AA missiles since so called Rebels had no air force at the time "
The Kiev regime had no need to put anti-aircraft batteries in the area at all, but they did!
Please everybody, get real.
Its been months since the shooting down of MH 17 and despite all the accusations made by the US government and the Kiev regime at the time, not one single piece of credible evidence has been produced. Obviously the information is being suppressed, and even more obviously it is not being withheld to protect the rebels or the Russians.
Alternative theory.MH17 was downed near Soledar and Artimovsk.
Under Artimovsk there is a gigantic weapons cache. Is it possible that the plane was downed so that Western investigators could look into an inventory of that site and assess what the Separatists removed from said weapons dump? Chemical, Nuclear, Biological weapons stocks?
The HQ for the crash site investigation was set up in Soledar which is a very close to the Salt Mine cave entrance.
The passengers were just collateral damage in the contest over weapons stocks.
|
|
|
Apr 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
Ronald Thomas West , Website November 29, 2014 at 12:42 pm GMT
Malaysia has been cut out of the investigation, why? For refusing to prejudge the outcome?http://journal-neo.org/2014/11/28/mh17-malaysia-s-barring-from-investigation-reeks-of-cover-up/
|
|
|
Apr 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
Sure Thing , March 7, 2015 at 3:48 am GMT
And here is an assessment of the non-surface-to-air-BUK (or 'red herring') theory, going with the pics and reports of two fighter jets -Ukrainian – seen on each side of MH-17 :Ray B. March 07, 2015
Here is my analysis, from an ex-Boeing aero engineer standpoint:
The Boeing 777 was initially at 33,000 feet. The aircraft, therefore, was above the Su-25's ceiling, as listed at wikipedia. (Service ceiling: 7,000 m (22,965 ft) clean,
5,000 m (16,000 ft) with max weapons) I am aware of the Comments both that this is an artificial, CIA-changed figure and that Su-25 pilots have reached at least 30,000 feet with supplemental oxygen. For the purpose here, it does not matter. I am presuming the Su-25 was carrying only two R-60 air-to-air missiles, which are low drag. So, the service ceiling in this case would have been around 21-22,000 feet. (The upgrades to the Su-25 did not include engine or aerodynamic changes, so are unlikely to have increased the ceiling.) The 777 was well within reach of the R-60s, though (66,000 ft, Mach 2.7). As a non-maneuvering, transport aircraft, it would have been laughably easy to hit. I would have salvoed both missiles, both for increased hit-chance and to avoid coming back with only one missile (very noticeable, as opposed to just empty pylons). The above would tie-in with ret. Col Zhilin's testimony. Most reports indicate the accompanying-fighter was closing from the rear, which is the most advantageous for infrared guidance. With infrared guidance, the missile would home-in directly on the hottest area – the engine exhaust. The warhead would probably detonate in the exhaust cone or adjacent to it. In the Boeing 777, the engine is slung well out in front of the wing. The expanding-rod warhead would rip up the engine but probably not take out the wing or flight control cabling. The 'hit' (or hits) might indeed be survivable. Today's jet engines are built with FAA-mandated 'containment shields'.They are meant to contain high-velocity fan/compressor/turbine blades if something causes them to shear off. They are basically armored 'cans' surrounding the rotating
parts. A missile detonating inside this 'can' might have the expanding-rods contained, rather than punching through the nacelle and into the fuselage. If detonating on the far side of the 'can' from the fuselage, much the same result Also, Zhilin says, " the Boeing turned 180 degrees to the left." This would be the direct result of losing thrust on the left engine. The pilots were probably more concerned with staying in the air (under control) than their heading http://www.boeing.com/assets/pdf/
commercial/startup/pdf/777_perf.pdf "Engine-out altitude capability (MTOW, ISA + 10°C) Basic: 16,200 ft Maximum Weight: 15,600 ft" After the 777's engine was hit and disabled by the R-60, the 777 would have descended to around 15-16,000 feet. That is the standard one-engine-out 'cruise' altitude as above. It may have been lower with the damage.If I were the pilot, I would have been on a circling descent through and below that altitude, looking for a nearby airport or good field. Since the R-60 has
such a small warhead, the pilots may not even have known they were hit by a missile and assumed a simple engine-out problem. That could account for the lack of initial reporting.This descent would have put the 777 well within the Su-25's (wikipedia) altitude capability. So, it would have been possible at that point to conduct a 'strafing' run with the 30mm cannon. With the 777 turning, that may have presented the opportunity for whatever angle shot the fighter pilot wanted. As various Commenters have noted, there seems to have been a concentration on the cockpit and avionics bay. (Grrr.)
Unfortunately, with the 'secrecy agreement' in place, I see no way that any important evidence will be revealed, barring a Snowden-like mass-release by someone with a Conscience
ReplyAm off to Asia Times with this too.
|
|
|
Apr 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
Contraviews , Website October 2, 2016 at 10:31 pm GMT
@ContraviewsRonald Thomas West , Website June 3, 2015 at 11:13 am GMTSomeone may already have commented on it, but it's impossible to read all the comments.One of the most salient points I find, is the fact that no vapour trail had been observed or photographed from the ground. A vapour condensation trail remains visible for quite some time and is visible for I would think at least 15 minutes.
Surely in this day and age when virtually everyone carries a cell phone capable of making pictures, such evidence should be available. But apparently there is not.
As a test it would be interesting if Russia would in front of the international press test fire a BUK missile.
I would very much appreciate comments on this particular aspect of the catastrophe. Thank you in anticipation.
The JIT in its 29/9 report showed a picture of a smoke trail. If that had been the smoke trail of the BUK that alledgedly shot down MH 17 than that picture would without a shadow of doubt been splashed over al the western media within hours. Hundreds may by thousands would have seen it and scores of pictures and videos would have been taken. The very fact that JIT now comes up with a smoke trail (which could have been taken any where) proves that it is a fake. If that is a fake all the other pictures are most likely fakes. Mr Eliot Higgins should have done better.
Russia states they have a Ukrainian witness backing the SU 25 combat jet shoot-down of MH 17Sure Thing , March 12, 2015 at 11:29 pm GMTStill think it was a BUK? Think again.
|
|
|
Apr 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
Ronald Thomas West , Website November 27, 2016 at 1:24 pm GMT
Despite the Dutch whitewash (report) which could only be called the 'likely' & 'probably' 'we love to point any finger at Putin report', material at odds with the western line continues to come out:Ronald Thomas West , Website January 30, 2017 at 10:10 am GMTThe Dutch investigators "can't decipher" the radar data provided by the Russians. As well, Dutch police have confiscated from journalists raw footage of new witness interviews that will no doubt be shared with Ukraine as a party to the investigation, endangering those persons who provided the information on condition of confidentiality:Ronald Thomas West , Website December 28, 2017 at 10:10 pm GMThttps://www.rt.com/news/375556-mh17-radar-investigation-decipher/
Leaked documents from the government at Kiev on the MH 17 shoot down by Ukrainian jet fighter:Ronald Thomas West , Website March 19, 2018 at 4:41 pm GMTMan identified as pilot who shot down MH 17 'commits suicide'JR , March 26, 2018 at 7:18 am GMThttps://sputniknews.com/europe/201803191062694528-voloshin-mh17-suspected-suicide/
^
The lengths Dutch Prime Minister publicly went (serving quote 'geopolitical interests') to get the EU-Ukraine association agreement ratified the clear rejection by advisory referendum notwithstanding, ought to make any well informed reader suspicious of how far Rutte went out of public sight to serve those same 'geopolitical interests' by manipulating both the investigation and public opinion in relation to MH17.JR , March 26, 2018 at 1:22 pm GMTRutte recently demonstrated his fealty to those 'geopolitical interests' again. When asked if new evidence was presented in the Skripal case to justify the Netherlands support for the UK, Rutte answered that 'such evidence wasn't necessary because May had stated that it was highly likely that Russia was responsible'.
The Dutch Government got a UN mandate to perform the investigation and as such that part of the investigation had to be transparent.
Clearly to serve those 'geopolitical interests' the Dutch separated the technical investigation from the legal liability investigation. The technical investigation was performed under the UN mandate and the second legal liability investigation was organized separate from any UN mandate.
The Dutch, Australian, Belgium government colluded with the Ukrainians to organize a 'Joint Investigation Team' which under the cover of performing a legal investigation refuses any transparency and at regular intervals hints that indictments are close but not there yet.
Also the Dutch Transport Safety Board technical investigation has concluded that the UkSATSE should have closed the Air Control area above Eastern Ukraine, but the Dutch government has thus far never taken any action to hold the Ukrainians responsible for that failure even when 3 days before MNH17 a AN-24 was downed from 6500m and UkSATSE (joint civil-military ATC) continued to control some 100 civil air liners a day over that area. The Dutch simply accepted that the Ukraine lost all relevant radar data.
@anonJR , March 27, 2018 at 6:40 am GMThttp://uksatse.ua/index.php?s=94a63ae71adf1e881cd1901e2276a734&act=Part&CODE=247&id=272&lang=en
News
4th June 2014
UkSATSE ensures safety in Ukrainian sky under any conditions
Ukrainian State Air Traffic Services Enterprise (UkSATSE) informs that the enterprise keeps on providing the whole range of air navigation services. It ensures flight safety in the airspace of Ukraine, airdromes of Ukraine and in the international airspace over the high seas at the relevant level. Moreover, UkSATSE ensures trouble-free operation of branches of Joint Civil-Military System of Air Traffic Management of Ukraine irrespective of foreign interference in work of air traffic services bodies in Crimea and at the East of Ukraine.Actually this "Who shot down MH17?" is the wrong question.CanSpeccy , Website March 29, 2018 at 2:42 am GMTThe question is "Who is liable?".
Shooting down aircraft above a war zone is SOP. If a civilian air liner is guided and controlled over such war area where 3 days earlier an AN-24 has been downed from 6500m one really ought to question the competence and liability of the ATC involved. That ATC authority UkSATSE as a joint civil-military ATC was fully informed about the situation and still continued to guide some 100 civil air liners ad day for three days over that war zone.
Shooting down a civil air liner over a war zone is tragic but not necessarily always a crime. There was no motive for the East Ukrainians, but as shown by the relentless exploitation by the Kiev puppet regime this Kiev regime most definitely had a motive.
Any liability investigation with the Ukrainian secret service as an investigator like in the Dutch/Australian/Ukraine Joint investigation Team simply can't be trusted to even look for the truth. The JIT was set up with the intention of evading the transparency requirements associated with the UN mandated investigation.
@JRAnonFromTN , March 30, 2018 at 6:54 pm GMTActually this "Who shot down MH17?" is the wrong question.
The question is "Who is liable?".
In which connection, as may already have been noted:
Thinking people smelled a rat in the case of MH17 straight off. No sensible person can fail to smell it now. Just a few considerations:Tom Van Meurs , Website March 31, 2018 at 3:36 am GMT
1. Donbass freedom fighters (and, by extension, Russia) were blamed by the US, its vassals, and its client states like Ukraine even before the debris cooled down. Only the perpetrators could have known designated "guilty party" without any investigation.
2. Satellite pictures promised by Kerry four years ago never materialized. The only logical conclusion is that the perpetrators were not those accused by the US, and the pictures would have revealed real perpetrators, which the US did not want to happen.
3. Malaysia, the owner of that airplane, was not allowed to participate in the investigation. Apparently, someone was afraid that it might not play ball. This can only happen when the "investigators" meant to hide the truth, not to reveal it.
4. The UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and one of the suspects, Ukraine, signed a non-disclosure agreement. It makes no sense unless one or more of the signatories is guilty.
5. The "investigation" is going on for four years, longer than any investigation in the history of civil aviation. The experience shows that a lot less time is needed to uncover the truth. Thus, the length of this "investigation" shows that the real purpose is cover-up.
6. Ukraine never provided the records of pilots' communications with air traffic controllers, or any other air traffic control records. Thus, it must have had something to hide.
One can continue in this vein, but what's the point? Suffice it to say that all international airlines drew their conclusions: they fly over Russia, but avoid Ukrainian airspace, like they avoid Iranian and North Korean airspace. Sapienti sat.In my blog 'contraviews' http://www.contraviewing.blogspot.com post 148 you will find a recording of the conversation (mentioned in this article) between the Estonian Foreign Affairs Minister Urmas Paet and EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton. Go to the year 2014 in the margin and scroll down to post 148. One may find more interesting articles on MH17.JR , March 31, 2018 at 5:18 pm GMT@AnonFromTNAnonFromTN , March 31, 2018 at 6:18 pm GMTSee my comment nr 230: There is not one investigation. The Dutch manipulated this into two separate investigations. There was a technical UN mandated transparent Dutch Safety Board investigation. The Dutch organized a second criminal investigation together with Australia, Belgium and the Ukraine and instigated A Joint Investigation Team (JIT).
The manipulation and exploitation of the MH17 incident by the Dutch seems to rival that of Skripal incident by the UK.
@JRYes. I can understand the Dutch government: they serve the US overlords first and foremost. They don't give a hoot about the lives of ordinary Dutch people. What I do not understand is the behavior of the people who lost loved ones in MH17 crash. Don't they want to know who killed them? Don't they object to being grist for the mill of amoral and cynical politicians?
|
|
|
Aug 14, 2014 | www.unz.com
Ukraine?
Last year I published Our American Pravda , making the case for the utter corruption and unreliability of the mainstream American media, both in the past and especially in recent years. The enormous lacunae I daily noticed in the pages of The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , and other leading media outlets were a major motivation behind my creation of The Review , whose readership has grown enormously in recent weeks.
A perfect example of this dangerous MSM "conspiracy of silence" may be found in the growing confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, greatly accelerated by the death of almost 300 passengers aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, shot down last month over Eastern Ukraine. The American media and its Western counterparts have almost unanimously placed the blame on anti-government rebels backed by Russia, and darkly insinuate that Russian President Vladimir Putin has the blood of those hundreds of innocent lives on his hands. London's once-respected Economist magazine has repeatedly run shrill covers promoting the great threat of Putin and Russia to world peace, even featuring a photo of the former under the stark title "A Web of Lies." There is the serious likelihood of a renewed Cold War against Russia and with the neoconized Republicans in Congress proposing legislation to incorporate Ukraine as an American military ally and deploy American forces there, the actual possibility of a military clash near the Russian border.
As readers know, I have been overwhelmingly consumed with my own software work in recent months and aside from closely reading the NYT and WSJ every morning, have devoted little time or effort to following the disastrous Ukraine situation. But just carefully reading between the lines of our elite MSM outlets and glancing at a few contrary perspectives presented on alternative websites have left me highly suspicious of our media narrative, leading me to wonder where the finger of guilt actually points.
For example, according to the official American story, MH17 was downed by rebels armed with a BUK anti-aircraft missile battery. As it happens, the pro-American Ukraine government possesses a large inventory of exactly those weapons, while it is far from clear that the rebels have a single unit, let alone the expertise to operate such sophisticated devices. Furthermore, there apparently exists radar evidence demonstrating that Ukraine fighter planes were in the immediate vicinity of MH17 just before it was shot down and there are firsthand reports from investigators on the ground that portions of the crashed fuselage showed strong evidence of having been hit the sort of heavy machine-gun fire employed in air combat. I find it extremely suspicious that the American government has repeatedly refused to release the evidence supporting its narrative, while the Russian government has released copious evidence supporting its contrary perspective.
We must bear in mind that the downing of MH17 and the deaths of the hundreds of mostly European passengers came as a fortuitous stroke of fortune for the embattled Kiev government and its neoconservative American backers, given that Germany and most of the other major European governments had just balked at approving the harsh anti-Russian economic sanctions being proposed by the White House. Cui bono ?
Furthermore, this terrible suspicion that 300 innocent lives may have been sacrificed in a ghastly false-flag operation by an American-supported government is somewhat buttressed by earlier events. Consider that the overthrow of the democratically-elected and neutralist Ukrainian government was sparked by the massive bloodshed that erupted between riot police and pro-American demonstrators in the Kievan capital, as many hundreds on both sides were suddenly killed or wounded by an outbreak of heavy gunfire over a couple of nights. I found it very intriguing that soon afterward an intercepted telephone call between the pro-Western foreign minister of Estonia and European High Commissioner Catherine Ashton, later confirmed to be genuine, revealed that the bullets found in the bodies of both government police and anti-government demonstrators had apparently come from the same guns. The most plausible explanation of this strange detail is that the snipers responsible were professionals brought in to cause the massive bloodshed necessary to overthrow the government, which is exactly what soon followed. Again cui bono ?
Am I certain about these facts, let alone the analysis built upon them? Absolutely not! As emphasized, I've been entirely preoccupied with other matters over the last few months. But if such obvious suspicions are apparent to someone who occasionally glances at the news reports out of the corner of his mind's eye, the total silence of the American media and its huge corps of full-time professional journalists constitutes a very telling indictment. Personally, I think there's a high likelihood that forces aligned with current pro-Western regime were responsible for the massacre in Kiev's Maidan Square and a better than fifty-fifty chance they more recently shot down MH17, but I really can't be sure about either of these things. However, I am absolutely 100% certain that the American MSM has been revealed as a totally worthless source of information on these crucial world events, although it can be relied upon to provide every last detail of Robin Williams' troubled life or the endless foibles of the Kardashians.
In the interests of providing our readers at least some access to alternate accounts of why we may now be heading into a new Cold War against Russia -- or even a hot one -- I've recently republished a couple of Mike Whitney's fine Counterpunch columns on the mysteries of Flight MH17 , which cautiously raised questions rather than claimed to answer them, as well as those of the redoubtable Paul Craig Roberts.
Aside from attracting considerable debate from our website's often "excitable" commenters, whose views range from the sensible to the deranged, our Whitney columns regarding MH17 had a far more important consequence. One of our left-liberal readers was shocked to read facts totally absent from the pages of The Nation , the Huffington Post , or any of the other left-liberal sites she visits. Out of curiosity, she contacted a very prominent left-liberal American academic, someone with special expertise in exactly that area of Europe. To her considerable surprise, he largely confirmed the outlandish "conspiracy theory," saying that the evidence increasingly indicated that the American-backed Kiev government had shot down Flight MH17, either accidentally or otherwise.
Based on his remarks, it sounded like he and his friends had devoted 100x the time and effort that I had to investigating the incident, thereby reassuring me that my casual conclusions were at least not wholly ridiculous. Yet it also appeared that neither he or any of the other American experts in his circle who apparently share his views had seen fit to publish their opinions in any of the numerous media outlets to which they have easy access, presumably for fear of being denounced and stigmatized as "conspiracy nuts." They may regard the possibility of an American military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia as a terrible danger, but it pales compared to the horrifying risk that the 22-year-old bookers at MSNBC chat shows might decide to put a black mark down next to their names.
The following day I lamented this cowardice of our intelligentsia to another prominent liberal academic with whom I'm friendly, and he immediately sent me the draft by a friend of his on that very topic that I am now greatly honored to publish. Most of the dead on MH17 were Dutch citizens and Karel van Wolferen ranks as one of the world's most prominent Dutch journalists, winner of major awards and someone whose numerous books that have sold well over a million copies worldwide. His article describes the evidence regarding MH17, but more importantly focuses on the totally corrupted worlds of journalism and politics that have enabled this dangerous situation to develop.
I urge everyone to read van Wolferen's long and thoughtful piece and ask themselves why such basic facts and simple analysis appear nowhere within the mainstream American media. Given his standing and his credibility, the New York Times should have long since featured his byline on a major opinion piece, and the absence constitutes powerful evidence. During our disastrous Iraq War the American media applied exactly the same boycott to the views of my old friend Bill Odom, the three-star general who had run the NSA for President Ronald Reagan and ranked as one of Washington's leading experts on national security issues. Our totally incompetent ruling elites refuse to let discordant voices puncture their bubble of unreality.
For those readers who refuse to admit the possibility that our vaunted MSM might conceal such vital facts, consider the important point I made at the beginning of my 2013 article . In recent years, leading scholars have conclusively established that for a decade or two during the 1930s and 1940s, a small network of Communist spies quietly gained substantial control of our national government in Washington, DC, successfully diverting the actions of the United States to their own nefarious ends. If our mainstream media had failed to notice or report that situation at the time and then spent the next half century ridiculing anyone who suggested this possibility, why should anyone believe that the media can be trusted on the question of who actually shot down Flight MH17 in Ukraine? Our American Pravda indeed.
The Ukraine, Corrupted Journalism, and the Atlanticist Faith By Karel van Wolferen • August 14, 2014 • 3,900 WordsUPDATE: Our long, detailed article by distinguished Dutch journalist Karel van Wolferen has had enormous traffic, and is now on the verge of becoming the most heavily read piece in the history of our young webzine, while the nearly 600 Tweets it has so far received indicatie distribution comparable to that of a major New York Times article. All this has happened in just the last couple of days.
Furthermore, just as I had hoped, the very lengthy comment threads of the two articles have provided a wealth of additional information, far beyond anything I had previously encountered, given my slight familiarity with this issue.
First, I learned that a group of highly-experienced former intelligence officers from the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other government agencies has issued a public statement sharply criticizing the lack of evidence substantiating the claims made by American government officials.
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/77302/77302/#more-77302
Also, the blogsite of Col. Patrick Lang, a very highly regarded former Defense Intelligence official, has published a lengthy and detailed analysis of the MH17 Incident, raising many of the same issues:
Furthermore, one of the commenters on our website, who purportedly has a military intelligence background, pointed us to the very detailed analysis he had published on his own blogsite regarding MH17:
http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2014/07/19/black-boxes-dark-arts-geopolitics/
And I also discovered that a prominent leftist journalist had also published a lengthy reconstruction of the shoot-down:
Although I claim no great expertise in military affairs, these analyses certainly seem to strengthen my suspicions that the Official Story almost universally accepted by the Western MSM is far from solid and may indeed be a ridiculous fabrication. I urge others to follow the links I have provided, and draw their own conclusions, perhaps different from my own. But they should ask themselves why so many highly-regarded former U.S. intelligence professionals would be raising these serious doubts and why our mainstream media has totally failed to report them.
As for me, I've noticed a curious fact. It appears that the people and organizations promoting the current Official Line on Ukraine have a huge overlap with the people and organizations that promoted the disastrous Iraq War, based on the notorious WMD Hoax. Meanwhile, the people providing serious skepticism about government accusations regarding MH17 are exactly the same people who raised doubts and skepticism about Iraq's alleged WMD and the wisdom of attacking Iraq, while being just as totally ignored by the MSM then as now.
Since none of the Iraq War or WMD Hoax culprits ever received proper punishment for their crimes, they've mostly remained alive and free and able to promote equally disastrous foreign policy adventures in the media they continue to control. But that doesn't mean we must be so gullible as to believe what they say.
Going forward, the crucial unknown is whether our timorous media or even its ideological fringes, will begin to seriously report these issues, or whether they'll all get into line just as they did during the WMD Hoax.
UPDATE 2:
Scott Horton has a podcast interview of Karel van Wolferen
http://scotthorton.org/interviews/2014/08/15/081514-karel-van-wolferen/
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Peter AU 1 , Mar 29, 2018 6:04:40 PM | 50
MH17 was an anglo/US hit job. I start to see now why no Australian rep went with the Malaysians to collect the victims and the planes black boxes. The Dutch at least had the decency to go with the Malaysian's and pick up their own people.With MH17 it took two weeks to push the EU into sanctioning Russia which and only then so called international team and Australian reps went to the site.
With Novichok, it only took a couple of days to get the EU on board so I think plenty of planning by UK and fellow travelers in the US before the Skripal's were poisoned.
|
|
|
Mar 27, 2018 | www.unz.com
JR , Next New Comment March 27, 2018 at 6:24 am GMT
Within a week after Brennan's 'routine' visit in April 2014 to the Ukraine the Ukrainian army launched a civil war. That was within 2 weeks of the CIA instigated coup an the end of February 2014.
|
|
|
Mar 27, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
col from OZ , Mar 21, 2018 9:38:04 PM | 87
Don 60 re Huntsman"our mutual friend Elliott Higgins" works for the Atlantic council, that's when he not ginning up (original) false Ghouta chemical attack and falsifying and photo shopping evidence on the MH17 (which was carried out by Ukraine.)
|
|
|
Mar 19, 2018 | www.unz.com
jilles dykstra , March 19, 2018 at 12:56 pm GMT
@RandalThere is one 'track record', Litvinov, killed by polonium. What secret service would be so dumb as to use this, pointing immediately to state murder ? Accidents, and suicides are quiet methods for keeping people silent for all times.
The Ukrainian pilot that, according to Russia, by accident shot down MH17, just committed suicide. I wonder if he was suicided. Sensational murders, or attempted murders, have quite different purposes. Blaming someone.
Who believes that Arafat was not murdered, does anyone believe that the Diana accident was an accident, who believes the Hess and Kelly suicides ? Why was Palme murdered, who indeed thinks that Anna Lyndh was killed accidentally, that Barschel committed suicide, that Mölleman died accidentally ? And so on, and so forth.
|
|
|
www.theamericanconservative.com
[ Editor's note : VT has long asserted that two Ukrainian SU 25s or SU27s "radar spoofed" shot down MH 17. We did so on live Russia Today backed by experienced combat pilots and we presented evidence that an Israeli F15E AWAC aided, taking off from Azerbaijan, to vector in the shootdown.
Now, years later, Russia speaks up after we believe media there was silenced by pro-Israeli traitors Gordon Duff ]
*
The pilot's death, preliminarily ruled a suicide, has reopened claims about his possible role in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in the summer of 2014.
Vladislav Voloshin, the Ukrainian combat pilot which some Russian investigative journalists have accused of responsibility for the MH17 disaster, allegedly shot himself Sunday at his home.
According to a press release by police in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the 29-year-old pilot's wife heard the gunshot and called the emergency services. Voloshin succumbed to his wounds on route to hospital.
According to the police, the pilot was shot by a Makarov pistol, a standard issue military and police side arm in Ukraine. The weapon has been sent for examination. Police have opened a criminal investigation.
Inconvenient Facts: JIT Likely to Ignore New Russian MH17 EvidenceRelatives told police that Voloshin had been in a depressed state, and had voiced suicidal thoughts. Friends and family told local media that he was suffering from problems associated with the reconstruction of Mykolaiv's airport, where he was acting director.
Voloshin's name came to be associated with independent investigations into the destruction of Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine. In late 2014, a Ukrainian army aircraft mechanic told Russian media that the passenger airliner may have been downed by a Su-25 close air support aircraft flown by Voloshin.
The Ukrainian side confirmed that the pilot was in the military at the time, but denied that he flew on the day the Malaysian airliner was brought down.
Speaking to Sputnik about Voloshin's suspected suicide, Ukrainian politics expert Bogdan Bezpalko said that Kiev's version aside, "one cannot help but think that the other side may have eliminated him as a dangerous witness who could have lifted the veil of secrecy over the downing of MH17, which would subsequently strengthen Russia's position."
According to the political scientist, "it's quite obvious that it was not in Russia's interest to shoot down this plane, and that all this was a provocation directed against our country."
In Bezpalko's view, Kiev and its Western power will continue to do everything they can to see that the truth about the tragedy of flight MH17 does not surface anytime soon. "It's possible that others who could shed light on this matter will be 'silenced' in one way or another. So I don't think we will learn the truth any time soon.
I would like to recall, for example, that all matters related to the flight of Rudolf Hess to Britain [in 1941] remain classified to the British people for 100 years. And I think that the circumstances of the airliner will be made known only when the urgency of the matter disappears," the observer said.
EXCLUSIVE: Kiev 'Turned Blind Eye to Lives of 298 People Aboard MH17'
On July 17, 2014, a Malasyia Airlines Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed outside the city of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people onboard.Kiev blamed the crash on the Donbass independence fighters, who countered by saying they did not have the means to bring down an aircraft flying at such a high altitude.
An inquiry by Dutch investigators concluded that the Boeing was shot down by a Buk missile system, which it alleged was delivered to the militia from Russia and then sent back. Moscow slammed the inquiry's bias, saying that the investigators' conclusions were based exclusively on information received from the Ukrainian side.
A separate investigation by Almaz-Antei, maker of the Buk system, concluded that the Boeing was shot down from territory controlled by the Ukrainian military.
|
|
|
Mar 19, 2018 | news.yandex.ru
The former Ukrainian pilot Vladislav Voloshin, suspected of attacking Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines, committed suicide. This was reported by the police of the Mykolayiv region. A retired military pilot killed himself at his home.
https://russian.rt.com/ussr/news/493702-ukraina-samoubiistvo-podozrevaemyi-mh17
|
|
|
Mar 25, 2018 | www.veteranstoday.com
MH17
Western governments and media continue to lie about MH17. I have not yet seen a government report which attempts to grapple with the fact that the pro-Russian rebels blamed for the disaster lacked access to the arming codes for the Buk missile system in their possession, for example.
I was amazed to learn this week that some websites are still pushing the discredited claim the Sukhoi-25 cannot reach FL330 (33'000 ft), the altitude MH17 was flying at when it was shot down. The issue is not whether a -25 can reach FL330 -- clearly it can, on combat power. The issue is why has the desperate lie that it could not been persisted in for so long?
Service ceiling for the Su-25M, of which the Ukrainian Air Force has at least two examples, is 33,000 ft and higher with combat power. In any event the Ukrainians didn't need armor-plate to fire at an unarmed 777. As I have pointed out on these pages before the -25 has a heavy, titanium armor 'bath' designed to protect the pilot from ground fire. Remove that and you immediately buy yourself extra performance.
You won't find any of these points acknowledged on Wikipedia. The intellectual dishonesty of those pushing the 'Russian rebel' conspiracy theory is breath-taking.
|
|
|
Mar 22, 2018 | thesaker.is
Peter from Oz on March 22, 2018 , · at 6:24 am UTC
The anger and righteous disgust by the chief RF MFA spokesman at around 1:45 from recall (I did just skip to snippets -- but got stopped there) is worth seeing. He talks of the Malaysian Boeing downed in Ukraine to the US rep in audience, pointing out US knows exactly what happened because of its satellites directly overhead, and says something I'd never heard -- repeated it a couple of times at least -- again in accusatory disgust -- that the first accusations Russia shot down the plane came BEFORE the plane was hit!Auslander on March 22, 2018 , · at 7:29 am UTCThis is true, the plane was still flying when the first accusations were made. The fact that it hit the ground moments later belies the lies that Opolchensya and/or Russia did it. The plane was not hit by a missile, there are entry and exit aircraft cannon holes in the left cockpit outer skin. I have no doubts that the photos of that damning piece of evidence are long gone but not to worry, I'm sure someone has them.
Auslander
|
|
|
Mar 22, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Abe , March 20, 2018 at 12:07 am
Abe , March 20, 2018 at 12:12 amIt's truly amazing what that plucky [CIA-based] Russian (and Ukrainian)-speaking "community" can provide:
-- chemical agents and nuclear materials (deliverable by aerial drone or up close and personal, of course),
-- rusty weapons parts and busted "barrel bombs" (I understand their "community" pioneered the IED concept),
-- even the occasional Russian missile or aircraft.Sadly, they aren't able to provide the one thing that the U.S. "intelligence community" can never quite seem to find: satellite photos.
But don't worry, folks. We don't have to take nobody's word for nuthin'. YouTube and Google Earth and "online investigations" from Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat (and you can "verify" too) have that all covered.
Rest assured, that plucky Russian (and Ukrainian)-speaking "community" has something really, really "good". They've already used it a few times. That worked so well that their gonna use it again. Like real soon.
It's truly amazing what that plucky Russian (and Ukrainian)-speaking "community" can provide:
-- chemical agents and nuclear materials (deliverable by aerial drone or up close and personal, of course),
-- rusty weapons parts and busted "barrel bombs" (I understand their "community" pioneered the IED concept),
-- even the occasional Russian missile or aircraft.Sadly, they aren't able to provide the one thing that the U.S. "intelligence community" can never quite seem to find: satellite photos.
But don't worry, folks. We don't have to take nobody's word for nuthin'. YouTube and Google Earth and "online investigations" from Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat (and you can "verify" too) have that all covered.
Rest assured, that plucky Russian (and Ukrainian)-speaking "community" has plenty of something. They're using it now and they're gonna keep on using it. Unless somebody finds some satellite photos.
|
|
|
Mar 18, 2018 | russia-insider.com
Crypto • 2 days ago ,
Nothing I have ever seen in my life is more ludicrous, more absurd and more unjust than this display in parliament.
1691 Crypto • 2 days ago ,
Peter Jennings Crypto • a day ago ,Remember the MH17 tragedy. It was worst. The whole western world was screaming Russia/Putin.
tom , 2 days agoI agree, and for a prime minister to gamble so much on 'highly likely' intelligence, is an insult to our intelligence.
The whole sorry lot in parliament are stuck in an 18th century mindset. The place has never so needed a new broom as it does right now.
"An editor at the Guardian says the poisoning was a 'brazen attack on a sovereign country' and 'cannot go unpunished'".So presumably The Guardian will now be agitating for the trial and severe punishment of all those responsible for brazen and unprovoked attacks on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan. Iraq, Libya and Syria?
All of which did rather more than poisoning two or three people (so far, non-fatally). In Iraq alone the "coalition" is responsible for over 3 million civilian deaths. In Iraq and Libya the civil infrastructure was demolished and the head of state murdered.
And what does The Guardian have to say about that?
Mizan Thrope • 2 days ago
Another FALSE FLAG created by the western neocons to discredit Russia. This is so obvious. The sheeple need to wake up.
|
|
|
Mar 18, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Posted by: the pessimist | Mar 16, 2018 2:03:28 PM | 21
Very reminiscent of the MH17 campaign that was used to bully the reluctant Europeans into imposing sanctions on Russia. Accusations were made and a narrative put forward immediately without presenting clear evidence or waiting for an investigation. Through repetition this narrative has become dogma in the West despite the fact that supporting evidence has still not been forthcoming. It seems that after 9-11 it became clear that quickly putting out a narrative, with the support of the press, and demonizing anyone with any public stature who questions the basic story could be successful, even when there were thousands of eye witnesses and many flaws in the official explanation. The facts, or what really happened no longer matter once the narrative has taken root.
My question is what kinds of threats are being used to keep potential dissenters in line now. French banks were punished over the mistrial deal and it was abandoned. Now the stakes seem to be higher and the risk of defections has increased, so what is the stick?
|
|
|
Mar 17, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk
Stonky , March 16, 2018 at 02:53
Kiza , March 16, 2018 at 02:55Clyde Davis: " until I hear a more convincing explanation I'm sticking to my guns."
1. Russian dissident oligarchs: loads of money; baleful influence and financial tentacles extend into the very heart of the UK establishment; all sorts of dodgy connections in the former Soviet Union; zero scruples; hate Putin.
2. Ukraine: fascist regime; involved in a war with Russia already; just as likely to have access to old Soviet Novichok (if it exists) as Russia; just as capable of manufacturing it as Russia if it doesn't; zero scruples; hate Putin.
3. Turkey: angry because they're losing a proxy war with Russia in Syria; already have their own chemical weapons programme; perfectly capable of manufacturing this stuff; previous in targeted assassinations; zero scruples; hate Putin.
4. Saudi Arabia: angry because they're losing a proxy war with Russia in Syria; loads of money; baleful influence and financial tentacles extend into the very heart of the UK establishment; happy to export or facilitate terrorism anywhere in the world including their supposed 'allies'; zero scruples; hate Putin.
5. Anti-Trump forces in the US: Demented in their obsession with 'Trump-Russia' collusion; angry because they're losing a proxy war with Russia in Syria; already have access to Soviet Novichok (if it exists); perfectly capable of manufacturing it if it doesn't; previous in targeted assassinations; zero scruples; hate Putin.
6. Israel: angry because they're losing a proxy war with Russia in Syria; probably the best military/scientific capability in the world; certainly capable of manufacturing this stuff; previous in targeted assassinations; zero scruples when pursuing what they believe to be their own best interests; hate Putin.Sergey , March 17, 2018 at 08:11To me this is a repeat of the MH17 case study with its:
- Propaganda preparation – media full of shot down Uki military planes vs. media full of CW victims in Syria for which Russia is to blame,
- "Rush" to judgement whodunit – former Australian Prime Minister Abbot publicly pointed finger at the Russian rebels in Ukraine 7 hours after the shootdown vs. the UK Prime Minister blames Russia a day after her event,
- Soviet Union = Russia when convenient – the Soviet designed and made BUK becomes the exclusively Russian made BUK vs. the Soviet Designed CW becomes the exclusively Russian produced CW (with a touch of the good old British propaganda – maybe Russia lost control over it! => well, maybe US "lost control" over it when it was helping it's client Uzbekistan destroy it)
- Logic matters not – let us find a BUK coming all the way from Russia instead of looking at tens of such systems operated by the Uki troops, apparently four near the area where the shoot down happened vs. let us look at poison or a trained chemist coming all the way from Russia (how when one cannot get even a small bottle of drink on a plane?) whilst there is a British own source 12 km away,
- When questions arise and contrary items of evidence come out, just ignore and keep drumming "the proven facts" (the science is settled) from the blame package prepared in advance – an alternative, facts-supported explanation will never be accepted no matter what.
The post-modern West operates on evidence-free pure emotion-eliciting narratives ("Putin killed my baby") on the shoulders of MSM and troll farms. Any unauthorised explanation, such as Mr Murray's, is declared a conspiracy theory to be ridiculed.
https://wikispooks.com/w/images/9/90/Report-mh17-crash-en.pdf Page 232
Above mean that Ukraine, Malaysia and Malaysia Airlines bore certain responsibilities with regards to the operations of flight MH17 based on national an international law.
Russia has very bad lawyers. The investigation is completed.
|
|
|
Mar 12, 2018 | www.rt.com
The US used Russia to prevent Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich from using his military against rioters in Kiev, and then 'cheated' Moscow by supporting an armed coup, President Vladimir Putin said. The accusation refers to events that happened in February 2014, when Ukraine was gripped by violent anti-government protests. Yanukovich and three leaders of the opposition forces signed a power-sharing deal, which effectively amounted to a capitulation of the president.
The deal was enforced by three European nations: Germany, France and Poland. The accord lasted only a few days, however, as protestors – led by far-right nationalists – violated its terms and advanced unopposed by demoralized security forces. This forced Yanukovich to flee for his life.
"Here is something not publicly known," Putin revealed in an interview. "At this very moment, our American partners called us and asked to do everything – and that's almost a quote – to ensure that Yanukovich didn't use the army, so that the opposition could clear the squares and governmental buildings on its own terms and go on towards the implementation of the agreement."
The Russian president said Moscow agreed to this request, only to see the situation escalate the next day into a full-fledged armed coup. "They could have at least called us, do something, say a word! They could have said, 'It was a case of agents stepping out of line, but we will fix it and turn everything into the bounds of the law,'" he said.
"Not a word! On the contrary, there was full support of those who committed this coup," Putin recalled. "This is what they did with their own hands. How can they not support the current leadership now? They put themselves into a corner."
After he was asked whether this was the first time Moscow had been cheated by Washington, Putin said this instance was "the first when the cheating was done so rudely and insolently." It was the first time that the US had broken a promise this quickly, and would not even bother to explain their actions through proper channels, the president added.
"They should have understood that all this was happening near our borders. There are many people who identify themselves as Russians or consider themselves closely connected with Russia," Putin said. "[Ukraine] is a country with which we have centuries-old special relations. We had an integrated production, energy and transport system. How can one not consider all those things?"
After the armed coup, the leadership of Ukraine chose to sever as many ties with Russia as it could, even though it hurt their own country. The painful break-up was justified by Kiev's ambition to become part of NATO and the European Union – two goals that don't seem much closer, four years after the ousting of Yanukovich. It did, however, cause significant damage to Ukraine's economy, forcing millions of Ukrainians to seek low-paid jobs in countries like Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic.
"If they did it a little different, Ukraine would have benefited much more. Our co-operation links would not have been broken. Entire industries in Ukraine would have still existed," Putin said. "All this destruction was done for what? For a 'civilizational choice?' Was that a choice of poverty or an opportunity to work illegally in European countries under the guise of a tourist visa?"
The remarks feature in a 90-minute documentary by journalist Vladimir Solovyov called 'World Order 2018,' which is based on interviews with Putin and a number of foreign dignitaries. The film is intended to show how the Russian leadership perceives the country's place in the world today.
If you like this story, share it with a friend!
|
|
|
Mar 02, 2018 | stonecoldtruth.com
What is not generally known, however, due to the lying coverage in the Transatlantic "Fake News" media, is that included in this unholy alliance of coup plotters were armed militia units made up of neo-Nazis, who were responsible for the bloodshed on Maidan Square in Kiev, and which threatened the ethnic Russians, which constitute the majority of the population in the eastern Ukraine regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The lie that there was no neo-Nazi involvement has been maintained, despite ample evidence to the contrary, including interviews with militants pronouncing admiration for Hitler's collaborators in the Bandera movement in Ukraine during World War II, when Ukrainian units murdered ethnic Poles, Russians, and other "non-Ukrainians", including Ukrainian Jews. The armed "Banderistas" and related thugs have been incorporated into the security apparatus of the Kiev regime, and continue to march in the halls of Parliament and on the streets, under banners with pictures of Bandera, the Nazi collaborator, and symbols going back to their alliance with the Nazi SS.
The coup provoked a chain of events which the U.S., London and NATO used as justification to impose punitive sanctions against Russia, while demonizing Russia's President Putin, asserting that the he was engaged in military operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, to reverse the coup. Efforts to stop the fighting between the regime's armed forces and ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine led to the Minsk Accord in 2015, which included a cease fire and the granting of autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk. The Minsk Accord was brokered by France, Germany and Russia.
On January 18, 2018, the Ukrainian Parliament ripped up the Minsk Accord, referring to the two republics as "temporarily occupied" by an "aggressor country," that is, Russia, and vowed to reintegrate them, by military force if necessary. This bill, which received the full support of Ukraine's President Poroshenko, has been described by the Russian Foreign Ministry as "a preparation for a new war." It occurs simultaneously with an outburst of war-like propaganda from western neocons, typified by a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), released on February 20 with the title, "Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts." The report charges that both Russia and China are preparing for war against the U.S., and that the Russians are deploying forces and artillery to overrun the Baltic states in a lightning strike, to reincorporate them into a new Russian empire!
THE CASE OF PAUL MANAFORT
This background is necessary to understand the vicious hostility behind the targeting of Paul Manafort, a long-time U.S. political operative, by the "amoral legal assassin", special counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort, who served as Donald Trump's campaign manager at a key moment in his fight to secure the Republican nomination, from May to August 2016, was indicted by Mueller on October 27, 2017, charged with numerous counts of money laundering, tax fraud, not registering as an agent of a foreign government, and of making false statements to the FBI. Mueller filed a revised indictment on February 28, 2018, following his "turning" of Manafort's partner Rick Gates, who filed a guilty plea to a single count on February 22. While awaiting trial in September, Manafort is confined to house arrest.
None of the charges against Manafort are related to the initial mandate given to Mueller, by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to investigate the allegations of Russian hacking and sundry meddling in the 2016 election, and whether Donald Trump had "colluded" with the Russians. However, they are directly related to the geopolitical manipulations against Russia, which have been sharply criticized by Trump, both as a candidate and as President.
Manafort was first placed under surveillance following a FISA Court order in 2014. FISA, the super-secret court set up as part of the post-9/11 apparat to spy on potential terrorists, granted the surveillance order as part of an investigation into alleged illegal lobbying on behalf of the Yanukovych government of Ukraine by Manafort and others. Note that the timing of the court order coincided with the 2014 coup in Ukraine. Manafort had been working for several years as an adviser to the Party of the Regions, which was the party of President Yanukovych, who was overthrown by the regime change coup.
The original FISA warrant targeting Manafort was subsequently not renewed, for lack of evidence. A second order, however, was approved by the FISA Court for surveillance of Manafort sometime during 2016 -- the exact date of the order has not been released -- likely around the time Manafort took over the reins of the Trump campaign. Manafort played a key role in holding the Trump coalition together heading into the Republican convention July 18-21, as Bush-directed "Never-Trumpers" were attempting to steal the nomination away from him.Prior to the convention, Manafort was involved in the successful fight to remove language from the party's platform which called for providing lethal weapons to the Poroshenko government, allegedly to fight against "Russian subversion." Manafort had the backing of Trump for this, as Trump had campaigned for an end to U.S. support for regime change wars, such as the Obama-neocon coup in Ukraine.
Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, a leading campaigner for tougher sanctions against Russia -- he was one of the authors of the initial anti-Russia sanctions, in the Magnitsky Act -- accused Trump and Manafort of changing the platform to benefit Russia, which he accused of robbing Ukraine of sovereignty! It is now reported that Manafort's role in changing the language in the platform is "under investigation" by Mueller!
(Manafort was also instrumental in including a plank supporting restoration of Glass Steagall banking separation, something vehemently opposed by Wall Street and the City of London financial institutions.)
It was during this same time period, June and July, once it was evident that, barring some unforeseen event, Trump would be the Republican nominee, that the anti-Trump activities of the "Deep State" went into high gear. While the "Never Trumpers" were unsuccessfully plotting to prevent his nomination at the convention, Christopher Steele began churning out memos, paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which included wild claims about Putin's secret service filming Trump in compromising sexual activity during the 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow. His first memo was written on June 20, 2016, and he met for the first time with an FBI official on July 5, 2016.
It was also in June that CIA Director John Brennan was briefed by GCHQ Director Hannigan, on "evidence" compiled by his agency, of "suspicious" activity they had picked up on Russian activity with Trump. GCHQ is Britain's cyber security intelligence agency, which works directly with MI5 and MI6. Brennan then pulled together an inter-agency task force to investigate the British charges of Russian activity. Among those in the FBI unit which was part of this task force were the now-famous duo, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, whose extensive text messaging shows that they were engaged in creating the fake narrative of "Russian meddling and Trump collusion". One text spoke of developing the Russiagate narrative to either defeat Trump in November, or provide an "insurance policy" against him, if he won.This incriminating text describes the meeting as taking place in "Andy's office", a reference to the now-fired Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, who told a Congressional hearing that there would have been no surveillance warrant issued by the FISA court in October 2016 against Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, had it not been for the Steele dossier.
Nunes has sent a list of ten questions regarding how the Steele's dossier shaped the anti-Trump mobilization of Obama's intelligence agencies. Among those receiving the list of ten questions are James Comey, the former FBI director fired by Trump, Obama's Director of National Intelligence Clapper, Brennan and Victoria Nuland. They are given until March 2 to answer, or they will face subpoenas. What Nunes is looking for is answers as to when the Steele dossier was brought to their attention, by whom, what actions were taken in response to it, its role in the submission to the FISA Court, and whether President Obama was briefed on what the dossier contained. They lay the basis for possible indictments against those receiving the questions, and for Steele. Senators Grassley and Graham have already stated they believe charges should be filed against Steele, who has thus far been protected by Her Majesty's government, which has acted to prevent Steele from being brought before a court of law.
STEELE AND THE UKRAINIAN CONNECTION
But Steele's role in shaping U.S. policy predates the setting up of the Get Trump task force. Both Nunes and Grassley are investigating Steele's connections with the U.S. State Department, including with the notorious Nuland. They are looking into the role of Jonathan Winer, a former assistant Secretary of State who served as a long-time aide to former Secretary of State John Kerry. Winer befriended Steele in 2009, when they were collaborating on investigations of Russian "corruption".
Beginning in 2013, Steele drafted more than 100 memos on Ukraine and Russia, and passed these on to Winer, who was then a special assistant to Kerry on Libya, which had been destroyed in a Clinton-Obama regime change operation. Winer admitted, in an oped in the Washington Post on February 8, 2018, that he passed these on to Victoria Nuland, who asked that he continue to bring them to her. Note that these were written at the time of, and the immediate aftermath of the coup in Ukraine. The Washington Post Deep State conduit, James Rosen, wrote that Nuland found these reports "informative and sometimes helpful", and asked Winer to keep them coming.When asked about the Steele memos on Ukraine in an interview with CBS on February 4 -- four days before Winer's oped was published -- Nuland lied, denying that she had used the Steele memos.
But the Steele-Winer connection continued. In September 2016, Winer met with Steele, who presented to Winer his anti-Trump dossier. Winer drafted a two-page summary of the dossier, which he gave to Nuland. She told him to present this to Kerry. Later in the month, Winer met with Hillary Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal, who showed him another specious anti-Trump dossier, compiled by Clinton operative Cody Shearer. Winer then shared this who Steele, who then claimed it confirmed the charges he made in his dossier, though coming from different "sources."
Nunes and Grassley are both investigating the Steele-Winer-Nuland connection to see what this means as far as Obama administration direct involvement in running the Russiagate coup. Among those calling for a full criminal investigation into Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Hillary Clinton, which would reach Obama as well, is former Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova, who said it's very likely they could all be indicted.
YET BRITISH HITMAN MUELLER PROCEEDS!
The new indictments against Manafort come from squeezing his former partner, Rick Gates. Using a prosecutor's set of tools, Mueller went after Gates on his weak flank, the threat to him and his family of bankruptcy, were he to fight the charges. In entering his guilty plea, Gates told the court, "Despite my initial desire to vigorously defend myself, I have had a change of heart. The reality of how long this legal process will likely take, the cost, and the circus-like atmosphere of an anticipated trial are too much. I will better serve my family moving forward by exiting this process."
On the new charges against Manafort on money laundering, a well-informed insider said he's astonished at the lengths to which Mueller is going. He noted the irony that, when Mueller and Comey were FBI Directors, they never made a criminal case against leading banks which engaged in billions of dollars in money laundering, much of it proceeds from drug and arms-trafficking.
One of the banks given a repeated pass was the notorious HSBC, which while being fined repeatedly for money laundering, never faced criminal prosecution. Among those arguing against criminal charges was the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who said a criminal proceeding against a "systemically important" bank, such as HSBC, would risk "global financial disaster." Obama's Attorney General Holder shared this view, as he refused to file any criminal charges against "Too Big to Fail" banks.
Until his appointment by Obama as Director of the FBI, James Comey served on the Board of Directors of HSBC!
From this review of the significance of Ukraine in the whole Russiagate process, it becomes clear that the perversion of justice it represents is surpassed only by the danger which flows from the anti-Russia theme it serves. Unless there is an intervention to shut down this witch hunt, as there was to end the hysterical red-baiting charges of the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, the threshold for a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia is being dramatically reduced. It was Trump's campaign pledge to cooperate with Russia, rather than prepare for war, which is the reason for the Russiagate fraud.
With the Ukraine tensions heightened by recent developments, full exposure of Steele's dirty role, and that of his collaborators, has become an essential component of a war-avoidance strategy.
|
|
|
Jul 07, 2018 | www.government.nl
Minister of Security and Justice Stef Blok and his Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Petrenko today signed a bilateral treaty on international legal cooperation in relation to the downing of flight MH17. The treaty provides that those suspected of downing flight MH17 can be prosecuted in the Netherlands in respect of all 298 victims. This means that all next of kin will have the same rights in the Dutch criminal proceedings.
Minister of Security and Justice Stef Blok and his Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Petrenko sign the treaty.
The countries whose prosecution authorities are cooperating in the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) – Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, Ukraine and the Netherlands – this week jointly decided that the prosecution and trial of the suspects would take place in the Netherlands, in a process rooted in close and ongoing international cooperation and support. The JIT's criminal investigation is still underway. A decision on prosecution will be taken by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service in due course.
The bilateral treaty with Ukraine eliminates any doubts that the prosecution could take place in the Netherlands in respect of all the victims, not only those who were Dutch nationals. The victims of the MH17 disaster included people from 17 different countries.
The treaty also makes it possible for any Ukrainian defendants to be examined by video link. Provision has also been made for the transfer of enforcement of any prison sentences that may be imposed. This is important since the Ukrainian constitution prohibits the country from extraditing its own nationals.
'The signing of this treaty is an important step towards establishing the truth, trying those responsible and achieving justice for the next of kin,' Mr Blok said. 'We are grateful to Ukraine for cooperating effectively with us, including in the agreement of this treaty.'
The MH17 treaty and its implementing legislation will be submitted to the House of Representatives for consideration as soon as possible.
|
|
|
Mar 04, 2018 | nationalinterest.org
Vic -> Agarbeau • a day ago ,Russia has a nasty habit of downing aircraft even commercial airliners.
focusser -> Vic • a day ago ,Hrm? Seems Russia is one of the few countries that does not have a habit of shooting down civilian airliners.
"Siberia Airlines Flight 1812[1] was a commercial flight shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001, en route from Tel Aviv, Israel to Novosibirsk," https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
"Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled Iran Air passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating on this route was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes under the command of William C. Rogers III, killing all 290 people on "board.https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_...
Vic -> focusser • a day ago ,MH17, and Korean Airlines 007. Just two planes Russia shot down.
Melotte 22 -> Vic • 20 hours ago ,MH17 was likely shot down by Ukraine in an successfully attempt to internationalize the conflict. Airliner 007 was shot down by Soviets.
Vic -> Melotte 22 • 11 hours ago ,Of course Kiev junta shot down MH17, otherwise US would provide satellite images and other details obtained by high tech devices. But so far nothing has been published. Speaks volumes, no?
disqus_t8zg0f4HzM Vic • a day ago ,Yes, that is a good point, USA had satellites passing over Ukraine when it happened, USA saw and recorded everything, Russia said this and demand that USA release the images, and USA itself admitted they had satellites over Ukraine during the event . However USA refused to reveal the satellite images. Which would have proven or disproven everything.
Vic disqus_t8zg0f4HzM • a day ago ,That is lie
olu -> Vic • a day ago ,Well, nobody really knows, what we do know is that Ukraine was the one directing where the MH17 should fly, and Ukraine had just one day earlier been bombing the rebels from airplanes in just that area, and Ukraine was responsibly for what happens inside its airspace, and that Ukraine benefited hugely from the destruction of the MH17.
Vic -> olu • a day ago ,So Soviet doesn't mean Russian?
Of course not. Different country, different government, different ideology. However anti-Russians often mix up Russia with Soviet when they want to say something negative, and pro-Russian often mix up Russia with Soviet when they want to say something positive.
An Anti-Russian would say "Russia exterminate millions in GULAG" and a pro-Russian would say "Russia won world war 2" neither is true of course. Most of the people exterminated in GULAG were Russians and while Russia was the largest country in the USSR and did the most to fight Nazism, USSR also consisted of many other ethnic groups that was critical to the success of USSR.
|
|
|
Mar 02, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
The Twisted Genius -> turcopolier ... , 01 March 2018 at 09:15 PM
pl,None of the articles you linked to provided any clear indication that Russian secure communications were compromised or that there was a drop in productivity of any USI penetration operations.
The most recent account talks about intelligence briefings provided to McMaster. These briefings could have referred to SIGINT outside of secure diplomatic communications or even diplomatic cocktail party chitchat. Much of the reporting about Kislyak referred to conversations with Trump associates. Certainly that wasn't secure communications systems.
The common denominator in all this reporting is the SS7 exploitation that was known for a long time and was publicly explained at the 2014 Chaos Computer Communications convention in Berlin.
This was probably how Nuland's "F the EU" conversation was picked up. This is no longer a technical breach of secure communications. It's a breach of human behavior. These smartphones are ubiquitous and open everyone around them to 24/7 surveillance.
Having said all that, I agree with you in considering these disclosures felonious.
|
|
|
Mar 02, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Brad Ruble, 01 March 2018 at 12:06 PM
Does anyone know who recorded and released the Victoria Nuland conversation? Was she talking on a secure phone? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QxZ8t3V_bkTidewater -> Brad Ruble ... , 01 March 2018 at 08:43 PMTidewater says,The Twisted Genius -> turcopolier ... , 01 March 2018 at 09:15 PMNo, she was not talking on a secure phone. She was obviously picked up by a scanner. Once picked up, a program could be attached to monitor that phone whenever it was activated. Whether analogue or digital, that phone was now infected. Anyone who ever telephoned her on that phone could be identified and tracked. Their phones could also be infected.
My opinion about this is that in the event Russian troops took over Kiev, they would arrest all the parties who made contact with Nuland's phone.
What intrigues me -- if she liked her phone, decided to stick with it, perhaps a new Blackberry, and she took it home to the USA, if she used it in, say, Virginia, could it still be tracked? If so, it could result in knowledge of predictable movement of certain people. And the infection could continue to spread.
If you get the right scanner and monitor, say, the Academy Awards, you could capture the phone conversations of some very famous people as they arrived. This is done all the time in New York near stadiums, for example.
This happened to Prince Charles in London.
I am not a tech guy. I think I am right about this. I could do it myself. Problem is, some type of scanners are now illegal and also hard to get. In Kiev, that would be no problem.
pl,None of the articles you linked to provided any clear indication that Russian secure communications were compromised or that there was a drop in productivity of any USI penetration operations. The most recent account talks about intelligence briefings provided to McMaster. These briefings could have referred to SIGINT outside of secure diplomatic communications or even diplomatic cocktail party chitchat. Much of the reporting about Kislyak referred to conversations with Trump associates. Certainly that wasn't secure communications systems.
The common denominator in all this reporting is the SS7 exploitation that was known for a long time and was publicly explained at the 2014 Chaos Computer Communications convention in Berlin. This was probably how Nuland's "F the EU" conversation was picked up. This is no longer a technical breach of secure communications. It's a breach of human behavior. These smartphones are ubiquitous and open everyone around them to 24/7 surveillance.
Having said all that, I agree with you in considering these disclosures felonious.
|
|
|
Feb 27, 2018 | www.youtube.com
Cater Page -- Victoria Nulland's Gasprom Spy since 2004
Connie Bevan , 1 day ago (edited)In this 128.4 video George begins by saying: "The only thing we really learn from the Democratic Memo is that Carter Page has been used as a surveillance rabbit, what I call a surveillance rabbit. Basically he runs around and rubs his nose against whoever you want to surveil and then you start surveillance on them in the FISA Court and I had said that he had been used as a surveillance rabbit going very far back with Victoria Nuland here is at least back to 2009. Well the Democratic Memo proved that I was right going back to 2013. The only new facts out of the ten pages, most of the ten pages were deny, deny, deny, and make exculpatory statements for the FBI etc. The one piece of information, the new piece of information, was Carter Page was used as a surveillance rabbit. Now again, I know everyone's going to say oh wait you said that 19 days ago. Believe it or not we're closing the gap, and this for me is a relatively short period of time before mainstream confirmation is coming.
So if you want to go back and look just say "George Webb Carter Page" catch up on all the Carter Page stuff, now that more of this, of what I've said has been trestled under you're going to have a lot more. It's just going to seem very much less speculative than it was 19 days ago. You're going to see how true a lot of the references were. The important piece of this is also Manafort was used in this way, and Manafort is now being stabbed in the back, and I think this is the appreciation people still don't have that Manafort was that, what I call the Bishop used in a higher-level manner more insiders more at the high level of the Sechin the right-hand man of, the guy who can get a meeting with the right-hand man of USSR. But you will find that Paul Manafort has met Sechin and that's how Sechin was put on surveillance and so again this is why it's so important for, now that the two, the summary memos are out there now we need to see the actual FISA Court proceedings.
I know the judges ruled against that in part, but then we also need to actually see the FISA applications. All 99 pages, all 99 pages. See exactly what went into it because the American people need to understand this. This was a soft coup. This was a soft coup attempt. So you have to look at actually the document that the conspirators used in the soft coup. It's absolutely fundamental to our right of review and our due process. There's just no other way to talk about it. We've actually been talking about Carter Page more than a year now. Lionel made some funny jokes about that when we had that interview. And again no one has really looked at how Carter Page has been used as far as getting Visas for Chinese Nationals coming into the United States, getting Visas for Russian Nationals coming into the United States.
How is he related to Omar Awan? He worked for him in San Diego still hasn't come forward and I talk about how Carter Page is probably a NOC, we don't know that background yet, like Valerie Plame, but he does seem to be, the same way Valerie Plame was used for Uranium it seems like Carter Page is used for oil and gas. Especially is Eastern Europe.
So there's the Chinese Visas and I make the Chinese Visa point and I make the, just all the proximity. What news agency, what news outlets has actually gone to show you how close he lives to the Naval Observatory or the fact that he had a Naval Intelligence background? Nobody. The number of times he visited the Soviet Embassy.
Who's asking those question?"
George goes on to say, "Again, this is going to be a fundamental part of understanding a soft coup in American history. All of this needs to be understood. This is almost like the 18-minute gap in Nixon's tape. It's so fundamental to understanding what actually happened in Watergate, or whatever that was, 13 minute gap, that it needs to be explained. How many times did Carter Page go to the Russian Embassy? How many Visas did Carter Page get? How many people did he meet with over there? How many people ended up on surveillance because of Carter Page had a meeting with them at the Chinese Embassy or the Russian Embassy? Again, here it is, here he's working for Omar Awan in San Diego going back to 2008.
Now is that because he's getting Pakistani Visas? We don't know yet. There is a whole, the other thing I saw done in the memo was that somehow that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page's conversations were a red herring. Yeah, fifty thousand messages in the three most important investigations of our time, the Hillary Investigation, the Huma Investigation and the Trump Investigation, they're involved all the way through, as well as Benghazi and some other major events, and that's a red herring?
That's a little bit like saying John Wilkes Booth is a red herring. Well I guess so, it depends on how you look at it. If you are really interested in the play I guess John Wilkes Booth is a red herring. George concludes, "So again documents, documents, documents. No one is looking at any of the supporting documents as far as Carter Page is concerned, and either supporting investigation or other investigations he was used to do, but that is the key here to unraveling this American history here. So, I will just say this that everything we've seen so far has been a very cursory, all the news programs has been a very cursory understanding of who Carter Page was for a three-month period of time. Actually he worked for the Trump campaign for less than that.
And in order to understand history you have to understand the full flight of the arrow. Where did this guy come from? He came from Navy Intel. How was he used?
Well, he was used all over Eastern Europe and there is the resources business. When did he start getting used to get convictions and exact bids from Russian Oligarchs? Well, we now know that it goes back to at least 2013, and I say it goes back to 2009."
|
|
|
Feb 17, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
So just to clarify - yes, the CIA chief admitted that Democracy-spreading 'Murica meddled in the Democratic elections of other nations "in the interests of democracy."
In case you wondered which ones he was referring to, here's a brief selection since 1948...
2016: UK (verbal intervention against Brexit)
2014: Afghanistan (effectively re-writing Afghan constitution)
2014: UK (verbal intervention against Scottish independence)
2011: Libya (providing support to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi)
2009: Honduras (ousting President Zelaya)
2006: Palestine (providing support to oust Prime Minister Haniyeh)
2005: Syria (providing support against President al-Assad)
2003: Iran (providing support against President Khatami)-
2003: Iraq (ousting of President Hussein)
2002: Venezuela (providing support to attempt an overthrow of President Chavez)
1999: Yugoslavia (removing Yugoslav forces from Kosovo)
1994: Iraq (attempted overthrow of President Hussein)
1991: Haiti (ousting President Aristide)
1991: Kuwait (removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait)
1989: Panama (ousting General Noriega)
1983: Grenada (ousting General Austin's Marxist forces)
1982: Nicaragua (providing support
1971: Chile (ousting President Allende)
1967: Indonesia (ousting President Sukarno)
1964: Brazil (ousting President Goulart)
1964: Chile (providing support against Salvador Allende)
1961: Congo (assassination of leader Lumumba)
1958: Lebanon (providing support to Christian political parties)
1954: Guatemala (ousting President Arbenz)
1953: Iran (ousting Prime Minister Mossadegh)
1953: Philippines (providing support to the President Magsaysay campaign)
1948: Italy (providing support to the Christian Democrats campaign)
gellero Sat, 02/17/2018 - 16:18 Permalink
SoilMyselfRotten -> skbull44 Sat, 02/17/2018 - 16:47 Permalink
Democracy? Annnnnnnd it's gone! No wonder the rest of the world thinks we've collectively lost our minds. BTW, Victoria Noodles will be very disappointed Ukraine didn't make the list after all of her hard work.
marysimmons -> SoilMyselfRotten Sat, 02/17/2018 - 17:16 Permalink
Victoria "F*ck the EU" Nuland and the CIA were all over the Ukrainian "coup", but of course no mention of that on "Fair and Balanced". Laura Ingram is a typical Fox News Zio-Nazi bitch, hiding behind a cross, who apparently believes her own BS, and along others like Hannity have blood on their hands.
The whole purpose of the Mueller indictment was to give the mainstream outlets something to report so idiot Americans will believe the crap put out about Russia since the Winter Olympics in Sochi and set the tone to justify a military conflict with Russia that won't end well for anyone, IMO
veritas semper -> marysimmons Sat, 02/17/2018 - 17:40 Permalink
And Victoria Nuland Kagan is now Senior Adviser in the Donald's Department of Defense.
See, kids, how the swamp is drained?
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2018 | www.informationclearinghouse.info
February 14, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Every empire needs a scary external threat, led by a singular menacing villain, to justify its massive military expenditures, consolidation of authoritarian powers, and endless wars. For the five decades after the end of World War II, Moscow played this role perfectly. But the fall of Soviet Union meant, at least for a while, that the Kremlin could no longer sustain sufficient fear levels. After some brief, largely unsuccessful auditions for possible replacements -- Asian actors like China and a splurging Japan were considered -- the post-9/11 era elevated a cast of Muslim understudies to the starring role: Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, ISIS and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and "jihadism" generally kept fear alive.
The lack of any 9/11-type catastrophic attack on U.S. (or any Western) soil for the past 17 years, along with the killing of a pitifully aged, ailing bin Laden and the erosion of ISIS, has severely compromised their ongoing viability as major bad guys. So now -- just as a film studio revitalizes a once-successful super-villain franchise for a new generation of moviegoers -- we're back to the Russians occupying center stage.
That Barack Obama spent eight years (including up through his final year-end news conference) mocking the notion that Russia posed a serious threat to the U.S. given their size and capabilities, and that he even tried repeatedly to accommodate and partner with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is of no concern: In the internet age, "2016" is regarded as ancient history, drowned out by an endless array of new threats pinned by a united media on the Russkie Plague. Moreover, human nature craves a belief in an existential foreign threat because it confers a sense of purpose and cause, strengthens tribal unity and identity, permits scapegoating, shifts blame for maladies from internal to external causes, and (like religion) offers a simplifying theory for understanding a complex world.
One of the prime accusations sustaining this script is that the Kremlin is drowning the West in "fake news" and other forms of propaganda. One can debate its impact and magnitude, but disinformation campaigns are something the U.S., Russia, and countless other nations have done to one another for centuries, and there is convincing evidence that Russia does this sort of thing now. But evidence of one threat does not mean that all claimed threats are real, nor does it mean that that tactic is exclusively wielded by one side.
Over the past year, there have been numerous claims made by Western intelligence agencies, mindlessly accepted as true in the Western press, that have turned out to be baseless, if not deliberate scams. Just today, it was revealed that Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra lied when he claimed he was at a meeting with Putin, in which the Russian president "said he considered Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states as part of a 'Greater Russia.'"
"Fake news" is certainly something to worry about when it emanates from foreign adversaries, but it is at least as concerning and threatening, if not more so, when emanating from one's own governments and media. And there are countless, highly significant examples beyond today's of such propaganda that emanates from within.
... ... ...
If there's any lesson that should unite everyone in the West, it's that the greatest skepticism is required when it comes to government and media claims about the nature of foreign threats. If we're going to rejuvenate a Cold War, or submit to greater military spending and government powers in the name of stopping alleged Russian aggression, we should at least ensure that the information on which those campaigns succeed are grounded in fact. Even a casual review of the propaganda spewing forth from Western power centers over the last year leaves little doubt that the exact opposite is happening.This article was originally published by " The Intercept "
Zeesso 101p · 4 hours ago
Russia accusations are a false flag!!-No evidence-Zero NADA!!Invictus · 2 hours ago
Rather than Russia how about Mossad false flags??!
More likely .............and the silence is deafening.......... at theZionist owned MSMs in the USA!!!!
Dollars to Doughnuts-Israel is the perpetratorI suppose I am too naive to understand thefudmier · 1 hour ago
hysteria and indignation that claims of Russia
Interference in the 2016 american electoral process garners.
The US openly calls for regime change in Syria. Hung Saddam
Hussein after a show trial. Arranged Muammar Gaddafi's sodomization
and assassination.
Do americans not realize that in levelling the accusation that Putin-Russia
successfully subverted the US electoral process that you are conceding that Russia has the power to subjugate (bring under domination or control, especially by conquest.) the US electoral process, its government, institutions and public perception.
If americans are going to continue to make this outlandish claim for which no evidence has yet to be produced then Putin's Russia must be recognized as the world hegemon and the indispensable- Exceptional nation. What does that do to the narrative of the "shining city set upon a hill".
The US is blinded by its own conceit.Frankly, what I have seen in the past 20 years, the people in San Francisco might be better off under Russian federation management than it has been under the selected, elected, salaried, privileged 527 USA neo clowns who manage Americans in America. At least the Russians might not give USA money to foreigners, prevent Americans from drilling their own gas and oil, tax Americans so the USA can give the tax revenues to the corporations, and send American jobs and educational knowledge to far away places; as the NEO CLOWN management has done.beanhead001 102p · 1 hour agoMy personal experience with Russia people with whom I have worked is they are just exactly like Americans, quite a bit better educated, may be a little more honest.. so the question becomes under which managing government would 340,000,000 Americans be better off: the Russian Federation or the 527 neocon-selected, media-elected, salaried, privileged USA neo clowns? Actually, i think both governments are in need of being better arranged to respond to the needs and intentions of their people instead of using those they govern to satisfy the Oligarchs.
"9/11-type catastrophic attack on U.S." a self-inflicted "catastrophic attack". Perhaps the USI should quit murdering people at home and abroad... maybe that way some semblence of symathy could be mustered up.
Oh and the "shooter" in Florida.. notuce it's not a "terrorist"? So this kid was a "shooter". Pfft. Call it what it is. He was and is a terrorist. Treat him as one would treat the invented funded and propped up "terrorists" abroad. Send the kid to 'Gitmo' (how i loathe that americanized word)
|
|
|
Feb 14, 2018 | www.unz.com
jilles dykstra , February 14, 2018 at 8:02 am GMT
Our Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs, Halbe Zijlstra, just a few months in office, had to admit that he in 2006 lied about being in Putin's country house, where he heard Putin say that White Russia, the Baltic States and Khazakstan 'would be nice to have'. Zijlstra yesterday resigned.43 out of 150 gave a vote of non confidence against prime minister Rutte, whoa had to admit that he knew about the lie since several weeks.
Zijlstra's excuse as that he wanted to protect someone else, who was there, and heard Putin say these things. This someone else, it was revealed, had been Van der Veer, now former Shell CEO, and now member of the NATO strategic commission.
Alas Van der Veer denied have heard the words, and having told Zijlstra, though 'Putin had made a statement more or less like what Zijlstra lied about'.
Dutch comments are that Shell has considerable interests in Russia.We now wonder how Zijlstra's lie surfaced after twelve years. He was scheduled to meet Lavrov a few days from now.
My, and many in my country, conclude that there is deliberate Russia, or Putin, bashing. Many already knew this, but never before was it so clear that an important politician with us had to resign.
MH17 still has not been solved, in my opinion it never will. The strategy seems to be to continue vague accusations against Russia, though nobody ever explained Russia's interest in destroying a western passenger plane.
As Jimmy Carter once said, 'it is unimportant who fires the first shot in a war, the origins of war always go years back'. In the case of Russia, we now know, at least to 2006.
jilles dykstra , February 14, 2018 at 4:54 pm GMT
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2018/02/the-lies-and-the-narrative/Wrong is that Zijlstra in 2006 worked for Shell, he just was a member of the representatives for the town of Utrecht.Pandora's box went open in yesterday evening Jinek talkshow, Rutte concluded gas deals for E Ukraine for Shell.
MH17 now also comes into a different light, why Russia must be blamed for the catastrophe, and why we still dot not know who did it.
|
|
|
Feb 08, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
SmoothieX12 -> David Habakkuk ... , 08 February 2018 at 11:28 AM
Another limitation on their understanding is that the last thing they are interested in his how the world outside the bubbles they prefer to inhabit operates, and they commonly have absolutely contempt for 'deplorables', be they Russian, British or American. This can lead to political misjudgements.It is not just "can" it very often does. The whole situation with Russia, of which, be it her economy, history, military, culture etc., is not known to those people, is a monstrous empirical evidence of a complete professional inadequacy of most people populating this bubble.
Most of those people are badly educated (I am not talking about worthless formal degrees they hold) and cultured. In dry scientific language it is called a "confirmation bias", in a simple human one it is called being ignorant snobs, that is why this IC-academic-political-media "environment" in case of Russia prefers openly anti-Russian "sources" because those "sources" reiterate to them what they want to hear to start with, thus Chalabi Moment is being continuously reproduced.
In case of Iraq, as an example, it is a tragedy but at least the world is relatively safe. With Russia, as I stated many times for years--they simply have no idea what they are dealing with. None. It is expected from people who are briefed by "sources" such as Russian fugitive London Oligarchy or ultra-liberal and fringe urban Russian "tusovka".
Again, the level of "Russian Studies" in Anglophone world is appalling. In fact, it is clear and present danger since removes or misinterprets crucial information about the only nation in the world which can annihilate the United States completely in such a light that it creates a real danger even for a disastrous military confrontation. I would go on a limb here and say that US military on average is much better aware of Russia and not only in purely military terms. In some sense--it is an exception. But even there, there are some trends (and they are not new) which are very worrisome.
|
|
|
Feb 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
While it is unclear what role the State Department may have in surveillance abuses, the Washington Examiner's Byron York noted last month that former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, was "well-connected with the Obama State Department," according to the book Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win" written by The Guardian correspondent Luke Harding and published last November.Harding notes that Steele's work during the World Cup soccer corruption investigation earned the trust of both the FBI and the State Department:
The [soccer] episode burnished Steele's reputation inside the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI. Here was a pro, a well-connected Brit, who understood Russian espionage and its subterranean tricks. Steele was regarded as credible. Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the State Department and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland , who was in charge of the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis.
Many of Steele's secret sources were the same sources who would supply information on Trump. One former State Department envoy during the Obama administration said he read dozens of Steele's reports on Russia. The envoy said that on Russia, Steele was "as good as the CIA or anyone." Steele's professional reputation inside U.S. agencies would prove important the next time he discovered alarming material, and lit the fuse again.
Aside from the infamous 35-page "Trump-Russia" dossier Steele assembled for opposition research firm Fusion GPS (a report which was funded in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC), Congressional investigators have been looking into whether Steele compiled other reports about Trump - and in particular, whether those other reports made their way to the State Department, according to The Examiner .
... they are looking into whether those reports made their way to the State Department . They're also seeking to learn what individual State Department officials did in relation to Steele, and whether there were any contacts between the State Department and the FBI or Justice Department concerning the anti-Trump material .
It will be interesting to see how the State Department - and in particular Secretary of State Rex Tillerson - responds to "phase two."
David Wooten, Feb 3, 2018 9:04 PM Permalink
" Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the State Department and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland , who was in charge of the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis... "
Excellent - except that Nuland wasn't responding to the Ukraine crisis. She started the whole thing. Thousands killed. Lock her up, lock her up, lock her up!
Dropthebomb, Feb 3, 2018 10:17 AM Permalink
bh2, Feb 3, 2018 10:25 AM PermalinkSounds like Steele was used in the Ukrainian take down, anything he's been tied to must be assumed as false or misleading.
"Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the State Department and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland..." And how much of THIS "material" was ever successfully corroborated?Was Steele just a successful fiction writer with a very specialized audience for his "works"?
|
|
|
Jan 31, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
str8arrow62 | Jan 30, 2018 9:30:51 AM | 50
The Kagan's, again think Victoria(free cookie$) Nuland's hubby need to rename their institute to more accurately describe their efforts...The Institute For The Study Of How To Start War. Little did one realize when he and his PNAC signer's put their missive on how to secure 'the realm', they were including the eastern part of the sovereign country of Syria.
str8arrow62 , Jan 30, 2018 9:40:10 AM | 51
To honor the lifetime of work by Robert Parry, RIP, here's a link to his writeup on the Kagan's and it's worth reading:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/15/the-kagans-are-back-wars-to-follow/
|
|
|
Jan 31, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Lala Blood , January 30, 2018 at 12:29 pm
Skip Scott , January 30, 2018 at 2:44 pmAre the Dutch part of the 'Deep State'? https://www.volkskrant.nl/tech/dutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections~a4561913/
Adrian E. , January 31, 2018 at 5:01 amI would say most definitely, as is the case in Germany, and many western European countries. Just look at how they mis-handled the MH-17 investigation. The CIA is deeply embedded in the MSM in the USA and Europe, and has been since after WWII. Look into "Operation Mockingbird" if you are curious.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts-the-world-needs-to-know/5471956
Skip Scott , January 31, 2018 at 8:53 amHardly "the Dutch" as a whole. Not even necessarily the Durch secret services as a whole. But, after all, that report was not even about an official statement from the Dutch secret services, it was just a leak from unnamed sources within the Dutch secret services (if even that attribution is correct). The US deep state certainly has close allies within the secret services of European NATO countries. They probably have the tightest connections with secret services of Anglosaxon countries like Britain and Australia and with Germany, where US secret services have their many bases in Europe, but there are certainly also close connections with the deep state in the Netherlands.
Yes. Of course I wasn't referring to the Dutch people. Their government, and their MSM, however do carry water for the US Deep State. Also like you say, the secret services are not monolithic. They are highly compartmentalized. Ray McGovern is a former analyst for the CIA, and he is obviously a highly moral person. VIPS was founded by people who have witnessed the corruption of the intelligence agencies firsthand, and have organized to expose and fight that corruption.
|
|
|
Jan 30, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com
The Unseen Wars of America the Empire By Patrick J. Buchanan • January 30, 2018, 12:01 AM
Forward Operating Base Torkham, in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan (army.mil) If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history.Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his forces will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded.
Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the United States to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian border with Turkey east of the Euphrates all the way to Iraq.
If the Turks attack Manbij, America will face a choice: stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon the Kurds.
Should the U.S. let the Turks drive the Kurds out of Manbij and the entire Syrian border area, as Erdogan threatens, American credibility would suffer a blow from which it would not soon recover.
But to stand with the Kurds and oppose Erdogan's forces could mean a crackup of NATO and a loss of U.S. bases inside Turkey, including the air base at Incirlik.
Turkey also sits astride the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea. NATO's loss would thus be a triumph for Vladimir Putin, who gave Ankara the green light to cleanse the Kurds from Afrin.
Yet Syria is but one of many challenges facing U.S. foreign policy.
The Winter Olympics in South Korea may have taken the menace of a North Korean ICBM out of the news, but no one believes that threat is behind us.
Last week, China charged that the USS Hopper, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal, a reef in the South China Sea claimed by Beijing, though it is far closer to Luzon in the Philippines. The destroyer, says China, was chased off by one of her frigates. If we continue to contest China's territorial claims with our warships, a clash is inevitable.
In a similar incident Monday, a Russian military jet came within five feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 Orion surveillance jet in international airspace over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to end its mission.
U.S. relations with Cold War ally Pakistan are at rock bottom. In his first tweet of 2018, President Trump charged Pakistan with being a false friend.
"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools," Trump declared. "They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"
As for America's longest war in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year, the end is nowhere on the horizon. A week ago, the International Hotel in Kabul was attacked and held for 13 hours by Taliban gunmen who killed 40. Midweek, a Save the Children facility in Jalalabad was attacked by ISIS, creating panic among aid workers across the country.
Saturday, an ambulance exploded in Kabul, killing 103 people and wounding 235. Monday, Islamic State militants attacked Afghan soldiers guarding a military academy in Kabul. With the fighting season two months off, U.S. troops will not soon be departing. If Pakistan is indeed providing sanctuary for the terrorists of the Haqqani network, how does this war end successfully for the United States? Last week, in a friendly fire incident, the U.S.-led coalition killed 10 Iraqi soldiers. The Iraq war began 15 years ago.
Yet another war, where the humanitarian crisis rivals Syria, continues on the Arabian Peninsula. There, a Saudi air, sea, and land blockade that threatens the Yemeni people with starvation has failed to dislodge Houthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa three years ago. This weekend brought news that secessionist rebels, backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized power in Yemen's southern port of Aden from the Saudi-backed Hadi regime fighting the Houthis. These rebels seek to split the country, as it was before 1990.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE appear to be backing different horses in this tribal-civil-sectarian war into which America has been drawn. There are other wars -- Somalia, Libya, Ukraine -- where the U.S. is taking sides, sending arms, training troops, flying missions.
Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger," said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing."
No, we don't, Senator. As in all empires, power is passing to the generals. And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial city? Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-gate.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
|
|
|
Jul 01, 2017 | www.defenddemocracy.press
The tragedy led to an international inquiry carried out by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) comprising aviation experts and investigators from the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Malaysia, and Ukraine.
The investigation paid little attention to data provided by Russian authorities, which provided the information to understand how the crash happened.
Today, many questions remain unanswered regarding the crash, including the process of the investigation.
RT: It's been three years on since the MH17 tragedy. How hopeful are you that all questions into the terrible event will be answered?
Willy Wimmer: I think there is almost no hope to get answers to the bag of questions we have because of this tragic accident. We shouldn't forget that within a few weeks a second Malaysian plane came down. The fate of those two planes is unsolved even today. This doesn't fit into the experience of air accidents we have in Europe. I won't mention other parts of the world. Remember, a few years ago we had this tragic accident with a German plane in the mountainous region in the southern part of France. Within days we knew what happened. When you look at the tragic events with these two Malaysian airplanes, nobody knows what happened. This is an uncertainty which makes it possible that those who died in the airspace of Ukraine died for a second time because there is no answer to the question why it happened; and they died for the second time because there is no proper investigation. That is a reality we face today.
RT: Your thoughts on the way the investigation is being carried out, considering how controversial this incident is?
WW: I think the standards of the investigations we have in Europe, and I won't speak about others part of the world, is different. We know within hours, or within days, what happened and who was responsible. From the very beginning of this investigation, which is called investigation, we all have seen from our experience that it has been politicized from the very beginning.
The interesting thing, I live in the neighborhood of the Dutch border, and we like to go to the Netherlands. The Dutch are in these NATO surveillance planes, AWACS, and two of these planes, if I remember correctly, have been in the area where the accident happened in this part of Ukraine. Until now we're not familiar with the experience of these two NATO planes, which made surveillance in this part of Ukraine. They must be familiar with all the events in this area, and the Dutch had been on these planes as well if I am correct. Nothing of these things have been explained to the public.
|
|
|
Dec 11, 2017 | www.defenddemocracy.press
This article is a translation of " Wordt MH17 ons 9/11? (28) Waarom de enige criticus van de Nederlandse regering tot zwijgen werd gebracht "
Mid November the Dutch parliamentarian, Pieter Omtzigt (Christian Democrat), came under fire for allegedly having stage-managed, at a meeting at the Free University in Amsterdam, the statement of a witness contradicting the official explanation of the downing of Flight MH17. A text message in which Omtzigt made a helpful suggestion to the witness how to summarise his story given that he would get one minute at best, was passed on to the Dutch daily, NRC Handelsblad, which raised the issue of the MP's credibility and called for his resignation.
This was not only a way of getting rid of the one parliamentarian who has consistently demanded of the Dutch government that it live up to the Prime Minister's vow to get to the bottom of the MH17 affair. Omtzigt was also his party's spokesman on tax matters, pensions, and the euro and there he was an even greater liability to the powers that be. This is why after half a year, his courtesy towards an Ukrainian man was suddenly turned into something close to treason.
When the MH17 meeting at the Free University happened in May last, the Dutch general election results were only two months old and no new government had yet been formed. The video of the witness making his statement (he was primarily interested in obtaining asylum in the Netherlands, or so it seemed) was circulated without causing any concern. The claim that one or more jet fighters had been spotted near MH17 had been made many times before and by far more reliable witnesses; in this case it was not even the man himself but has wife who had seen the planes.
Now fast-forward to November, when NRC Handelsblad came with its 'scoop', six months after the fact. After a tortuous cabinet formation taking all summer and comfortably interrupted by full holidays taken, there now was a government of mainstream Liberals, neoliberals, Christian Democrats and Christian fundamentalists (who actually held up the negotiations for another week because their leader had to attend a rock concert in Germany). This coalition only had 76 seats, a majority of one. It also surprised the nation with an announcement that it would scrap the dividend tax, a gift to business of 1.4 billion euros per year -- although none of the coalition partners had proposed this in their election manifestoes.
However, as Marx famously put it in the Communist Manifesto, the government is only a committee for handling the day-to-day affairs of the capitalist class; and in their plans, scrapping the dividend tax had long been on the agenda.
... ... ...
Was this was the drop that made the bucket overflow? For within days, NRC Handelsblad, the mouthpiece of the Liberal party, began what can only be considered a character assassination of this, one of our finest parliamentarians. By unearthing a half-year-old issue of no consequence they also got rid of an MH17 critic who had been stubbornly following the government in its obvious attempt to kick the issue into the long grass.
Meanwhile his own Christian Democratic fraction leader, instead of defending Omtzigt, chose to stoke the flames of paranoia about 'Russian meddling' in Dutch affairs, thus heightening the climate of suspicion in which the campaign against Omtzigt had been made possible in the first place. The victim could do little else but officially declare he would no longer be the spokesman on the MH17 portfolio.
But let one think this means the case is closed. More will follow.
Kees van der Pijl (with thanks to Babette U.)
Published at http://oorlogisgeenoplossing.blogspot.gr/p/blog-page_0.html
|
|
|
Dec 08, 2017 | www.unz.com
jilles dykstra , December 8, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMT
@Michael KennyWhat is the problem of having contacts with Russia ? As to the Ukraine, USA, EU and NATO should leave there. We in Europe do not want the war NATO, USA and EU are seeking. We want normal relations with the country we had a lot of trade with, much of which has disappeared because of sanctions, made possible by the deaths of over 300 passengers aboard MH17.
My country, the Netherlands, objected most to sanctions, we exported a lot to Russia, on the day after the disaster objections had vanished. So it was very lucky for those who wanted to impose sanctions that a plane from Schiphol Amsterdam was hit. Despite that Russia just has disadvantages of the disaster, and the west advantages, the continuing investigation, that will never end, Peyton Place, does anything possible to continue stating vague accusations against Putin.
Suspect Ukraine has been permitted to take part in the investigations.
|
|
|
Apr 16, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Russian President Vladimir Putin - who TIME readers recently voted as the most influential person in the world - held his annual call-in/ town hall-style Q&A on Thursday, and as one might imagine, there were some memorable moments. Previous sessions included the following classic clips (via RT):
Putin on whether Alaska is "ice crimea" (play on "ice cream"): "What would you need Alaska for? It's cold there, let's not get overenthusiastic about it."
Putin on when he would be willing to retire: "You won't live to see it."
Putin on John McCain's suggestion that the Russian President will go the way of Muammar Gaddafi: "McCain sat in a pit in Vietnam for several years, anyone would go nuts after that."
Putin on astronomy, the exact time table for the end of the world, and how, if he's around then, he will most assuredly not be afraid:
Clearly these are tough acts to follow and so, with the bar set, Putin came into Thursday's event prepared to one-up himself - he did not disappoint.
As Bloomberg notes, the Russian President took 'the pot calling the kettle black' to the next level by likening the US to the post-war USSR. Like the Soviet Union, Washington seeks to "impose" its will, Putin said, echoing comments made by his security council last month in a critique of US foreign policy. The US, he continued, wants "vassals" and not "allies." Putin also employed the tried and true "express willingness to negotiate then make not-so-veiled nuclear threat" strategy before reminding listeners that Stalin was not Hitler.
Here's more:
- U.S. "doesn't need allies, they need vassals"
- Nothing good came of U.S.S.R.'s attempts to impose will, model on other countries; U.S. also won't succeed in forcing its position on world, U.S. shouldn't be only power
- Putin says it wasn't Russia that ruined relations w/ U.S. its allies
- If U.S., allies was to rebuild ties, they must respect Russia, its interests
- Russia wants cooperation, willing to work w/ those who want to cooperate with Russia
- Anti-Russia sanctions aren't very effective
- Putin says Russia's nuclear power is nearly equal to U.S.
- Russia bolstering defense to protect itself, not planning to go to war w/ anyone
- Putin says confrontation isn't reason for his high public support
- Russia will continue to fight radical nationalism, nationalism is threat to Russia's unity
- Putin says Stalinism, Nazi regimes shouldn't be compared as Josef Stalin didn't try to exterminate entire ethnic groups
Other highlights include the following, via The Guardian:
Iran: Putin insisted lifting a five-year embargo on the delivery of air defence missiles to Iran did not undermine international sanctions since the Russian ban was voluntary. The US and Israel have objected to the move announced this week. Putin said he made the decision since Iran had shown "a desire to reach compromise".
WW2 commemorations: European nations not coming to Moscow to mark the 70th anniversary of the war's end had been put under pressure by Washington, Putin claimed.
Ukraine: The Russian president denied Russian military forces were in Ukraine and said Kiev was violating a peace accord by maintaining an economic blockade on eastern regions under the control of pro-Russian rebels.
Economy: Putin was optimistic in his answers, highlighting gains in agriculture and a low unemployment rate. He added that the rouble was getting back on its feet following a sharp devaluation last year, and estimated a full recovery to be "somewhere in the region of two years".
Here's the entire spectacle:
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces also invoked the cold war in claiming that Washington has adopted a 'to the winner go the spoils' approach to international politics since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This, the officials claim, is evident in the US approach to the conflict in Ukraine. Here's more, via Reuters:
Top Russian officials accused the United States on Thursday of seeking political and military dominance in the world and sought to put blame on the West for international security crises, including the conflict in east Ukraine.
Evoking Cold War-style rhetoric, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said a drive by the United States and its allies to bring Kiev closer to the West was a threat to Moscow and had forced it to react.
"The United States and its allies have crossed all possible lines in their drive to bring Kiev into their orbit. That could not have failed to trigger our reaction," he told an annual security conference in Moscow.
Echoing his comments, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, told the meeting: "Considering themselves the winners of the Cold War, the United States decided to reshape the world to fit its needs.
"Aiming at complete dominance, Washington stopped taking into account the interests of other countries and respect international law."
And a bit more color from WSJ:
General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said missile defense systems slated for installation in Poland and Romania represented a threat and Russia had to prepare to respond.
"Nonnuclear powers where missile-defense installations are being installed have become the objects of priority response," Gen. Gerasimov said, referring to Poland and Romania.
The comments came at a Moscow defense conference where a series of high-level Russian leaders repeatedly warned of the serious threats that the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization posed to modern Russia. Together, the speeches formed a fiery rebuke to the U.S. that comes as the conflict in Ukraine has brought the worst relations between Moscow and Washington since the days of the Cold War...
In the past, Western leaders have said NATO's long-running project to build a missile defense shield in Europe aimed to deter an attack from Iran rather than from Russia. On Thursday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said such assertions were a lie.
"Today it is clear that the missile threat from Tehran that the U.S. and other countries of the alliance invented was a bluff," Mr. Shoigu said...
Gen. Gerasimov also warned of Islamist extremism. He said al Qaeda had arisen from the Mujahideen that fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan with U.S. money and support and suggested history had begun to repeat itself.
"Not so long ago participants in ISIL also were 'good' fighters, widely paid off by the West as 'fighters for democracy in Syria,'" Gen. Gerasimov said. "Now they've gotten out of control," he added, saying they posed a threat to their "former employers."
* * *
As funny as it is to listen to the Russian President field random questions on subjects as diverse as cloning, astronomy, and annexing Alaska, and while there's certainly a degree to which the Kremlin employs a bit of sophistry in an effort to paint Russia as the tragic protagonist in a story about an evil hegemon bent on spreading Russophobia (so pretty much the exact same thing the US did during the cold war, only in reverse), the tension between Moscow and the West is palpable and with NATO now conducting its own snap drills in Eastern Europe and with the very same militants to which Gen. Gerasimov is referring just a few kilometers away from the palace of the Russian-backed Bashar al-Assad, we wonder if and when the war of words will turn into one of bullets.
takeaction
Wouldn't it be nice to have a real leader. Take a look. What a joke.
nuubee
Actually no. American's shouldn't need leaders, the fact that they feel they do should be a point of great shame to them.
CrazyCooter
I wonder if he need teleprompters for all that Q&A ...
PartysOver
Like him or not, he has exposed Obama and Team as the incompetent fools they are. Just go back and look and Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Ukraine. Add in the Iranian deal and Yemen. That is just the Foreign Affairs book and I am sure I forgot a few. Toss in the Domestic issues and the pattern becomes clearer.
Create chaos and instability throughout the world then re-sculpt in the Vision of the Messiah. Only I is doomed to failure leaving behind unfathomable death and destruction.
ch25061
Judging from the quickness of his wit and sophistication of his off-the-cuff responses that his IQ is Enormous... Probably well over 160.
SeminoleBob For Truth
Hey new Crazy Cooter! I watched this via live feed. He doesn't seem to use teleprompters, always eyeing the audience and not looking in one place. He reads stats from paper or from the computer, when answering questions and speaking to the people, eyeing the people to the side, front, other side. It's pretty amazing. A far cry from an Obama State of the Union:
Obama: Our economy is booing!
Democrats: standing ovation and cheers
Obama: Unemployment has never been better!
DemocratsL Standing ovation and cheers
Obama: We have contained Russia and China
Democrats and Republicans: standing ovation and cheers
Love Putin or hate him, he knows his country, knows the facts and talks to he people, taking hard questions. We just don't see that heee in America. Very sad, it's always a reminder of how far we have fallen
walküre
I think it's better to leave history alone and try and forget who hated who and for what reasons. Germans weren't exactly loved anywhere in Europe prior to WW1 and especially not prior to WW2. There was injustice and abuse toward native Germans all across Eastern Europe going back a couple centuries. It's just too sad when people rely on their forefathers to promote sentiment against other groups of people. What it comes down to is the issue of money and compensation. Many Germans lost everything after two major wars and nobody is defending their claims. I know we lost not one but two wars but c'mon, that can't be the last excuse for eternity? Especially when the circumstances of each war are very nebulous and the origin of guilt is hard to establish - unofficially.
Unless we truly let bygones be bygones and focus on the future without running in circles and accusing each other of whatever our grandfathers did or may have had involvement in. That can never be compensated and those that were victims are dead and frankly, they don't care anymore.
swass
No one should be responsible for any atrocities committed by their ancestors. 100% agree. Although I know at the same time that memories of such atrocities are often passed down many generations and evoke a lot of emotion. You're right that it is to the benefit of everyone to recognize the distinction between something that happened a long time ago and that it doesn't make it true today. Some blacks still feel that America somehow owes them reparations for slavery that happened more than 150 years ago. I don't think slavery was ever right, and I don't believe that any of my ancestors ever owned slaves (that were here in the US). Yet they still hate whitey and demand reparations from all Americans, despite the fact this happened so long ago, and that no one alive here in the US has ever lived in slavery. They need to learn that the past is the past, just like may others throughout the world.
datura
Well, it si quite difficult to let bygones be bygones, when another WWIII is on the horizon. Why do you think Russians are now so sensitive about Hitler and WWII??? Just think! They simply do NOT want any other world war, but they know they are being pushed to such a war right now by the USA neocons and banksters. Russians will now have a huge WWII Victory Day celebrations and Western leaders will not come to see it, although it is so much important for Russians, because they wanted to remind the world of WWII to make them understand that we must do anything to prevent any such war. But Western leaders are puppets and do not seem to care if we all die or not. So, instead, Putin will have China, India, Vietnam etc. in these celebrations and the world is once again divided into blocks. Interestingly, the Chinese president seems to make a fuss over WWII as well, because the Chinese have suffered in WWII as well - in the hands of Japan and now the USA seems to be arming up Japan. And the Nazis in Ukraine. It seems that both for Russia and China all this just opens old wounds and they take it very seriously.
"Chinese President Xi Jinping will reach Moscow on May 8 for the celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of Russia's defeat of Nazi Germany and 70 years since the end of World War II.. Heads of 26 countries have confirmed their attendance at the May 9 celebrations in Moscow. Putin and Xi have both, in recent months, warned against "distorting history". Chinese President Xi Jinping said at a war commemoration event in December that "forgetting history means betrayal and denying the crime means committing it once again." Last month, Putin ordered the organizing committee, established for the 70th anniversary celebration of the victory of the Anti-Fascist War on May 9 in Moscow, to effectively counter worrying attempts to "rewrite history". "This is a very important work to involve the young people in preserving historical memory about the events of the Great Patriotic War, about the key role of the Soviet Union in the victory over Nazism," a Kremlin statement quoted Putin.
swass
Actually, I don't think that is really true. At least not something anyone can make a sweeping generalization about. While I think the hatred of Hitler is universal in Russia (and many countries like Ukraine), Hitler wasn't trying to exterminate all Russians. That is completely false. If that were true, Germans would have done so as they took control of villages and cities. Nazi's did, as Putin said, target Jews and attempt to exterminate them, but not Russians in general. In any case, everyone knows that WWII was very costly for Russia in terms of casualties. I have family in Russia and Ukraine. I'm well aware. "USA people" are well aware. WWI was very bad for the US also. Not sure what you think your arguing exactly.
Mike Masr
Good point. I have family in St. Petersburg that lived through the nazi siege. I think Americans who also gave lives to defeat nazism understand only to a degree. They had no nazi invasion and most here cannot comprehend 27 million lost to fighting this evil. So yes most Americans are aware, but don't understand or comprehend the price our people paid.
This is why the war is known is the West as World War II and in Russia as "The Great Patriotic War".
swass
Sure, I agree with what you said Mike. I also agree that it's hard for most people to conceptualize that size of a loss. My wife is helping to host Victory Day celebrations for Russians/Ukrainians/etc here in Minnesota and especially for elderly that lived through WWII and it's aftermath there.
Mike Masr
Could you imagine our spineless leader barry in a conference like this without a teleprompter? I don't even think he would make it 30 minutes. Forget 4 hours!!!
Jack Burton
Jack BurtonNo American president has talked unscripted to the Americna people since Carter, even Reagan gave up the idea of talking directly and taking unscreened questions. Bush refused all contact with unscreened Americans, and Obama is the same. Cowards, and idiots.
"Nonnuclear powers where missile-defense installations are being installed have become the objects of priority response," Gen. Gerasimov This is a sad fact. Anti Missile systems sound defensive in nature. But they are part of a First Stike Capability. One side launches a mass attack on the others nuclear weapons systems, then sits back and counts on it's anti missile shield to destroy many of the surviving response missiles. Thus, the anti missile systems are MORE IMPORTANT a first strike target than the USA's nuclear forces themselves. So Poland and others who host a vast anti ballistic missile system for America, hoping this is all part of defense, are being lured into becoming the VERY most threatening force in the world to Russia.
Russia then, if they seek survival, would absolutely HAVE to hit Poland first and as hard as possible at the very first hint of an American Nuclear missile launch. This is very basic Nuclear War Fighting Strategy! Poland and others would be Russia's priority target when the first US ICBM appear on a Russian radar screen. The Polish sites would be hit long before Russia even launched it's response missiles. A lighting fast hair trigger will be set on Russian missiles set right on Poland's borders. Why? Because only a fool would not see the need to eliminate the anti missile systems first and foremost.
By trying to please Washington, Poland is taking a nuclear war timing from 15 minutes to an 1 hour, down to 5 minutes. Russia would have 5 - 10 minutes to launch on Poland to get the anti missiles out of the way first. Then consider the larger defensive launch on the West.
Poland is fucking insane to push the nuclear trigger this tightly. They have nothing to gain, and everything to lose. Idiots!
besnook
there isn't a single politician in the entire usa who would do this, let alone the president.
watching putin and comparing him to any usa leadership, public or private, makes me cry for the usa.
|
|
|
Mar 28, 2015 | Foreign Affairs
How did twenty-first-century Russia end up, yet again, in personal rule? An advanced industrial country of 142 million people, it has no enduring political parties that organize and respond to voter preferences.The military is sprawling yet tame; the immense secret police are effectively in one man's pocket. The hydrocarbon sector is a personal bank, and indeed much of the economy is increasingly treated as an individual fiefdom. Mass media move more or less in lockstep with the commands of the presidential administration.
Competing interest groups abound, but there is no rival center of power. In late October 2014, after a top aide to Russia's president told the annual forum of the Valdai Discussion Club, which brings together Russian and foreign experts, that Russians understand "if there is no Putin, there is no Russia," the pundit Stanislav Belkovsky observed that "the search for Russia's national idea, which began after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is finally over. Now, it is evident that Russia's national idea is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin."
Russia is classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank (having a per capita GDP exceeding $14,000). Its unemployment remains low (around five percent); until recently, consumer spending had been expanding at more than five percent annually; life expectancy has been rising; and Internet penetration exceeds that of some countries in the European Union.
But Russia is now beset by economic stagnation alongside high inflation, its labor productivity remains dismally low, and its once-vaunted school system has deteriorated alarmingly. And it is astonishingly corrupt. Not only the bullying central authorities in Moscow but regional state bodies, too, have been systematically criminalizing revenue streams, while giant swaths of territory lack basic public services and local vigilante groups proliferate.
Across the country, officials who have purchased their positions for hefty sums team up with organized crime syndicates and use friendly prosecutors and judges to extort and expropriate rivals. President Vladimir Putin's vaunted "stability," in short, has turned into spoliation. But Putin has been in power for 15 years, and there is no end in sight. Stalin ruled for some three decades...
Jamil M Chaudri
Interesting but slanted and one-sided, myopic analysis. Why would the 1.6 billion Muslims spread over three continents, accept Mr Kotkin's concept of "World Order".There is no World Order; it is the predatory West's efforts to enslave people to the European weltanschauung. It is an effort by the colonialists to prolong their hegemony over Muslim lands and people.
One of the biggest mistakes Pakia made was to join the West in destroying Soviet Russia. A bi-polar world was a better world than a unipolar world, where the west is destroying Muslim nations (one after the other).
This is no World Order: it a man eat man world that has been created.
Jamil M Chaudri -> JACK RICE
Before the invasion (and total destruction) of Afghanis there was no daily violence in Afghania. Before the invasion (and total destruction) of Iraqia, there is no daily violence in Iraqia. Before Pakia allied itself with America (leading to the further debasement of an evolving state) there were no (practically) daily suicide bombings in Pakia. Before America decided to aid Ethiopia (and joined it) in destroying Somalia, the state of Somalia had a pretty vibrant civil society, and no gangster precipitate violence.
Before America decided to KILL Gadhafi by indiscriminatingly arming gangsters to carry out their will, the incipient-unity state of Libya did not have the sectarian violence that we presently hear about. Before America decided to Destroy the Syrian State, by leading a crusade (guised as a push for, of all things, DEMOCRACY), Syria was a fast-developing state. ......... This list could be stretched back to the days of Pilgrim Fathers. But I am hoping you follow the drift.
If the hat fits, wear it! If the shoe fits, wear them!! From the top of the head to the sole of the shoes, everything is dyed deep in BLOOD.
At the moment with more than 2'000'000 deaths in Iraqia, and more than 250'000 deaths in Afgania and more than 10'000 deaths in Pakia,
Jamil M Chaudri -> BAKER ALLON
Take some smelling salts, and read what happened in North and South America, when whole nations were destroyed by the colonialists, and kept in RESERVATIONS; their children were taken to missions for conversion to Christianity, their dwellings were destroyed. Read about the Trail of Tears, when a whole nation was banished from their ancestral lands. Read about 2'000'000 deaths in Afghania. For you destruction of HUMAN LIFE is less important than destruction of statues? Shows the kind of person you are. There are many clips available on the internet showing the destruction of Human Life in most parts of Iraqia(including Mosel) by the blood thirsty invaders. Harping about statues and museums, and totally callus about human lives (millions of them) you are indeed a museum piece! Go back to the shelf you have come off.
Renee Barclay -> Jamil M Chaudri • 19 days ago
Bush was a moron but that doesn't change the fact that Saddam was a murderous dictator. And Saddam's sons were known rapists and murderers.
Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites turned on each other after Bush eliminated Saddam and that's the simple fact. And they're STILL killing each other to this day. Google it.Jamil M Chaudri -> Renee Barclay
I do not have to Google such assertions. They are non sequitur, in nature. Even then, let us examine your assertion for a moment: Bush was a Moron but Saddam was a murderous dictator. By your logic we American must be the epitome of Moron-ness, for we ELECTED Bush; Iraqis must be a gentle and good people who were overpowered by the Saddam, the Murderous Dictator..
By the way, how many Iraqis did Saddam murder? And then, how many Iraqis were murdered, at the command of Bush? Since the Iraqis were killed/murdered at the command of Bush, and Americans elected Bush, Americans are responsible for the murders. We Americans have blood on our hands!
My assertion is that America is responsible for 2'000'000 deaths in Iraq.
On your non-sequitur. If a good man has evils sons, does the man become evil? Again, Sunnis turned against Shias; so what? About the American Civil War, Google says: Though the number of killed and wounded in the Civil War is not known precisely, most sources agree that the total number killed was between 640,000 and 700,000.
There was no civil war in Iraq before American Invasion and destruction of Iraqi State and Society. Thus, America is TOTALLY responsible for 2'000'000 deaths in Iraq.
Vivienne Perkins -> Jamil M Chaudri
Dear Jamil: As an American citizen, I take my hat off to you for telling the exact truth -- that the terrorist state is the United States of America and our media's propaganda stream is now in overdrive, especially in regard to Russia, which is our latest target.
The US State Department's Victoria Nuland and our CIA (+ Blackwater mercenaries) installed the puppet Yatsenyuk/Poroshenko govt. in Kiev (to do our bidding) and CIA Dir. James Brennan himself went to Kiev to launch the civil war against the Eastern provinces that Europeans, at least, are now trying to bring to a halt. The US does leave nothing but failed states behind it, and Western Ukraine will be the next failed state in a long list. Since the end of WWII, the best estimate is that the United States, in 67 military operations and countless covert CIA operations, has destroyed between 20 and 30 million people world-wide, largely in the interest of commandeering their resources or serving the interests of the banks to which they owe money--money they were usually cajoled into borrowing.
As for political corruption, I don't know much about Russian levels of corruption, but I know a lot about the total corruption of our system of government and the evisceration of all of our civil liberties, subsequent to the passage of the so-called and mis-named Patriot Act. By the provisions of the NDAA, any US citizen can be picked up and held in indefinite military detention without charge or trial. I wonder how much worse is Russia than that?
And since Citizens United, nearly every legislator in our Congress is absolutely bought and paid for. Maybe we should leave Russia alone and think about how to restore what we once thought of as a democratic system of governance h ere in the United States.
jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins
One thing has nothing to do with the other. While I'm in agreement with you on the Ukrainian matter, lets not forget that Vladimir Putin's Russia also has a very big problem with Islamic extremists in their territories as does a number of countries around the world .
Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37
I'm not sure I get your point. Maybe we should think about why the West has trouble with Islamic extremists. Might it be because for over a hundred years the Western powers have chosen the dictatorial rulers of Muslim countries, drawn their boundaries, supported leaders or removed them at its own whim (as S. Hussein in Iraq, the Shah in Iran, Mubarak in Egypt, Khaddafi in Libya, etc.) and inserted Israel into Arab territory for its own reasons. Has it ever occurred to you that if Muslim nations had been allowed to develop according to their own preferences, we might possibly have a more rational and peaceful world today? I can't prove this obviously, but it does seem clear that the more the US attacks and interferes, the more hostile the Muslims become. As an American I would like to see my country behave in a more decent way and with less self-serving propaganda.
jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins
And was America to blame for Jihadi activity thousands of years ago before its existence? Do you not realize that their actvity is given full sanction, and indeed commands them to go to war with the Kufar? Currently, there is Jihadi activity in countries stretching from India toChechnya and in several African countries. They all have to do with Islamic aggression against there neighbors and almost nothing to do with " western imperialism'
Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37
"Thousands of years ago" Islam did not exist. I hold to my original point that Islamic terrorism has been created by unjustified Western interference.
jlord37 -> Vivienne Perkins
Islam first appeared on the world stage in about the year 620 AD.
Vivienne Perkins -> jlord37
Which means it is now 1,395 years old (not thousands) and I doubt that it's legitimate to equate its idea that it was entitled to make forcible conversions to the present situation, which seems to me to have arisen fairly recently as a response to Western meddling in Arab lands.
Jamil M Chaudri -> jlord37
The answer to the one of your question is a LOWD Yes: It was the FIRST CRUSADES that brought religiosity into the GAME OF KINGS: enlarging kingdoms at the expense of neighbouring kingdoms. The First Crusade was indeed nearly a thousand years ago. The only differences between JIHAD and CRUSADE are:
1. CRUSADERS are more cruel, surreptitious, deceptive, etc.
2. Crusades have no moral component, the goal is political supremacy. Jihad is about moral supremacy, justice and equality.
Since you bring religion into the mix, try to re-read the bible (the new and the old, both of which) PRESCRIBE DEATH to heretics and non-believers. Here is a action in pursuance of such biblical dictate:
"A Spanish missionary, Bartolome de las Casas, described eye-witness accounts of mass murder, torture and rape. 2 Author Barry Lopez, summarizing Las Casas' report wrote:
"One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can parallel....' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food." 3
Currently there is CRUSADING MISSIONARY activity in all non-Christian lands by religious warrior-fanatics (wearing the piety hat of the Christian hue). Read about the recent reaction local Hindu population in India against such activity.
First the Western nations used the RELIGION hat to subdue MORALLY SUPPERIOR but less BLOOD-THURSTY peoples; When that strategy ceased to work they rolled out a second version called DEMOCRACY. The second is as much of a sham as the earlier attempt.
Even internal to American, the "down trodden" masses are beginning to cry foul. The prevailing poverty rate in America is staggering. See the figures in most authoritative publications.
Reading does bring enlightenment. That is why I read from diverse sources.
jlord37 -> Jamil M Chaudri
Yes that's why millions of people are seeking to emigrate by any means necessary., and not the reverse. I can assure the " impoverished masses" in the west are in a lot better shape than they are in your neck of the woods.
But I think your trying to deflect once again. That Christianity ad well as other religions has had a bloody past, is no revelation, band I for one am no big fan. But steps have been taken since than, to temper the extremism that brought on these acts. One does not read of to many beheadings and or sucide bombings in the name of Jesus, Buddha, or Shiva. This is not meant as a criticism of Muslim people per se, or a put down of that particular of the world, it is merely mea by as a critique of some of the problems that I, and countless others see in the Islamic faith. There's no question that the leadership in the west, can be very corrupt and rapacious at times, but I think the general trend is towards an attempt at understanding and accommodation. Now, I think it is time for the Muslim world to attempt some sort of inner dialogue where they take steps towards a dressing and correcting their own problems. I enjoyed our discussion, and I hope we will be able to part in civil terms. Best wishes.
Jamil M Chaudri -> jlord37
First of all let me disabuse your notion of "my neck of the woods". In one of my earlier posting I have clearly stated that I am a proud American Citizen, living in a well wooded and watered part of the US of A. But as my country has gone wayward (essentially in pursuit of the buck) from its charter I am trying to bring America back to its promise.
You have levied accusation against me of "deflecting" arguments. Let me tell you what your problem is: you want to levy unsubstantiated accusations against others, and when they, with references, confront your falsehoods and soothsaying, you accuse the other of "deflecting" or "hijacking" the discussion! Pot calling the kettle black? Man, it is you who is unable to stick to the argument – but then, as you have no argument, of course, you have nothing to stick to. Your statements are based on your penchant for name-calling, bad mouthing, others. Perhaps your mind-set suggests that with such strategies, you will be the last "man standing" (?).
.
In my first posing on Dr Kotkin's article, I simply wanted to repudiate the so called "World Order". By what right have Great Britain and France seats at the Security Council. By definition in a democratic set-up, every unit has equal rights. What Dr Kotkins calls a World Order is therefore a sham democracy, created to benefit the West.Under the guise of bringing democracy to Iraqia, Afghania, Libya, the Yemen, etc. the west is simply trying to prolong its hegemony. It is a sham democracy they impose on weak nations. Pliant regimes are being installed, and millions of people being killed. Any voice that is raised against such pseudo-democracy is silenced by force, by the thugs installed as "democratic" regimes. This is western patronage.
Presently, you read about EXCESSES done by the lunatic fringes of the Muslim Society (these groups, by the way, were created by and operate with the support of CIA – so that organisations like HOMELAND Security can get more dollars), because 90% of the news buzz is created by American media.
The USA is a state trying to improve its democracy on a continuous basis. In 1777 did America treat all people the same way? When was the promulgation of freedom (of SLAVES) passed in America? When was the voting rights acts passed? Are the economic developments of the Whites and Blacks (call it Afro-American, if you like) even TODAY at the same level?
I wish you and your, the very best. May Allah have his mercy on us as a Nation, so that we can STANDING TOGETHER still sing the Star-Spangled Banner.
jlord37 -> Jamil M Chaudri
We currently have a black president, black attorney General, a black director of homeland security, and a black national security adviser. That's not to mention the various statutes and regulations on the books that are strictly enforced to prevent discrimination and instances of inequality. Are these details of such small consequence? With regards to your observations of so called regime change, I am in complete agreement with you . I against such interventions wether it is Cairo or Kiev. It is up to the indigenous population of that country to determine the course that their country should take, and not have to be subjected to outside interference. However, I have to ask the question, do you really think that the CIA bears the sole responsibility for the for the existence of these groups? Could it be that they're trying to co opt them and use them for their own purposes? Im almost certain that the CIA didn't create the leaders who take certain texts and use them for recruitment purposes. All I'm suggesting is that we need to hear more from the moderate elements, and that some sort of reformation May have to be undertaken, much in the way it occurred in other religions. ( Christianity for example )
Finally, Im not sure where you got the idea that I " have a penchant of bad mouthing others" but nevertheless, I sincerely apologize if I have offended you in anyway. You are a worthy opponent, and it's been an enlightening discussion to say the least.
Robert Munro -> Jamil M Chaudri
Stephen Kotkin is a Jewish shill for the oligarchy.
Jamil M Chaudri -> Robert Munro
I only knew Dr Kotkin's background as a historian; his religious affiliation did not concern me. The only part of his writing that offended me was the concept of "World Order". I do not accept nor do I want anybody else to be suppressed by the unbridled-capitalists.
Unfortunately, to exercise unbridled capitalism, the underpinning is provided by exercise of power over others. It is the RAPE OF NATIONS.
Robert Munro -> Jamil M Chaudri
I've read Kotkin before. He advocates a world ruled by an elite (unspecified). However, from his background and affiliations, it's very possible that his mind-set matches that of Baruch Levy, below..........
"The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah. It will attain world domination by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship.
In this New World Order, the children of Israel will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the
Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the
resources of the state.Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which it is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands."
Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx (1879), printed in La Revue de Paris, p. 574, June 1, 1928
Given the 3000 year history of Judaism, its religious writings, its possession of nuclear weapons and control of the American government/economy/media, it seems appropriate to take such claims very seriously.
Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON
Here's some more "fantasy" about your barbaric cult............
http://www.haaretz.com/news/di...
http://www.richardsilverstein....
http://www.btselem.org/downloa...
BTW- All three of the links above are to Jewish web sites - civilized Jews.
Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON
It is the cult for which you shill that is the disease.......for 3000 years you have been a malignant cancer trying to metastasize throughout our world.
Robert Munro -> BAKER ALLON
The disease that sickens and, hopefully, will kill your cult is truth...............
"To communicate anything with a Goy about our relations would be equal to the killing of all Jews, for if the Goyim knew what we teach about them, they would kill us openly." (found in both the Torah and Talmud)
Jamil M Chaudri -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP
Of course, of course. But then, there are even some people with eyes who do not see. For them it is a blessing, for they see no evil. It is really a mental condition due to aberrant eye. By the way, Yogi Berra is supposed to have said: "You can observe a lot just by watching". But perhaps street-walkers in Europe do not watch, because their game is different, and they are enjoying the benefits of their game.
I do not want to shatter your innocence, but slaves are not seen by street-walkers: Slaves are consigned to SLAVE QUARTERS. Present day, western world has built slave quarters in India, Pakistan, Sudan, Congo, etc. This is where the Western Worlds Slaves Live. If you want to read the whole report goto: http://www.globalslaveryindex....
India has the largest number of slaves in the world (14 million).
Mind you, A related concept is "wage slavery". To understand this concept requires sensibility.
Yet another but even more subtle concept is "mental slavery". A variation of this is known as the Stockholm Syndrome. Mental Slavery is a totally abject state where the person ceases to think eigenartig but assumes the likes and hates of the person/people who have programmed him/her.
From the last line in your post, I can only assume that deep programming has been done. Programmed consciousness is virtual reality.
ARJAN VELLEKOOP -> Jamil M Chaudri
So, now the west should care for what governments in other countries do with their citizens? I thought you hated imperialists! Your reference to India is just idiotic. Why should the west feel responsible for the condition India is in?! You are probably going to say the colonial past. Well, thats bullcrap since there are plenty of countries which have grown, since their liberty, into decent and reasonably wealthy states. The west is not responsible for India, India is responsible for itself.
Particularly the Middle Eastern countries have shown behaviour to shift the blame away from their own failures. Maybe it have to do with their Islamic background, in which so many actions are based/motivated from religious basis. And of course the prophet is never wrong, so it must be the fault of a imperialist outsider.
Get real. The countries which contain these so called slaves, can make their own choices. They dont have to be part of the capitalist terrible world order. They can make the better choice like you and other believe it. Sadly enough, that idea is, apparently, not that good. Because good ideas sell itself.
Jamil M Chaudri -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP
You seem unable to differentiate between an imperialist and a "good Samaritan". You had earlier written that, as a street walker in Europe you had not seen any slaves, my response to that posting simply told you where you could go to see slavery. And specific reference to India was simply to help you find slavery most easily - with 14 million slaves India is the centre of Modern Slavery. However, in my conversations with Indians, especially the demi-literate ones, instead of admitting to the prevailing REALITY in India, they do not admit to seeing it. With their eyes open, the street walkers do not see it.
There is absolutely no religious underpinning for State Government in any of the states where Muslims are in Majority. The Saudi Family are are there because of America; the present rule in Iran is a reaction to America (re-)installing the 2-cent "SHAH" to rule the Iranian Nation. The present excesses of the Iranian state are essentially defense postures against America intransigence, and mechanisms to harm (and if possible) destroy the Iranian Nation.
I experience reality every day. If you would just come out of your VIRTUAL REALITY, you might by just watching observe some. I know deprogramming is not easy, and self-deprogramming is even more difficult.
All the same, I suggest that you wake up and smell the Coffee; if not try some smelling salts.
Robert Munro -> ARJAN VELLEKOOP
And we have read the drivel of thousands of shills for the oligarchy and the Zionist/Fascist cult...............such as yourself.
Ivan Night Terrible
Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin-Putin... :)) Hmmm... oк, about Putin: Look at Putin's foreign agenda this past year: Latin America just as the sanctions came in - an intentional finger in Washington's eye, as I read it - then China, China again recently, Turkey more recently, India just now. He has not been to Iran, but there, as in all these other places, he has forged or reiterated promising relations. The deals cut are too numerous to list. A couple are worth mentioning. The twin gas deals with China, worth nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars, are historic all by themselves. In six years' time China will be buying more gas from Russia than the latter now sells to Europe. And do not miss this: My sources tell me that this gas can be priced such as to crowd the U.S. at least partially out of the Asian market. Other side of the world: Putin has just canceled a planned pipeline to southeastern Europe, the South Stream. This is the defeat Western media put it over as, surely: Russia loses some customers. But two points:
- One, it was soon enough clear that the Europeans, having used South Stream as leverage in the sanctions game, probably overplayed their hand. The day following the announcement they were struggling for composure so far as I can make out.
- Two, Putin stunned everyone with his decision from Ankara, where he stood with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to announce that South Stream would be rerouted to serve the Turkish market. Think about this: It is more than a new deal; there are significant political and diplomatic implications in this, given Turkey's traditional alliances, its EU aspirations and so on.
|
|
|
Oct 19, 2015 | Antiwar.com
Russophobia compromises the media and academia
The truth is often ignored, at first, and when that becomes impossible, truth-tellers are often punished. As two incidents starkly reveal, this is certainly the case when it comes to the civil war in Ukraine and Washington's unfolding cold war with Russia.
The first illustration of our truth-telling principle occurred after the "Maidan revolution" had already captured the imagination of the Western media, which was busy promulgating the official view as given expression by US government officials. According to this narrative, the "protesters" were heroes, the government of "Russian-backed' Viktor Yanukovich was a coven of devils, and the catalyzing incident that led to Yanukovich's ouster, the shooting of protesters in the Maidan, was the work of the Berkut, the Ukrainian government's militarized police.
There's just one problem with this story: it isn't true. A leaked phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, revealed that the protesters were shot by their own leaders – the radical nationalists who had military control of the Maiden.
... ... ...
Ashton's main concern seemed to be that this would get out and discredit the new government "from the very beginning."
Oh, but not to worry: it didn't get out, at least not in the United States. There were oblique mentions of the recording in the mainstream media, but only weeks afterward and then without any specifics: two months after the fact, the Los Angeles Times referred to it in the vaguest terms, only to dismiss it as a "conspiracy theory." The New York Times didn't cover it: neither did the War Street Journal, Time magazine, or any of the other usual suspects. The Daily Beast, typically, served as a mouthpiece for the official Washington-Kiev account, citing Dr. Bogomolets as claiming her conversation with Paet was a "misunderstanding." Yet Paet didn't cite her as his sole source: he said "all the evidence." No doubt the Estonians have their own sources in the country, and it's improbable the Foreign Minister would have made such an assertion based on a single person's testimony.
In any case, the story was pretty much buried here in the US, with the exception of this space and a few other alternative news sources.
But in Europe, it was a different story: the German public television station ARD carried a report which threw the identity of the Maidan shooters into serious question. And more recently the BBC produced a documentary, "The Untold Story of the Maidan Massacre," in which eyewitnesses assert that the Berkut were fired on from positions controlled by the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, which, along with the neo-Nazi "Right Sector" organization, ran Maidan security.
Still, the story was ignored in the US, but that may not be possible much longer, and the reason springs from an unlikely source: the current Ukrainian government of President Petro Poroshenko.
Last week Ukrainian police raided the homes of Svoboda Party leaders Oleksandr Sych, who served as Deputy Prime Minister in the post-Maidan government, and Ole Pankevich, whose 2013 appearance at a neo-Nazi memorial event provoked the ire of the World Jewish Congress. The Ukrainian prosecutor's office confirmed that the raid was conducted as part of an investigation into the Maidan shootings:
"The court warrant for the raid on the apartment of Pankevich, a former MP and the ex-head of Lviv regional council, explicitly referred to a BBC documentary on the subject, according to a copy of the warrant In the documentary, journalist Gabriel Gatehouse spoke to an opposition nationalist rifleman who had acknowledged having fired on riot police in the morning of February 20."
The warrant, posted online,
"[A]lso refers to video footage that showed a rifleman firing out of the Hotel Ukraina, situated on Maidan. The room from which he fired was occupied at the time by Pankevich, according to the court warrant.
"Police also raided the apartment of Sich, vice-prime minister in the immediate post-Maidan government in 2014, also in connection with shots fired from the same hotel, where he was also staying on February 20.
"An assistant to Ukraine's prosecutor general, Vladislav Kutsenko, confirmed to the Ukrainian TV channel 112 that searches of the Svoboda leaders' apartments were linked to an investigation of the February 20 events."
So the Ukrainian government is admitting that their previous narrative is false – and that the ultra-rghtist Svoboda and Right Sector, who were the military arm of the Maidan protesters, provoked the incident that led to Yanukovich's overthrow.
Why this stunning turnaround?
Both Svoboda and Right Sector have declared war on the Poroshenko regime and are calling for a "national revolution" – one that would install them in power. The ultra-nationalists are opposed to the Minsk agreement, brokered by the EU, which makes concessions to the east Ukrainians.
The far right is accusing Poroshenko of "betraying the revolution." They scoff at the ceasefire as a "sellout" because they want the civil war to continue: and as Poroshenko makes draconian cuts in the government budget in order to mollify Ukraine's creditors, and to ensure the flow of Western funding, the rightists are gaining ground politically. And they are getting increasingly violent, staging a riot in front of the parliament building in which three officers were killed by a grenade hurled at policemen: 130 cops were injured. The rightists were protesting the decision by the parliament to grant the eastern rebels some small degree of autonomy. This incident followed a series of shoot-outs with the armed rightist gang known as Right Sector, which played a key role in the Maidan protest movement.
That the Poroshenko government, which had previously stonewalled any serious effort to investigate the shooting deaths that sent Yanukovich packing, is playing this card now is an indication of the regime's desperation in the face of a challenge from the ultra-right. For to upend the official narrative – one that is fully supported by their Western sponsors, and their amen corner in the media – is to subvert the very foundations of the post-Maidan order. If the truth comes out, the ultra-nationalists may be finished – but so may the government that exposes their murderous role.
... ... ...
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud. I've written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and ISI Books, 2008). You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
|
|
|
foreignpolicy.com
Moscow may no longer be a superpower, but its revanchist politics are unsettling the international order. How should Donald Trump deal with Vladimir Putin?
... ... ...
It did not have to be this way. Twenty-five years ago, the dissolution of the Soviet Union marked not only the end of the Cold War but also the beginning of what should have been a golden era of friendly relations between Russia and the West. With enthusiasm, it seemed, Russians embraced both capitalism and democracy. To an extent that was startling, Russian cities became Westernized. Empty shelves and po-faced propaganda gave way to abundance and dazzling advertisements.
Contrary to the fears of some, there was a new world order after 1991. The world became a markedly more peaceful place as the flows of money and arms that had turned so many regional disputes into proxy wars dried up. American economists rushed to advise Russian politicians. American multinationals hurried to invest.
Go back a quarter century to 1991 and imagine three more or less equally plausible futures. First, imagine that the coup by hard-liners in August of that year had been more competently executed and that the Soviet Union had been preserved. Second, imagine a much more violent dissolution of the Soviet system in which ethnic and regional tensions escalated much further, producing the kind of "super-Yugoslavia" Kissinger has occasionally warned about. Finally, imagine a happily-ever-after history, in which Russia's economy thrived on the basis of capitalism and globalization, growing at Asian rates.
Russia could have been deep-frozen. It could have disintegrated. It could have boomed. No one in 1991 knew which of these futures we would get. In fact, we got none of them. Russia has retained the democratic institutions that were established after 1991, but the rule of law has not taken root, and, under Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian nationalist form of government has established itself that is notably ruthless in its suppression of opposition and criticism. Despite centrifugal forces, most obviously in the Caucasus, the Russian Federation has held together. However, the economy has performed much less well than might have been hoped. Between 1992 and 2016, the real compound annual growth rate of Russian per capita GDP has been 1.5 percent. Compare that with equivalent figures for India (5.1 percent) and China (8.9 percent).
Today, the Russian economy accounts for just over 3 percent of global output, according to the International Monetary Fund's estimates based on purchasing power parity. The U.S. share is 16 percent. The Chinese share is 18 percent. Calculated on a current dollar basis, Russia's GDP is less than 7 percent of America's. The British economy is twice the size of Russia's.
Moreover, the reliance of the Russian economy on exported fossil fuels - as well as other primary products - is shocking. Nearly two-thirds of Russian exports are petroleum (63 percent), according the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
... ... ...
Nevertheless, it is important to remember what exactly Putin said on that occasion. In remarks that seemed mainly directed at the Europeans in the room, he warned that a "unipolar world" - meaning one dominated by the United States - would prove "pernicious not only for all those within this system but also for the sovereign itself." America's "hyper use of force," Putin said, was "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts." Speaking at a time when neither Iraq nor Afghanistan seemed especially good advertisements for U.S. military intervention, those words had a certain force, especially in German ears.
Nearly 10 years later, even Putin's most splenetic critics would be well-advised to reflect for a moment on our own part in the deterioration of relations between Washington and Moscow. The Russian view that the fault lies partly with Western overreach deserves to be taken more seriously than it generally is.
Is the West to blame?
If I look back on what I thought and wrote during the administration of George W. Bush, I would say that I underestimated the extent to which the expansion of both NATO and the European Union was antagonizing the Russians.
Certain decisions still seem to me defensible. Given their experiences in the middle of the 20th century, the Poles and the Czechs deserved both the security afforded by NATO membership (from 1999, when they joined along with Hungary) and the economic opportunities offered by EU membership (from 2004). Yet the U.S. decision in March 2007 to build an anti-ballistic missile defense site in Poland along with a radar station in the Czech Republic seems, with hindsight, more questionable, as does the subsequent decision to deploy 10 two-stage missile interceptors and a battery of MIM-104 Patriot missiles in Poland. Though notionally intended to detect and counter Iranian missiles, these installations were bound to be regarded by the Russians as directed at them. The subsequent deployment of Iskander short-range missiles to Kaliningrad was a predictable retaliation.
A similar act of retaliation followed in 2008 when, with encouragement from some EU states, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. In response, Russia recognized rebels in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and invaded those parts of Georgia. From a Russian perspective, this was no different from what the West had done in Kosovo.
The biggest miscalculation, however, was the willingness of the Bush administration to consider Ukraine for NATO membership and the later backing by the Obama administration of EU efforts to offer Ukraine an association agreement. I well remember the giddy mood at a pro-European conference in Yalta in September 2013, when Western representatives almost unanimously exhorted Ukraine to follow the Polish path. Not nearly enough consideration was given to the very different way Russia regards Ukraine nor to the obvious West-East divisions within Ukraine itself. This was despite an explicit warning from Putin's aide Sergei Glazyev, who attended the conference, that signing the EU association agreement would lead to "political and social unrest," a dramatic decline in living standards, and "chaos."
This is not in any way to legitimize the Russian actions of 2014, which were in clear violation of international law and agreements. It is to criticize successive administrations for paying too little heed to Russia's sensitivities and likely reactions.
"I don't really even need George Kennan right now," President Obama told the New Yorker's David Remnick in early 2014. The very opposite was true. He and his predecessor badly needed advisors who understood Russia as well as Kennan did. As Kissinger has often remarked, history is to nations what character is to people. In recent years, American policymakers have tended to forget that and then to wax indignant when other states act in ways that a knowledge of history might have enabled them to anticipate. No country, it might be said, has had its character more conditioned by its history than Russia. It was foolish to expect Russians to view with equanimity the departure into the Western sphere of influence of the heartland of medieval Russia, the breadbasket of the tsarist empire, the setting for Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard, the crime scene of Joseph Stalin's man-made famine, and the main target of Adolf Hitler's Operation Barbarossa.
One might have thought the events of 2014 would have taught U.S. policymakers a lesson. Yet the Obama administration has persisted in misreading Russia. It was arguably a mistake to leave Germany and France to handle the Ukraine crisis, when more direct U.S. involvement might have made the Minsk agreements effective. It was certainly a disastrous blunder to give Putin an admission ticket into the Syrian conflict by leaving to him the (partial) removal of Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons. One of Kissinger's lasting achievements in the early 1970s was to squeeze the Soviets out of the Middle East. The Obama administration has undone that, with dire consequences. We see in Aleppo the Russian military for what it is: a master of the mid-20th-century tactic of winning victories through the indiscriminate bombing of cities.
Left: Free Syrian Army fighters fire an anti-aircraft weapon in Aleppo on Dec. 12. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images); Right: Far-right Ukrainian activists attack the office of the pro-Russian movement "Ukrainian Choice" in Kiev on Nov. 21. (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images)
What price peace?
Yet I remain to be convinced that the correct response to these errors of American policy is to swing from underestimating Russia to overestimating it. Such an approach has the potential to be just another variation on the theme of misunderstanding.
It is not difficult to infer what Putin would like to get in any "great deal" between himself and Trump. Item No. 1 would be a lifting of sanctions. Item No. 2 would be an end to the war in Syria on Russia's terms - which would include the preservation of Assad in power for at least some "decent interval." Item No. 3 would be a de facto recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea and some constitutional change designed to render the government in Kiev impotent by giving the country's eastern Donbass region a permanent pro-Russian veto power.
What is hard to understand is why the United States would want give Russia even a fraction of all this. What exactly would Russia be giving the United States in return for such concessions? That is the question that Trump's national security team needs to ask itself before he so much as takes a courtesy call from the Kremlin.
There is no question that the war in Syria needs to end, just as the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine needs resolution. But the terms of peace can and must be very different from those that Putin has in mind. Any deal that pacified Syria by sacrificing Ukraine would be a grave mistake.
President Obama has been right in saying that Russia is a much weaker power than the United States. His failure has been to exploit that American advantage.
... ... ...
The Russian Question itself can be settled another day. But by reframing the international order on the basis of cooperation rather than deadlock in the Security Council, the United States at least poses the question in a new way. Will Russia learn to cooperate with the other great powers? Or will it continue to be the opponent of international order? Perhaps the latter is the option it will choose. After all, an economic system that prefers an oil price closer to $100 a barrel than $50 benefits more than most from escalating conflict in the Middle East and North Africa - preferably conflict that spills over into the oil fields of the Persian Gulf.
However, if that is the goal of Russia's strategy, then it is hard to see for how much longer Beijing and Moscow will be able to cooperate in the Security Council. Beijing needs stability in oil production and low oil prices as much as Russia needs the opposite. Because of recent tensions with the United States, Russia has been acquiescent as the "One Belt, One Road" program extends China's economic influence into Central Asia, once a Russian domain. There is potential conflict of interest there, too.
... ... ...
|
|
|
Nov 29, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com
marknesop , , November 28, 2017 at 2:13 pm
Ha, ha!!! The Victim Of The Aggressor Country seldom fails to entertain. Here we have VR Deputy Chairperson Ira Gerashchenko bossing Europe around , and telling it that the Victim Of The Aggressor Country's parliamentary delegation will continue to insist on Russia not returning to the Council of Europe. Because, she says, Russia has stolen part of the territory of the VOTAC which was a gift from Russia in the first place (although she doesn't mention that last part), thereby setting a precedent for every country which has a province 'liberated' by the west to term it stolen by the west. But that wasn't my favourite part. No; this is – "We live at the time of a certain degrading of European institutions and their external weakening, including by Russia. You can accept it and go with the flow but you can also recognize the fact try to resist it."Beautiful, Ira!! Inspiring!! And how many degraded European leaders are Billionaires who openly own an impressive slate of businesses and media in their countries, which they continue to operate and profit from while piously declaring their only interest is the welfare of the country? Which is, by the bye, the most corrupt country in Europe ? How many Prosecutors-General has the VOTAC had since its glorious liberation from the yoke of the Moskali? Yes, you can certainly teach Yurrup a thing or two about integrity.
It must be embarrassing to be European these days. To be dressed down by the corrupt country you support on handouts because you are not doing enough to support it. First we had the 'Me' generation. Then we had the 'Me' country.
|
|
|
Nov 28, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy.
For any country, the foundation of successful diplomacy is a reputation for credibility and reliability. Governments are wary of concluding agreements with a negotiating partner that violates existing commitments and has a record of duplicity. Recent U.S. administrations have ignored that principle, and their actions have backfired majorly, damaging American foreign policy in the process.
The consequences of previous deceit are most evident in the ongoing effort to achieve a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. During his recent trip to East Asia, President Trump urged Kim Jong-un's regime to "come to the negotiating table" and "do the right thing" -- relinquish the country's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Presumably, that concession would lead to a lifting (or at least an easing) of international economic sanctions and a more normal relationship between Pyongyang and the international community.
Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in 2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous.
North Korea is likely focused on another incident that raises even greater doubts about U.S. credibility. Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi capitulated on the nuclear issue in December of 2003, abandoning his country's nuclear program and reiterating a commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In exchange, the United States and its allies lifted economic sanctions and welcomed Libya back into the community of respectable nations. Barely seven years later, though, Washington and its NATO partners double-crossed Qaddafi, launching airstrikes and cruise missile attacks to assist rebels in their campaign to overthrow the Libyan strongman. North Korea and other powers took notice of Qaddafi's fate, making the already difficult task of getting a de-nuclearization agreement with Pyongyang nearly impossible.
The Libya intervention sullied America's reputation in another way. Washington and its NATO allies prevailed on the UN Security Council to pass a resolution endorsing a military intervention to protect innocent civilians. Russia and China refrained from vetoing that resolution after Washington's assurances that military action would be limited in scope and solely for humanitarian purposes. Once the assault began, it quickly became evident that the resolution was merely a fig leaf for another U.S.-led regime-change war.
Beijing, and especially Moscow, understandably felt duped. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates succinctly described Russia's reaction, both short-term and long-term:
The Russians later firmly believed they had been deceived on Libya. They had been persuaded to abstain at the UN on the grounds that the resolution provided for a humanitarian mission to prevent the slaughter of civilians. Yet as the list of bombing targets steadily grew, it became obvious that very few targets were off-limits, and that NATO was intent on getting rid of Qaddafi. Convinced they had been tricked, the Russians would subsequently block any such future resolutions, including against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
The Libya episode was hardly the first time the Russians concluded that U.S. leaders had cynically misled them . Moscow asserts that when East Germany unraveled in 1990, both U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and West German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher offered verbal assurances that, if Russia accepted a unified Germany within NATO, the alliance would not expand beyond Germany's eastern border. The official U.S. position that there was nothing in writing affirming such a limitation is correct -- and the clarity, extent, and duration of any verbal commitment to refrain from enlargement are certainly matters of intense controversy . But invoking a "you didn't get it in writing" dodge does not inspire another government's trust.
There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious.
The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia, a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West would use subsequently in Libya.
Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own.
Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point explicitly in a February 2008 State Department briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking.
It is painful for any American to admit that the United States has acquired a well-deserved reputation for duplicity in its foreign policy. But the evidence for that proposition is quite substantial. Indeed, disingenuous U.S. behavior regarding NATO expansion and the resolution of Kosovo's political status may be the single most important factor for the poisoned bilateral relationship with Moscow. The U.S. track record of duplicity and betrayal is one reason why prospects for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue through diplomacy are so bleak.
Actions have consequences, and Washington's reputation for disingenuous behavior has complicated America's own foreign policy objectives. This is a textbook example of a great power shooting itself in the foot.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles and policy studies on international affairs.
Magdi , says: November 28, 2017 at 5:46 am
you are dead ON! I have been saying this since IRAQHerbert Heebert , says: November 28, 2017 at 7:47 am
fiasco (not one Iraqi onboard on 9/11) we should have invaded egypt and saudi arabia. how the foolish american public(sheep) just buys the american propaganda is beyond me.. don't blame the Russians one spittle!!A few points:Viriato , says: November 28, 2017 at 9:25 am1. I think North Korea might also be looking at the example of Ukraine, and Russia's clear violation of the Budapest Memorandum.
2. It's silly to put so much weight on Baker's verbal assurance re: NATO expansion.
3. I would suggest Mr. Carpenter make a list of Russia's betrayals. But I have the impression he is not interested.
Excellent piece. The US really has destroyed its credibility over the years.craigsummers , says: November 28, 2017 at 10:09 amThis points Ted Galen Carpenter makes in this piece go a long way toward explaining Russia's destabilizing behavior in recent years.
One point in particular jumped out at me:
"Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique."
This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Espańol's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and, more famously, in Ukraine.
This
Mr. CarpenterDOD , says: November 28, 2017 at 10:23 amYou have made a reasonable case that the US and Europe have not always been reliable, but the expansion of NATO is not one of them. No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard.
The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic which Russia invoked with the Medvedev Doctrine in 2008. This is currently on display in Ukraine. Russia is aggressively denying Ukraine their sovereignty. Who could possibly blame former Soviet Block countries for hightailing it to NATO during a lull in Russian aggression?
One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess. Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate.Michael Kenny , says: November 28, 2017 at 12:12 pmThe whole weakness of the author's argument is a classic American one: very few Americans seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that the Soviet Union ceased to exist 26 years ago! They are still totally locked into their cold war mentality. He thus unquestioningly accepts Putin's pre-1789 "sphere of influence" theory in which there are "superior" and "inferior" races, with only the superior races being entitled to have a sovereign state and the inferior races being forced to submit to being ruled by foreigners. Mr Carpenter really needs to put his cold war mentality aside and come into the 21st century!Will Harrington , says: November 28, 2017 at 12:58 pmMost seriously of all, Mr Carpenter offers no solution for improving relations between the US and Russia. Saying that past US actions were wrong, even if true, says nothing about the present and offers nothing for the future. At best, Mr Carpenter's article is empty moralising.
And the unspoken, but perfectly obvious, subtext, namely that the US should "atone for its sins" by capitulating to Putin, is morally reprehensible and politically unrealistic. Since, by Mr Carpenter's own account, the problem is caused by US wrongdoing, isn't it for the US to put things right (for example, by getting Putin out of Ukraine) and not simply make a mess in someone else's country and then run for home with its tail between its legs? Who gave Americans the right to give away other people's countries?
Herbert HeevertWill Harrington , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:15 pmThe one problem with your argument if, you are an american as I am, is that Russia is not acting in our names. If the US government, supposedly a government of, by, and for the people breaks its word, then you and I are foresworn oathbreakers as well because the government is (theoretically, at least) acting on OUR authority.
Craig SummersNoldorElf , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:31 pmReally?! "Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard."
I think that if you look at a map or a globe, you will find that this is not a belief but a fact. How you could overlook this, I don't know.
"The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic "
If you are going to try and use history to influence opinion, it is best to check your facts. This is a very old concept.What do you think the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire in Central Asia was about? For that matter, what we call the Byzantine Commonwealth was a clearly attempt by the Romaoi to establish a political, cultural, and religious sphere of influence to support the power of the Empire, much as the United States has been doing over the past several decades.
You could make the case that Iraq too in 2003 is another reason why the Russians and the North Koreans distrust the US.Jeeves , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:42 pmAt this point, it is fairly certain that the Bush Administration knew that Saddam was not building nuclear weapons of mass destruction, which is what Bush strongly implied in his ramp up to the war.
One other takeaway that the North Koreans mag have from the 2003 Iraq invasion is that the US will lie any way to get what it wants.
Not saying that Russia or North Korea are perfect. Far from it. But the US needs to take a hard look in the mirror.
What Craigsummers said.SteveM , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:49 pmAnd, Mr. Carpenter, when you have time off from your job as Russian apologist, learn the meaning of "verbal." It's not a synonym for "oral."
Re: craigsummers, "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard."b. , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:33 pmExcept both here and abroad, the Global Cop Elites in Washington shape the strategy space through propaganda, fear-mongering and subversion. Moreover, the Eastern European countries are happy to join NATO when it's the American taxpayers who foot a large percentage of the bill.
Standard U.S. MO: create the threat, inflate the threat, send in the War Machine at massive cost to sustain the threat.
Rather than being broadened, NATO should have been ratcheted back after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. military presence in Europe massively reduced. Then normalized relations between Europe and Russia would have been designed and developed by Europe and Russia. Not the 800 pound Gorilla Global Cop that is good at little more than breaking things. (And perversely, after flushing TRILLIONS of tax dollars down the toilet, duping Americans to wildly applaud the "Warrior-Heroes" for a job well done.)
The 2008 war between Georgia and Russia was, per observers at the time, in Russian word and thought directly linked to the Balkan 's precedent.Janek , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:45 pmThe subtext here – of nation states, sovereignty, separatism and secessionist movements – is even more relevant with respect to US-China relationships. Since WW2 and that brief, transient monopoly on nuclear weapons, US foreign policy has eroded the Peace of Westphalia while attempting to erect an "international order" of convenience on top if it.
Both China and Russia know that nothing will stop the expansionism of US "national interests". In response to the doctrinal aspirations of the Soviets, the US has committed itself to an ideology that is just a greedy and relentless. In retrospect, it is hard to tell how many decades ago the Cold War stopped being about opposition to Soviet ideology, and instead became about "projecting" – in every sense of the word – an equally globalist US ideology.
We are the redcoats now. Now wonder the neocons and neolibs are shouting "Russia!" at every opportunity.
I am amazed how many masochistic conservatives are in USA conservative circles especially in the CATO institute. Mr. T. G. Carpenter, as is clear from not only this and other articles, is a staunch defender of Yalta and proponent of Yalta 2 after the Cold War ended. As far as I remember Libya was the hatchet job of the Europeans especially the French and British. B. Obama at first didn't want to attack Libya but gave in after lobbying by the French, British and the neoliberal/neo-conservative lobby and supporters of the Arab Spring in the USA. America lost credibility after and only since the conservatives neoliberals and neocons manipulated USA and the West's foreign politics for thirty plus years. USA is still a democratic country so it is easy to blame everything on the US. In today's Putin's Russia similar critics of the Russian politics wouldn't be so "easy".SteveM , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:45 pmThe Central Europe doesn't want Russia's sphere of influence precisely because of centuries of Russian occupation and atrocities in there especially after WW2, brutal and bloody invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Cuban Crisis, Afghanistan, Chechnya etc. Now you have infiltration by Russia of the American electoral process and political system and some conservatives still can't connect the dots and see what is going on. I wonder why the western conservatives and US in particular are such great supporters of Russia. If Russia should be allowed to keep her sphere of influence after the Cold War then what was the reason to fight the Cold War in the first place. Wouldn't it be easier to surrender to Russia right after WW2.
One other observation about Russia that should be made but isn't is that the Russia-phobes can't point to an actual motive for Russian military aggression. There is no "Putin Plan" for conquest and domination by Russia like in Das Kapital or Hitler's Mein Kampf . What strategic value would Russia see from overrunning Poland and then having to perpetually suppress 35 million resistors? Or retaking the Baltic states that have only minority ethnic Russian populations?Mark , says: November 28, 2017 at 3:00 pmPutin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision and Putin knows it.
In the gangster movies, a mob boss often says that he hates bloodshed because it's bad for business. That's Putin. He's been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove (former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough.
U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending the befuddled taxpayers the bill.
"And, Mr. Carpenter, when you have time off from your job as Russian apologist, learn the meaning of "verbal." It's not a synonym for "oral."I imagine you thought you were being funny; and you were, just not in the way you foresaw. In fact, verbal is a synonym for oral; to wit, "spoken rather than written; oral. "a verbal agreement". Synonyms: oral, spoken, stated, said, verbalized, expressed."
Of course anyone who attempts to portray the United States as duplicitous and sneaky (those are synonyms!)is immediately branded a "Russian apologist". As if there are certain countries which automatically have no rights, and can be assumed to be lying every time they speak. Except they're not, and the verbal agreement that NATO would not advance further east in exchange for Russian cooperation has been acknowledged by western principals who were present.
As SteveM implies, NATO's reason for being evaporated with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and was dead as a dodo with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Everything since has been a rationalization for keeping it going, including regular demonizations of imaginary enemies until they become real enemies. You can't just 'join NATO' because it's the in-crowd, you know. No, there are actually criteria, one of which is the premise that your acceptance materially enhances the security of the alliance. Pretty comical imagining Montenegro in that context, isn't it?
When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America.
|
|
|
Nov 18, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org
Yesterday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson swore into office a new Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Dr. A. Wess Mitchell became the Trump Administration's top diplomat for Europe , "responsible for diplomatic relations with 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia, and with NATO, the EU and the OSCE."
Readers will recall that the position was most recently held during the Obama Administration by Kagan family neocon, Victoria Nuland, who was key catalyst and cookie provider for the US-backed coup overthrowing the elected government in Ukraine. Victoria Nuland's virulently anti-Russia position was a trademark of the neocon persuasion and she put ideology into action by " midwifing ," in her own words, an illegal change of government in Ukraine.
It was Nuland's coup that laid the groundwork for a precipitous decay in US/Russia relations, as Washington's neocons peddled the false line that "Russia invaded Ukraine" to cover up for the fact that it was the US government that had meddled in Ukrainian affairs. The coup was bloody and divisive , resulting in a de-facto split in the country that continues to the day. Ukraine did not flourish as a result of this neocon scheme, but has in fact been in economic free-fall since the US government installed its preferred politicians into positions of power.
You don't hear much about Ukraine these days because the neocons hate to talk about their failures. But the corruption of the US-installed government has crippled the country, extreme nationalist elements that make up the core of the post-coup elites have imposed a new education law so vicious toward an age-old Hungarian population stuck inside arbitrarily re-drawn post-WWI borders that the Hungarian government has blocked Ukraine's further integration into NATO, and a new "Maidan" protest has steadily gathered steam in Kiev despite Western cameras being uninterested this time.
Fortunately Donald Trump campaigned on and was elected to improve relations with Russia and end the Obama Administration's neocon-fueled launch of a new Cold War. He raised eyebrows when he directly challenged the neocon shibboleth -- amplified by the mainstream media -- that Russia was invading Ukraine. But candidate Trump really blew neocon minds -- and delighted voters -- when he said he was looking into ending US sanctions on Russia imposed by Obama and may recognize Crimea as Russian territory.
Which brings us back to Wess Mitchell. Certainly President Trump, seeing the destruction of Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Victoria Nuland's anti-Russia interventionism, would he finally restore a sane diplomat to the position vacated by the unmourned former Assistant Secretary. Would appoint someone in line with the rhetoric that landed him the Oval Office. Right?
Wrong!
If anything, Wess Mitchell may well prove to be Victoria Nuland on steroids. He was co-founder and CEO of the neocon-dominated Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Mitchell's CEPA is funded largely by the US government, NATO, neocon grant-making mega-foundations, and the military-industrial complex. The "think tank" does the bidding of its funders, finding a Russian threat under every rock that requires a NATO and defense industry response -- or we're doomed!
Mitchell's CEPA's recent greatest hits? " The Kremlin's 20 toxic tactics ," " Russian disinformation and anti-Western narratives in Romania: How to fight back? ," " Winning the Information War ," " Alliances and American greatness ," " Russia's historical distortions ," " What the Kremlin Fears Most ," and so on. You get the idea. The raison d'etre of the organization founded by the new Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia is to foment a new (and very profitable) Cold War (and more?) with Russia.
Last month, CEPA put on its big conference, the " CEPA Forum 2017 ." Speakers included central European heavy hitter politicos like the president of Latvia and also Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe, who gave a talk on how "the unity of the NATO Alliance" is "what Russia fears the most." The grand event was funded, as might be expected, by war contractors Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin. But also, surprisingly, significant funding came from the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban, who is seen as somewhat of a maverick in central Europe for refusing to sign on to the intense Russia-hate seen in the Baltics and in Poland.
The no-doubt extraordinarily expensive conference was funded by no less than three Hungarian government entities: the Embassy of Hungary in Washington, DC, the Hungarian Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade , and the Hungarian Presidency of the Visegrad Group . Again, given Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's reputation for bucking neocon positions vis-a-vis Russia it is surprised to see the virulently anti-Russia CEPA conference so awash in Hungarian taxpayer money. Perhaps there is something to explore in the fact that the recently-fired Hungarian Ambassador to Washington,Réka Szemerkényi, was recently named executive vice president of CEPA. Hmmm. Makes you wonder.
But back to Mitchell. So he founded a neocon think tank funded by a NATO desperate for new missions and a military-industrial complex desperate for new wars. What about his own views? Surely he can't be as bad as Nuland. Right? Wrong! Fortunately Assistant Secretary Mitchell is a prolific writer, so it's easy to track his thinking. In a recent piece for neocon Francis Fukuyama's American Interest , titled "Predators on the Frontiers," Mitchell warns that, "From eastern Ukraine and the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, large rivals of the United States are modernizing their military forces, grabbing strategic real estate, and threatening vulnerable US allies."
Mitchell continues, in a voice right out of the neocon canon, that:
By degrees, the world is entering the path to war. Not since the 1980s have the conditions been riper for a major international military crisis. Not since the 1930s has the world witnessed the emergence of multiple large, predatory states determined to revise the global order to their advantage -- if necessary by force.We are on a path to war not seen since the 1930s! And why are our "enemies" so hell-bent on destroying us? Because we are just so isolationist!Writes Mitchell: "Over the past few years, Russia, China, and, to a degree, Iran have sensed that the United States is retreating in their respective regions..."
We are "retreating"?
So what can we do? Mitchell again does the bidding of his paymasters in advising that the only thing we can do to save ourselves is...spend more on militarism:
The United States should therefore enhance its nuclear arsenal by maintaining and modernizing it. It needs to sustain a credible nuclear extended deterrent at a time when revisionist states are gradually pushing their spheres of influence and control closer to, if not against, U.S. allies. Moreover, it should use the limited tactical nuclear weapons at its disposal and seed them in a few of the most vulnerable and capable frontline states (Poland and Japan, for instance) under "nuclear sharing" agreements.There is our new Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia. Our top diplomat for Europe. The only solution is a military solution. President Trump. Elected to end the endless wars, to forge better relations with Russia, to roll-back an "outdated" NATO. President Trump has replaced Victoria Nuland with something far more dangerous and frightening. Heckuva job, there, Mr. President!
Copyright © 2017 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
/div
/divPeter AU 1 | Nov 12, 2017 1:24:16 AM | 43Don Bacon @40Peter AU 1 | Nov 12, 2017 1:45:50 AM | 44"I've lived in many countries and have found the people in all of them to be wonderful, just as the American people are."
Edward Abbey: "The tragedy of modern war is not so much that the young men die but that they die fighting each other--instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals."
I would totaly agree with most of this. Away from anything political, many Americans are just ordinary down to earth people. Even in geo-politics, a percentage, perhaps 10% fully understand the dirty shit that is going on, and that in the name of the state of USA, what their state is doing. But Americans as a general population goes, are different from the other five eyes. Much bragado and exceptionalism and theater. This is general population, as compared to the other five eyes. Not individuals.
The general attitude/culture whatever it can be called seems to go back a long way Don.
My father in law who as an 18/19 year old was part of defence of US airstrips as the US island hopped to Japan had no enminty for the Japanes but dissliked Americans from that time.
Same for two relatives who were in Vietnam, one a conscript, the other a carrer military officer. I never really understood that, and it was only in the months after MH17 I began to feel the same.
But the question is this. Why do they not feel this way towards other five eye forces they have fought alongside?I watch a lot of youtube videos, when I can't do much else, on things that interest me. When dealing with another culture, some of the US videos are very good, but in others, the exceptionalism or perhaps condescension towards the 'lower' culture just oozes out and I find these unwatchable even though I am interested in what they are filming.
There is a huge amount of inovation come from the US, and this I like reading about or watching, but there is also something else about the US, this is just speaking of population in general rather than idividuals, is a general feeling of arrogance, or exceptionalism, that has come perhaps from the huge inovations the US has made, and also generations of indoctrination.
This would be unnoticable to Americans who have grown up and lived their lives thinking this is the norm.
@ Don BaconGeorge Smiley | Nov 12, 2017 1:59:11 AM | 45As far as swallowing propaganda goes, all people in all countries are the same.
In Australia, not one fucking polition made waves that reached the media about MH17. Although very few people I know, make that no one trusts MSM or their politicians, because it was all around them, thought MH17 had been shot down by the 'rebel' side and Russia may or may not have had involvement. People are the same all over, they fall for propaganda if the lie is repeated constantly. In the US, this has produced a general culture of arrogance and exceptionalism that has killed many millions around the world and therein lies the difference. I have thought for the last few years now, that the only way to break this culture, is for the US to go through what Russia went through in the nineties.
@43Yes I agree wholeheartedly. We can pretend that every culture is smart and just a-okay or we can seriously look at some glaring problems that exist in the USA collectively. Its not unique to them either, a lot of the west holds quite similar attitudes, but in America its just taken to it's extreme.
One only has to look towards the end of the Roman, Athenian or Ottoman states to get a sense of this too. Culture at the end of most empires is usually often very "flawed" (for lack of a better word) and filled with its own hubris. You can blame it on the state, or media, or anything really, but it doesn't change much besides the explanation of why.
No one is calling Americans "sheeple" here
|
|
|
Mar 24, 2015 | Stratfor
Editor's Note: This week, we revisit a Geopolitical Weekly first published in July 2014 that explored whether Russian President Vladimir Putin could hold on to power despite his miscalculations in Ukraine, a topic that returned to prominence with his recent temporary absence from public view. While Putin has since reappeared, the issues highlighted by his disappearing act persist.There is a general view that Vladimir Putin governs the Russian Federation as a dictator, that he has defeated and intimidated his opponents and that he has marshaled a powerful threat to surrounding countries. This is a reasonable view, but perhaps it should be re-evaluated in the context of recent events.
Ukraine and the Bid to Reverse Russia's Decline
Ukraine is, of course, the place to start. The country is vital to Russia as a buffer against the West and as a route for delivering energy to Europe, which is the foundation of the Russian economy. On Jan. 1, Ukraine's president was Viktor Yanukovich, generally regarded as favorably inclined to Russia. Given the complexity of Ukrainian society and politics, it would be unreasonable to say Ukraine under him was merely a Russian puppet. But it is fair to say that under Yanukovich and his supporters, fundamental Russian interests in Ukraine were secure.
This was extremely important to Putin. Part of the reason Putin had replaced Boris Yeltsin in 2000 was Yeltsin's performance during the Kosovo war. Russia was allied with the Serbs and had not wanted NATO to launch a war against Serbia. Russian wishes were disregarded. The Russian views simply didn't matter to the West. Still, when the air war failed to force Belgrade's capitulation, the Russians negotiated a settlement that allowed U.S. and other NATO troops to enter and administer Kosovo. As part of that settlement, Russian troops were promised a significant part in peacekeeping in Kosovo. But the Russians were never allowed to take up that role, and Yeltsin proved unable to respond to the insult.
Putin also replaced Yeltsin because of the disastrous state of the Russian economy. Though Russia had always been poor, there was a pervasive sense that it been a force to be reckoned with in international affairs. Under Yeltsin, however, Russia had become even poorer and was now held in contempt in international affairs. Putin had to deal with both issues. He took a long time before moving to recreate Russian power, though he said early on that the fall of the Soviet Union had been the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. This did not mean he wanted to resurrect the Soviet Union in its failed form, but rather that he wanted Russian power to be taken seriously again, and he wanted to protect and enhance Russian national interests.
The breaking point came in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004. Yanukovich was elected president that year under dubious circumstances, but demonstrators forced him to submit to a second election. He lost, and a pro-Western government took office. At that time, Putin accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of having organized the demonstrations. Fairly publicly, this was the point when Putin became convinced that the West intended to destroy the Russian Federation, sending it the way of the Soviet Union. For him, Ukraine's importance to Russia was self-evident. He therefore believed that the CIA organized the demonstration to put Russia in a dangerous position, and that the only reason for this was the overarching desire to cripple or destroy Russia. Following the Kosovo affair, Putin publicly moved from suspicion to hostility to the West.
The Russians worked from 2004 to 2010 to undo the Orange Revolution. They worked to rebuild the Russian military, focus their intelligence apparatus and use whatever economic influence they had to reshape their relationship with Ukraine. If they couldn't control Ukraine, they did not want it to be controlled by the United States and Europe. This was, of course, not their only international interest, but it was the pivotal one.
Russia's invasion of Georgia had more to do with Ukraine than it had to do with the Caucasus. At the time, the United States was still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Washington had no formal obligation to Georgia, there were close ties and implicit guarantees. The invasion of Georgia was designed to do two things. The first was to show the region that the Russian military, which had been in shambles in 2000, was able to act decisively in 2008. The second was to demonstrate to the region, and particularly to Kiev, that American guarantees, explicit or implicit, had no value. In 2010, Yanukovich was elected president of Ukraine, reversing the Orange Revolution and limiting Western influence in the country.
Recognizing the rift that was developing with Russia and the general trend against the United States in the region, the Obama administration tried to recreate older models of relationships when Hillary Clinton presented Putin with a "reset" button in 2009. But Washington wanted to restore the relationship in place during what Putin regarded as the "bad old days." He naturally had no interest in such a reset. Instead, he saw the United States as having adopted a defensive posture, and he intended to exploit his advantage.
One place he did so was in Europe, using EU dependence on Russian energy to grow closer to the Continent, particularly Germany. But his high point came during the Syrian affair, when the Obama administration threatened airstrikes after Damascus used chemical weapons only to back off from its threat. The Russians aggressively opposed Obama's move, proposing a process of negotiations instead. The Russians emerged from the crisis appearing decisive and capable, the United States indecisive and feckless. Russian power accordingly appeared on the rise, and in spite of a weakening economy, this boosted Putin's standing.
The Tide Turns Against Putin
Events in Ukraine this year, by contrast, have proved devastating to Putin. In January, Russia dominated Ukraine. By February, Yanukovich had fled the country and a pro-Western government had taken power. The general uprising against Kiev that Putin had been expecting in eastern Ukraine after Yanukovich's ouster never happened. Meanwhile, the Kiev government, with Western advisers, implanted itself more firmly. By July, the Russians controlled only small parts of Ukraine. These included Crimea, where the Russians had always held overwhelming military force by virtue of treaty, and a triangle of territory from Donetsk to Luhansk to Severodonetsk, where a small number of insurgents apparently supported by Russian special operations forces controlled a dozen or so towns.
If no Ukrainian uprising occurred, Putin's strategy was to allow the government in Kiev to unravel of its own accord and to split the United States from Europe by exploiting Russia's strong trade and energy ties with the Continent. And this is where the crash of the Malaysia Airlines jet is crucial. If it turns out - as appears to be the case - that Russia supplied air defense systems to the separatists and sent crews to man them (since operating those systems requires extensive training), Russia could be held responsible for shooting down the plane. And this means Moscow's ability to divide the Europeans from the Americans would decline. Putin then moves from being an effective, sophisticated ruler who ruthlessly uses power to being a dangerous incompetent supporting a hopeless insurrection with wholly inappropriate weapons. And the West, no matter how opposed some countries might be to a split with Putin, must come to grips with how effective and rational he really is.
Meanwhile, Putin must consider the fate of his predecessors. Nikita Khrushchev returned from vacation in October 1964 to find himself replaced by his protege, Leonid Brezhnev, and facing charges of, among other things, "harebrained scheming." Khrushchev had recently been humiliated in the Cuban missile crisis. This plus his failure to move the economy forward after about a decade in power saw his closest colleagues "retire" him. A massive setback in foreign affairs and economic failures had resulted in an apparently unassailable figure being deposed.
Russia's economic situation is nowhere near as catastrophic as it was under Khrushchev or Yeltsin, but it has deteriorated substantially recently, and perhaps more important, has failed to meet expectations. After recovering from the 2008 crisis, Russia has seen several years of declining gross domestic product growth rates, and its central bank is forecasting zero growth this year. Given current pressures, we would guess the Russian economy will slide into recession sometime in 2014. The debt levels of regional governments have doubled in the past four years, and several regions are close to bankruptcy. Moreover, some metals and mining firms are facing bankruptcy. The Ukrainian crisis has made things worse. Capital flight from Russia in the first six months stood at $76 billion, compared to $63 billion for all of 2013. Foreign direct investment fell 50 percent in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. And all this happened in spite of oil prices remaining higher than $100 per barrel.
Putin's popularity at home soared after the successful Sochi Winter Olympics and after the Western media made him look like the aggressor in Crimea. He has, after all, built his reputation on being tough and aggressive. But as the reality of the situation in Ukraine becomes more obvious, the great victory will be seen as covering a retreat coming at a time of serious economic problems. For many leaders, the events in Ukraine would not represent such an immense challenge. But Putin has built his image on a tough foreign policy, and the economy meant his ratings were not very high before Ukraine.
Imagining Russia After Putin
In the sort of regime that Putin has helped craft, the democratic process may not be the key to understanding what will happen next. Putin has restored Soviet elements to the structure of the government, even using the term "Politburo" for his inner Cabinets. These are all men of his choosing, of course, and so one might assume they would be loyal to him. But in the Soviet-style Politburo, close colleagues were frequently the most feared.
The Politburo model is designed for a leader to build coalitions among factions. Putin has been very good at doing that, but then he has been very successful at all the things he has done until now. His ability to hold things together declines as trust in his abilities declines and various factions concerned about the consequences of remaining closely tied to a failing leader start to maneuver. Like Khrushchev, who was failing in economic and foreign policy, Putin could have his colleagues remove him.
It is difficult to know how a succession crisis would play out, given that the constitutional process of succession exists alongside the informal government Putin has created. From a democratic standpoint, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin are as popular as Putin is, and I suspect they both will become more popular in time. In a Soviet-style struggle, Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov and Security Council Chief Nicolai Patryushev would be possible contenders. But there are others. Who, after all, expected the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev?
Ultimately, politicians who miscalculate and mismanage tend not to survive. Putin miscalculated in Ukraine, failing to anticipate the fall of an ally, failing to respond effectively and then stumbling badly in trying to recoup. His management of the economy has not been exemplary of late either, to say the least. He has colleagues who believe they could do a better job, and now there are important people in Europe who would be glad to see him go. He must reverse this tide rapidly, or he may be replaced.
Putin is far from finished. But he has governed for 14 years counting the time Dmitri Medvedev was officially in charge, and that is a long time. He may well regain his footing, but as things stand at the moment, I would expect quiet thoughts to be stirring in his colleagues' minds. Putin himself must be re-examining his options daily. Retreating in the face of the West and accepting the status quo in Ukraine would be difficult, given that the Kosovo issue that helped propel him to power and given what he has said about Ukraine over the years. But the current situation cannot sustain itself. The wild card in this situation is that if Putin finds himself in serious political trouble, he might become more rather than less aggressive. Whether Putin is in real trouble is not something I can be certain of, but too many things have gone wrong for him lately for me not to consider the possibility. And as in any political crisis, more and more extreme options are contemplated if the situation deteriorates.
Those who think that Putin is both the most repressive and aggressive Russian leader imaginable should bear in mind that this is far from the case. Lenin, for example, was fearsome. But Stalin was much worse. There may similarly come a time when the world looks at the Putin era as a time of liberality. For if the struggle by Putin to survive, and by his challengers to displace him, becomes more intense, the willingness of all to become more brutal might well increase.
|
|
|
Nov 08, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Disregarding President Trump's insistent claim that the establishment press propagates "fake news" requires a constant effort -- especially when a prestigious outlet like the New York Times allows itself to be used for blatantly fraudulent purposes.
I cherish the First Amendment. Mark me down as favoring journalism that is loud, lively, and confrontational. When members of the media snooze -- falling for fictitious claims about Saddam's WMD program or Gaddafi's genocidal intentions, for example -- we all lose.
So the recent decision by Times editors to publish an op-ed regarding Paul Manafort's involvement in Ukraine is disturbing. That the Times is keen to bring down Donald Trump is no doubt the case. Yet if efforts to do so entail grotesque distortions of U.S. policy before Trump, then we are courting real trouble. Put simply, ousting Trump should not come at the cost of whitewashing the follies that contributed to Trump's rise in the first place.
The offending Times op-ed, the handiwork of Evelyn N. Farkas, appears under the title "With Manafort, It Really Is About Russia, Not Ukraine." During the Obama administration, Farkas served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and Mess Kit Repair. Okay, I added that last bit, but it does seem like quite an expansive charter for a mere deputy assistant secretary.
The story Farkas tells goes like this.
First, from the moment it achieved independence in 1991, Ukraine was a divided nation, "torn between Western Europe and Russia." Ukrainians in the country's western precincts wanted to join the European Union and NATO. Those further to east "oriented themselves toward Russia, which exerted maximum influence to keep Ukraine closely aligned." In one camp were enlightened Ukrainians. In the other camp, the unenlightened.
Second, Manafort's involvement in this intra-Ukrainian dispute was -- shockingly -- never about "advanc[ing] the interests of democracy, Western Europe or the United States." Manafort's motives were strictly venal. In what Farkas describes as a "standoff between democracy and autocracy," he threw in with the autocrats, thereby raking in millions.
Third, Manafort's efforts mattered bigly. In 2010, he helped Victor F. Yanukovych become president of Ukraine. An unquestionably nasty piece of work, Yanukovych was, according to Farkas, "Putin's man in Kiev." Yet like it or not, he came to power as the result of democratic election. In 2013, Yanukovych opted against joining the EU, which along with NATO, had, in Farkas's words, "experienced a burst of membership expansion" right up to Russia's own borders.
In response to Yanukovych's action, "the Ukrainian people," that is, the enlightened ones, "took to the streets," forcing him to flee the country. Rather than bowing to the expressed will of the people, however, Russia's Vladimir Putin "instigated a separatist movement" in eastern Ukraine, thereby triggering "a war between Russia and Ukraine that continues to this day."
To accept Farkas's account as truthful, one would necessarily conclude that as Manafort was hijacking history, the United States remained quietly on the sidelines, an innocent bystander sending prayers heavenward in hopes that freedom and democracy might everywhere prevail .
Such was hardly the case, however. One need not be a Putin apologist to note that the United States was itself engaged in a program of instigation, one that ultimately induced a hostile -- but arguably defensive -- Russian response.
In the wake of the Cold War, the EU and NATO did not experience a "burst" of expansion, a formulation suggesting joyous spontaneity. Rather, with Washington's enthusiastic support, the West embarked upon a deliberate eastward march at the Kremlin's expense, an undertaking made possible by (and intended to exploit) Russia's weakened state. In football, it's called piling on.
That this project worked to the benefit of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, the Baltic Republics, and others is very much the case. On that score, it is to be applauded.
That at some point a resentful Russia would push back was all but certain. Indeed, more than a few Western observers had warned against such a response.
The proposed incorporation of Ukraine into NATO brought matters to a head. For Putin, this was an unacceptable prospect. He acted as would any U.S. president contemplating the absorption of a near neighbor into hostile bloc of nations. Indeed, he acted much as had Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy when they assessed the implications of Cuba joining the Soviet bloc.
That doesn't justify or excuse Putin's meddling in Ukraine. Yet it suggests an explanation for Russian behavior other than the bitterness of an ex-KGB colonel still with his shorts in a knot over losing the Cold War. Russia has an obvious and compelling interest in who controls Ukraine, even if few in Washington or in the editorial offices of the New York Times will acknowledge that reality.
Furthermore, Russia was not alone in its meddling. The United States has been equally guilty. When "the Ukrainian people took to the streets," as Farkas puts it, the State Department and CIA were behind the scenes vigorously pulling strings. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland believed it was incumbent upon the United States to decide who should govern Ukraine. ("Yats is the guy," she said on a leaked call). Nuland would brook no interference from allies slow to follow Washington's lead. ("F–k the EU," she told the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.)
That Ukraine is, as Farkas correctly states, a torn country, did not give Nuland pause. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. policymakers have assigned to themselves a magical ability to repair such tears and to make broken countries whole. The results of their labors are amply on display everywhere from Somalia and Haiti to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Now add Ukraine to that sorry list.
Even so, can't we at least assume Nuland's motives were morally superior to Putin's? After all, President Putin is clearly a thug whereas Nuland is an estimable product of the American foreign policy establishment. She's married to Robert Kagan, for heaven's sake.
Persuade yourself that the United States is all about democracy promotion, as Farkas appears to believe, and the answer to that question is clearly yes. Alas, the record of American statecraft stretching over decades provides an abundance of contrary evidence. In practice, the United States supports democracy only when it finds it convenient to do so. Should circumstances require, it unhesitatingly befriends despots, especially rich ones that pay cash while purchasing American weaponry.
Yanukovych was Putin's man, "and therefore, indirectly, so was Mr. Manafort," Farkas concludes. All that now remains is to determine "the extent to which Mr. Manafort was Putin's man in Washington." For Farkas, the self-evident answer to that question cannot come too soon.
As to whether Russia -- or any other great power -- might have legitimate security interests that the United States would do well to respect, that's not a matter worth bothering about. Thus does the imperative of ousting Trump eclipse the need to confront the pretensions and the hubris that helped make Trump possible.
Andrew Bacevich is writer-at-large at The American Conservative
John Fargo , says: November 7, 2017 at 11:17 pm
This is why the term "fake news" is so harmful and should not be used by media outlets. The use of "bad journalism" would be much more useful as it forces the claimants to justify their reasons for doing so.William Dalton , says: November 8, 2017 at 12:02 am
"Fake news" is just a dog whistle.Has it not occurred to the foreign policy establishment in Washington that it is more in America's national interests for Ukraine to remain in Moscow's orbit, so as to strengthen U.S.-Russian relations, not exacerbate tensions, rather than to pull them into the EU, or, God forbid, NATO? Isn't this what any of the seasoned experts at Foggy Bottom would tell you? Why aren't they doing so?Tiktaalik , says: November 8, 2017 at 2:49 amTwo comments in orderJonB , says: November 8, 2017 at 5:39 am1) Yanukovich won in 2004 as well and the election results were hijacked by 'Maidan'
2) Yanukovich wasn't Putin man back in 2010. As a matter of fact, he and his party actively promoted EU integration deal, until they read its actual conditions. After that they backtracked and rushed to Putin for a support.
So it was classical case of sitting on two chairs simultaneously.
Completely agree with John Fargo. "Fake News" should be reserved for deliberate falsehoods published knowingly. This NYT op-ed amounts to "an interpretation of history Bacevich doesn't agree with." I may not agree with it either – but it's not like claiming that the Vegas shooter was anti-Trump, or creating a Facebook account for a non-existent person or organization.Nolan , says: November 8, 2017 at 6:42 amMr Fargo: Disagree. "Bad journalism" implies the author is lazy yet innocent in their way. "Fake news" is more about narrative control and manipulation of the reader through reinvention or exaggeration, et cetera. Calling articles and outlets fake news is more accurate and levies much more weight against the lies and deceit than simply accusing someone or thing of bad journalism.Christian Chuba , says: November 8, 2017 at 6:54 amThis is why we should disband politically oriented NGO's. In essence, a country is only a democracy if it is pro-U.S. Resistance is futile. Meddling at this level will only bring about more conflict, instability and military obligations will follow. It is good to be king but it is also quite expensive and ultimately ruinous.Fran Macadam , says: November 8, 2017 at 7:30 amIf it were all about democracy promotion, they wouldn't also be so anxious to negate an election here at home. Imperialism rules other peoples against their will, necessitating for its survival the lessening of democratic accountability at home, too, since it lessens the importance of citizens' own concerns, also requiring for its warmaking security keeping voters in the dark.SteveM , says: November 8, 2017 at 7:36 amDee , says: November 8, 2017 at 8:08 amRe: "More 'Fake News,' Alas, From the New York Times"Make that, More 'Fake News,' Of Course From the New York Times. Saturated with Fake News of various manifestations, the NY Times and its rancid analog Washington Post on the other end of the Crony-Elite NY-DC axis are unreadable.
Re: "That this project worked to the benefit of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, the Baltic Republics, and others is very much the case. On that score, it is to be applauded."
Given a ham-fisted EU run by Elite hacks in Brussels that is white washing Europe's Christian legacy, mandating overbearing economic and social controls and absorbing millions of net negative migrants, the Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and Balts seem to be having second thoughts. BTW, The Russians will not and do not want to invade those countries. As the EU spins out of control and the One Belt One Road initiative develops, Russia only needs to ask them what direction they want to face in the future.
How is it someone's "opinion" constitutes "fake News"? Trump did not win by policy issues, he rode the right-wing outrage at all things clinton/libtard better than anyone else. His policy positions were mostly promise everything to everyone, but his campaign was about Lock her up/ build the wall! After bashing Goldman Sachs during the election, once he won he promptly filled his cabinet with them and other mega donor types.Mario Diana , says: November 8, 2017 at 9:30 am@John Fargo – I'm in almost complete sympathy with Mr. Bacevich's essay, but you make an excellent point. "Bad journalism" is the better term. In fact, the only criticism I can make of your statement is that "dog whistle" is the wrong term. Everyone associates the term "fake news" with Donald Trump. (If it were possible, he no doubt would have trademarked it.) Using the term alienates the very people who need to hear criticisms like those in Mr. Bacevich's essay. They hear it, too; and upon hearing it, they stop listening.Egypt Steve , says: November 8, 2017 at 11:34 amLook, elite and non-elite self-delusion about the purity of U.S. motives abroad dates back to the Roosevelt administration at least -- and I mean the Teddy Roosevelt administration. I don't see how any of this amounts to a defense of charges of money-laundering against Manafort.Janek , says: November 8, 2017 at 11:37 amI disagree with John Fargo. The news that NYT, Washington Post, and other media outlets (not only liberal ) "produce" is the "Fake News". "Bad journalism" should be reserved and used in the sense Nolan explains. Besides the "Fake News" on the so called "left" in American politics in general is the problem of "double speak" and speaking with the "forked tongues". American "right" is the camp of the white flag.Tom , says: November 8, 2017 at 12:20 pmThe op-ed page is for opinion pieces of writing and that is what this was an opinion. It isn't fake news because it isn't news.SteveM , says: November 8, 2017 at 12:43 pmRe: Janek:Siarlys Jenkins , says: November 8, 2017 at 1:09 pmBesides the "Fake News" on the so called "left" in American politics in general is the problem of "double speak" and speaking with the "forked tongues". American "right" is the camp of the white flag.
I've mentioned the various "flavors" of Fake News before. There is (1) the obvious – what is claimed as true is actually false. But also (2), what is claimed as important, actually isn't. And (3) what is important, is weakly or not reported at all.
An example of Type 2 is the WaPost reporting on its front page before the 2016 that Jared Kushner may have been greased into the Harvard MBA program. As if Ivy League greasing by monied Elites is unheard of. How was that front page news? And how about the acceptances of Chelsea Clinton (Stanford) and Malia Obama (Harvard)?
The cases of Type 3 Fake News are much more egregious. For example, the reasoned arguments and analysis by retired American intelligence officers and academics that the Syrian forces "chemical weapon attack" in April was almost certainly a false flag with staged recovery activity.
The NY Times and WaPost have consistently refused to acknowledge that those arguments and analysis even exist.
The linking of Russia to the DNC email leaks as factual by the Times, Post and NPR without a scintilla of published hard evidence is another example.
There are many more examples of Type 3 Fake News that could be demonstrated. Much of what claims to be journalism by the MSM is now Fake News trash.
Fayez Abedaziz , says: November 8, 2017 at 3:22 pmDisregarding President Trump's insistent claim that the establishment press propagates "fake news" requires a constant effort -- especially when a prestigious outlet like the New York Times allows itself to be used for blatantly fraudulent purposes.I agree in principal, although I note that President Trump and his team are as guilty of fake news as anyone, and the president himself appears to be positively delusional. I might at times disagree with Bacevich as to which news is fake.
I would also agree that there has been a great deal of "fake news" out of Ukraine, and what is really going on their is a former SSR with a bitterly divided population that each has about equal numbers, proponderance in some territories compared to others, and equally opportunistic leadership showing no great commitment to anything recognizable as "democracy."
Say, can we refrain from using the word 'journalism' when we refer to the American media? We should.Janek , says: November 8, 2017 at 3:39 pmThe internet and sources overseas, such as the Independent News paper/site out of Britain, have news that is not purposely spun as is by the neo-con American news papers and magazines. Not as much, anyway. Several points here, for example of what bad news (pun intended) the joke of American media is:
1- quit calling the main stream media liberal or left. They are liberal in a 'social issues sense,' that is, to be politically correct.
2- So, having said that, on foreign policy they, all newspapers and the vast majority of magazines, are war-peddling neo-con supporters.
3-They have agendas. Do we not remember how they, at the new york times, peddled the war against Iraq and how, when you look at the editorial page you feel that these people and the guests opinion writers are soulless people that have no concern for America's 'flyover' country?
4- Yeah, isn't that ironic that these people look down on America's middle class, blue collar workers and yes, it's troops, by that constant bashing of nations here and there and pushing for aggressive stands or even military attacks? Let the people at the major newspapers like this n.y.times rag tell us when they served in the U.S. military or their when their offspring did or when they're gonna join and volunteer for combat duty. Never mind, I've got the answer-none of 'em.
Do not buy any major newspaper. Let them wither away and, it wasn't fake spun 'news' we have been getting only this year: fake agenda driven bull has been going on for decades. Go to the internet and overseas for news think what I said over and you will see
@SteveMNot everybody has the time to analyze the deluge of all the "Fake News" and categorize it into classes and/or sub-classes you or somebody else proposes. Where all that leads? Soon we will have new sociopolitical discipline and experts on "fake-newsology" that will introduce another layer of pseudo-information that will have to be translated to the uninitiated and unwashed.
All this social, economic and political mess is the result of deregulation in the economic, social, political spheres. The effects of those deregulations are now quite obvious in: economy, society, morality and politics that are already corrupted to the core, but the corruption is not stopping there, it is consuming everything else on its way. There is no end to it, and what is even more surprising is that people want even more of all kinds of deregulations etc.
Wouldn't it be more logical to bring back responsibility, moral standards and decency to politics, society and economy etc? What I now see in media is the total lack of any ideas on how to correct the obvious, but instead everybody is spinning his/her lies to make them more believable to the yet unconverted. This is pure relativism and sophistry and it destroys not only the USA, but the West as well.
nikbez
If an opinion piece in NYT or other MSM blatantly distorts the facts, then it belongs to the category of "fake news." Which should probably be called "malicious rumors."
So the defense of some commenters that you can blatantly lie in opinion pieces (the right NYT exercised to the full extent in this particular example and for which Bacevich criticized them) is wrong.
Anti-Russian witch hunt in NYT and other MSM destroys the credibility of the USA version of neoliberalism as well as the USA foreign policy. Along with Trump election, I view it as a symptom of the crisis of neoliberalism for which the US elite is unable to find a more suitable answer than scapegoating.
Also the fact that Nuland is married to neocon warmonger Kagan is a material fact.
|
|
|
Oct 30, 2017 | www.strategic-culture.org
A NATO supporter criticized Russia's President Vladimir Putin for Russia's Ukraine policy, on October 19th, at the Valdai Discussion Club's annual meeting in Sochi, and Putin fired back with his most detailed statement to-date, describing the overthrow in February 2014 of Ukraine's democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, as having been a "coup" by the West, especially by the EU (which he blamed for it, rather than blame the US).
Asle Toje, a Norwegian supporter of the NATO anti-Russian military alliance, had raised this subject when he asked Putin :
What about Ukraine? From the European point of view, the ball is firmly in the court of Russia. It has turned into a semi-frozen conflict; the sanctions that were meant to be dynamic have become semi-permanent. What does Russia intend to do about this?
Putin replied:
Well, we think the ball is in Europe's court, because due to the completely unconstructive – I am choosing my words so as not to appear rude – position of the former members of the European Commission, the situation went as far as a coup.
On 4 February 2014 the agent whom US President Barack Obama had tasked to plan the coup, Hillary Clinton's longtime friend Victoria Nuland, instructed the US Ambassador in Ukraine whom to appoint to run Ukraine as soon as the coup would be culminated, which occurred 23 days later, on 27 February: "Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience the governing experience he's the" person to appoint , she told the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.
And "Yats" Yatsenyuk got the post, which was the appointment as Prime Minister, because Obama wanted the rabidly anti-Russian Yulia Tymoshenko to win Ukraine's Presidency in an election, so as to be able to describe the change-of-government as being 'democratic' i.e., 'elected', not imposed (as was the appointment of "Yats"). However, Tymoshenko had too much of a public reputation as being a US agent (and grifter ), for her to win; and, so, Petro Poroshenko won the 'election' instead.
It was an 'election' in all of the majority Ukrainian-speaking areas of Ukraine, but without allowing to vote the populations in many of the majority Russian-speaking regions, where the man whom Obama overthrew, Yanukovych, had won by over 75% of the votes, in the last democratic election in Ukraine, which was the Presidential election in 2010 -- the final election in which Ukrainians in all parts of the country voted. Although Poroshenko was anti-Russian, he wasn't nearly as anti-Russian as was Tymoshenko. Yatsenyuk was Tymoshenko's subordinate, and he had been selected by Nuland because the Obama Administration were thinking that after the Presidential election, Yats would hand off the government to Tymoshenko, who led Yats's Party.
Putin blamed the EU for the coup, though (in fact) when the EU's Foreign Minister, Catherine Ashton, learned, on February 26th of 2014, that this overthrow had been a coup instead of a democratic revolution, she expressed shock and disappointment but went right on carrying out the Obama Administration's plan for the integration of the formerly Russia-allied Ukraine into the EU, and, ultimately, as was expected, into NATO, so that US nuclear missiles will be able to be installed there, on Russia's border, as close to Moscow as possible, for a blitz-attack against Russia, to conquer Russia .
Furthermore, in Nuland's instruction to the Ambassador in Kiev, she said "F -- k the EU" , because the EU aristocracies weren't nearly as eager to conquer Russia as the US aristocracy are; the EU aristocracies had wanted Vitaly Klitschko to head Ukraine; Klitschko wasn't rabidly anti-Russian , like Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk were. Putin knew this -- he knew that the coup was done by the US, not by the EU.
Putin then described the coup as follows:
There were riots backed by the United States – both financially, politically and in the media – and all of Europe.
They supported the unconstitutional seizure of power, a bloody one at that, with casualties, and took things as far as a war in southeastern Ukraine. Crimea declared its independence and its reunification with Russia, and now you think that we are to blame for that? Was it us who brought about the anti-constitutional coup? The current situation is the result of the unconstitutional armed seizure of power in Ukraine, and Europe is to blame, because it backed it.
What could have been easier than to say back then: "You staged a coup, and after all, we are the guarantors." As guarantors, the foreign ministers of Poland, France and Germany signed a document, an agreement between President Yanukovych and the opposition. Three days later, it was trampled upon, and where were the guarantors? Ask them where these guarantors were? Why did they not say, "Please, put things as they were. Get Yanukovych back in office and hold constitutional democratic elections." They had every chance of winning, 100 percent, no doubt. No, they had to do it through an armed coup instead. Well, we were confronted with this fact, accepted it and signed the Minsk agreements.
However, the current Ukrainian leadership is sabotaging every paragraph of these agreements, and everyone can see it perfectly well. Those who are involved in the negotiation process are fully aware of it, I assure you. Not a single step has been made towards implementing the Minsk agreements. Still everyone is saying, "Sanctions will not be lifted until Russia complies with the Minsk agreements."
Everyone has long since realised that the current leadership of Ukraine is not in a position to comply with them. Now that the situation in that country has hit rock bottom both in terms of the economy and domestic policy, and the police are using gas against protesters, expecting the President of Ukraine to take at least a small step towards implementing the Minsk agreements is an exercise in futility. I am not sure how he can accomplish this. But there is no alternative to it, unfortunately. Therefore, we will keep the Normandy format in place as long as our colleagues like, and we will strive to implement these Minsk agreements that you mentioned.
Nowhere has Putin ever blamed the US Government for that coup, but he knows at least as much about it as did the head of the "private CIA" firm Stratfor when Stratfor's head described it as "the most blatant coup in history" because it had been so well documented via leaked phone-conversations and other solid evidences. There was no doubt that the US State Department had run it, and, ultimately, evidence became public that Google and the US State Department were already preparing the operation as early as in 2011 .
Putin continued his response:
It is not enough only to appeal to Russia; it is also necessary to influence Kiev's position. Now they have made a decision on the language, essentially prohibiting the use of ethnic minority languages in school. Hungary and Romania raised objections. Poland also made some comments in this regard. However, the European Union as a whole is silent. Why are they not condemning this? There is silence.
Now they have erected a monument to Petlyura. He was a man with Nazi views, an anti-Semite who killed Jews during the war. Except for the Zionist Jewish Congress, everyone else is silent. Are you afraid of hurting your clients in Kiev, is that it? This is not being done by the Ukrainian people; this is being done at the prompting of the relevant ruling authorities. But why are you keeping silent?
Putin was appealing for the EU to become neutral on the Ukrainian matter, not for the US Government to do so, because Putin recognized that the US Government wants to conquer Russia and took Ukraine in order to advance that goal, whereas many in the EU want instead to have peace and trade with Russia and aren't so eager to invade. Putin has given up on America, whose Government is -- along with Ukraine and Canada -- the only defender of nazism (i.e., of racist fascism), at the U.N. But he knows that if he blames the coup on the US Government, this would make more difficult any possible efforts by the EU to move away from the US toward neutrality, because such an accusation against the US Government would only unify NATO, not break it up. He might be able to pick off a few EU members, to move toward neutrality and away from the NATO goal of ultimately invading Russia, but this can work only if he plays down the real power-contest, the contest between the US Government, whose goal is to conquer Russia , versus the Russian Government, whose goal is to remain a free and independent nation -- to protect its national sovereignty. The reason Putin blames the EU instead of the US is thus tactical. Especially interesting is that he says "This is not being done by the Ukrainian people; this is being done at the prompting of the relevant ruling authorities. But why are you keeping silent?" He is there making his appeal to anti-nazi Europeans, for them to break away from today's pro-nazi US regime. He is saying: Speak out against it; publicly separate yourselves from it. Then, he said:
I hope that this realisation will eventually come. I can see our partners' interest, primarily our European partners' interest in resolving this conflict. I can see real interest. Angela Merkel is doing a great deal, putting the time in, becoming deeply involved in these matters. Both the former president of France and President Macron are also paying attention. They are really working on this. However, it is necessary to work not just technically and technologically but politically. It is essential to exert some influence on the Kiev authorities, get them to do at least something. Ultimately, Ukraine itself has a stake in normalising our relations.
Now they went and imposed sanctions on us, as the EU did. We responded in kind. The president asks me, "Why did you do this?" I say, "Listen, you introduced sanctions against us." This is just amazing!
He refers there to "the Kiev authorities," instead of to the Washington authorities, because he knows that the Europeans he's addressing are aware that Ukraine is now a vassal-nation of the US He knows that they know what he knows, on this. Then, he really does address, not the rulers of Ukraine, but instead the people of Ukraine, when he says:
I believe that it is becoming obvious and most importantly, it is becoming obvious to the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian citizens. We like Ukraine and I really regard the Ukrainian people as a brotherly nation if not just one nation, part of the Russian nation.
Even though Russian nationalists do not like this and Ukrainian nationalists do not like this either, this is my position, my point of view. Sooner or later, it will happen – reunification, not on an interstate level but in terms of restoring our relations.
Numerous polls have shown that many Ukrainians do feel "brotherly" toward Russians; he is trying to appeal to these people, to seek a restoration of that previous alliance: Russia with Ukraine's anti -nazis, instead of America with Ukraine's pro -nazis.
The pro-NATO Asle Toje could have interjected a retort to what Putin was saying, but kept entirely quiet, perhaps because he knew that if he objected to any of what Putin said there, then Putin would have had a terrific opportunity to respond by hinting at the real role that NATO (i.e., the US) was playing in Ukraine, the nazi role there, such as by perhaps alluding to the nazi American Victoria Nuland's famous "F -- k the EU!" statement, which she said when she gave the instruction, on 4 February 2014, for the next Government of Ukraine to be led by Ukraine's rabidly anti-Russian nazis .
Hamid Karzai, the former ruler of Afghanistan (or at least of Kabul), was also one of the participants at this conference, and he spoke about his country's long history of being a pawn in the ancient aristocratic "Great Game" of aristocracies waging wars of conquest in order to establish international empires and grab lands from each other. Then, he commented specifically about the role that America's seizure of Ukraine in 2014 had played in the latest stage of the Great Game:
On Ukraine and the conflict phase there, I was, uh, it was during my last years of government when this crisis emerged in Ukraine. I and my close colleagues in my government and foreign policy and security issues convened, and we met. I told them that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the independent states, Ukraine was one of the closest countries to Russia, in ethnic relations and economic relations, and in cultural relations, and in terms of the value that Ukraine holds for Russia. So my approach was one of sentiment and sensitivity, but, keeping the Russian sentiment in mind, keeping the Russian sensitivity in this region in mind. Look at it this way: if Russia went and tried to turn Canada into an ally of the Warsaw Pact against America, what would America do? They would act more aggressively than what Russia did. On Crimea: to the extent that I understand, Crimea was given to Ukraine in 1957, is that true? 1954. So it was part of Russian territory.
His point about "if Russia went and tried to turn Canada into an ally of the Warsaw Pact against America, what would America do?" was merely rhetorical, because in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the US already had shown what the US would do if Russia were to place missiles on or near America's borders: the US would launch a nuclear war against Russia. For some reason, Americans felt that that response -- threatening World War III -- was justified, by America, then, in 1962, but somehow don't feel that it would be a justified response, by Russia, now, when the shoe is on the other foot and even more so than it had been back in 1962 (because Ukraine is right on Russia's border). But, of course, it would be justified even more in the present instance, because conquest of Russia became, in 2006, America's all-but-official strategic-policy goal, replacing the former reliance (by both sides) upon the strategic-policy peace-maintenance goal, "Mutually Assured Destruction" (or "MAD") , which was nuclear weapons being maintained in order to avoid a WW III, instead of to 'win' a WW III (such as it has been for the US ever since 2006). Russia still believes in MAD, but America is now 'going for the gold', of 'victory'. This was implicitly the US and NATO policy ever since 24 February 1990 , but it became, since 2006, overtly the US and NATO objective, called "Nuclear Primacy," meaning the ability of the US to win a nuclear conflict against Russia -- to conquer Russia.
The recent (October 19th) statement by Putin was the most extensive that he has yet presented on the Ukrainian matter, but it's not the only statement he has made on this subject:
A year earlier than this latest Valdi discussion, Putin had said, on 12 October 2016 , at the 8th annual investment forum VTB Capital "Russia is Calling!" seeking foreign investments in Russia:
You have just mentioned the crisis in Ukraine. But we did not bring this to a coup in Ukraine. Have we done this? No. Especially our American partners do not hide that to a large extent they stood behind this, funded a radical opposition, brought to an unconstitutional way of changing power, although it could be done quite differently. Former President Yanukovych signed all the requirements and was ready to hold early elections. Instead, they contributed to a coup d'état. What for?
And when we are forced to emphasize this, we were compelled to protect the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass, were compelled to respond to the aspirations of people living in the Crimea, to return to the Russian Federation, and immediately began to untwist a new flywheel of anti-Russian policy and the imposition of sanctions.
You have just said about the Minsk agreements. But we are not sabotaging them, the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
On that occasion, because he was responding then to a question which had been raised by Rick Boucher, a former member of the US Congress, and now a partner in a law firm, Putin had been more direct, by his saying, "We did not bring this to a coup in Ukraine. Have we done this? No. Especially our American partners do not hide that to a large extent they stood behind this, funded a radical opposition, brought to an unconstitutional way of changing power." But he was ambiguous as regards whether America simply "stood behind this," or instead actually "brought [the situation in Ukraine] to an unconstitutional way of changing power [i.e., to a coup there]." In any case, Boucher, too, had no response recorded there, to Putin's statement.
Vagueness in political speech is the norm; it's seen everywhere; and wherever it is encountered, tactical reasons are commonly being exemplified.
Still earlier, on 23 May 2014, just a few months after America's coup, Putin took part in the plenary session of the 18th St Petersburg International Economic Forum, and said in response to a question from CNBC's Geoff Cutmore:
President Yanukovych decided to postpone the signing and hold additional talks. What came next? A coup d'état. No matter what you choose to call it, a revolution or something else. It's a coup d'état with the use of violence and militant forces. Who′s on whose side now? Who is using which tools from the past or the future?
It′s imperative to be very careful with regard to public institutions of emerging nations because if you are not things may slide into chaos, which is exactly what happened in Ukraine. The civil war and chaos are there already. Who benefits from it? Why would they do it, if Yanukovych agreed to everything? They had to go to the voting stations instead, and the same people would be in power now, only legally. We, like idiots, would be paying them the $15 billion that we promised, keeping gas prices low for them and continuing to subsidise their economy
Let's face it. We are all adults here, right? Intelligent and educated people. The West supported the unconstitutional coup d'état. It did in fact, didn′t it? Not only by way of the infamous cakes, but through informational and political support and what not. Why did it do so?
All right. And now you think that it′s all our fault? We proposed a dialogue and were denied it. What's next? The last time I was in Brussels we agreed to keep this dialogue alive. That was before the coup. Mr Ulyukayev (he is sitting there across from me), a man of respect, speaks decent English, has absolutely market-driven brains, one of our top specialists in the economy, went for consultations. Ask him about it after the session is over. I won′t dwell on it now. But there were no consultations. Nothing but slogans.
What's next? They made a coup and don′t want to speak with us. What are we supposed to think? The next step will take Ukraine into NATO. They never ask us about our opinion, and we have found out over the past two decades that there′s never any dialogue on this issue. All that they ever tell us is, ″It′s none of your business, none of your concern.″ We tell them, ″A military infrastructure is approaching our borders.″ ″Don′t worry, it's not aimed against you.″ So, tomorrow Ukraine may end up being a NATO member, and the next thing you know, it will have a US missile defence complex stationed on its territory. No one ever talks to us on this subject, either. They just tell us, ″It′s not against you, and it′s none of your concern.″
if we did not do what we did in Crimea, Crimea would have it much worse than Odessa where people were burned alive. And there are no explanations, no real condemnations by anyone. It′s still not even clear who did it, I mean the tragedy in Odessa.
He said this, against "The West," after the clear evidence that it had actually been the US regime that did the coup, and that had hired local Ukrainian nazis to carry it out, was already public knowledge, outside "The West."
On the front page of the New York Times on 23 October 2017 was a news-report about the efforts by Republicans in the US Congress to focus on something else than the alleged Russiagate manipulation of the 2016 US election, and about the efforts by congressional Democrats to focus only on those allegations, and this front-page NYT story casually employed the phrase "the extraordinary efforts of a hostile power to disrupt American democracy", as if that were already a proven fact, instead of being the Democratic Party's incessant propaganda-line in order to 'explain' Hillary Clinton's electoral defeat.
The US propaganda-media do things such as that, in order to whip up, to the maximum, their audience's hatred of Russians, and especially of the Russian Government, and so to promote the 'case' for war against Russia. Putin knows what the source of this march toward World War III is, and that it's not in Europe.
He knows that they've had more than their fills of wars, but that Americans are more malleable on this matter, more controlled by the aristocracy who own the nation's "military-industrial complex."
Tags: Ukraine Putin
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
Abe , October 31, 2017 at 4:28 pm
The fake "citizen investigative journalists" team at Bellingcat are busy on the case with more of their signature "creative Googling".
This time it's a photograph of Papadopoulos in London
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2017/10/31/new-george-papadopoulos-photograph-actually-years-old/The "online investigations" propaganda operation at Bellingcat site very much includes the comments section of the site. Don't expect Bellingcat to perform any
