Defend Ukraine! Fight Russian Imperialism!
Mike Ermler
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by American Dream » Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:24 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:28 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:34 pm
'US military hardware will cause more bloodshed in Ukraine' – Russian official
Published time: December 29, 2014 18:16
Edited time: December 31, 2014 11:48 Get short URL
The possible relocation of US hardware from Afghanistan to Ukraine suggested by President Obama will only lead to more casualties, a senior Russian lawmaker has stated.
“Russia cannot be content with such plans as they would increase the tensions near our borders and also inevitably cause more casualties in Donbass,” the head of the Upper House Committee for Foreign Relations, Konstantin Kosachev, told reporters on Monday.
The senator added that such a step by the United States would be an open interference into the conflict, which would definitely lead to further aggravation both in Russian-American relations and within the security situation in Eastern Europe as a whole.
Kosachev also gave a critical appraisal to the allied mission in Afghanistan that is being wrapped up this year. The Russian lawmaker called the result of Western military presence in the country disappointing, noting that the military mission did not solve any problems in the region – but rather created a few new ones.
Earlier on Monday, a Russian Lower House MP also criticized Washington's decision to transfer military hardware from Afghanistan to Ukraine, promising reciprocal actions from Russia. A member of the State Duma Committee for Defense and the chairman of the Russian Union of Afghanistan War Veterans, Frants Klintsevich (United Russia party) told reporters that he would use all his powers to initiate an official State Duma address to President Putin, seeking to start the supplies of Russian military hardware to the Lugansk and Donetsk republics.
In early December, MP Mikhail Yemelyanov of the leftist Fair Russia party said the US Senate’s decision to arm the Kiev regime should prompt “adequate measures” from Russia, such as deploying military force on Ukrainian territory before the threat becomes too high.
Yemelyanov also noted that in his opinion, the US Senate’s decision to arm Ukraine has revealed that Washington is not interested in the de-escalation of the Ukrainian conflict. “In a few years, Ukraine will turn into a poor and hungry country with an anti-Russian government that will teach its population to hate Russia. They will be armed to the teeth, and Ukraine and US reluctance to recognize the Russian Federation within its current borders would always provoke conflicts,” the MP noted.
On March 1 2014, the Upper House of the Russian Parliament – the Federation Council – approved a resolution allowing the president to use military force on the territory of Ukraine “until the normalization of the social and political situation in that country.” The resolution was adopted in accordance with the first part of Article 102 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
However, on June 25, the Federation Council voted to repeal the legislation following a request from Vladimir Putin. The Russian president instigated the move from a desire to alleviate tensions in view of the three-party talks on a peaceful settlement in the east and southeast of Ukraine.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:39 pm
Ukraine’s War: A Prelude to World War III, Says Former Ukraine Ambassador to U.S.
By Eric Zuesse
Global Research, December 30, 2014
Region: Russia and FSU
Theme: US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT
USA Ukraine 2
“This [U.S-Russian conflict that’s being carried out in Ukraine] is a prelude to World War III. A lot of people know this.” So says Yuri Shcherbak, who was Ukraine’s Ambassador in Washington during 1994-1998.
Dr. Shcherbak was one of Ukraine’s few progressives ever to become an official of the Ukrainian Government. He now is speaking out publicly for the first time to express his concern about the movement toward a nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia, and about Ukraine’s dangerous current role in helping to bring that about.
In 1998, he authored a book The Strategic Role of Ukraine, published by Harvard University Press; so, this is a subject that he knows a lot about.
On Monday, December 29th, he spoke on Ukraine’s Channel 5 television, to warn his country about the direction of their newly installed Government, one which had come to power in a violent coup on February 22nd and has spent its time since then bombing the area of Ukraine that had voted 90% for the democratically elected Ukrainian President who was overthrown in the coup that brought this new Government to power.
Dr. Shcherbak is especially concerned about the issue because of his intensive knowledge of “the strategic role of Ukraine,” and also because of his having served in Washington as Ukraine’s Ambassador. Dr. Shcherbak also speaks here as being a rare person in his country’s recent political history: an anti-communist who also is anti-fascist.
In fact, unlike virtually all major current Ukrainian politicians, Dr. Shcherbak was never a communist, and he was also opposed to the nazism that is represented especially by Ukraine’s Right Sector Party, and by Ukraine’s Svoboda (or ‘Freedom’) Party that had called itself “The Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine” until the U.S. CIA advised them to change their name to “Svoboda.” (Ukraine’s political culture has still not gotten much beyond the two Ukrainian political polar viewpoints: that Hitler-was-good-and-Stalin-was-bad, versus Stalin-was-good-and-Hitler-was-bad; and almost all of the exceptions to that polarity, the supporters of democracy and opponents of anysort of totalitarianism, are in the region that is currently being bombed. The CIA has always supported the pro-Hitler Ukrainians.)
Shcherbak (despite his coming from Ukraine’s ultra-conservative northwestern half) is an authentic Ukrainian champion of democracy. As such, he also is a respected international expert on the topic of U.S-Russian relations and of Ukraine’s role in that. He’s not just another person who has an opinion on the matter.
His full statement on this issue, as quoted Monday at the influential Ukrainian website politnavigator.net, was:
“This is a prelude to World War III. A lot of people know this. For example, [consider] Zaporizhia nuclear power plant just 160 kilometers away from the [current] fighting. Can you imagine what a disaster might happen if it gets hit by a shell? Do we have an alternative to the Minsk talks [between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the leaders in the rebelling area]? Can we declare war against Moscow and conduct it by means of merely a swift operation? No. Because in this case the cruise missiles will fly from Russia tomorrow against Kiev.”
Channel 5 TV was owned by today’s Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko until he became elected by the voters (in the non-rebelling region) to become the President (over all of Ukraine) on May 25th. This channel, where Poroshenko had hired the producers, is generally regarded as still representing his viewpoints. Poroshenko is now being strenuously attacked by other Ukrainian oligarchs, especially by the U.S. White House’s friend Ihor Kolomoysky (a big financial backer himself of the extermination-campaign), as being insufficiently aggressive inexterminating the residents in Ukraine’s rebelling region. Dr. Shcherbak is saying, basically, that exterminating those people with increased intensity would be dangerous for all Ukrainians, not only for the ones in the southeast, whom the Government has been bombing.
When the European Union, immediately after the February 22nd coup, sent an investigator to Kiev to find out who was behind the massive bloodshed that had brought about the downfall of Ukraine’s democratically elected then-President Viktor Yanukovych and the installation of the new pro-‘Western’ regime which was replacing Yanukovych, the investigator found that even Petro Poroshenko himself privately admitted then to him that the masked gunmen were from their side, not from Yanukovych’s, and so the idea (being spread in Washington and Kiev) that Yanukovych was behind it was just a story for the public, not the actual truth of the matter. The EU’s Foreign Affairs Minister was shocked to learn this, then immediately changed the subject (since the EU is basically controlled from Washington).
Poroshenko is now trying to satisfy Washington and the American oligarchs who control it, at the same time as he is satisfying the oligarchs in Ukraine itself (of which he is one). Thus, for Dr. Ambassador Shcherbak now to appear on Poroshenko’s former TV station, when Poroshenko is quite possibly about to be replaced by a politician who wants to bomb the rejectionist region even more than Poroshenko has already been doing, might possibly reflect this intensifying political split among Ukraine’s oligarchs, regarding whether they really do want a nuclear attack by Washington against Russia — an attack from which Ukraine would be perhaps the major staging-area, and likely to suffer far more than America’s oligarchs. So, a split is opening within the international aristocratic order, as events proceed closer toward a nuclear attack.
The ultimate decision will be made by Barack Obama — or, perhaps (if after 2016), by whomever succeeds him. In any case, he has built the foundation for such an attack.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:54 pm
Kiev Regime’s Official Policy for East Ukraine is Starvation, Torture, Rape and Murder
By George Eliason
Global Research, December 30, 2014
Region: Russia and FSU
Theme: Crimes against Humanity, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT
Imagine a sign pinned to the podium on the floor of the US Senate that reads Ferguson will be ours! Pictured on it is an armored personnel carrier with the United States flag driving over a mountain of corpses. This picture shown below says just that about Donbass. This is Kiev’s official statement on mass murder for the area. This was pinned to the podium on the floor of the Ukrainian Senate (Verkhovna Rada).
President Petro Poroshenko and his government have run out of wiggle room to deflect charges of genocide any more.
On December 18th the newly appointed Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Senate) deputy Semen Semenchenko, formerly commander of the battalion “Donbass” warned that Ukraine intends to pursue terrorists from Donbass anywhere in the world. The terrorists from Donbass Semenchenko wants to pursue is anyone that did not leave when the ATO began.
Andrey Biletsky, former “Azov” battalion commander, Ukrainian nationalist ideologist, and a favorite in Victoria Nuland’s circles ( Biletsky was made a Verkhovna Rada deputy by Arseni Yatsenyuk) made clear who those terrorists are in an interview with Foreign Policy .
“Unfortunately, among the Ukrainian people today there are a lot of ‘Russians’ (by their mentality, not their blood), ‘kikes,’ ‘Americans,’ ‘Europeans’ (of the democratic-liberal European Union), ‘Arabs,’ ‘Chinese’ and so forth, but there is not much specifically Ukrainian… It’s unclear how much time and effort will be needed to eradicate these dangerous viruses from our people.”
Biletsky, a new Senator who is being groomed for the Ukrainian presidency thinks even his American handlers are part of the virus infecting Ukraine.
Rape is Official Policy in Ukraine?
His Azov battalion (with Nazi insignia) are showing their true American and European values in Mariupol by gang raping women prisoners at prison every night, torturing, and murdering some of them. This is someone that describes Americans and democratic values as a dangerous virus that need to be eradicated making sure your US tax dollars hard at work again.
According to an article that was published in the Kharkov News by Rita Samoilov on December 25th 15-20 women prisoners at penal colony #107 are taken to the military camp every night and raped by the Azov battalion. Earlier in the year I reported the same behavior at the mines in Lower Krynka by Aydar battalion which resulted in reports of mass rape, torture, and mass graves found on the site where over 5000 Ukrainian cleansing troops and national guard were camped. Upon checking the allegations the OSCE found them to be true. Kiev responded by making Aydar the new model of policing in Ukraine.
One of the nurses at a hospital that treats the torture victims after the fact is saying that they are working to save the lives of some of the women that are dropped off with expanding construction foam stuffed inside their vaginas and anuses. Originally it was an employee of the prison that brought this to light by calling Rita Samoilov about the story.
The women are treated this way because they are considered to be terrorists in a city where not having pro- nazi contacts on your phone is enough to get you arrested. Is it as ok for Ukrainian nazis to rape women prisoners as it is fellow soldiers?
In Mariupol the Ukrainian government is directly responsible for the welfare of the women in the penal system. Could a US governor walk away from this kind of scandal unscathed? If governor Rick Perry was suspected of even knowing (Ukraine is the same size as Texas) a state crime this big might be going on broadcast news would be all over it. The investigations would be swift and he would NOT be allowed to conduct them himself.
In Odessa, a city Poroshenko described as Ukrainized after the May pogrom; Ukraine is bringing in tanks and armored personnel carriers to hunt for separatists. The cleansing crews arriving on December 30, 2014 are going through social media lists arresting people that have done nothing against Ukraine.
Lets be clear; this isn’t State sanctioned rape and torture on Kiev’s part. This is the Ukrainian government providing the rape and torture victims. The women are kept in prison, many for the charge of separatism. This is State sanctioned rape of prisoners by every country and government outside of Ukraine that is supporting Kiev that won’t step in and investigate it.
Ukraine Where Murder is the base of your financial planning
Why would people volunteer to do this? One Ukrainian volunteer that was captured twice answered this question to a large degree. They asked him why he came back? The volunteer (not a conscript) said the first time he was in Donbas he made enough money to purchase a car. He came back because he wanted to make money and buy a house.
This murder for hire mentality is prevalent inside the cleansing battalions. These battalions are committing most of the atrocities and do so with definite rewards in mind. Look at the Rada in Kiev today. The more land they clear of people, the more property they are given. To do so the people that live in those cities, towns, and homes need to go one way or the other. If you can’t scare them, kill them.
According to an article in livejournal Since June 2014 members of ATU and family members of deceased servicemen in the territorial bodies Goszemagentstva ( Dept of Land Resources)was filed 15,582 applications for land .
These represent land grants given by the Ukrainian government for how effective they have been getting rid of separatists. The cleansing battalions don’t fight in the war. They murder and rob. They torture and rape. They fill tractor trailer loads with the possessions robbed from the murdered and displaced they want to keep or sell. They like their work.
Free Speech, law and order in Ukraine
The city of Kharkov is outside of Donbass. It is and has been under Ukrainian control this whole time. Kharkov has a strong anti-maidan movement in it. In the new democratic Ukraine on November 22 Victor a VK anti-maidan group editor was arrested and taken for questioning by the SBU (Ukrainian FBI). VK (V Kontakte) is the Russian version of Facebook. The group editor is the person that publishes the posts for the group on the page.
Victor who clearly wasn’t in Donbass and not a militia member was tortured for 4 days before being dumped on the side of the road in a coma. He never regained consciousness and died on November 26th. The official cause of death on the certificate from the hospital was pneumonia. Four days earlier Victor’s family says he was healthy.
Every one of Victor’s fingers were broken and bent to the back of his hand. His finger nails were pulled out. Every rib was broken. Alexander’s skull was split. This was just questioning. He was never charged formally.
This is the same Kiev government that promised amnesty for anyone that did not participate in the war and included amnesty for people that guarded warehouses for instance according to Andrey Lysenko the speaker of the National Security and Defense Council in Kiev.
This is happening today all across Ukraine from Lviv (Galicia, western Ukraine) to the Kiev controlled areas inside the neutral area outside Donbass. The only area the official Ukrainian style of questioning isn’t happening is Donbas.
Ukraine’s Official position on the Humanitarian Blockade
In Ukraine, news can’t be reported until it is cleared through official channels. Reporters that go against this on a good day find themselves out of work. On a bad day they are sent to the front lines in Donbass as conscripts in the army.
In an effort to shape public opinion popular news presenter Natalya Stanko stated bluntly that Kiev should bomb Donbass into oblivion because bombing them was nobler and starving people to death was to slow. Linguistically the word for “death” she chose referred to slimy undesirable creatures, not typically referenced for people.
In the video below Ukrainian senator Semen Semonchenko explains the reason why they won’t let humanitarian convoys into Donbass is that there is no humanitarian crisis there at all. According to him if the pensioners that had their payments cut off want to reinstate them all they needed to do was to go to a city in Ukrainian control like Slavyansk and apply there.
Semenchenko then stated that the humanitarian cargo they stopped was needed for a city that had a real humanitarian crisis- one in Kiev’s control since mid summer. If the people there were getting their pensions, utilities, or heat like he said Donbass pensioners could get what does this mean?
Semenchenko left out the fact that without having a living permit (Propiska) in a city, you can’t apply for anything.
The positions of the Ukrainian government are also clear in the tank battles that have been raging near Donetsk over the last few days. Towns inside the supposed neutral area have been attacked by Ukrainian tank battalions. Towns inside Donbass have been lost to Kiev and then won back over the last few days and nights. The attacks continue. Kiev never abided by the Minsk agreements or the cease fire.
All of this will seem small if Kiev is allowed to attack again. Since the peace started they kept the convoys of weapons and ammunition moving into Donbass. The probing attacks they have conducted point to a large offensive starting very soon, possibly within days.
Should American or European money be used to fund this?
The humanitarian crisis in Donbass continues to grow rapidly. Currently the only direct help coming in is from Russia. Please consider donating to humanitarian groups working directly in Donbass.
by conniption » Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:56 pm
Club Orlov
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Dmitry Orlov
The Imperial Collapse Playbook
Leon Kuhn
Some people enjoy having the Big Picture laid out in front of them—the biggest possible—on what is happening in the world at large, and I am happy to oblige. The largest development of 2014 is, very broadly, this: the Anglo-imperialists are finally being forced out of Eurasia. How can we tell? Well, here is the Big Picture—the biggest I could find. I found it thanks to Nikolai Starikov and a recent article of his.
Now, let's first define our terms. By Anglo-imperialists I mean the combination of Britain and the United States. The latter took over for the former as it failed, turning it into a protectorate. Now the latter is failing too, and there are no new up-and-coming Anglo-imperialists to take over for it. But throughout this process their common playbook had remained the same: pseudoliberal pseudocapitalism for the insiders and military domination and economic exploitation for everyone else. Much more specifically, their playbook always called for a certain strategem to be executed whenever their plans to dominate and exploit any given country finally fail. On their way out, they do what they can to compromise and weaken the entity they leave behind, by inflicting a permanently oozing and festering political wound. “Poison all the wells” is the last thing on their pre-departure checklist.
• When the British got tossed out of their American Colonies, they did all they could, using a combination of import preferences and British “soft power,” to bolster the plantation economy of the American South, helping set it up as a sort of anti-United States, and the eventual result was the American Civil War.
• When the British got tossed out of Ireland, they set up Belfast as a sort of anti-Ireland, with much blood shed as a result.
• When the British got tossed out of the Middle East, they set up the State of Israel, then the US made it into its own protectorate, and it has been poisoning regional politics ever since. (Thanks to Kristina for pointing this out in the comments.)
• When the British got tossed out of India, they set up Pakistan, as a sort of anti-India, precipitating a nasty hot war, followed by a frozen conflict over Kashmir.
• When the US lost China to the Communists, they evacuated the Nationalists to Taiwan, and set it up as a sort of anti-China, and even gave it China's seat at the United Nations.
The goal is always the same: if they can't have the run of the place, they make sure that nobody else can either, by setting up a conflict scenario that nobody there can ever hope to resolve. And so if you see Anglo-imperialists going out of their way and spending lots of money to poison the political well somewhere in the world, you can be sure that they are on their way out. Simply put, they don't spend lots of money to set up intractable problems for themselves to solve—it's always done for the benefit of others.
Fast-forward to 2014, and what we saw was the Anglo-imperialist attempt to set up Ukraine as a sort of anti-Russia. They took a Slavic, mostly Russian-speaking country and spent billions (that's with a “b”) of dollars corrupting its politics to make the Ukrainians hate the Russians. For a good while an average Ukrainian could earn a month's salary simply by turning up for an anti-Russian demonstration in Kiev, and it was said that nobody in Ukraine goes to protests free of charge; it's all paid for by the US State Department and associated American NGOs. The result was what we saw this year: a bloody coup, and a civil war marked by numerous atrocities. Ukraine is in the midst of economic collapse with power plants out of coal and lights going off everywhere, while at the same time the Ukrainians are being drafted into the army and indoctrinated to want to go fight against “the Muscovites.”
But, if you notice, things didn't go quite as planned. First, Russia succeeded in making a nice little example of self-determination in the form of Crimea: if it worked for Kosovo, why can't it work for Crimea? Oh, the Anglo-imperialist establishment wishes to handle these things on a case-by-case basis, and in this case it doesn't approve? Well, that would be a double-standard, wouldn't it? World, please take note: when the West talks about justice and human rights, that's just noise.
Next, the Russians provided some amount of support, including weapons, volunteers and humanitarian aid, to Ukraine's eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, which declared themselves People's Republics and successfully fought Ukraine's so-called “anti-terrorist operation” to a stalemate and an imperfect, precarious cease-fire. Very significantly, Russia absolutely refused to get involved militarily, has withheld official recognition of these republics, has refused to consider breaking up Ukraine, and continues to insist on national dialogue and a peace process even as the bullets fly. According to Putin, Ukraine must be maintained as “a contiguous political space.” Thus, the Russians have responded to the Anglo-imperialists' setting up of an anti-Russia in the form of Ukraine by setting up an anti-Ukraine in the form of DPR and LPR, thereby shunting the Anglo-imperialist attempt to provoke a war between Ukraine and Russia into a civil war within Ukraine.
You might also notice that the Anglo-imperialists have been getting very, very angry. They have been doing everything they can to vilify Russia, comparing Putin to Hitler and so on. This is because for them it's all about the money, and they didn't get what they paid for. What the Anglo-imperialists were paying for in corrupting Ukraine's politics was a ring-side seat at a fight between Ukraine and Russia. And what they got instead is a two-legged stool at a bar-room brawl between Eastern and Western Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine accounts for a quarter of the Ukrainian economy, produces most of the coal that had formerly kept the lights on in the rest of the country, and contains most of the industry that had made Ukraine an industrialized nation. Western Ukraine is centered on the unhappy little rump of Galicia, where the political soil is so fertile for growing neo-Nazis. So, paying billions to watch a bunch of Ukrainians fight each other inconclusively while Russia gets to play peacemaker is not what the Anglo-imperialists wanted, and they are absolutely livid about it. If they don't get the war they paid for PDQ, they will simply cut their losses, pack up and leave, and then do what they always do, which is pretend that the country in question doesn't exist, which, the way things are going in the Ukraine, it barely will.
Note that leaving, and then pretending that a place doesn't exist, is something the Anglo-imperialists have been doing a lot lately. When they left Iraq, they did succeed in setting up a sort of anti-Iraq in the form of Iraqi Kurdistan, but that all blew up in their face. Their attempts to set up an anti-Syria or an anti-Libya died in their infancy, and they don't seem to have any plan at all with regard to Afghanistan, unless it is to repeat every single blunder the Soviets made there as carefully and completely as possible.
What's more, it's starting to look like they are about to get kicked out of Eurasia altogether. Most of the major Eurasian players—China, Russia, India, Iran, much of Central Asia—are cementing their ties around the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to which the United States isn't even admitted as an observer. As for the European Union, the current crop of EU politicians is very much bought and will be paid for upon retirement by the Anglo-imperialists, but the only reason they are still in power is that there are lots of older voters in Western Europe, and older people tend to cling to what they know even after it stops working—for them or, especially, for their kids. If it was up to the young people, the Anglo-imperialists would face open rebellion. In fact, the trends in voting patterns show that their departure from the region is a matter of time.
Here is a preview of possible coming attractions. On their way out, the Anglo-imperialists will of course try to set up an anti-Europe, and the obvious choice for that is Britain. Of all the European nations, it is the most heavily manipulated by their Anglo cousins from across the pond. It would take minimal effort for them to hurt Britain economically, then launch a propaganda campaign to redirect the blame for the bad economy toward the continent. They wouldn't even have to hire translators for their propaganda—a simple “spelling-chequer” (or whatever) would suffice. And so, to make sure that their efforts to provoke a large-scale, hugely destructive, festering conflict between Britain and Europe fail, Europe would do well to set up an anti-Britain within Britain.
And the obvious choice for an anti-Britain is of course Scotland, where the recent independence referendum failed because of... the recalcitrance of older voters. A dividing line between the Anglo empire and Eurasia running through the English Channel/La Manche would be a disaster for Europe and moving it somewhere west of Bermuda would pose a formidable challenge. On the other hand, suppose that line ran along Hadrian's Wall, with the traditionally combative and ornery Scots, armed with the remnants of North Sea oil and gas, aligning themselves with the Continent, while England remains an ever-so-obedient vassal of the Anglo-imperialists? That would reduce the intercontinental conflict to what Americans like to call a “pissing contest”: not worth the high price of admission. Yes, there would be some strong words between the two sides, and some shoving and shouting outside of pubs, and even some black eyes and loose teeth should diplomacy fail, but that should be the extent of the damage. That I see as the best-case outcome.
So that's the big picture I see heading into 2015, which I am sure will be a most tumultuous year. Not to make a prediction as to timing (don't worry, you won't ever get one out of me!) but 2015 could be the year the Anglo-imperialist franchise finally starts shutting down in obvious ways. We know it will have to shut down eventually, because failing all the time is not conducive to its survival. The bonus question is, what sort of anti-America will these parasites set up inside America before they abandon their host and scatter to their fortified compounds in undisclosed locations around the world? Or will they not even bother, and just provoke a war of all against all?
I would think that they would at least try to leverage their expensively engineered red/blue divide within the United States. This fake cultural/political divide, with all the pseudoliberal/pseudoconservative indoctrination and university- and church-based brainwashing that put it in place, cost them a pretty penny. It was engineered to produce the appearance of choice at election-time while making sure that there isn't any. But could it not be pressed into service in some more extreme manner? How about leveraging it to organize some sort of rabidly homophobic racist fundamentalist separatist enclave somewhere down south? Or perhaps one somewhere in the north, where zoophilia is de rigeur while heterosexual intercourse requires a special permit from a committee stocked with graduates in women's studies? Now, fight, you idiots! Don't you see how well that could work in practice? Would they waste such a nice opportunity to set up a system of controlled mayhem? I think not!
I leave all of that up to you to imagine.
Happy New Year!
by American Dream » Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:47 pm
As soon as I heard about Scalise’s rush to distance himself from David Duke, I wondered once again what compelled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to invite Duke to a holocaust revisionism conference in Tehran back in 2006. Given the massive campaign to tighten the screws on Iran and make its people suffer, why put down the red carpet for a former leader of the KKK? Was this the type of “anti-imperialism” that so many people on the left had begun to identify with? One that was missing a brain?
This was not the only sign that Duke had sympathies for the “axis of resistance”. In an article on his website dated April 30, 2014 he said things that have a leftist tinge:Putin, by ardently supporting the Assad government, almost single-handedly stopped a Zio mass invasion of Syria, as occurred in Iraq. The Zionists of course see Syria as an ardent enemy of Israel. He has had the Russian envoy on the UN Security Council veto and/or make known that Russia would veto resolutions which the Zionists want the Council to take.
A few months later Duke called attention to his appearance alongside the Syrian Girl on Jeff Rense’s radio show. The two would “expose the truth about the Zionist created Syrian conflict and the role Zionist controlled U.S. Policy in the rise of ISIS.” The Syrian Girl is a 27-year old woman named Maram Susl who blogs on behalf of the Baathist dictatorship from her home in Australia. Her Youtube videos praising Bashar al-Assad have been played more than 2.5 million times. Jeff Rense is another left/right figure. When he isn’t praising Russia standing up to NATO over Ukraine or the Baathist war on its own people, he is reporting on UFO’s, how 9/11 was an inside job and how AIDS got started as an experiment in American biochemical weaponry labs.
Most of you are probably aware that Syria has attracted the support of rightwing figures in Europe who are as committed to white nationalism as David Duke. British National Party leader Nick Griffin has visited Syria twice and other groups have taken up the Baathist cause, including the French National Front and Greece’s Golden Dawn.
What do all these groups and individuals have in common, including Steve Salise, David Duke, Nick Griffin and Vladimir Putin? It is white nationalism.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:03 pm
by coffin_dodger » Thu Jan 01, 2015 9:47 pm
by Sounder » Fri Jan 02, 2015 11:17 am
But throughout this process their common playbook had remained the same: pseudoliberal pseudocapitalism for the insiders and military domination and economic exploitation for everyone else.
by American Dream » Fri Jan 02, 2015 12:02 pm
11 June 2013 Syria , UK
What is BNP leader Nick Griffin doing in Syria?
The fact that Nick Griffin has travelled to Syria on a fact-finding mission may surprise some, but this is not the first time the BNP leader has traveled to the Middle East.
Nick Griffin has revealed he is in Syria, after leaving the UK on Sunday and travelling to the war-torn country via Lebanon.
Griffin, leader of the beleaguered British National Party, whose fortunes have waned since the 2010 local elections, claims he has travelled to the Arab nation to find out about rebel groups being offered funding by William Hague, who he claims are jihadists.
BNP spokesman Simon Darby revealed that Griffin was invited as part of a delegation of European politicians along with representatives from Poland, Russia and Belgium.
President Bashar al-Assad's regime is reported to have invited the far-right MEP to take part in a fact-finding mission, Griffin tweeted earlier comparing Islamist rebels in Syria to Lee Rigby's alleged murderers.
Posting to Twitter Griffin posed the question: "Why turn stable secular state into Iraq-style hell of sectarian hate?" and compared Damascus to Belfast during the height of the conflict in Northern Ireland.
Back in the Middle East
This is not Griffin's first trip to the Middle East. The far-right figurehead tried to form unusual alliances before in the region during his time with the National Front.
Inspired by the ideas of Italian fascists, Griffin attempted to build contacts with Colonel Gaddafi's Libya in the late 80s as a leading member of the National Front's "political soldier" faction.
Griffin was pursuing an ideology called "third positionism", which saw itself as being beyond the left-right spectrum of politics, opting instead for an ultranationalism that supports the creation of racially homogenous communities.
Guided by this ideology, Griffin openly backed black separatist Louis Farrakhan in the nationalist magazine Bulldog and called for nationalists to support Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.
He met with representatives of the Gaddafi regime in London and even travelled to Libya to try secure support for his party. The trip was unsuccessful but Gaddafi's Green Book remained a favourite in Griffin's circles.
At the time, the push for support from Islamic regimes raised eyebrows in the National Front, an organisation known for its hard-line stance on immigration and racist views of members.
National Front News wrote: "Those involved must work to nail the media lies which are used by our enemies to try and divide us and make us afraid to be seen standing side by side with Third Way nations such as Libya and Iran."
When Gaddafi's regime was overthrown Griffin was outraged, claiming it was an attempt to "remove any potential state threat to Israel".
Strange bedfellows
The BNP is not the only far-right party in Europe to try make friends in unusual places, Hungary's Jobbik party have been building links with Iran based on their mutual dislike for Israel.
The anti-Semitic alliance has seen the Hungarian town of Tiszavasvari, a Jobbik stronghold, twinned with the Iranian city of Ardabil.
Italian fascists CasaPound have long admired Irish republican groups - selling merchandise commemorating IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. However, their advances were swiftly rejected when Irish republican groups found out.
In Lebanon, where Griffin stopped off on his way to Damascus, the far-right Phalanges party holds five seats in parliament. Launched in 1936, the party was modelled on Spanish and Italian fascist movements.
by slimmouse » Fri Jan 02, 2015 12:53 pm
What is Nick Griffin doing in Syria?
by Searcher08 » Fri Jan 02, 2015 1:52 pm
His tips include not eating the outside of an onion, how cheese can be used on a jacket potato and remembering to remove the foil from stock cubes.
from the comments:J Hallenbeck
5 months ago
I'm surprised he let the 'swedes' into his meal. Those damn swedes coming over here...
shosy69
3 days ago
The really British way to cook would be to give up after 5 minutes and then phone a kebab. Can't see Nick Griffin or the BNP condoning that though.
Sadik Meah
4 months ago
He should have made a chicken tikka masala. Didnt anyone tell him its the nations favourite dish?
Billinghaylad1976
8 months ago
I noticed that he put tabasco sauce in it. Is that tabasco sauce made in another country? Oh dear Nick. A racist idiot, who still relies on food from abroad. You couldn't make it up. Lol.
by Nordic » Fri Jan 02, 2015 2:44 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 02, 2015 2:48 pm
Neocons and the Ukraine Coup
February 23, 2014
Exclusive: American neocons helped destabilize Ukraine and engineer the overthrow of its elected government, a “regime change” on Russia’s western border. But the coup – and the neo-Nazi militias at the forefront – also reveal divisions within the Obama administration, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
More than five years into his presidency, Barack Obama has failed to take full control over his foreign policy, allowing a bureaucracy shaped by long years of Republican control and spurred on by a neocon-dominated U.S. news media to frustrate many of his efforts to redirect America’s approach to the world in a more peaceful direction.
But Obama deserves a big dose of the blame for this predicament because he did little to neutralize the government holdovers and indeed played into their hands with his initial appointments to head the State and Defense departments, Hillary Clinton, a neocon-leaning Democrat, and Robert Gates, a Republican cold warrior, respectively.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Even now, key U.S. diplomats are more attuned to hard-line positions than to promoting peace. The latest example is Ukraine where U.S. diplomats, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, are celebrating the overthrow of an elected pro-Russian government.
Occurring during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the coup in Ukraine dealt an embarrassing black eye to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had offended neocon sensibilities by quietly cooperating with Obama to reduce tensions over Iran and Syria, where the neocons favored military options.
Over the past several weeks, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was undercut by a destabilization campaign encouraged by Nuland and Pyatt and then deposed in a coup spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias. Even after Yanukovych and the political opposition agreed to an orderly transition toward early elections, right-wing armed patrols shattered the agreement and took strategic positions around Kiev.
Despite these ominous signs, Ambassador Pyatt hailed the coup as “a day for the history books.” Most of the mainstream U.S. news media also sided with the coup, with commentators praising the overthrow of an elected government as “reform.” But a few dissonant reports have pierced the happy talk by noting that the armed militias are part of the Pravy Sektor, a right-wing nationalist group which is often compared to the Nazis.
Thus, the Ukrainian coup could become the latest neocon-initiated “regime change” that ousted a target government but failed to take into account who would fill the void.
Some of these same American neocons pushed for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, not realizing that removing Saddam Hussein would touch off a sectarian conflict and lead to a pro-Iranian Shiite regime. Similarly, U.S. military intervention in Libya in 2011 eliminated Muammar Gaddafi but also empowered Islamic extremists who later murdered the U.S. ambassador and spread unrest beyond Libya’s borders to nearby Mali.
One might trace this neocons’ blindness to consequences back to Afghanistan in the 1980s when the Reagan administration supported Islamic militants, including Osama bin Laden, in a war against Soviet troops, only to have Muslim extremists take control of Afghanistan and provide a base for al-Qaeda to plot the 9/11 attacks against the United States.
Regarding Ukraine, today’s State Department bureaucracy seems to be continuing the same anti-Moscow geopolitical strategy set during those Reagan-Bush years.
Robert Gates described the approach in his new memoir, Duty, explaining the view of President George H.W. Bush’s Defense Secretary Dick Cheney: “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.”
Vice President Cheney and the neocons pursued a similar strategy during George W. Bush’s presidency, expanding NATO aggressively to the east and backing anti-Russian regimes in the region including the hard-line Georgian government, which provoked a military confrontation with Moscow in 2008, ironically, during the Summer Olympics in China.
Obama’s Strategy
As President, Obama has sought a more cooperative relationship with Russia’s Putin and, generally, a less belligerent approach toward adversarial countries. Obama has been supported by an inner circle at the White House with analytical assistance from some elements of the U.S. intelligence community.
But the neocon momentum at the State Department and from other parts of the U.S. government has continued in the direction set by George W. Bush’s neocon administration and by neocon-lite Democrats who surrounded Secretary of State Clinton during Obama’s first term.
The two competing currents of geopolitical thinking – a less combative one from the White House and a more aggressive one from the foreign policy bureaucracy – have often worked at cross-purposes. But Obama, with only a few exceptions, has been unwilling to confront the hardliners or even fully articulate his foreign policy vision publicly.
For instance, Obama succumbed to the insistence of Gates, Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus to escalate the war in Afghanistan in 2009, though the President reportedly felt trapped into the decision which he soon regretted. In 2010, Obama backed away from a Brazilian-Turkish-brokered deal with Iran to curtail its nuclear program after Clinton denounced the arrangement and pushed for economic sanctions and confrontation as favored by the neocons and Israel.
Just last summer, Obama – only at the last second – reversed a course charted by the State Department favoring a military intervention in Syria over disputed U.S. claims that the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons attack on civilians. Putin helped arrange a way out for Obama by getting the Syrian government to agree to surrender its chemical weapons. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Showdown for War or Peace.”]
Stirring Up Trouble
Now, you have Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, acting as a leading instigator in the Ukrainian unrest, explicitly seeking to pry the country out of the Russian orbit. Last December, she reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve “its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion.” She said the U.S. goal was to take “Ukraine into the future that it deserves.”
The Kagan family includes other important neocons, such as Frederick Kagan, who was a principal architect of the Iraq and Afghan “surge” strategies. In Duty, Gates writes that “an important way station in my ‘pilgrim’s progress’ from skepticism to support of more troops [in Afghanistan] was an essay by the historian Fred Kagan, who sent me a prepublication draft.
“I knew and respected Kagan. He had been a prominent proponent of the surge in Iraq, and we had talked from time to time about both wars, including one long evening conversation on the veranda of one of Saddam’s palaces in Baghdad.”
Now, another member of the Kagan family, albeit an in-law, has been orchestrating the escalation of tensions in Ukraine with an eye toward one more “regime change.”
As for Nuland’s sidekick, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Pyatt previously served as a U.S. diplomat in Vienna involved in bringing the International Atomic Energy Agency into a line with U.S. and Israeli hostility toward Iran. A July 9, 2009, cable from Pyatt, which was released by Pvt. Bradley Manning, revealed Pyatt to be the middleman who coordinated strategy with the U.S.-installed IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano.
Pyatt reported that Amano offered to cooperate with the U.S. and Israel on Iran, including having private meetings with Israeli officials, supporting U.S. sanctions, and agreeing to IAEA personnel changes favored by the United States. According to the cable, Pyatt promised strong U.S. backing for Amano and Amano asked for more U.S. money. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “America’s Debt to Bradley Manning.”]
It was Ambassador Pyatt who was on the other end of Nuland’s infamous Jan. 28 phone call in which she discussed how to manipulate Ukraine’s tensions and who to elevate into the country’s leadership. According to the conversation, which was intercepted and made public, Nuland ruled out one opposition figure, Vitali Klitschko, a popular former boxer, because he lacked experience.
Nuland also favored the UN as mediator over the European Union, at which point in the conversation she exclaimed, “Fuck the E.U.” to which Pyatt responded, “Oh, exactly …”
Ultimately, the Ukrainian unrest – over a policy debate whether Ukraine should move toward entering the European Union – led to a violent showdown in which neo-fascist storm troopers battled police, leaving scores dead. To ease the crisis, President Yanukovych agreed to a power-sharing government and to accelerated elections. But no sooner was that agreement signed then the hard-right faction threw it out and pressed for power in an apparent coup.
Again, the American neocons had performed the role of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, unleashing forces and creating chaos that soon was spinning out of control. But this latest “regime change,” which humiliated President Putin, could also do long-term damage to U.S.-Russian cooperation vital to resolving other crises, with Iran and Syria, two more countries where the neocons are also eager for confrontation.
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