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by conniption » Fri Feb 06, 2015 6:54 pm
Published on Feb 6, 2015
Will peace be given one last chance? The French president and German Chancellor head to Moscow for talks to end Ukraine’s civil war. At the same time the US Secretary of State arrives in Kiev to arrange training and arms transfers. Which approach will prevail? CrossTalking with Alexander Mercouris, James Jatras, and Mary Dejevsky.
by Nordic » Fri Feb 06, 2015 7:23 pm
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Not much has filtered out of the Medusa Merkel/General Hollande/Vlad tense threesome in Moscow.
And yet John Kerry, as usual, is already lying through his teeth about their trip to the Kremlin.
He said Putin had sent “a couple of ideas” to France and Germany, and Merkel/Hollande were responding.
Nonsense: Merkel/Hollande – in desperation – went to Moscow to talk to Putin because Putin has the ONLY possible plan to stabilize Ukraine - and that has been the case for months now. Otherwise, there WILL be war, which is exactly what Empire of Chaos masterminds in D.C. want.
Kerry lied the extra mile when he said the US wanted a diplomatic solution. BUT then came the usual talk of “reviewing all options”, including “the possibility of providing defensive systems to Ukraine”.
Do that – and the Russian response will be devastating.
No wonder the absolute majority of the EU – apart from crackpot Lithuanians – is opposed to weaponizing Kiev’s goons.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung – a very decent paper – last Sunday featured Russian military expert Yevgeny Buchinsky warning that if that happens, “Russia will have to intervene, and then, bluntly speaking, to take Kiev. Then NATO would be in a difficult situation. Then you would have to start World War III, which no one wants.”
That may be a bit Dr. Strangelovian over the top – but the Süddeutsche Zeitung was on the money to stress Washington weaponizing Kiev’s goons would be interpreted by Russia as a declaration of war.
Medusa Merkel, on the record, is against it. But Chocolateshenko is, what else, hysterical: “I don’t have any doubt that the US and other partners will provide help with lethal weapons so that Ukraine will be able to defend itself.” "
If that happens, all hell will break loose. Russia will act. And the Empire of Chaos will spin it as "more aggression". Escalation will be inevitable. And then all bets are off.
Predictably, Western corporate media is spinning this whole debacle is now due to FEAR OF THE DEVIL – as in Vlad. The fears apparently rampant in Brussels and assorted European capitals (among pol clowns, for sure; NOT in the streets)
The rhetoric is beyond ominous.
Carl Bildt, former Swedish foreign minister, said war “between Russia and the West” was now CONCEIVABLE.
General Hollande, on the record, talked about the risk of “total war”.
General Sir Richard Shirreff, top British banana, sorry, NATO “commander” until last March, said a “strong message” should be sent to Putin if MAINLAND EUROPE (!!!) was to avoid “total war”.
Fogh of War Rasmussen – the Return of the Living Dead! – said that Putin could expand “Soviet revisionism” to NATO and the EU. In the Baltics, he said Putin would go for a little exercise in “hybrid warfare”.
There will be more (minor) EU sanctions on Monday. The hardcore economic sanctions against Russian banks and companies lapse only in July. Italy and Greece may torpedo them for good when that happens.
Even EU bureaucrats admit – off the record – sanctions are ridiculous, sanctioning in fact the EU for least 15% of exports to Russia. The Brits, predictably – shades of the Great Game never vanish – lead the pro-sanction crowd.
Some idiot in the Grauniad passing as “Europe editor” (where do they find these people? Getting pissed in a pub after an Arsenal match ?) wrote that “Putin is increasingly seen as a reckless gambler who calls bluffs and takes risks, and is inscrutable, paranoid and unpredictable.” Looks like this was ghostwritten by a State Department hack.
And other rags go on the same road: the real nightmare for Europe is not Ukraine, bur Evil Vlad. NO ONE dares to criticize the Empire of Chaos.
And now back to…
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by cptmarginal » Fri Feb 06, 2015 7:41 pm
Obama has weighed sending lethal aid to Ukraine before, but has always decided against taking that step. But holding fast to that position has left him isolated within his administration, given the support for sending the Ukrainians defensive assistance from high-ranking officials including Secretary of State John Kerry and NATO Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove.
The top military commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization gave the strongest signal yet of western military backing for supplying arms to Ukraine, saying that alliance members could use “all tools in the tool bag.”
The top NATO commander warned Thursday that any move to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons must take into account any possible angry reaction from Russia.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove said that any action the U.S. or other Western nations take "could trigger a more strident reaction from Russia."
His remarks come amid signals that the U.S. is considering giving Ukraine defensive weapons to help protect forces along the border from escalating assault by Russian-backed separatists. He and other U.S. leaders insist there is no military solution to the conflict, but say that Ukraine has the right to defend itself.
"Everything we do we have to look and evaluate as to will (it) advance the ball toward that political solution that we have to find here," Breedlove told The Associated Press in an interview here. "So all manner of aid has to be taken in light of what we anticipate would be the Russian reaction."
Breedlove would not talk about what advice he gave the administration or his NATO leadership, but he said the situation in eastern Ukraine is deteriorating and any action the U.S., takes must help move the conflict toward a political solution.
Allied Command Operations (ACO) is located at SHAPE, Mons, Belgium. It is headed by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), a U.S. four star general or admiral with the dual-hatted role of heading U.S. European Command. (For legal reasons SACEUR has retained the traditional title including Europe although the responsibilities were extended to all allied operations in 2003).
by conniption » Sun Feb 08, 2015 11:03 pm
journalitico
Some of the strongest and sanest voices on Russia are American voices
I am often, of late, accused of sounding “anti-America” on this blog.
It seems odd to people who know me that I could have spent a couple of years living in Washington, living and breathing Capitol Hill, and spent many years before that seemingly supporting American foreign policy — or at least not not supporting it.
But this isn’t about being “pro-Russia” or “anti-America”. This is about right and wrong — and while no one side has a monopoly on right — we have come to a point in time when it seems that, by and large, we have accepted that one side does hold that monopoly.
We have, for the most part, blindly followed one narrative and dismissed all dissenting voices as nonsense.
That acceptance of a black and white view has led us to a dangerous precipice in Europe.
Yet in the midst of this crisis there have been a number of brilliant and astute geopolitical commentators trying to shake some sense into the mainstream media and policymakers in Washington and Brussels.
They have largely been ignored or sidelined as “apologists” and “useful idiots” aiding a Russian “dictator” whose geopolitical adventurism has led to the crisis we see today in Ukraine.
They have explained, time and time again, why this narrative is false and why it deserves to be held up to much tougher scrutiny.
Yet because they are ostracized by the biggest networks and newspapers, their commentary and incredibly useful insights rarely are allowed to filter out into the mainstream.
It is no exaggeration to say this is entirely deliberate. My own experience within the lower ranks of mainstream US print media have proved this to be true.
Some of the strongest and sanest voices however, are actually American voices — and they are all well-worth reading — if you know where to look.
I have chosen three (although there are many more) and have summarized some of their comments:
continued...
FortRuss
New Video Evidence of America’s Coup in Ukraine — and What it Means
"MUST WATCH: Nov 2013 (pre-Maidan!): Ukraine Deputy has proof of USA staging civil war in Ukraine".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9hOl8TuBUMPublished on Jan 27, 2015
"MUST WATCH: 20.11.2013!! (pre-Maidan!): Ukraine Deputy has proof of USA staging civil war in Ukraine". –––––VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW–––––
How the February Coup in Kiev was plotted and arranged by the US
http://ian56.blogspot.ch/2015/01/how-...
--
DEUTSCHE VERSION: http://youtu.be/JBL6jMF2NVg
–––––VIDEO TRANSCRIPT–––––
Deputy Oleg Tsarov has the word
Honourable Colleagues
Honourable Vladimir Vasiljevitch
In my role as a representative of the Ukrainian people…
…activists of the public organisation "Volya" turned to me…
…providing clear evidence…
…that within our territory…
…with support and direct participation
…of the US Embassy in Kiev…
…the "TechCamp" project is realised…
…under which preparations are being made for a civil war in Ukraine.
The "TechCamp" project prepares specialists for information warfare…
…and the discrediting of state institutions using modern media…
…potential revolutionaries…
…for organising protests…
… and the toppling of the State Order.
The project is currently overseen and under the responsibility…
…of the US ambassador to Ukraine…
…Geoffrey R. Pyatt.
After the conversation with the organisation "Volya“…
… I have learned…
…that they succeeded to access Facilities in the project "TechCamp“…
…disguising as a team of IT specialists.
To their surprise, briefings on peculiarities of modern media were held.
American instructors explained how social networks and Internet technologies…
…can be used for targeted manipulation of public opinion…
…as well as to activate protest potential…
…to provoke violent unrest on the territory of Ukraine…
…Radicalisation of the population and triggering of infighting.
American instructors show examples of successful use of social networks…
…used to organise protests
…in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
"TechCamp" representatives currently hold conferences throughout Ukraine.
A total of five events have been held so far.
About 300 people were trained as operatives, which are now active throughout Ukraine.
The last conference "TechCamp" took place on 14 and 15 November 2013…
…in the Heart of Kiev on the territory of the US Embassy!
You tell me which country in the world would allow…
…a NGO to operate out of the US Embassy?
This is disrespectful to the Ukrainian government, and against the Ukrainian People!
I appeal to the Constitutional Authorities of Ukraine with the following question:
Is it conceivable that representatives of the US Embassy…
…which organise the "TechCamp" Conferences…
…misuse their diplomatic mission?
–– Let him speak ––
Carry On
UN Resolution of 21 December 1965 regulates…
…inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of a state…
…to protect its independence and its sovereignty…
…in accordance with paragraphs one, two and five.
I ask you to consider this as an official beseech…
…to pursue an investigation of this case
Thank You!
Eric Zuesse
7 Feb. 2015
New video evidence has been added to the already-conclusive video evidence which shows that the U.S. Government was the controlling power behind the extremely violent and illegal 18-27 February 2014 Ukrainian coup, which overthrew the democratically elected and never legally removed-from-power Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
continued...
by seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 13, 2015 1:31 am
NYT Whites Out Ukraine’s Brown Shirts
Exclusive: The New York Times has been more biased on the Ukraine crisis – endlessly promoting State Department propaganda – than when it published false Iraqi WMD stories last decade. Case in point: a story from Mariupol hailing the Azov battalion without noting its neo-Nazi fighters, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
In covering the Ukraine crisis, the New York Times continues its descent into becoming little more than a propaganda organ for the U.S. State Department and the Kiev regime, again refusing to acknowledge the role of neo-Nazi militias in the civil war against ethnic Russians in the east.
On Wednesday, the Times published a long article by Rick Lyman that presented the situation in the port city of Mariupol as if the advance by ethnic Russian rebels amounted to the arrival of barbarians at the gate while the inhabitants were being bravely defended by the forces of civilization. But then the article cites the key role in that defense played by the Azov battalion.
Though the article provides much color and detail – and quotes an Azov leader prominently – it leaves out one salient and well-known fact about the Azov battalion, that it is composed of neo-Nazis who display the Swastika, SS markings and other Nazi symbols.
But this inconvenient truth – that neo-Nazis have been central to Kiev’s “self-defense forces” from last February’s coup to the present – would presumably disrupt the desired propaganda message. So the New York Times just ignores it and refers to Azov as simply a “volunteer unit.”
What’s particularly egregious about this omission is that the connections between the Azov battalion and Nazism have been well-documented for months and even acknowledged by officials of the Kiev regime, who knowingly sent these and other extremists into the battle because they are the fiercest fighters.
Even the Times itself has included at least one brief reference to this reality, though buried deep inside an article. On Aug. 10, 2014, a Times’ article mentioned the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in the last three paragraphs of a lengthy story on another topic.
“The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat,” the Times reported.
“Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Discovers Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis at War.”]
Not a Mistake
The conservative London Telegraph offered more details about the Azov battalion in an article by correspondent Tom Parfitt, who wrote: “Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’… should send a shiver down Europe’s spine.
“Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”
Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the reality of the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.
Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
In other words, for the first time since World War II, a government had dispatched Nazi storm troopers to attack a European population – and officials in Kiev knew what they were doing. The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ignoring Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]
But a rebel counteroffensive by ethnic Russians last August reversed many of Kiev’s gains and drove the Azov and other government forces back to the port city of Mariupol, where Foreign Policy’s reporter Alec Luhn also encountered these neo-Nazis. He wrote:
“Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags fly over Mariupol’s burned-out city administration building and at military checkpoints around the city, but at a sport school near a huge metallurgical plant, another symbol is just as prominent: the wolfsangel (‘wolf trap’) symbol that was widely used in the Third Reich and has been adopted by neo-Nazi groups. …
“Pro-Russian forces have said they are fighting against Ukrainian nationalists and ‘fascists’ in the conflict, and in the case of Azov and other battalions, these claims are essentially true.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Seeing No Neo-Nazi Militias in Ukraine.”]
SS Helmets
More evidence continued to emerge about the presence of Nazis in the ranks of Ukrainian government fighters. Germans were shocked to see video of Azov militia soldiers decorating their gear with the Swastika and the “SS rune.” NBC News reported: “Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past … when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast.
“The video was shot … in Ukraine by a camera team from Norwegian broadcaster TV2. ‘We were filming a report about Ukraine’s AZOV battalion in the eastern city of Urzuf, when we came across these soldiers,’ Oysten Bogen, a correspondent for the private television station, told NBC News. “Minutes before the images were taped, Bogen said he had asked a spokesperson whether the battalion had fascist tendencies. ‘The reply was: absolutely not, we are just Ukrainian nationalists,’ Bogen said.”
Despite the newsworthiness of a U.S.-backed government dispatching neo-Nazi storm troopers to attack Ukrainian cities, the major U.S. news outlets have gone to extraordinary lengths to excuse this behavior, with the Washington Post publishing a rationalization that Azov’s use of the Swastika was merely “romantic.”
This curious description of the symbol most associated with the human devastation of the Holocaust and World War II can be found in the last three paragraphs of a Post lead story published in September 2014. Post correspondent Anthony Faiola portrayed the Azov fighters as “battle-scarred patriots” nobly resisting “Russian aggression” and willing to resort to “guerrilla war” if necessary.
The article found nothing objectionable about Azov’s plans for “sabotage, targeted assassinations and other insurgent tactics” against Russians, although such actions in other contexts are regarded as terrorism. The extremists even extended their threats to the government of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko if he agrees to a peace deal with the ethnic Russian east that is not to the militia’s liking.
“If Kiev reaches a deal with rebels that they don’t support, paramilitary fighters say they could potentially strike pro-Russian targets on their own — or even turn on the government itself,” the article stated.
The Post article – like almost all of its coverage of Ukraine – was laudatory about the Kiev forces fighting ethnic Russians in the east, but the newspaper did have to do some quick thinking to explain a photograph of a Swastika gracing an Azov brigade barracks.
So, in the last three paragraphs of the story, Faiola reported: “One platoon leader, who called himself Kirt, conceded that the group’s far right views had attracted about two dozen foreign fighters from around Europe.
“In one room, a recruit had emblazoned a swastika above his bed. But Kirt … dismissed questions of ideology, saying that the volunteers — many of them still teenagers — embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of ‘romantic’ idea.”
So, why did the New York Times excise this well-documented history as it touted the Azov battalion to its readers on Wednesday? Isn’t the role of neo-Nazis newsworthy? In other contexts, the Times is quick to note and condemn any sign of a Nazi resurgence in Europe. However, in Ukraine, where neo-Nazis, such as Andriy Parubiy served as the coup regime’s first national security chief and neo-Nazi militias are at the center of regime’s military operations, the Times goes silent on the subject.
It can’t be because the Times is unaware of what has been extensively reported about the Azov battalion. The Times could even find a brief reference in one of its own prior stories. The only logical answer is that the Times is committed to a propaganda position on the Ukraine crisis and doesn’t want the facts to get in the way of its preferred storyline.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Feb 16, 2015 11:20 am
Has the IMF Annexed Ukraine?
Posted on Feb 14, 2015
Michael Hudson, an economist at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of the upcoming book “Killing the Host: Financial Parasites and Wall Street’s War on Capitalism,” says the terms attached to the loans made by the IMF to Ukraine are likely to turn its people into penniless serfs of international banks.
In the video above, Sharmini Peries at The Real News Network asks Hudson, “In a recent interview [by former State Department official James Carden] published in The National Interest magazine you said that most media covers Russia as if it is the greatest threat to Ukraine. History suggests that the IMF may be far more dangerous. What did you mean by that?”
Hudson responds, “Well, the terms on which the IMF make loans, first of all, are based on austerity. The terms require more austerity and a withdrawal of all public subsidies. Now, you have the Ukrainian population absolutely devastated. The only result of the IMF’s austerity program, the conditions that it’s laying down for making loans to Ukraine, is you have to repay the debts, but you don’t have the ability to repay the debts. So there’s only one way to do it, and that’s the way that we’ve told Greece and other countries to do. You have to begin selling off whatever you have left of your public domain. Or you have to have your leading oligarchs take on partnerships with American or European investors so that they can buy out into the monopolies in the Ukraine.
“So essentially, the IMF has a two stage, one-two punch. Punch number one is: ‘Here’s the money, now you have to repay us after cutting back public spending and causing a depression.’ The two punch is: ‘Oh, you can’t pay us? I’m sorry that all of our projections are wrong.’
“And the IMF has been wrong on Ukraine year after year. Almost as much as it’s been wrong on Ireland and on Greece. So now the real problem is: what is Ukraine going to have to sell to pay off the foreign debts that it gets for having waged a war that’s devastated an economy. Well, the main things that foreign investors want are Ukrainian farmland. Monsanto has been buying into Ukraine, but Ukraine has a law against alienating its farmland and agricultural land to foreigners. As a matter of fact, its law is very much the same as what the Financial Times reports that Australia is wanting to do today: to block Chinese and American purchases of farmlands. The IMF’s position is: ‘You have to dismantle public regulations against foreign investment and you have to dismantle consumer production and environmental production regulations.’
“In other words, what is in store for Ukraine is a neoliberal policy that’s guaranteed to actually make it even worse. And in that sense, finance is war. Finance is a new kind of warfare using finance and forced selloffs in the IMF as a new kind of battlefield. I’m not sure how all of this is going to really help Ukraine, and it promises to lead to yet another crisis down the road, very, very quickly.”
by Nordic » Mon Feb 16, 2015 3:53 pm
by cptmarginal » Tue Feb 17, 2015 2:36 am
The main looters set to benefit from the takeover of power were some high profile American politicians and their friends and family and they were unashamedly supporting the protests to ensure that they would get their licence to loot. “We stand ready to assist you,” US Vice President Joe Biden promised to protesters, “Imagine where you’d be today if you were able to tell Russia: ‘Keep your gas.’ It would be a very different world.” Biden certainly had imagined where he and his family would be in a Ukraine without Russian gas – his son Hunter has since joined the board of the biggest Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holding.
Biden was not the only well-connected American to join the gas company. Devon Archer, a wealthy investor and Democratic campaign fundraiser with long ties to US Secretary of State John Kerry, upon joining the board of directors rejoiced that Burisma Holdings reminded him of “Exxon in its early days.” The company’s portfolio of licenses is well-diversified across all three of Ukraine’s key hydrocarbon basins – Dnieper-Donets, Carpathian and Azov-Kuban, and its fields are fully connected to the major gas pipelines in the country.
Park started binging on cocaine and Paradigm, his company, suffered. According to people with inside knowledge, one of Park’s business partners began angling for control of the company, and Park began hunting for a buyer friendly to his interests. As luck would have it, he found one in an unlikely quarter: then-Senator Joseph Biden’s family.
At the time, Biden was mulling a 2008 presidential bid. According to sworn statements from people involved in the deal, he worried that his son Hunter’s lobbying career could hurt his campaign and asked his brother James to find Hunter a new line of work. (Hunter Biden disputed this account in an interview with The New Republic.) James Biden approached a business associate named Anthony Lotito, who connected him with James Park’s camp, and the three men began negotiating to buy Paradigm.
On its face, the deal looked solid. Paradigm’s marketing materials boasted $1.5 billion under management and generous returns, and Lotito believed they could quickly expand into union pension funds, which tend to have close ties to democratic politicians. So Lotito and the Bidens pushed ahead. In the spring of 2006, they signed an agreement that gave them a controlling stake in the company, in return for $21 million in cash, to be paid in six months. Hunter Biden—who had no financial industry experience—was named CEO, with a salary of $1.2 million. But it was clear that they needed James Park’s hedge-fund expertise, which meant confronting him about his cocaine habit. According to three sources close to the negotiations, James Biden visited James Park and persuaded him to seek treatment at a center in Florida.
The Bidens soon realized that Paradigm wasn’t as solid as they thought. Instead of $1.5 billion under management, it had just $200 to $300 million, and its holding companies were buried in debt. Worse, the Bidens’ main financier backed out.3 But the Bidens found a way around the lack of capital. That summer, according to court documents and people close to both sides of the negotiations, they approached Park, who was still in treatment, and cut a new deal: Instead of $21 million in cash, they would fork over an $8 million note. Hunter Biden and his lawyer, Marc LoPresti, maintain that the deal was fair, given the state of the company. But people close to Park say he was emotionally fragile and felt indebted to the Bidens, which put him in a vulnerable position.
Finally, in 2008, the economy collapsed, after which it emerged that Allen Stanford, whose firm was soliciting investors for one of Paradigm’s funds, was running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. While the fund itself was solid, investors were spooked. In 2010, Paradigm filed for voluntary liquidation. “It was a thicket,” Hunter Biden told me. “Every time you thought you saw a way out, there would be another road block.”
by conniption » Tue Feb 24, 2015 5:52 pm
MoA
(embedded links)
February 24, 2015
U.S. Pushes For Escalation, Arms Kiev By Laundering Weapons Through Abu Dhabi
The U.S. is circumventing its own proclaimed policy of not delivering weapons to Ukraine and is thereby, despite urgent misgivings from its European allies, increasing the chance of a wider catastrophic war in Europe.
The Ukrainian coup president Poroshenko went to an international arms exhibition in Dubai. There he met the U.S. chief military weapon salesman.
ABU DHABI – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is expected to meet with U.S. defense companies Tuesday during a major arms exhibition here even though the American government has not cleared the firms to sell Kiev lethal weapons.
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s acquisition executive is scheduled to meet with a Ukrainian delegation Monday evening, however Poroshenko is not expected to be there. Kendall, in an interview, said he will be bringing a message of support from the United States.
“I expect the conversation will be about their needs,” Kendall told Defense One a few hours before the meeting. “We’re limited at this point in time in terms of what we’re able to provide them, but where we can be supportive, we want to be.”
Poroshenko, urged on by his neocon U.S. sponsors, wants total war with Russia. Porosheko's deputy foreign minister, currently on a visit in Canada, relayed the message:Ukraine's deputy foreign minister says he is preparing for "full-scale war" against Russia and wants Canada to help by supplying lethal weapons and the training to use them.
Vadym Prystaiko, who until last fall was Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, says the world must not be afraid of joining Ukraine in the fight against a nuclear power.
In the mind of these folks waging a "full-scale war" against a nuclear superpower like Russia is nothing to be afraid of. These are truly lunatics.
Russia says that U.S. weapons delivered to Ukraine would create real trouble. They mean it. To hint how Russia would counter such a move it just offered a spiced up S-300 missile defense system to Iran:Sergei Chemezov, chief executive of the Russian defense corporation Rostec, said Tehran is considering its offer to sell an Antey-2500 anti-ballistic air defense system,
The Antey-2500 is a mobile surface-to-air missile system that offers enhanced combat capabilities, including the destruction of aircraft and ballistic missiles at a range of about 1,500 miles, according to its manufacturer, Almaz-Antey.
The system was developed from a less advanced version -- the 1980s-generation S-300V system -- which has a 125-mile range. A 2007 contract to supply the S-300 system to Iran was canceled in 2010, after the U.S. and Israel lobbied against it, ...
Such a system in Iran would, in case of a conflict, endanger every U.S. airplane in the Middle East.
But that threat did not deter the U.S. As the U.S. arms dealer in Abu Dhabi said: "where we can be supportive, we want to be". The U.S. will now disguise its arms-to-Kiev program by laundering it through its sponsored Middle East dictatorships:Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM
Poroshenko, UAE agree on "delivery of certain types of armaments and military hardware to #Ukraine."
The United Arab Emirates is not known as arms producer. But it buys lots of U.S. weapons. It will now forward those to Ukraine while the U.S. will claim that it does not arm Ukraine. Who do they think will believe them?
This is again a dangerous escalation of the conflict in Ukraine by U.S. machinations. It comes at the same moment that Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine meet in Paris to push for faster implementation of the Minsk 2 accord for a ceasefire and for a political solution of the civil war in Ukraine:
On Monday spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Yevhen Perebyinis said that during their Paris meeting, the foursome of foreign ministers will focus on the implementation of the Minsk agreements and withdrawal of heavy artillery in Donbas.
The Ukrainian government has said that it will not withdraw its artillery as long as there are still skirmishes around a few flashpoints along the ceasefire line. In Shirokyne east of Mariupol the government aligned neo-nazi battalion Azov continues to attack the federalists. The Ukrainian propaganda claims that the federalists plan an immediate attack on Mariupol. That is nonsense and the federalist have denied any plans for further fighting. Unlike the Ukrainian government the federalist started to pull back their artillery and will continue to do so.
The Ukrainian government is breaking the Minsk 2 agreement by not pulling back its heavy artillery from the ceasefire line. The U.S. is arming the Ukrainian army and will soon train its volunteer neo-nazi "national guard" forces.
The major European powers, Germany, France and Russia, try to tame the conflict down. The U.S. and its poodles in Kiev continue to poor oil into the fire. If the Europeans do not succeed in pushing back against Washington the Ukraine with burn and Europe with it.
In Further Escalation U.S. Delivery Of Weapons To Kiev Will Be Laundered Through Abu Dhabi
Posted by b at 10:20 AM | Comments (15)
by Sounder » Wed Feb 25, 2015 8:26 am
After the conversation with the organisation "Volya“…
… I have learned…
…that they succeeded to access Facilities in the project "TechCamp“…
…disguising as a team of IT specialists.
To their surprise, briefings on peculiarities of modern media were held.
American instructors explained how social networks and Internet technologies…
…can be used for targeted manipulation of public opinion…
…as well as to activate protest potential…
…to provoke violent unrest on the territory of Ukraine…
…Radicalisation of the population and triggering of infighting.
American instructors show examples of successful use of social networks…
…used to organise protests
…in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
by conniption » Fri Feb 27, 2015 8:22 am
RT
Why the rise of fascism is again the issue
John Pilger
Published time: February 26, 2015
March of the Truth in Kiev. (RIA Novosti/Alexandr Maksimenko)
The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazis iconography is embedded in our consciousness.
Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.
“To initiate a war of aggression…," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news...
continued...
by seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:19 am
by conniption » Thu Mar 05, 2015 5:57 pm
The Guardian
The demonisation of Russia risks paving the way for war
Seumas Milne
Politicians and the media are using Vladimir Putin and Ukraine to justify military expansionism. It’s dangerous folly
An Azov fighter's insignia
On the ground, it has meant the rise of Ukrainian fascist militias such as the Azov battalion, now preparing to ‘defend’ Mariupol from its own people. Photograph: Alexander Khudoteply/AFP/Getty Images
Wednesday 4 March 2015
A quarter of a century after the end of the cold war, the “Russian threat” is unmistakably back. Vladimir Putin, Britain’s defence secretary Michael Fallon declares, is as great a danger to Europe as “Islamic State”. There may be no ideological confrontation, and Russia may be a shadow of its Soviet predecessor, but the anti-Russian drumbeat has now reached fever pitch.
And much more than in Soviet times, the campaign is personal. It’s all about Putin. The Russian president is an expansionist dictator who has launched a “shameless aggression”. He is the epitome of “political depravity”, “carving up” his neighbours as he crushes dissent at home, and routinely is compared to Hitler. Putin has now become a cartoon villain and Russia the target of almost uniformly belligerent propaganda across the western media. Anyone who questions the dominant narrative on Ukraine – from last year’s overthrow of the elected president and the role of Ukrainian far right to war crimes carried out by Kiev’s forces – is dismissed as a Kremlin dupe.
That has been ratcheted up still further with the murder of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. The Russian president has, of course, been blamed for the killing, though that makes little sense. Nemtsov was a marginal figure whose role in the “catastroika” of the 1990s scarcely endeared him to ordinary Russians. Responsibility for an outrage that exposed the lack of security in the heart of Moscow and was certain to damage the president hardly seems likely to lie with Putin or his supporters.
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But it’s certainly grist to the mill of those pushing military confrontation with Russia. Hundreds of US troops are arriving in Ukraine this week to bolster the Kiev regime’s war with Russian-backed rebels in the east. Not to be outdone, Britain is sending 75 military advisers of its own. As 20th-century history shows, the dispatch of military advisers is often how disastrous escalations start. They are also a direct violation of last month’s Minsk agreement, negotiated with France and Germany, that has at least achieved a temporary ceasefire and some pull-back of heavy weapons. Article 10 requires the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Ukraine.
But Nato’s hawks have got the bit between their teeth. Thousands of Nato troops have been sent to the Baltic states – the Atlantic alliance’s new frontline – untroubled by their indulgence of neo-Nazi parades and denial of minority ethnic rights. A string of American political leaders and generals are calling for the US to arm Kiev, from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Martin Dempsey, to the new defence secretary, Ashton Carter. For the western military complex, the Ukraine conflict has the added attraction of creating new reasons to increase arms spending, as the US army’s General Raymond Odierno made clear when he complained this week about British defence cuts in the face of the “Russian threat”.
Ukrainian government soldiers dig trenches east of the port city of Mariupol. Photograph: Scott Peterson/Getty Images
Putin’s authoritarian conservatism may offer little for Russia’s future, but this anti-Russian incitement is dangerous folly. There certainly has been military expansionism. But it has overwhelmingly come from Nato, not Moscow. For 20 years, despite the commitments at the end of the cold war, Nato has marched relentlessly eastwards, taking in first former east European Warsaw Pact states, then republics of the former Soviet Union itself. As the academic Richard Sakwa puts it in his book Frontline Ukraine, Nato now “exists to manage the risks created by its existence”.
Instead of creating a common European security system including Russia, the US-dominated alliance has expanded up to the Russian border – insisting that is merely the sovereign choice of the states concerned. It clearly isn’t. It’s also the product of an alliance system designed to entrench American “leadership” on the European continent – laid out in Pentagon planning drawn up after the collapse of the Soviet Union to “prevent the re-emergence of a new rival”.
Russia has now challenged that, and the consequences have been played out in Ukraine for the past year: starting with the western-backed ousting of the elected government, through the installation of a Ukrainian nationalist regime, the Russian takeover of Crimea and Moscow-backed uprising in the Donbass. On the ground, it has meant thousands of dead, hundreds of thousands of refugees, indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas and the rise of Ukrainian fascist militias such as the Azov battalion, supported by Kiev and its western sponsors, now preparing to “defend” Mariupol from its own people. For the bulk of the western media, that’s dismissed as Kremlin propaganda.
Russian covert military support for the rebels, on the other hand, is denounced as aggression and “hybrid warfare” – by the same governments that have waged covert wars from Nicaragua to Syria, quite apart from outright aggressions and illegal campaigns in Kosovo, Libya and Iraq.
That doesn’t justify less extreme Russian violations of international law, but it puts them in the context of Russian security. While Putin is portrayed in the west as a reckless land-grabber, in Russian terms he is a centrist. As the veteran Russian leftist Boris Kagarlitsky comments, most Russians want Putin to take a tougher stand against the west “not because of patriotic propaganda, but their experience of the past 25 years”.
In the west, Ukraine – along with Isis – is being used to revive the doctrines of liberal interventionism and even neoconservatism, discredited on the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, Angela Merkel and François Hollande have resisted American pressure to arm Kiev. But when the latest Minsk ceasefire breaks down, as it surely will, there is a real risk that Ukraine’s proxy conflict could turn into full-scale international war.
The alternative is a negotiated settlement which guarantees Ukraine’s neutrality, pluralism and regional autonomy. It may well be too late for that. But there is certainly no military solution. Instead of escalating the war and fuelling nationalist extremism, western powers should be using their leverage to wind it down. If they don’t, the consequences could be disastrous – far beyond Ukraine.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:12 am
ISIS in Ukraine
Kiev and the jihadists: a dark alliance
by Justin Raimondo, March 06, 2015
While we’re fighting the Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIS, in Iraq and Syria, and American officials tout the alleged danger of an attack on the US homeland, in Ukraine Washington and the Caliphate are fighting on the same side. A remarkable series of articles by Marcin Mamon in The Intercept has documented an aspect of the Ukraine conflict that no one else has paid any attention to: the role played by the "Dudayev Battalion," a fighting force of radical Islamists consisting of Chechens, but also including fighters from throughout the Caucasus as well as some Ukrainains.
The keys to Ukranie’s Islamist underground were handed to Mamon by a contact in Istanbul, "Khalid," who commands the ISIS branch there. "Our brothers are there," he told Mamon, and the reporter traveled to Ukraine where he was put in touch with a contact named Ruslan, who led him to Munayev’s clandestine camp.
Named after the first "president" of breakaway Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudaev, the Dudayev Battalion was commanded by Isa Munayev, recently killed in a east Ukraine. Imbued with a fanatical hatred of the Russians, who are backing the rebels in the east, Munayev’s men also feel they are paying back a debt, since the ultra-nationalist Right Sector battalions now fighting for Kiev apparently helped the Chechens in the past. Right Sector is an openly neo-fascist paramilitary group which provided much of the muscle that made the coup against Viktor Yanukovych, former Ukrainian president, possible. Organized into various battalions, including the notorious Azov Brigade, they idolize the World War II collaborators with the Nazis, who fought Soviet troops: the ultra-nationalists have been accused of carrying out atrocities in the Donbass, as well as terrorizing their political opponents on the home front. According to Mamon, they also have been involved in fighting the Russians in far-off Chechnya, where former Right Sector bigwig Oleksandr Muzychko fought alongside Munayev and "the brothers" against the Russians. As Ruslan told Mamon:
"I am here today because my brother, Isa, called us and said, ‘It’s time to repay your debt. There was a time when the brothers from Ukraine came [to Chechnya] and fought against the common enemy, the aggressor, the occupier."
Aside from this solemn warrior ethic, another likely reason for ISIS support to Kiev is the access this gives the terrorists to Western targets. As Mamon puts it:
"Ukraine is now becoming an important stop-off point for the brothers, like Ruslan. In Ukraine, you can buy a passport and a new identity. For $15,000, a fighter receives a new name and a legal document attesting to Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine doesn’t belong to the European Union, but it’s an easy pathway for immigration to the West. Ukrainians have few difficulties obtaining visas to neighboring Poland, where they can work on construction sites and in restaurants, filling the gap left by the millions of Poles who have left in search of work in the United Kingdom and Germany."
We are told that ISIS is planning terrorist attacks in Europe, and security forces are busy rounding up suspects all across the continent – and yet here is this gaping hole in the West’s defenses, where "the brothers" are quietly infiltrating without much notice in the Western media. In cooperation with ultra-nationalist groups like Right Sector, which have also formed their semiautonomous battalions, the Islamists of Ukraine, brandishing Ukrainian passports, have opened a gateway to the West.
Demands that Washington start giving lethal aid to the Ukrainian regime are now part of the foreign policy debate in Washington, with the usual suspects urging the administration to open the weapons spigot. Yet the Ukrainians are saying they’re already getting lethal aid from countries they refuse to identify, according to Ukrainian national security council official Oleg Gladovsky:
"[The aid is coming from] places where we have no influence and where there’s no public uproar about it (which we ourselves have helped created in some places, unfortunately). It’s from these countries that we’re now receiving lethal aid."
So where is this aid coming from?
"In eastern Ukraine," writes Mamon, "the green flag of jihad flies over some of the private battalions’ bases." But how "private" are these fighting groups?
The tatterdemalion Ukrainian army, consisting of poorly-motivated and poorly-armed conscripts, is a poor match for the separatists, who are fighting on their home turf against an invader. The Kiev regime is dependent on these "private" armies to provide the backbone of its fighting force, and there appears to be an uneasy symbiotic relationship between the regular Ukrainian army and these volunteers, with a hands-off approach taken by Kiev to the latter. If the Ukrainian regime is now openly acknowledging getting aid from unnamed countries, it’s fair to ask: is the Dudayev Battalion getting direct aid from the same sources supplying Syria’s radical Islamist rebels with arms – Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and the Saudis?
As the US-funded-and –supported Syrian "moderate" rebels defect to ISIS in droves, the international jihadist network is extending its tentacles into Ukraine to take up the fight on behalf of their "brothers."
One of the key links between the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist factions and the Islamists was Oleksandr Muzychko, who fought alongside Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev – the mastermind behind the Beslan school massacre – in the Chechen wars. Last year Muzychko was killed in a shoot-out with Ukrainian police, but before he went down he was the very visible public face of Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist movement.
In a video that went viral, Muzychko and a group of his fellow Right Sector stormtroopers entered the state prosecutor’s office in the city of Rivne, in northwestern Ukraine, and slapped the prosecutor around for not doing his job to Muzychko’s satisfaction. He also broke into a meeting of the Rivne city council, brandishing a gun, and declaring Right Sector would never disarm. While the authorities no doubt found Muzychko’s antics annoying, this sort of thing is "normal" in the new Ukraine, and it’s likely his involvement with the ISIS underground, rather than his public antics, brought down the ire of the authorities, who ambushed and shot him down on March 24 of last year. Was his involvement with the ISIS cell in Ukraine was becoming increasingly obvious, even to those in the West who had been content to look the other way?
That the Kiev authorities are working with the ISIS outpost is implied throughout Mamon’s piece: as Mamon made his way Munayev’s encampment in the company of Ruslan, they had no trouble at Ukrainian army checkpoints, where the opportunity to collect bribes was foregone and they were waved right through. Throughout Mamon’s piece we hear Munayev’s complaints of poverty: the Dudayev Battalion, we are told, must depend on criminal activities to finance their jihad. Yet one minor oligarch, named "Dima," hands them $20,000, and there is talk of selling black market amber to "buyers in the Persian Gulf, including wealthy sheikhs" – perhaps the same wealthy donors who have so generously funded ISIS.
The links between the Kiev regime and the ISIS enclave in Ukraine are numerous, and only half-hidden. When Mamon arrived at Munayev’s camp, he was met by an armored car that, we are told, was donated by Ihor Kolomoisky, one of the richest men in Ukraine who was recently appointed governor of Dnipropetrovsk. Kolomoisky, despite his Jewish heritage, has no compunctions about allying himself with openly anti-Semitic groups like Right Sector, whose battalions he has financed: like the ISIS-affiliated jihadists he gifted with an armored car, all he cares about is the fight against Vladimir Putin, whom he despises.
Another indication of the ISIS-Kiev alliance is the escape of Adam Osmayev, deputy commander of the Dudayev Battalion, from a Ukrainian jail, where he had been serving a sentence for plotting Putin’s assassination. After the coup in Kiev, Munayev and his fellow fighters broke Osmayev out of prison: when they were confronted by Ukrainian police at a checkpoint, they were mysteriously allowed to pass. As Mamon reports:
"After a dramatic standoff, the Ukrainians allowed the Chechens to go free. (There is no way to confirm Ruslan’s account, but in the fall of 2014, the Odessa court suddenly declared that Osmayev had fulfilled enough of his sentence and had been set free). Osmayev and Munayev came back to Kiev, and the Dudayev battalion was created."
"From time to time," writes Mamon, "Munayev met with representatives of the Ukrainian Security Service, known as the SBU."
The Dudayev Battalion numbers around 500 fighters, but there are also other jihadist brigades in Ukraine, organized into "the Sheikh Mansour battalion, which broke off from the Dudayev battalion" and "is based close to Mariupol, in the southeast of Ukraine," as well as two other groups composed of Crimean Tatars, each consisting of about 500 jihadists.
As US aid flows into Ukraine, how much of it will trickle down to these allies of ISIS – and to what future use will it be put? If John McCain and Lindsey Graham have their way, US arms will soon find their way into the hands of these terrorists, whose jihad against the Russians is bound to turn westward and strike at the capitals of Europe.
This is blowback with a vengeance: we are creating our own enemies, and giving them the weapons to harm us, even as we claim the need for universal surveillance in order to fight them. The mad scientists formulating US foreign policy are raising an army of Frankenstein monsters – who are sure to come after their deluded creators.
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by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 06, 2015 12:19 pm
Syria: As al-Qaeda defeats ‘moderate’ US allies, will US ally with al-Qaeda?
By Juan Cole | Mar. 5, 2015 |
President Obama’s impossibly complicated plan for dealing with ISIL involves a de facto alliance with Iran in Iraq, and training up a ‘third force,’ essentially creating a new, ‘moderate’ Free Syrian Army to attack al-Qaeda and ISIL.
Training an effective new fighting force will likely take 15 years, making it a not very practical option.
Worse, the few moderate units allied with the US in the north of Syria have been being badly defeated by the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), an al-Qaeda affiliate. Just this week, remnants of the al-Hazm Group were defeated at Aleppo and they have been forced to disband. Some of their fighters appear to have gone over to al-Qaeda, taking their American-supplied T.O.W. anti-tank weaponry with them.
The US increasingly has no one with whom to ally in Syria.
Now comes the supposedly good news that the Support Front is considering severing its ties with al-Qaeda. This step seems to have been forced on it by Gulf patrons who are increasingly angry about the al-Qaeda presence.
The danger here is that the Support Front will remain al-Qaeda in all but name, running a hard line ‘emirate’ in Idlib and elsewhere.
It should be remembered that the US dealt with the Taliban in the 1990s, toying with the idea of a gas pipeline through Afghanistan from Turkmenistan.
A decade earlier, in the 1980s, the US was in a de facto alliance with the Office of Services (which became al-Qaeda) against the Communist government of Afghanistan and its Soviet allies.
Those alliances, with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, got the USA attacked on September 11, 2001.
The extremist guerrillas fighting in Syria are no less brutal or mercurial. Those who favor direct US intervention in Syria give ISIL as a pretext.
Over time the temptation to ally with the Support Front will become irresistible in Washington, and the radicals may well be forgiven their years as an active ally of al-Qaeda.
The US as a de facto ally of the next generation’s Usama Bin Laden? We’ve seen this picture and the ending is ugly. Don’t do it. Just say no. The Support Front must not be rehabilitated or become the recipient of US military aid. US troops must not embed with al-Qaeda, or with a group that allied with the latter for years.
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