Libya, Syria And Now Ukraine - Color Revolution By Force

[seemslikeadream]

‘Wrong' Maidan: Ukraine demands that France’s Canal+ TV take hard-hitting documentary off air
Published time: 1 Feb, 2016 08:26
Edited time: 1 Feb, 2016 10:40

Police officers and opposition supporters are seen on Maidan Nezalezhnosti square in Kiev, where clashes began between protesters and the police, February 19, 2014. ©
Andrey Stenin

Ukraine’s authorities have urged a French broadcaster to take a documentary titled “Masks of Revolution” off the air. They claim the movie misrepresents Maidan events, and have a list of their own suggestions for what needs to be shown.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in their facebook statement went as far as to urge Canal+ TV to overhaul their editorial policy.


The film is scheduled to be shown on February 1.

“Paul Moreira strips the masks of modern-day Ukraine and carries out an investigation on the firing line of the new 'Cold War' between the East and the West,” the synopsis posted on the Canal+ website reads.

The film is a special investigation carried out by Paul Moreira, which covers the events in Ukraine over 2014: the far-right radical groups allegedly backed by the US, as well as the deadly violence in the southern Ukrainian town of Odessa.

Read more
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko takes part in a commemoration ceremony at the site where anti-Yanukovich protesters were killed during clashes in Kiev, Ukraine, November 21, 2015. © Gleb GaranichMost Ukrainians think country headed in wrong direction on 2nd anniversary of Maidan uprising
Ukrainian authorities say that Moreira’s Masks of Revolution is “deception” and not an example of “media pluralism,” as it provides a “misrepresented view on the situation in Ukraine.”

"The version of events in the Ukraine offered in the film is pleasing to the ears of conspiracy theories’ supporters and of pro-Russian propagandists. This pamphlet is a documentary made in the worst tradition of misinformation,” the statement adds.

The diplomats went on to urge Canal+ “to reconsider the possibility of airing the film on TV.”

Also, the embassy gave a list of suggestions about what the French broadcaster should show about 2014 Maidan events, “hoping that one day these movies will be presented on Canal +”

The filmmaker, Paul Moreira, has responded to the accusations, saying his film was “contrary to the commonly accepted narrative” but the reaction still shocked him.

“I knew I was going to meet a strong opposition, would be accused of playing into the hands of Putin, of using elements of propaganda. I didn’t expect to meet such denial, bordering on hysteria… I was called a ‘terrorist’ in the pay of the Russian secret services. [They are] urging that the film be banned.

“Even the Ukrainian ambassador pressured Canal Plus. That is what surprises me the most. For it seems to me that Ukraine must urgently raise the question of these paramilitary groups. They are, as stated in the film, the greatest threat to Ukrainian democracy.

”





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1EuQ2yyLv0

[conniption]

U.S Control Over Crimea - the Aim of the Coup in Kiev

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
4th February, 2016

politikus

*Note: the original article was originally published (in Russian) in 2014*



"The coup d'état in Kiev in February of this year had a specific goal: to neutralize the Russian black sea fleet based in Sevastopol, and replace it with the U.S. fleet", said Maurizio Blondet, in a sensational article published on the website http://www.effedieffe.com on 29.05.2014:

"On 22nd February, the day when Yanukovych was deprived of power, the American group hastily entered the Black sea through the Bosporus Strait. This fleet was to take the place of the Russian black sea fleet based in Crimea.

The degree of threat to the vital interests of Moscow clarifies to us why Putin was quick to take Crimea and declare the Peninsula to the Russians. He had irrefutable evidence that the coup in Kiev in February of this year had a specific goal: to neutralize the Russian black sea fleet based in Sevastopol, and replace it with U.S Navy.

On 18th February this year, the Ukrainian Parliament was raided by armed activists of the Svoboda party and Right Sector. On February 22nd, President Yanukovych was forced to leave Kiev, the Pro-Western authorities took power. At the same time, the head of the secret services of Ukraine (SBU) had been appointed - Valentyn Nalyvaichenko. Who is this? An American citizen.



Of course, "accidentally", on February 13th, one of the four American marine groups led by the aircraft carrier George Bush (CSG-2) left the naval base in Norfolk and was sent to the Aegean sea. George Bush is 102 thousand tons, with 90 aircraft and helicopters onboard. It was accompanied by 16 warships, including the cruiser USS Philippine Sea, destroyers Truxtun and Roosevelt and three nuclear submarines.

On 22nd February, the day when Yanukovych was deprived of power, the American group hastily entered the Black sea through the Bosporus Strait. This is a direct violation of the Treaty of Montreux of 1936, allowing only warships up to 45 thousand tons to pass through the Dardanelles. But, as was reported by the Turkish magazine Hurriyet, citing a source from the Defense Ministry of Turkey, the authorities gave secret permission for the passage of the valiant American Navy. This fleet was to take the place of the Russian black sea fleet based in Crimea.

Of course, it was expected that Crimea would also "choose democracy" and will happily welcome the star-spangled fleet. However, crowds of people came to the square of Sevastopol, and after a couple of days of siege of the Parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the Prime Minister Anatolii Mohyliov was driven out, who declared his loyalty to the coup in Kiev (despite the fact that he was brought to power by Yanukovych, giving him a luxury Villa in Yalta). Sergey Aksyonov was chosen to replace Mohyliov, the leader of Pro-Russian forces.

On 6th March, the Parliament of the autonomy of Crimea refused to submit to Kiev and chose to hold a March 16th referendum on the reunification of Crimea with the Russian Motherland. It complicated the American plans.

On March 5th, the original orders sent to the aircraft carriers were canceled. New orders were given to turn from the Greek city of Piraeus to Antalya, to arrive at the Turkish base and wait there. Only destroyers USS Truxtun, USS Donald Cook and the frigate USS Taylor were sent to explore the shores of North Crimea from the 7th to 22nd March under the pretext of joint exercises with Bulgaria and Romania.

The Russian air force announced through the media that the USS Donald Cook had arrived to disrupt the action of the antennas associated with the Mission control space center of the black sea fleet and a network of military satellites ELINT, working in the electromagnetic spectrum. This sophisticated modern system allows them to receive data on U.S. Navy aircraft aboard and launch vehicles from Crimean electronic surveillance radar and navigation systems.

Russian military planes were forced to block the actions of Cook: two su-24MR across eleven visits (!) circled the American ship at the lowest possible altitude, using an onboard system to lock the frequencies of 12-18 Hz in order to neutralize the radar of the USA cruiser.

In addition, the Russian secret services were convinced of the presence onboard the American ship of six groups of commandos, each with 16 people ready to swim unnoticed underwater to reach the shore with the purpose of carrying out acts of sabotage in Crimea and of creating an atmosphere of panic among the local population. This could be via explosions on public transport during rush hour, damaging state buildings, etc. Injection of fear and terror before the referendum would lead to a decrease in the number of voters and would invalidate the results. To exclude such actions, "Russian had to have a hard preventive and impenetrable method of control."

In fact, there was information about the capture by some commandos from NATO countries of one of the sites of Crimea, as was indicated by the urgent request of the General Prosecutor of Crimea Natalia Poklonskaya to translators from the language of one of the landlocked NATO countries neighboring Ukraine. Our conclusion: Cossacks who were sent there, who were able to understand the Romanian language.

Based on the results of the referendum in Crimea (83% of the population voted, 99.7% of voters chose Russia), the American fleet, headed by the aircraft carrier George Bush, was ordered to stop their mission, and duly left the Aegean sea and went to Bahrain.

It is clear to everyone that the Russian military base in Sevastopol is essential. Confirmation of this comes from the recent modernization of the black sea fleet, enhancing its collection to 20 modern ships, including six submarines, frigate-launchers, specializing in protection and locking the opponent in an electronic field, as well as the newest class of helicopter carrier - Mistral, built in French shipyards (deal collapsed -OR). The Navy has a large group of fast reaction forces consisting of paratroopers and Marines. They are supported by the fourth air force division and air defense.

In addition, separate air cargo fleet transportation, consisting of 135 aircraft An-22, An-124, Il- 76MD and An-12, guarantees the transfer of 80 thousand soldiers of the 49th and 58th military corps. This grouping of rapid reaction forces, directly subordinate to the black sea fleet, has a common goal — protection from terrorism in the Mediterranean basin, Eastern Africa and the Middle East up to the Persian Gulf.

But even more powerful is the invisible, or nearly invisible, part of the fleet. It is the Center of space mission control, which has existed since Soviet times. Its written history lists the ships 'Salut', 'Soyuz', 'Apollo-Soyuz' and 'Lunokhod'. Today the Space center receives data from missile-radar systems such as the Voronezh-M (within 6 thousand km), established in Lekhtusi in the Leningrad region, in the city of Pionersky of the Kaliningrad region and in the city of Armavir. The centre receives information from satellites' early warning alarm KMO/K, capable of detecting the launch of missiles of any type — cruise or ballistic. Disruption of the functioning of the center (a serious obstacle to US hegemony and expansion towards Central Asia) or complete withdrawal due to its failure is one of the main goals of the Pentagon.

Based on the aforementioned, we believe that the coup in Kiev, bringing to power a "democratic" puppet government, had as its primary objective the elimination of the Space Center.

Ukraine's entry into NATO is already a secondary objective. With the help of the presidential elections and the strengthening of a "democratic" government, the Pentagon had hoped to force Putin to leave the military base in Crimea in order to replace it later with an American one. But haste cost the Americans, who consider themselves masters in these situations, as they prematurely launched a squadron of drones (unmanned aircraft) into Dnepropetrovsk for reconnaissance flights.

It was flying drones over the Crimean territory before the referendum that revealed to the Russian side, who was using an antenna for eavesdropping, the true plans of the United States".

[backtoiam]

Welcome to Far Side...

on edit: the reason the type of aerial bombing, the things dropped from the helicopters are so dastardly, is because nobody really knows "exactly" where they will land." They are not precision weapons and do not have laser guided systems, they just 'drift' until they hit something.

It was meant to be that way because the terror it adds is huge. There is no "target" because there is no specific guidance system and 'everybody' knows it. So everybody is a target. A terrible weapon.

[conniption]

^^^ In case you haven't been paying attention, bucko, this is a thread more about the Ukraine. Not so much Syria.

thx

[backtoiam]

I have been paying attention. "Syria" is in the thread title, bucko But I get your point, I do...there is actually a better thread for this...

[seemslikeadream]

Scott Horton interviews Dan Wright

1/29/16
Dan Wright
Dan Wright, a longtime blogger and writer for Shadowproof.com, discusses why the US Congress lifted a ban on funding Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, and how their nonstop warmongering could start an apocalyptic nuclear war with Russia.

CONGRESS QUIETLY KILLS BAN ON FUNDING NEO-NAZIS IN UKRAINE

26
JAN
2016
Dan Wright DAN WRIGHT

U.S. policymakers have been in a precarious position since backing the coup that overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

Though many within President Barack Obama’s administration support a policy of tension with Russia and believe a new Cold War can secure budgets and promote their relevance, the Ukrainians actually fighting on behalf of the post-coup government in Kiev are a less-than reputable sort. In fact, many are outright neo-Nazis or neo-Nazi sympathizers who see their fight as part of a larger struggle for racial purity in Ukraine.

Though many of those neo-fascist fighters in Ukraine hearken back to popular figures in Ukrainian history who allied with the Nazis, few Americans and even fewer American policymakers typically cast a fond gaze at the ideology or history of the Third Reich.

Thus, the dilemma: give up support for the neo-fascist militias and be seen as weak in standing up to Russia or support the militias and be seen as getting into bed with murderous neo-Nazis.

Not surprisingly, the first course of action for policymakers was to support the militias and hope no one noticed. This did not go well, as the Associated Press and other media outlets noticed that one of the groups being trained by the U.S. military was the Azov Battalion, which actually uses an emblem from Nazi Germany.

Even the reliably neoconservative Daily Beast started publishing stories wondering if the US was training Neo-Nazis, then eventually confirming that, indeed, the US was providing military and financial support to neo-Nazi militants in Ukraine.

The outcry over the U.S.-Neo-Nazi alliance in Ukraine led Congressmen John Conyers and Ted Yoho to draft an amendment to the House Defense Appropriations bill to limit “arms, training, and other assistance to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia, the Azov Battalion,” which passed by unanimous vote in the House of Representatives.

But that amendment was stripped out of the final bill, allowing U.S. aid to neo-Nazis in Ukraine to continue. According to The Nation, the Department of Defense were the ones who successfully lobbied Congress to kill the Conyers-Yoho amendment and did so on a thoroughly dishonest basis:

The Pentagon’s objection to the Conyers-Yoho amendment rests on the claim that it is redundant because similar legislation—known as the Leahy law—already exists that would prevent the funding of Azov.

This, as it turns out, is untrue. The Leahy law covers only those groups for which the “Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.” Yet the State Department has never claimed to have such information about Azov, so funding to the group cannot be blocked by the Leahy law. [emphasis added]

While it is nice to see the Pentagon pretending to care about redundancy (please carry that view forward to procurement), the truth is if the previous bans had covered the Azov Battalion the US military would not have been training them in the first place.

The reason the Pentagon is playing such a dirty game with Congress on funding the neo-fascist elements in Ukraine is not hard to deduce. Neo-Nazi militias, like the Azov Battalion, are the most dedicated and fierce killers, driven by racial bloodlust and unmoored to civilized thinking or conduct. Azov and their comrades are anxious to get into the fight and spill blood whereas many other Ukrainians are doing everything they can to avoid the war in the east.

What the Obama Administration will soon learn, as the government in Kiev knows now, is that the rabid dog you release on your enemy can just as easily bite your own hand. Empowering the neo-fascist militias today may lay the groundwork for another coup tomorrow.

[seemslikeadream]

IMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, January 31, 2014
Global Research 28 November 2004
Region: Russia and FSU

There is an ongoing and deliberate attempt by foreign powers to spearhead the destabilization of Ukraine including its state structure.

There is a long history of colored revolutions in Ukraine going back to the 1990s.

The protest movement in Kiev bears a marked resemblance to the “Orange Revolution” of 2004 which was supported covertly by Washington. The 2004 “Orange Revolution” led to the ousting of the pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, spearheading into power the Western proxy government of President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko.

Once more Viktor Yanukovitch is the target of a carefully staged “pro-EU protest movement”. The latter was launched following president Yanukovitch’s decision to cancel the “association agreement” with the EU.

The mechanisms of interference are in some regards different to those of 2004. The protests are supported directly by Brussels and Berlin (with EU officials actively involved) rather than by Washington:

“The right-wing parties leading the protests in coordination with EU officials and politicians had called for a “million man march.” Ultimately, some 250,000 to 300,000 people gathered on Maïdan (Independence) Square. It was the largest protest in Kiev since the 2004 “color revolution” organized by US and European imperialism—the so-called Orange Revolution that ousted the pro-Russian Yanukovich and brought the pro-Western tandem of President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko to power.

Evgenia Tymoshenko, the daughter of former prime minister and billionaire natural gas magnate Julia Tymoshenko, whom Yanukovich has jailed, read a message from her mother calling for Yanukovich’s “immediate” ouster. (See Alex Lantier, December 8, 2013)

The following article first published in November 2004, focuses on the October-November 2004 “Orange Revolution” directed against then prime minister Viktor Yanukovich, while also providing details on the insidious role of the IMF and the World Bank in imposing the neoliberal economic policy agenda on behalf of the “Washington Consensus”.

Michel Chossudovsky, December 2013

IMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine

by

Michel Chossudovsky

November 2004

Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukrainian presidential elections is firmly backed by the Washington Consensus.

He is not only supported by the IMF and the international financial community, he also has the endorsement of The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) , Freedom House and the Open Society Institute , which played a behind the scenes role last year in helping “topple Georgia’s president Eduard Shevardnadze by putting financial muscle and organizational metal behind his opponents.” (New Statesman, 29 November 2004).

The NED has four affiliate institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI) , the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) , and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). These organizations are said to be “uniquely qualified to provide technical assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide.” See IRI, http://www.iri.org/history.asp )

In the Ukraine, the NED and its constituent organizations fund Yushchenko’s party Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine), it also finances the Kiev Press Club. In turn, Freedom House, together with The Independent Republican Institute (IRI) are involved in assessing the “fairness of elections and their results”. IRI has staff present in “poll watching” in 9 oblasts (districts), and local staff in all 25 oblasts:

“There are professional outside election monitors from bodies such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but the Ukrainian poll, like its predecessors, also featured thousands of local election monitors trained and paid by western groups. … They also organised exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Mr Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed.” (Ian Traynor 26 November 2004, the Guardian, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TRA411A.html )

Needless to say these various foundations are committed to “Freedom of the Press”. Their activities consist not only in organizing exit polls and feeding disinformation into the Western news chain, they are also involved in the creation and funding of “pro-Western”, “pro-reform” student groups, capable of organizing mass displays of civil disobedience. (For details, see Traynor, op cit) In the Ukraine, the Pora Youth movement (“Its Time”) funded by the Soros Open Society Institute is part of that process with more than 10,000 activists. Supported by the Freedom of Choice Coalition of Ukrainian NGOs , Pora is modeled on Serbia’s Otpor and Georgia’s Kmara.

The Freedom of Choice Coalition acts as an Umbrella organization. It is directly supported by the US and British embassies in Kiev as well as by Germany, through the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (a foundation linked to the ruling Social Democrats). Among its main “partners” (funding agencies) it lists USAID, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Freedom House, The World Bank and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

(Complete list at http://coalition.org.ua/en/index.php?op ... &Itemid=51 )

In turn, Freedom of Choice Coalition directly funds and collects donations for Pora (See http://pora.org.ua/en/content/view/83/95/ )

The National Endowment for Democracy

Among the numerous Western foundations, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), although not officially part of the CIA, performs an important intelligence function in shaping party politics in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and around the World.

NED was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for establishing the NED during the Reagan Administration: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (Washington Post, Sept. 21, 1991).

In the former Soviet Union including the Ukraine, the NED constitutes, so to speak, the CIA’s “civilian arm”. CIA-NED interventions are characterized by a consistent pattern. In Venezuela, the NED was also behind the failed CIA coup against President Hugo Chavez and in Haiti it funded the opposition parties and NGOs, in the US sponsored coup d’Etat and deportation of president Aristide in February 2004. (For details, see Michel Chossudovsky, 29 Feb 2004, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO402D.html )

In the former Yugoslavia, the CIA channeled support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) (since 1995), a paramilitary group involved in terrorist attacks on the Yugoslav police and military. Meanwhile, the NED through the “Center for International Private Enterprise” (CIPE) was backing the DOS opposition coalition in Serbia and Montenegro. More specifically, NED was financing the G-17, an opposition group of economists responsible for formulating (in liaison with the IMF) the DOS coalition’s “free market” reform platform in the 2000 presidential election, which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.

Copy and Paste? The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) has a very similar mandate in the Ukraine, where it directly funds research on “free market reforms” in several key “independent think tanks” and policy research institutes. The Kiev based International Center for Policy Studies (ICPS) is supported by CIPE. It has a similar function to that of the G-17 in Serbia and Montenegro: A group of local economists hired by ICPS was put in charge of drafting, with the support of the World Bank, a comprehensive blueprint of post-election macro-economic reform.

Who is Viktor Yushchenko? IMF Sponsored Candidate

In 1993, Viktor Yushchenko was appointed head of the newly-formed National Bank of Ukraine. Hailed as a “daring reformer”, he was among the main architects of the IMF’s deadly economic medicine which served to impoverish The Ukraine and destroy its economy.

Following his appointment, the Ukraine reached a historical agreement with the IMF. Mr Yushchenko played a key role in negotiating the 1994 agreement as well as creating a new Ukrainian national currency, which resulted in a dramatic plunge in real wages.

The 1994 IMF package was finalized behind closed doors at the Madrid 50 years anniversary Summit of the Bretton Woods institutions. It required the Ukrainian authorities to abandon State controls over the exchange rate leading to an impressive collapse of the currency.

Yushchenko as Head of the Central Bank was responsible for deregulating the national currency under the October 1994 “shock treatment”:

The price of bread increased overnight by 300 percent,
electricity prices by 600 percent,
public transportation by 900 percent.
the standard of living tumbled
According to the Ukrainian State Statistics Committee, quoted by the IMF, real wages in 1998 had fallen by more than 75 percent in relation to their 1991 level.( http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr ... r03174.pdf )

Ironically, the IMF sponsored program was intended to alleviate inflationary pressures: it consisted in imposing “dollarised” prices on an impoverished population with earnings below ten dollars a month.

Combined with the abrupt hikes in fuel and energy prices, the lifting of subsidies and the freeze on credit contributed to destroying industry (both public and private) and undermining Ukraine’s breadbasket economy.

In November 1994, World Bank negotiators were sent in to examine the overhaul of Ukraine’s agriculture. With trade liberalization (which was part of the economic package), US grain surpluses and “food aid” were dumped on the domestic market, contributing to destabilizing one of the World’s largest and most productive wheat economies, (e.g. comparable to that of the American Mid West).

By 1998, the deregulation of the grain market had resulted in a decline in the production of grain by 45 percent in relation to its 1986-90 level. The collapse in livestock production, poultry and dairy products was even more dramatic.

(See http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr ... r03174.pdf )

The cumulative decline in GDP resulting from the IMF sponsored reforms was in excess of 60 percent (from 1992 to 1995).

Propaganda in support of the “Free Market”

Under these circumstances, why would Yushchenko, who was closely associated with the process of economic destruction and impoverishment be so popular? Why has the public image and political reputation of an IMF protégé, namely Mr. Yushchenko remained unscathed?

What the neoliberal agenda does is to build a consensus in “the free market reforms”. “Short term pain gain for long term gain” says the World Bank. “Bitter economic medicine” is the only solution, much in the same way as the Spanish inquisition was the consensus underlying the feudal social order.

In an utterly twisted logic, poverty is presented as a precondition for building a prosperous society. This consensus presents a World of landless farmers, shuttered factories, jobless workers and gutted social programs as a means to achieving economic and social progress.

To sustain the consensus and convince public opinion, requires “turning the World upside down”, creating divisions within society, distorting the truth and ensuring, through a massive propaganda campaign, that no other viable political alternative to the “free market” is allowed to emerge.

Why is Yushchenko so popular? For same reason as George W. Bush, running on his record of war crimes is popular.

And because his opponent, outgoing Prime Minister Yanukovich does not represent a genuine political alternative for The Ukraine, which forcefully challenges the international financial institutions and the interests of Western corporate capital, which are destroying and impoverishing an entire nation.

The 2004 election in the Ukraine was built on a massive propaganda and public relations campaign, supported by the US, with money payoffs by Washington for political parties and organizations committed to Western strategic and economic interests. In turn, US intelligence, working hand in glove with various foundations including the NED, has consistently supported this process of civil society manipulation. The objective is not democracy, but rather the fracturing and colonization of the former Soviet Union.

The IMF and “Good Governance”

In the Ukraine, the IMF not only intervened in the implementation of the macroeconomic agenda, it also intruded directly in the arena of domestic party politics. As in Russia in 1993, the Ukrainian parliament was seen as an obstacle to the implementation of the “free market reforms”. In 1999, under due pressure from Washington and the IMF, Yushchenko was appointed Prime Minister:

Yushchenko’s candidacy had been proposed by 10 parliamentary groups and factions, and Kuchma agreed with their choice…

The weightiest argument may be the International Monetary Fund’s desire to see Yushchenko as Ukraine’s prime minister, because the provision of the former Soviet republic with extended finance facilities depends on that.

Several parliament members believe the IMF is ready to extend a loan worth 300m dollars to Ukraine in January in case Yushchenko becomes prime minister. (ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, 17 Dec 1999)

Following his appointment, Yushchenko immediately set in motion a major IMF sponsored bankruptcy program directed against Ukrainian industry, which essentially consisted in closing down part of the country’s manufacturing base. He also attempted to undermine the bilateral trade in oil and natural gas between Russia and the Ukraine on behalf of the IMF which had demanded that this trade be conducted in US dollars rather than in terms of commodity barter.

They have sacked “our own” Prime Minister!

Yushchenko was accused by his opponents of having put the interests of the IMF ahead of those of the country. In 2001, Yushchenko was sacked as prime minister following a non-confidence vote in the parliament:

”Viktor Yushchenko has fulfilled obligations to the IMF better and more accurately than his duties to citizens of his our country, Olena Markosyan, a Kharkiv-based analyst, has opined in Ukrainian centrist daily Den” (BBC Monitoring, 16 Nov 2004)

“This [Yushchenko] government openly states that it executes all IMF recommendations. Though the government declares the social direction of its policy, actually it is carrying out an anti-social, anti-national policy,” said Communist Party leader Heorhiy Kruchkov ( quoted in Financial Times, May 17, 2001)

The international financial community took immediate action. The Ukraine was back on the creditors’ blacklist.

“The West, which openly put its stake on Yushchenko recently, is not likely to sit on its hands. There is no lack of instruments to bring pressure on Kiev. Most probably the question of resuming IMF, World Bank and EBRD credits to Ukraine will be put on hold because they were expressly linked with Yushchenko’s stay in power…. Talks with the Paris Club on restructuring Ukraine’s $1.2 billion debt may run into difficulty… Not surprisingly, (Ukrainian President) Leonid Kuchma yesterday hastened to distance himself from what is happening and spoke critically about the Rada [Parliament] decision. (Vremya Novostei, 1 May 2001, original Russian)

IMF Managing Director Horst Kohler was adamant. “Yushchenko has gained a lot of credibility outside of Ukraine, and I think he also deserves support inside of Ukraine.” (quoted in the Financial Times, 27 April 2001). The IMF Head did not mince his words:

“He added that the IMF respects Ukraine’s right to choose its leaders, but maintained that the direction of reforms must be preserved. He questioned the wisdom of the VR spending time on maneuvering for a vote of no-confidence in the government while reforms need to be implemented.”

Replicating Yugoslavia. The Partition of The Ukraine?

A few months after his dismissal in 2001, Yushchenko was in Washington for talks with senior members of the Bush administration. He was back in Washington in early 2003 under the auspices of the International Republican Institute. During this visit, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The Neocons had carefully “set the stage” for the October-November 2004 presidential elections.

Yugoslavia was a dress rehearsal for the fracturing of the remnant republics of the former Soviet Union. As recent developments suggest, the break up of the country, namely the partition of The Ukraine, modeled on the experience of former Yugoslavia is, no doubt, one among several transition “scenarios” envisaged by the Bush administration.

Creating divisions between Ukrainians, Russians, Tatars in Crimea and other ethnic groups, between Russian Orthodox. Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholics, etc. is part of Washington’s hidden agenda.

Military Realignments in support of the Free Market

Militarisation supports the Free Market and vice versa. The CIA oversees the NED. The donor community including the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions collaborate with the European Union, NATO and the US State Department.

War and Globalization go in hand in hand. While Yushchenko is considered a protégé of the international financial community, his colleague and political crony, former Defense Minister Yevyen Marchuk is a unbending supporter of US and NATO military presence in the region.

It was largely the initiative of Yevyen Marchuk as Defense Minister to send Ukrainian troops to Iraq, a decision which was opposed by the majority of the Ukrainian population.

In August, Marchuk met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at The Crimean seaside resort of Yalta.

On the agenda of the August talks: Ukraine’s participation in the Iraqi war theater but also the upcoming Ukrainian elections. Defense Minister Marchuk announced following these meetings that Kiev would continue to participate in “the coalition of the willing” and would maintain its troops in Iraq.

Marchuk was sacked in September, barely a month before the first round of the presidential elections.

Attempting a Coup d’Etat?

In a televised address on November 25th, Marchuk, sent a message to the military, police and security forces to disobey the authority of the civil authorities, namely the government of Leonid Kuchma.

“Ukraine’s former defense minister and head of the National Security and Defense Council has declared that he’s convinced that opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko is entitled to be recognized as the president of Ukraine.

Former Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk called on President Leonid Kuchma and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych to exercise good sense. Marchuk underscored that there should be no bloodshed in Ukraine.

Marchuk appealed to state security officers not to fulfill illegal orders and to remember their official honor and dignity.

He stressed that election fraud in the Nov. 21 presidential run-off election, which the government says was won by Prime Minister Yanukovych, was on a mass scale. He said that there is only one way out of the tense political stand-off that has engulfed Ukraine since Monday: negotiations between equals.

Marchuk also appealed to Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Viktor Chernomyrdin to pass along to Russian President Vladimir Putin only objective information. He reminded officers of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol that they are on the territory of a foreign government, and that they should remain mindful of that, calling on the Russian Federation’s defense minister to obey the law.” (See Kiev Post, 26 Nov 2004 and Kanal 5 transcripts, BBC Monitoringm 26 Nov 2004)

This statement by Marchuk, which calls upon the Armed forces and the Police to go against the government, essentially sets the stage for a US-NATO sponsored Coup d’Etat.

Power Struggle: Oil and Pipeline Corridors

Behind the presidential elections, there is a power struggle between pro-US-NATO and pro-Russian factions within the leading political establishment and the military.

What is at stake is not only the maintenance of the IMF sponsored macroeconomic agenda, strategic US-NATO military interests in the region are also at stake.

The objective of the Bush Administration is to install a Ukrainian government which is firmly aligned with Washington, with the ultimate objective of displacing the Russian military from the Black Sea.

In this regard, The Ukraine has already signed several military agreements with NATO and Washington under the government of Leonid Kuchma.

The Ukraine is a member of GUUAM, a military alliance between five former Soviet republics ( Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova). This military alliance was initially designed in 1997 by the Ukrainian National Security Services (NSBU) in close liaison with Washington. Its objective was to undermine the alliance between Russia and Belarus, signed between Moscow and Minsk in 1996.

The Ukraine also signed agreements with Poland and the Baltic states, pertaining to the control of transport corridors and pipeline routes.

GUUAM lies strategically at the hub of the Caspian oil and gas wealth, “with Moldava and the Ukraine offering [pipeline] export routes to the West.” The objective of GUUAM was to exclude Russia from the Black Sea, protect the Anglo-American pipeline routes out of Central Asia and the Caspian sea and essentially cut Russia off not only from the Caspian sea oil basin but also from the Black sea.

Coinciding with the ceremony of NATO’s 50th anniversary at the outset of the war on Yugoslavia in 1999, the heads of State from all five GUUAM countries were present including President Leonid Kuchma of The Ukraine. They had been invited to NATO’s three day celebration in Washington to sign the GUUAM agreement under NATO and US auspices.

Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, immediately announced that they would be leaving the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) security union, which defines the framework of military cooperation between the former Soviet republics, as well their links to Moscow:

“The formation of GUUAM (under NATO’s umbrella and financed by Western military aid) was intent upon further fracturing the CIS. The Cold War, although officially over, had not yet reached its climax: the members of this new pro-NATO political grouping were not only supportive of the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, they had also agreed to ‘low level military cooperation with NATO while insisting that ‘the group is not a military alliance directed against any third party, namely Moscow.’ Dominated by Anglo-American oil interests, the formation of GUUAM ultimately purports on excluding Russia from the oil and gas deposits in the Caspian area as well as isolating Moscow politically.” (Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization, the Truth behind September 11, Global Research, Montreal, 2002, Chapter V)

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2014

[seemslikeadream]

Conflict Heats Up in Ukraine. Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) Versus the Donbass and Lugansk militias

By South Front
Global Research, March 08, 2016

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement this February regarding the casualties sustained in the conflict in the eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) and the Donbass and Lugansk militias.

According to the OHCHR there have been 9,167 killed and 21,044 injured since the conflict began in April of 2014. These figures include civilian casualties. There is some skepticism regarding the casualty figures reported by the Armed Forces, with most parties knowledgeable of the fierce fighting that took place prior to the signing of Minsk II believing that the government has hidden the extent of casualties suffered in the battles that led to the Debaltseve encirclement.

Artillery shelling and small arms fire originating from both sides of the Line of Contact has mired the cease-fire agreed upon under Minsk II on an almost daily basis. As recently as the end of February of this year, the OSCE has monitored and reported on the movement of heavy weapons out of storage on the part of the UAF at numerous times in clear violation of Minsk II, as well as the positioning of infantry fighting vehicles within the 15 kilometer exclusion zone on the part of the militias. Civilians of the Donbass have been subjected to indiscriminant artillery bombardment from the UAF on a continuous basis.



On February 23rd, the UAF attacked the DPR town of Spartak in force, with the support of tanks and artillery. They have also continued to bombard the Donetsk airport with artillery, including “Grad” mobile rocket units. The town of Gorlovka and surrounding neighborhoods have been the target of recent bombardment as well. DPR and LPR reconnaissance has noted the movement of artillery, infantry fighting vehicles and tanks in forward areas close to the contact line on the part of the UAF. This is corroborated by OSCE reports of discrepancies in serial numbers of T-64 and T-72 tanks in storage and the wholesale absence of tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment at UAF storage facilities that come under OSCE monitoring under the Minsk II agreement.

There is further evidence that the UFA is planning a possible offensive in the coming spring and summer months. The AFU “Lugansk” unit, as well as elements of the 24th and 28th mechanized brigades are preparing to conduct exercises simulating the capture and occupation of territories of the LPR. These exercises are to take place very close to the line of contact. The reinforcement and strengthening of defensive positions and the movement of ammunition and supplies to the front line has also been observed.

The tensions between Russia and Turkey that have come out of differing objectives in the Syrian conflict and the downing of the Russian SU-24 last year may now be manifesting in the Ukraine as well. Turkish militants have apparently been working with Crimean Tartars in acts of sabotage directed at the Crimean peninsula. Apparently, the Tartar nationalists that have allied with the Right Sector to enforce an illegal energy and food blockage of Crimea from the Kherson region are receiving material support from the Turkish government. Pictures have appeared that show members of the Turkish “Grey Wolves” with Tartar nationalists in the Kherson area, as well as comments from the Tartar nationalist leader Lenur Islyamov that Turkey has provided him with monetary and material support for the blockade. It is unknown how many Grey Wolves may be operating in Ukraine, but the internal security forces of Crimea are well aware of their presence.

As the government in Kiev continues to lose the support of the people, is mired in charges of corruption, and has proven totally incapable of improving the economic situation of the country, it will most likely resort to a renewal of hostilities in the east. The Poroshenko regime may see no other alternative than to raise the specter of another Russian invasion to retain their hold on power as the domestic situation continues to deteriorate. A renewed offensive against the DPR and LPR and military actions against Crimea, including terrorist operations by Tartar nationalist assisted by Turkish extremists, may well be planned for the summer months as the Ukraine continues to slide towards bankruptcy and the Ukrainian government continues to lose legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of its citizens.

UKRAINE AND TURKEY LAUNCH JOINT NAVAL DRILL AMID STAND-OFFS WITH RUSSIA
BY DAMIEN SHARKOV ON 3/8/16 AT 6:32 PM

A soldier stands guard on the Turkish boat TCG Turgutreis in the port of Varna, March 9, 2015.
NATO countries and Ukraine have carried out multiple drills around the Black Sea since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.
SASA KAVIC/REUTERS
WORLDRUSSIA TURKEY RELATIONSUKRAINE CONFLICT
Ukraine and Turkey’s navies launched a joint military exercise on Monday, as Kiev and Ankara continue to grow closer in the face of their respective stand-offs with Russia.

Ukraine’s relations with Russia have plummeted since Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to annex Crimea in 2014 and Russian-backed fighters moved in on eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, Turkey had been complaining of repeated violations of its airspace by Russian military jets in Syria before it shot one down in November 2015, triggering a very public spat with the Kremlin.

According to a Facebook post by Ukraine’s Navy, Ukraine and Turkey sent two frigates and a degaussing vessel into the Sea of Marmara on Monday to practice tactical maneuvering, anti-aircraft combat and communication.

“In accordance with the plan for joint activities between the Ukrainian Navy and the Navy of the Republic of Turkey, joint base training to prepare Ukrainian crews at Turkey’s naval facilities is also scheduled,” the statement added.

Last month, Ukrainian Member of Parliament Mustafa Dzhemilev said he had opened discussions with Turkey about potentially receiving arms from the NATO member.

And before that, at the end of January, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin met his Turkish counterpart in Istanbul, where he told local newspaper the Daily Sabah that military cooperation with Turkey is something he was “definitely” interested in.

Klimkin’s statement came less than a week after a meeting between Ukraine’s national security and defense secretary Oleksandr Turchynov and Turkey’s Head of the Secretariat for Defense Industries Іsmail Demir, where the two agreed that it is important to “unite the capabilities of [their] countries.”

[Nordic]

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/ ... oy-russia/

U.S. Gov’t. Backs Fascists Who Want To Destroy Russia

Eric Zuesse

The Nation published an outstanding article on March 9th, by James Carden, which described the remarkable extent to which the Obama government (and virtually all of the Washington Establishment) are supporting (financially and otherwise) fascists who want to destroy Russia.

One such example was a recent event in Washington:

It featured the deputy speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament, Andriy Parubiy. According to the program bio, Parubiy served as the “commandant” of the Euromaidan (why did an ostensibly peaceful protest require a “commandant” anyway?) and, later, as secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. The bio provided to attendees might fairly be described as selective. Unmentioned was Parubiy’s role in cofounding the neo-fascist Svoboda party, and his ties to extremist right-wing groups.

After Parubiy’s presentation, which amounted to little more than a recitation of neocon talking points, former US Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst gushed: “That was wonderful.” The Atlantic Council’s Ariel Cohen praised Parubiy’s presentation as “inspiring and impressive.”

Carden unfortunately failed to mention that the Atlantic Council is a PR agency that was established in order to promote NATO, the anti-Russia military alliance, which today’s Ukrainian government wants to join, and which America’s President wants to be in NATO.

Here is how I described Parubiy on 17 February 2015::

Andrey Parubiy, a co-founder of the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, which the CIA renamed the “Freedom” Party (“Svoboda”) in order to hide its origin as Ukraine’s nazi party, announced on Sunday February 15th, that he’ll be seeking weapons from the U.S. He had started (but the CIA named) Ukraine’s ‘Anti Terrorist Operation,’ which has been trying to exterminate the residents in Ukraine’s Donbass region, Ukraine’s separatist region. Parubiy’s announcement said, “Next week I’m off to the United States to speak about this very subject,” of getting Washington to supply the weapons necessary to finish that job.

The reason for his visit is: Ukraine is running out of bullets, guns, and other necessary equipment to achieve his goal. It’s a goal he had only begun as the organizer of Ukraine’s ‘Anti Terrorist Operation.’ The ‘ATO’ had commenced soon after the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, and has not been proceeding nearly as quickly as had been planned; it’s way behind schedule.

According to German intelligence sources, no more than 50,000 people have been killed so far in the operation, though more than a million have fled, which also counts as success because the goal is to clear the land there. As a retired Ukrainian general who supports the operation said, “The shelling there is done as intimidation, … not just object destruction, but [also as] intimidation [to get the population to flee to nearby Russia]. The civilian population is intimidated by a chaotic bombardment.” That constant bombardment requires lots of bombs and bullets, which is why Parubiy now needs a big resupply.

Crimea’s Chief Prosecutor, Natalya Poklonskaya, who lived in Kiev and was a criminal prosecutor in Ukraine’s national government until the coup, but who quit because she didn’t want to serve in what she called a “nazi” government which was being established from the coup, says that Parubiy “was the leader of the armed part of Maidan” — he was the key organizer of the masked snipers who dressed as government forces and shot both the police and the Maidan demonstrators during the coup and so brought down the sitting President of Ukraine. If what she says about his role is correct, then Paribuy was crucial in the success of the 22 February 2014 overthrow of democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and was also crucial to the fulfillment of the appointment that occurred four days later of Yanukovych’s replacement as Ukraine’s leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom Victorial Nuland of the U.S. State Department had already selected, on 4 February 2014, to become Ukraine’s new leader.

So, Parubiy was crucial in America’s successful take-over of Ukraine, and he will now be coming to Washington to request from Congress and the U.S. President the military support needed to finish the job that he and they had started, by completing the extermination of the residents in the Donbass region, which is the region whose residents had voted 90% for Yanukovych (it’s dark purple on that map) and have refused to accept the legitimacy of the Obama-coup Government.

Then, on 26 February 2015, I reported that,

The Deputy Speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Andriy Parubiy, who had been the co-founder of the Nazi-inspired Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, met in Washington on Wednesday, February 25th, with members of the U.S. House and Senate who support his request that the U.S. Government donate weapons to his virtually bankrupt Government. Parubiy also visited with the Pentagon. Weapons are needed by his Government because his Government is engaged in a civil war against the residents in the area of Ukraine that had voted 90% for the former Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Parubiy himself (when he was called “the Mayor of Maidan”) led to overthrow in a violent February 2014 coup.

According to a recent report by Gabriel Gatehouse of the BBC, witness testimony and photographic evidence both conflict with Parubiy’s account of how the overthrow a year ago occurred. The United States Government strongly supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, and denies that it was a coup. The Obama Administration calls it an expression of Ukrainian democracy, and says that the replacement Government was “duly elected” (though by whom was left unsaid by Mr. Obama), and that when elections for a new Ukrainian President were held in northwest Ukraine on 25 May 2014, in which no one in the rebelling region participated, the residents in the rebelling region were terrorists if they refused to accept the election’s winner as being their President. The residents still refused to accept the winner of that election as being their leader. The Government, on 2 May 2014, massacred an estimated 100+ peaceful demonstrators against the Government, in Odessa, and sent troops into the southeast to take over their local governments, and so the civil war started. Mr. Parubiy was a member of the small team that planned the Odessa massacre.

The residents in the area of Ukraine that is being bombed and even firebombed by Parubiy’s Government had opposed the overthrow, because they had voted 90% for the person who was being overthrown; they did not feel that an imposed new leader would be acceptable to them. The continued bombing of them by the replacement Government has thus-far failed to persuade the residents there to support Parubiy’s Government; and, so, those residents have declared their region to be no longer a part of Ukraine. Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko, disagrees; he says that they have no right to do that and that they are therefore ‘terrorists’ for seceding from Ukraine. The United States Government supports that position, and Congress voted more than 98% for it. However, U.S. President Barack Obama, whose Administration ran that coup and actually selected the leader of the interim government to replace Yanukovych, Ukraine’s current Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, hasn’t yet decided whether to send Ukraine more weapons than he has already sent.

Parubiy was also the founder of Patriot of Ukraine, and this article presents their ideology, which is rabidly anti-Russian, but also anti-Semitic and boldly for ‘White Power,’ while it assumes that pureblood ‘Ukrainians’ are the whitest of the whites. People such as this are now feted in Washington, as if the nazis had won WW II and we were them. Being rabidly anti-Russian gives nazis a pass here. This is the entire Washington Establishment as an extension of Allen Dulles’s CIA, which brought even self-proclaimed Nazis into the U.S. and gave them considerable power both here and abroad, because Dulles had secretly been supporting Hitler’s movement all along. Nazis hated Russia, and this has given them carte-blanche by the Washington Establishment.

James Carden’s article in The Nation continues:

Writing in Forbes recently, Adam Ereli, State Department official-turned-lobbyist for the Turkish Institute for Progress, warned that Russia is in the process of turning Armenia into a “new satellite state.” … Ereli is hardly alone is identifying what may be the next front in the new cold war. In a letter to The Washington Post, Andrew Bowen, a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest, decried the growing military ties between Russia and Armenia, which he claims threaten Turkey, “an indispensable US ally and partner in the fight against the Islamic State.”

Leave aside the wholly unsubstantiated — indeed, laughable — claims that Turkey is an “indispensable ally” in the fight against ISIS. The authors simply dismiss the fact that Russian troops are in Armenia at the invitation of the Armenian government. … Does Russia have any legitimate interests?

Carden’s point is shockingly true: Washington denies the legitimate national-security interest that the Russian people have, to not be surrounded by NATO nations whose militaries have been united, ever since U.S. President George H.W. Bush double-crossed Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, in a plan to expand NATO right up to Russia’s borders, and then do — in spades — to the Russian people the type of thing that the communist dictator of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, had tried to do to the American people in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. John Fitzgerald Kennedy didn’t accept it in 1962, and Vladimir Putin isn’t accepting it in 2016. For that, Obama calls Russia the world’s most aggressive nation, which is actually what his own government has been and is.

Here is a terrific 1992 BBC documentary that provides the nazi-fascist Allen Dulles CIA organized origin of G.H.W. Bush’s plan, and its continuation right up to the time when Russia abandoned communism and eliminated its NATO-mirror alliance, the Warsaw Pact, which was the time when Bush’s plan continued that of Dulles, but after the anti-communist rationalization for it was dead and gone. That documentary enables one to understand not only Parubiy, but also the CIA operation that made him and that prepared him to be a leader in the new, U.S.-fascist-run Ukrainian nation.

On 24 November 2014, I headlined, “U.S. Among Only 3 Countries at U.N. Officially Backing Nazism & Holocaust-Denial; Israel Parts Company from Them; Germany Abstains.” The Obama-appointed U.N. Representative, Samantha Power, formerly a journalist famous for condemning genocide, was now one of only three supporters at the U.N., of ethnic cleansing: “In a U.N. vote, on November 21st, only three countries — the United States, Ukraine, and Canada — voted against a resolution to condemn racist facsism, or “nazism,” and to condemn denial of Germany’s World War II Holocaust against primarily Jews. This measure passed the General Assembly, on a vote of 115 in favor, 3 against, and 55 abstentions (the abstentions were in order not to offend U.S. President Obama, who was opposed to the resolution).”

Now that the aristocrats, who run America, no longer have communism to kick around, they’ve gone whole-hog fascist, themselves; and, yet, they’re still considered by the American people to be not shunned and condemned, but instead elected and (by some) even praised. What’s perhaps yet more ominous is that Europeans don’t condemn them. Though none of the EU nations joined the fascist Obama in that U.N. vote, they all stay in NATO and in the American-run EU. No matter how evil the U.S. Government becomes, it retains a thick coat of Teflon. Seemingly more-appropriate allies for today’s Establishment Washington than Europans are, are the Saud family, the biggest financial backers and arms-suppliers to jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS — and, like the American aristocracy, they’re rabidly anti-Russian. That type of aristocrat could be their model. After all, the born Polish nobleman and longtime American, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a co-founder of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, is proud, even today, of having helped create Al Qaeda to defeat the Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan, and he still continues to blame Russia for just about everything — just like Obama does. The U.S. Congress is urging him to do it even more. He’s not enough of a fascist to suit today’s Congress. He’s not doing enough harm to Russia, fast enough to satisfy them. He’s not making the (nazi) ’progress’ that they demand.

[AlicetheKurious]

Nordic, reading that article reminds me why I'm sort of hoping Trump wins. I'm sick of sociopath mass murderers pretending they're human. I like it better when fascists look like what they are.

[Nordic]

Nordic, reading that article reminds me why I'm sort of hoping Trump wins. I'm sick of sociopath mass murderers pretending they're human. I like it better when fascists look like what they are.

Agreed. People are up in arms about Trump and he doesn't even have any power yet. He may be doing us all a favor.

[backtoiam]

AlicetheKurious » Sat Mar 12, 2016 12:33 pm wrote:
Nordic, reading that article reminds me why I'm sort of hoping Trump wins. I'm sick of sociopath mass murderers pretending they're human. I like it better when fascists look like what they are.


nordic replied:
Agreed. People are up in arms about Trump and he doesn't even have any power yet. He may be doing us all a favor.

Agreed.

I saw a news article this morning while I was cruising the news aggregators. It had a fairly good list of the powerful billionaires, politicians, corporate tycoons, and mass other assorted well known psychopaths in it that were aligning against Trump. I would post it but it was written by a conservative who wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade (which I am ambivalent about anyway, i don't care) so I didn't post it for obvious reasons but the rest was a pretty good analysis.

I thought, after reading it, that the people lined up against Trump are the devil we know because of their actions, in spite of their words. Trump is the devil we don't know because we have only heard his words and he has no real power yet.

Considering what the devil we know has done and will continue to do, maybe its time for the devil we don't know...the devil we know is by no means through destroying this planet and the people on it, so why not?

[seemslikeadream]

MARCH 23, 2016
Ukraine Has Become a Problem Case for the European Union
by ULRICH HEYDEN

Nine hundred thousand Ukrainian internal refugees are threatened with losing social assistance. Still no successor to the discredited Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is in sight. Will Poroshenko now have to haggle with the Russia-friendly oligarchs?

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will meet today in Brussels with Angela Merkel and François Hollande, the press secretary of the Ukrainian President, Svyatoslav Zegolko, announced via Facebook.

The meeting could be interesting because a new tone in German-Ukrainian relations has been sounded in recent weeks. “Sometimes I have the impression that Moscow and Kyiv are not fully aware of how serious the situation is,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared at the ‘Normandy Group’ meeting on March 3 in Paris which brought together leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine to discuss greater efforts to implement the Minsk-2 ceasefire agreement of February 2015.

Previously, Berlin had placed particular responsibility on Moscow to implement the agreement.
Andriy Melnyk, the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, is none too happy with the new tone from Steinmeier. He accused the German government of having an “exaggerated pro-Moscow course earlier”. Conciliatory signals from Berlin would be perceived in Moscow as weakness, said Melnyk.

Juncker sees no EU membership for Ukraine in the next 20 years

Another meeting on Thursday in Brussels will bring together Poroshenko, European Council President Donald Tusk and EU European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. This meeting will discuss a proposed visa-free travel regime for citizens of Ukraine. (See postscript below.)

The Ukrainian government gave the go-ahead on March 16 for creating a national agency to combat corruption. The creation of such an agency was a pre-condition of the EU for the introduction of a visa-free regime. On March 15, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law introducing electronic tax returns. So one EU requirement has been met. But visa-free travel for Ukrainians seems unlikely anytime soon due to different positions between Germany and the rest of the EU concerning refugee/migration policy and whether to implement monetarist or more state- active investment policies for the Union.

Hopes of joining the European Union Ukraine are up in the air. A clear stop sign was presented by no less than Juncker on March 3 when he said in a speech at The Hague, “Ukraine will definitely not be able to become a member of the EU in the next 20 to 25 years, and not of NATO either.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper guessed that Juncker’s utterance was directed at reassuring the citizens of the Netherlands who will vote in an April 6 referendum on whether to accept the proposed economic association agreement between EU and Ukraine. Juncker hopes that “an old trading nation like the Netherlands” see its way to approving the trade agreement.

According to a survey by the Dutch television station EenVandaag, some 75 per cent of Dutch voters will vote against the trade agreement. Juncker called on the citizens of the Netherlands to think as “European strategists” and not to oppose the agreement.

“I have no criticism of the political system in the Netherlands,” said Juncker, “but I say: be careful, [a no vote] could change the balance in Europe” and “lead to a big continental crisis. Russia will benefit from a ‘no’ to the treaty. ”

Successor to Yatsenyuk not yet in sight

For the EU, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a problem case. The economic and political problems of the country are evident, to the point that Poroshenko is seeking a way to ‘restart’ his government. But it’s not clear who could succeed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. He is a very unpopular figure among Ukrainians, most of whom are deeply disappointed with the February 2014 “revolution of dignity”. In mid-February, the Ukrainian president suggested a “voluntary resignation” of Yatsenyuk.

In the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament), a majority vote of no confidence against the government led by Yatsenyuk could not be cobbled together. It seems that the prime minister is still quietly backed by the oligarchs, even by Rinat Akhmetov.

Three candidates to succeed Yatsenyuk are being discussed in Kyiv. The most frequently mentioned is Finance Minister Natalya Jaresko. She was born to a family of Ukrainians in the United States. A “technocratic government aiming to accelerate reforms” has been suggested by the press secretary of the Ukrainian president.

Two other possible candidates are the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, and the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Grojsman. But their political weight is not high.

Will Poroshenko get an agreement with the Russia-friendly oligarchs?

A relaxation of the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine is not in sight. There is still no agreement between Kyiv and the internationally unrecognized republics of Donetsk and Lugansk on the conduct of elections in the breakaway territories, as required by the Minsk-2 agreement.

The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) is becoming increasingly self-confident. On March 16, DNR chief Aleksandr Zakharchenko presented the first passports of the ‘people’s republic’ to citizen applicants in a public ceremony (report and video here, in Russian).

Plans were announced at the end of last week by some Ukrainian oligarchs and the leader of the anti-EU ‘Ukrainian Choice’ party, Viktor Medvedchuk, for a ‘federalized’ Ukraine. According to this plan, the wealthy industrialist Akhmetov and Opposition Block leader Yuri Boiko would govern the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk republics and bring them back into the Ukrainian fold. But the idea was quickly rebuffed by Zakharchenko. There is still no confirmation of the existence of this plan and whether Poroshenko has reviewed it.
On March 15, Zakharchenko explained his rejection of the Medvedchuk plan, saying that Donetsk has realized one of the dreams of the Maidan-protesters, namely, a Ukraine without domination by oligarchs. This demand was voiced strongly at the outset of the Maidan movement in 2013, said Zakharchenko; a return to the rule by the Ukrainian oligarchs in eastern Ukraine is out of the question.

As to whether the Opposition Bloc could participate in elections in the Donetsk republic, Zakharchenko said the party must first recognize the “war crimes” committed by the Kyiv regime in Donetsk and Lugansk.

Kyiv’s desired return of control over Donetsk and Lugansk would be a “step back”, Zakharchenko said. “What the people have achieved will not be given back.”

Fighting in the East increases

Military conflicts along the line of contact between Ukraine and the people’s republics have increased in recent days. Rumours of a new round of open warfare are everywhere. Heavy weapons have been used in artillery exchanges in recent days at the edges of the cities of were Donetsk, Gorlovka and the railway juncture city of Debaltseve.

On Wednesday, March 16, the Ukrainian President decreed a new military policy. He spoke of recent “aggressive actions by Russia to exhaust the Ukrainian economy and damage the social and political stability with the goal of destroying the Ukraine and conquering its territory.”

Another “challenge to the security of Ukraine”, he said, is “the possibility of the territory of Ukraine being used in a war in the emerging conflict between member states of NATO and the Russian Federation.”

IDPs threatened with withdrawal of social assistance

Big problems threaten the people who came as refugees to central and western from the “Russian occupied territories” in the east. The Ukrainian secret service is now checking the lists of names of the 900,000 people “resettled” in an exercise to verify whether or not their real domicile is in the east but they are claiming residence in the west for the purpose of receiving social services there.

The Ukrainian journal Korrespondent reported last week that numerous refugees have already been stricken from social assistance rolls under accusations of illegal use of government services but without informing them or giving them the opportunity to explain or appeal.

“Almost half of the registered persons are bogus,” declared the head of Ukraine’s social services department, Basil Hrycak. “They did not move and are living in the occupied territory.”

Ukraine is said to be spending hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars equivalent on such cases monthly. Some of those being cut off are said to be facing severe hunger if not starvation.

According to Ukrainian human rights official, reports Korrespondent, those people who have remained in the zone of the ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ of the Kyiv government are citizens of Ukraine with equal rights and the right to social protection. But the Ukrainian president cut payment of all social services to the residents of the ‘people’s republics’ in November 2014. Poroshenko hoped his draconian measure might provoke food riots in the republics, but these did not materialize. Russia has been sending convoys of humanitarian aid since 2014.

News from Odessa is of attempts at resistance to Kyiv’s rule. On March 16, Oleksandr Borovyk, an advisor to the governor of Odessa, Mikheil Saakashvili, and a deputy of the Odessa city council was physically removed from the council chamber after he delivered a speech in which he accused the town-administration of falsifying the mayoral election that took place in October 2015. Votes were “stolen” and his victory was blocked, Borovyk said. He said the city government is “not legitimate”.

Borovyk said Odessa is the “the worst city” in which he has ever lived. Many deputies applauded as he was removed from the council.
The mayor in the majority Russian-speaking city who was elected in October 2015 is Hennady Trukhanov. He said on Wednesday he is not concerned by the incident in the city council. Borovyk has offended the residents of Odessa, he said.

Ukraine has become a refuge for “political garbage”, Trukhanov said. This was a reference not only to Borovyk but also to Saakashvili, who was appointed governor of Odessa and granted Ukrainian citizenship by Petro Poroshenko on May 30, 2015[1]. “Today they do nothing except that they offend the people of Odessa of various items of no reason.”

Notes:
[1] Mikheil Saakashvili is a fugitive from justice in his home country of Georgia, where he is wanted on criminal charges dating from his time as president of the country from 2008 to 2013. He announced on June 1, 2015 that he had given up his Georgian citizenship in order to avoid “guaranteed imprisonment” in Georgia. The Constitution of Ukraine forbids the extradition of Ukrainian citizens to other states

Postscript, by Ulrich Heyden, March 21, 2016:

Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Petro Poroshenko met in Brussels on March 18 on the sideline of a European Union summit meeting.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that the three leaders agreed on “the need for elections in certain areas of Donetsk and Lugansk in accordance with the Minsk-2 ceasefire agreements.” The convoluted wording “certain areas” refers to the split of the two regions caused by the civil war in Ukraine.

The three politicians also demanded “the immediate release and return to Ukraine of Nadiya Savchenko”. The Ukrainian paramilitary is in prison in Russia where she is accused of drawing Ukrainian artillery fire on two Russian journalists who were killed in a bombardment in May 2014. On March 21, a Russian court found her guilty of being an accessory to the murders of the two journalists.

Merkel, Holland and Poroshenko affirmed that the lifting of sanctions against Russia is dependent on the “full implementation of the Minsk agreements”.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said after a meeting with Poroshenko that the Commission will propose visa travel liberalization with Ukraine in April. Ukraine had made “huge reforms” to comply with EU conditions, said Juncker.

The demonstrative unity in Brussels cannot hide the fact that more criticism is being voiced in Berlin towards the situation in Ukraine and the policies of the government in Kiev.

This piece was first published in German by Telepolis, Thursday, March 17, 2016, translated to English by Roger Annis for CounterPunch.

[seemslikeadream]

Senate committee hearing on JANUARY 21, 2015 - National Security Threats

Former National Security Advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Snowcroft testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on threats to U.S. national security.





Sith Lord Zbigniew Brzezinski continues his Grand Chessboard strategy for US/NATO control over the Eurasian continent. These old men have worked to foment war across the world and they continue to blame Russia for the wars and crimes that they commit themselves. This video is highly revealing in how outdated their thinking is. Link to 2009 German think tank report that detailed US/NATO plans for overthrowing Ukraine and fomenting conflict between Russian and the EU.

IMI-Analyse 2009/013, in: IMI/DFG-VK: Kein Frieden mit der NATO
Imperial Geopolitics: Ukraine, Georgia and the New Cold War between NATO and Russia


von: Martin Hantke | Veröffentlicht am: 1. Januar 2009
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Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand current and future U.S., EU and NATO policy. Over ten years ago the former National Security Advisor gave a graphic description of the imperatives of imperial geopolitics. He argued that the U.S.A.’s position of supremacy should be preserved under all circumstances. To this end NATO, acting as a “bridgehead” of the U.S.A., should expand into Eurasia and take control of geostrategically important regions so as to prevent Russia’s resurgence as a powerful political force.

Brzezinski had in mind two countries or regions in particular: “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state, more likely to be drawn into debilitating conflicts with aroused Central Asians, who would then be supported by their fellow Islamic states to the south.” […] “However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.“1 Brzezinski argued further that there was an imperative need to gain control of the southern Caucasus, i.e. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, on Russia’s southern flank. The past master of U.S. geopolitics set out the aim and purpose of NATO policy with impressive clarity: “The United States and the NATO countries – while sparing Russia’s self-esteem to the extent possible, but nevertheless firmly and consistently – are destroying the geopolitical foundations which could, at least in theory, allow Russia to hope to acquire the status as the number two power in world politics that belonged to the Soviet Union.”2

In the years that followed, these words were systematically put into political practice with NATO taking its eastward expansion right up to Moscow’s borders. Furthermore, active Western support for the “colourful revolutions” in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004) led to the sitting pro-Russian or neutral governments and presidents being ousted by pro-Western candidates.3 Russia regarded NATO’s policy as crossing the “red line”. As the war between Russia and Georgia in the summer of 2008 showed, Russia is no longer prepared to stand idly by in the face of further attempts at expansion. Nevertheless, the Western military alliance is doggedly pursuing its escalation policy, in which Ukraine and Georgia are now being offered NATO membership as a means of safeguarding the “successes” that have been scored. U.S. President Barack Obama is also in favour of these two countries joining NATO.4 The announcement that Michael McFaul, a hardliner on policy towards Moscow, is to be appointed senior director for Russian affairs at the National Security Council gives little cause for hope that Washington under its new president will abandon its aggressive, anti-Russian policy. This amounts to tacit acceptance that the New Cold War between NATO and Russia, invoked so frequently of late, will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Ukraine: “On someone else’s arse”

Even now, the approach to Ukraine is evidently still determined by Brzezinski’s recipes from the devil’s workshop of geopolitics. NATO accession and Europe’s energy supply are issues that are closely intertwined. Writing in Handelsblatt, Peter Zeihan from Strategic Forecast, the think-tank often referred to as the “shadow CIA”, described the complex geopolitical situation as follows: “On the one hand, the ‘orange’ revolution of 2004 led to the installation of a Ukrainian government hostile to Russia’s objectives. President Viktor Yushchenko would like to integrate his country into the European Union and NATO. For Russia that would be the kiss of death. Most of the infrastructure linking Russia with Europe – from pipelines to railway lines and high-voltage cables – is located in Ukraine. Industry and agriculture in both countries are closely interlinked. There are more Russians living in eastern Ukraine than anywhere else in the world outside Russia. The Russian Black Sea fleet is stationed in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol because there are no reasonable alternatives. Ukraine stretches so far into southern Russia that a hostile power in the country could pose a threat to Moscow. Moreover, the country stretches so far eastwards that an antagonistic government there could even threaten Russia’s connections with the Caucasus. In a nutshell, if Ukraine slips out of Russia’s sphere of influence Russia will be forced completely onto the defensive in strategic terms. Vice versa, if Russia regains control in Kiev, the country could set itself up as a regional – and perhaps even a global – power.”5 It was to obviate such a scenario that Washington engaged in a further round of frenzied activity shortly before the end of U.S. President George W. Bush’s period in office. This activity was aimed at advancing Ukraine’s future membership of NATO. Martin Luther’s words to the effect that “Riding through a fire is easy on someone else’s arse” might perhaps have flashed through the mind of the then U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, as she walked up with Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Volodymyr Ohryzko, to sign the United States-Ukraine Charta on Strategic Partnership on 19 December 2008. Rice said: “The United States supports Ukraine’s integration into the Euro-Atlantic structures. And in that regard, I want to assure you that the declaration at Bucharest which foresees that Ukraine will be a member of NATO when it can meet those standards is very much at the center of our policy.” The Ukrainian Foreign Minister set great store by a strengthening of the presence of the United States in Ukraine, in particular through a diplomatic mission on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea.6

In addition to a programme of enhanced security cooperation intended to strengthen Ukraine’s candidacy for NATO membership, agreement was reached on close collaboration on energy issues. It was resolved inter alia that “In recognition of the importance of a well functioning energy sector, the parties intend to work closely together on rehabilitating and modernizing the capacity of Ukraine’s gas transit infrastructure.”7 This Charter on Strategic Partnership was signed against the backdrop of the gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia. Given Ukraine’s failure to pay its debts and the lack of any new agreement on deliveries of gas to Ukraine, supplies of Russian gas to Ukraine were stopped as of 1 January 2009. Within a few days the dispute began to have an effect on energy supplies throughout Europe. On 6 January 2009, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece and Macedonia reported that deliveries through the Ukrainian transit pipelines had come to a halt. Supplies to Austria fell by 90%. There are a number of indications that Ukraine’s actions can only be explained by reference to the support it received from the U.S.A. That was the Russian view too: “The Russian gas company Gazprom has pinned responsibility for the gas dispute with Ukraine on the U.S.A. Gazprom declared on Tuesday that Ukraine’s actions are being directed by the U.S. government. Despite the deployment of EU observers the Ukraine is again removing gas from the transit pipelines. Russia is therefore unable to deliver supplies to the EU countries. Alexander Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the Russian energy giant, has accused the U.S.A. of fuelling the conflict.”8

In the case of both Georgia and Ukraine there is a close link between the gas dispute and support for their admission to NATO. In April 2008 the Bertelsmann Foundation concluded that Ukraine and Georgia were already closely integrated into “NATO’s working processes”. “Ever since it was founded in 1994, both countries have been part of the Partnership for Peace programme of the North Atlantic Alliance which is intended to promote individual cooperation between NATO and non-NATO countries. Cooperation has subsequently been extended. […] In their bilateral cooperation agreements with NATO both countries see far-reaching domestic reforms as a means of moving closer to the defence alliance. Such reforms principally concern the consolidation of internal democratic structures, but priority is also given to the fight against global terrorism and support for the operations and missions of the North Atlantic Alliance. The latter was one reason why U.S. President George W. Bush emphasized his efforts to have Ukraine and Georgia included in the Membership Action Plan. The progress made in integration into NATO’s defence structures puts into perspective the question that arose at the Bucharest summit about the steps Ukraine and Georgia will take after the provisional ‘no’ to their admission to the Membership Action Plan. Their path will inevitably take them into NATO.“9

Germany is playing a double role here. On the one hand it has joined France in rejecting an accelerated accession procedure for Ukraine, which the U.S.A. favoured; on the other hand it is playing a risky game by not placing any obstacles in the path of fundamental approval of Ukraine’s accession to NATO. The German Foreign Office has itself provided an apt description of this double role: “At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008 Ukraine was in principle given the prospect of membership (‘We agreed today that these countries (i.e. Ukraine and Georgia) will become members of NATO’). Ukraine was not granted a Membership Action Plan (MAP); instead, a comprehensive review process was initiated.”10 This granting of prospective membership to Ukraine for the first time, combined with Georgia’s aggression shortly afterwards against Abkhazia and South Ossetia, proved the last straw for Moscow.

Georgia: a geopolitical prize

A look at the map quickly makes it clear why the Southern Caucasus is so important. Georgia provides the only opportunity of supplying Europe with gas and oil from the resource-rich countries of Central Asia and of transporting goods and products to Europe by land from China and Kazakhstan. The Nabucco pipeline project is intended to help reduce Europe’s “dependence” on Russian gas imports, which currently account for 40% of its supplies and are expected to climb to even higher levels. According to the European press service EurActiv, “The US has long been pushing for the construction of oil and natural gas pipelines from the Caspian basin that would bypass Russia, especially via Georgia.”11 The project is a top priority for the European Union, too. During his period as representative of the EU Council President in 2006 the Austrian Minister of Economics Martin Bartenstein said: “[The] Nabucco pipeline is Europe’s most important energy project.”12

For both the EU Member States and the NATO countries Georgia provides the geographical terrain that is essential to cutting Russia off from the purchasers of its energy exports. Russia’s countermeasures include three pipeline projects – Nord Stream (Baltic Sea pipeline), South Stream (Russian-Italian gas pipeline through the Black Sea via Varna in Bulgaria) and Blue Stream (from Russia through the Black Sea into Turkey) – as well as the building of direct energy lines to western and southern Europe to ensure the unobstructed export of energy free from any checks or controls by former Eastern Bloc states very favourably disposed to the U.S.A. This was why the U.S.A., in particular, played the Georgian card in the hope of containing Russia’s political influence in Europe and preventing its rise to the status of an industrial power.

Western support for the war

Germany continues to play a significant part in the arming of Georgia. The Federal Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) mostly train Georgian officers as part of the general staff training course which includes participants from other countries. Over the past few years the Bundeswehr has been host to a steady stream of high-ranking military delegations from Georgia. In addition, G 36 rifles manufactured by Heckler & Koch have been delivered to Georgia. The bulk of the training has been carried out by the U.S.A., however. The U.S. Army has trained Georgian soldiers “to bring the armed forces of Georgia, a loyal ally of Washington, up to NATO standards as an outpost in the Caucasus.”13 In 2006 alone, says the German news magazine Der Spiegel, the U.S.A. supported Georgia to the tune of 80 million U.S. dollars, 13 million of which went on the payment of “military supplies and services” as well as the training of soldiers. In addition the U.S.A. has helped Georgia by regularly modernising its fleet and delivering helicopters free of charge.14 The considerable extent of U.S. military assistance, which has “enabled the Pentagon to overhaul Georgia’s forces from bottom to top”, is described by the New York Times as follows: “At senior levels, the United States helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, American marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle.”15
All told, therefore, the Georgian armed forces have over five infantry brigades each numbering 2,000 men. In addition there are the reservist units whose level of training is far inferior. The Georgian government talks officially of 37,000 soldiers and 100,000 reservists. Since Mikhail Saakashvili took office, Georgia’s military spending has increased significantly: “In 2003 it amounted to 52 million lari (24 million U.S. dollars), whereas in 2006 that figure had tripled to 139 million lari (78 million U.S. dollars). Real expenditure is much higher, however. Anyone liable to be called up for military service, for example, can buy themselves out of the army – four-fifths of the money goes straight to the ministry.”16

There is also brisk cooperation between Georgia and NATO. In July 2008, a joint manoeuvre was held as part of the Partnership for Peace Programme in which a total of 1,630 military personnel, including 1,000 Americans and 600 Georgians, took part.17 In addition, the Georgian army has been – and still is – prominently involved in the war in Iraq, which is in contravention of international law, as well as in Afghanistan and Kosovo. In 2008, Georgia had 2,000 solders in Iraq, the third-largest contingent of the “Coalition of the Willing”. However, after the Georgian army had been repulsed in South Ossetia in August 2008, the U.S. Air Force flew the Georgian units stationed in Iraq back to the home front to provide help while the fighting was still in progress. Given the massive campaign undertaken by the U.S.A. and its allies to build up the country’s military, it is barely credible that, while the U.S.A. might not actually have given the green light, it was not fully informed of the pending attack and subsequently kept silent about it.

At any rate, the Russians are certain that the attack took place with support from Washington. The Russian ambassador to NATO, Dimitri Rogozin, made a statement to the effect that Saakashvili agreed the attack with his “backers”. It is clear to whom he was referring.18 Vladimir Vasilyev, Chairman of the Duma Security Committee, summed up the Russian point of view as follows: “The longer the matter goes on, the better the world will come to understand that Georgia would never have been capable of it [the attack on South Ossetia] without the United States”.19 In an interview for the German TV station ARD the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made his views of the U.S.A.’s behaviour perfectly clear: “One cannot help thinking that the American leadership knew of the planned action and, indeed, participated in it […] in order to organise a small-scale but successful war. And, if things went wrong, to force Russia into the role of the enemy.”20

Russia’s counter-attack

It is, indeed, hard to believe that the Georgian attack took place without any prior consultation with the U.S.A. Yet it must have been clear to the U.S. government that the Georgian army would be crushed in battle, which was precisely what happened. The question arises, therefore, as to Washington’s motives. Did it simply miscalculate in assuming that Russia would quietly accept the Georgian advance? It is hard to imagine but conceivable nonetheless. The other explanation is that the primary objective was to stir up a conflict with Russia so as to make the European Union toe an even more anti-Russian line and that Saakashvili came in handy here in the role of useful idiot, albeit at the expense of the people in the region. The matter cannot be clarified with any degree of certainty, although the latter explanation would appear more plausible.

At all events, the calculation backfired, because Russia seized the opportunity provided by the Georgian attack to improve its own position in the Caucasus. It is also very hard to imagine that Moscow was not informed of Georgia’s invasion plans. It was evidently well prepared for such an eventuality. In July, 8,000 Russian soldiers carried out an exercise simulating the repulsion of a Georgian attack. That might also explain why the Georgian troops were halted within 24 hours and the Russian troops gained the upper hand relatively quickly. Hence to describe Georgia’s war of aggression as the result of President Saakashvili stumbling into a Russian trap is not very convincing. Whether the Russians were well prepared or not, the fact of the matter is that Georgia engaged in a war of aggression.

In the course of the conflict Russia succeeded in shattering confidence in Georgia’s reliability as a transit country for future Caspian energy supplies. Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili himself said that “one of the main reasons for the Russian attack was that Georgia already has the Baku-Tblissi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), which has been laid one metre underground from end to end. This is intended to circumvent Russia.”21 That suspicion is not as mistaken as it might seem. After all, the opening of the BTC pipeline in May 2006, over which Washington and Moscow had wrangled bitterly for almost a decade, was one of the biggest geopolitical successes in the U.S.A.’s plans to roll back Russian influence in the region. “The Georgian security adviser, Alexander Lomaia, says that the Russians dropped six bombs but failed to hit the pipeline. If that is true, it would indicate that Russia’s military action was conducted in pursuit of other, more far-reaching strategic goals than merely preventing a humanitarian crisis in South Ossetia.”22

The Nabucco project was also dealt a heavy blow. According to Ed Chow from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Russia has raised serious doubts in the minds of Western lenders and investors […] as to whether a pipeline through Georgia is safe from attacks or beyond the control of the Kremlin.”23 Nevertheless, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs attempted to give an assurance that the EU was sticking to its plan to build the Nabucco pipeline through Georgia despite the Caucasus conflict: “This infrastructure is needed”, Piebalgs said.24

For the first time since the end of the (old) Cold War Russia has thus ended a Western attempt at expansion by military means. That alone is sufficient to underline the dimensions of the Russian-Georgian war. At the same time the invasion of Georgia is a clear signal to the West that in future Russia will once again have to be taken into account in international power politics. A Strategic Forecast analysis says: “Russia has demonstrated three things with its operation in South Ossetia. Firstly, its army can carry out successful operations, which foreign observers have doubted. Secondly, the Russians can defeat forces trained by U.S. military instructors. Thirdly, Russia has shown that the U.S.A. and NATO are not in a position that would enable them to intervene militarily in this conflict.”25

Astonishing one-sidedness

It is hardly surprising that the Russian response to the Georgian invasion was fiercely criticised by the U.S., which almost unreservedly took Georgia’s side. Zbigniew Brzezinski was vociferous in his response, comparing Putin’s actions with those of Hitler. He went on to say that Moscow’s behaviour “can lead to exclusion and economic and financial sanctions. If Russia continues down this road it must ultimately be isolated within the community of states.”26
The European Union adopted an equally one-sided stance: “The European Council is gravely concerned by the open conflict which has broken out in Georgia, by the resulting violence and by the disproportionate reaction of Russia.”27 These were the words used by the European heads of state and government on 1 September in commenting on the events in the Caucasus. They failed to mention, let alone criticise, the fact that Georgia’s aggression was clearly what had unleashed the war. The statement continues by severely criticising Russia alone. Thus the heads of state and government “strongly condemn Russia’s unilateral decision to recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.” In stark contrast to the policy of recognizing Kosovo that was pursued by the vast majority of EU Member States, the European Council “recalls that a peaceful and lasting solution to the conflict in Georgia must be based on full respect for the principles of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity recognised by international law, the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and United Nations Security Council resolutions.”27

There were occasional vehement demands for even more drastic action against Russia. The Chairman of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski (EPP), advocated an EU position that is “tougher than that of NATO.”28 The fact that the hardliners were not able to have their way entirely has to do with the specific constellation of interests that have made this appear inopportune, particularly from a German perspective. On the one hand there is a desire to show Moscow who is in charge in Europe but, on the other, there is a wish not to spoil things completely with Russia, because business there is simply too profitable.29 Nevertheless, Germany is in almost full accord with NATO’s escalation policy.

(Energy) NATO is put into position

In November 2006 U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, a leading NATO strategist, literally went on the offensive. On the fringes of the NATO summit in Riga he criticised Moscow for its attempts to use oil as a “weapon” against the West and proposed the setting up of an “Energy NATO”. The underlying idea is that in future NATO should treat any interruption of oil and gas supplies as it would a military attack (see article by Tobias Pflüger).

In January 2008, five high-ranking NATO generals published a position paper that was specifically introduced into the debate in the form of a catalogue of requirements for the forthcoming updating of NATO’s strategic concept, the idea being that it could serve as a blueprint for the NATO summit on 3/4 April 2009: “ There will be an increase in global competition for scarce resources, and this will certainly be the case for fossil fuel, which will swell the possibility of suppliers abusing their position and their leverage.. […]Dependency on oil and gas is a vulnerability that some governments will seek to exploit – the Gazprom crisis demonstrated how easily demand can be manipulated. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is – and is likely to remain – a mechanism for keeping the price of oil artificially high, and recently Russia and the United Arab Emirates have been exploring the idea of setting up a ‘Gas OPEC’. […] For this reason, it might well be worth considering using NATO as an instrument of energy security.“30

Shortly afterwards, in June 2008, Richard Lugar, who for a time was under discussion as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State for Defense, repeated his threats against Russia at a hearing of the Senate and vigorously advocated the building of the Nabucco pipeline.31 At the same hearing the new U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden expressly praised Lugar’s work on energy policy and emphasised the importance of the conflicts in the Caspian region: “The stakes involve hundreds of billions of dollars in oil and infrastructure, the resurgence of Russia, and the energy security of Europe.. […] Russians love chess. Our strategic response on the chess board of Central Asia must be to establish a presence on parts of the board they do not yet control. That means laying down new pipelines that add alternatives […] to the monopoly Russia has enjoyed.”32

Biden is therefore likely to have welcomed one of the last major security policy initiatives launched by the Bush administration which aimed at drawing Georgia further into the Western orbit by means of a joint declaration on partnership: “The United States and Georgia officially became “strategic partners” under a charter signed by the two governments on January 9 [2009]. […] Few details have been publicized about the charter, which was signed four months after Georgia’s disastrous war with Russia. It has been widely reported, however, that the Georgian pact resembles a strategic partnership charter signed by the United States and Ukraine in December.”33 Like the United States-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership the agreement with Georgia is likely to comprise intensified military cooperation and measures to expedite Ukraine’s membership of NATO. On 15 September 2008 NATO resolved to set up a commission to deepen relations with Georgia. This is intended “to coordinate Alliance efforts to assist Georgia in recovering from the recent conflict”.34

Cold War as a self-fulfilling prophecy

The aim of the policy pursued by the U.S.A. in Ukraine and Georgia is to wage a new Cold War against Russia. Russia is to be challenged by a policy of pinpricks involving “colourful revolutions”, energy blockades, NATO expansion and the stationing of missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. By disrupting economic relations with Western Europe Washington aims to contain Russia’s global political influence and thwart its advance as a new industrial power. Should this scenario turn out to be a success, it would simultaneously ensure that the NATO allies in Western Europe are tied into a joint strategy of escalation and have to become even more heavily involved in projects designed to secure energy supplies.
Since this strategy has thus far proved successful and it cannot, unfortunately, be assumed that there will be a move away from a policy of U.S. confrontation under President Obama, there is a renewed threat of bloc confrontation. At the height of the Georgian war Russian President Dmitri Medvedev sent out a clear message to the West: “We are not afraid of anything, not even the prospect of a Cold War.”35 The anti-war movement will have to adjust to the realities of the New Cold War. The strategy of imperialism pursued by NATO and the EU must be opposed here and now in a calm and collected fashion.

More from Brzezinski here:





New British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has revealed NATO's nefarious actions fomenting the war in Ukraine and explains what their global dominance goals are.

[conniption]

The Kremlin Stooge
(embedded links)

Having Failed to Achieve Any of Its Goals in Crimea, the West Resorts to Lying

Posted on March 25, 2016
by marknesop


Uncle Volodya says, "Sometimes you can learn things from the way a person denies something. The choice of lies can be almost as helpful as the truth.”

NATO once had such plans for Crimea. It was all going to come together so beautifully. Once Ukraine had been wrenched from Russia’s orbit into that of Europe, Sevastopol would make a dandy NATO naval base on the Black Sea, while Russia was left scrambling for an alternative port. However, after polling public opinion in Crimea and finding a very healthy majority of Crimeans supported a return to Russian control and membership in the Russian Federation, a lightning referendum was held and Russia took back its gift to Ukraine. Disaster; Crimea had been the biggest prize the west was after in Ukraine. Just like that, it was snatched away, out of its reach and gone.

So the west – led, as usual, by Washington, which is a damning indictment of the spoiled dilettantism which currently passes for leadership in Europe – announced that it did not recognize the results of the referendum: it was like it never happened, as so frequently occurs when people make a choice Washington does not care for. The whole business was just completely, entirely illegal under international law, although no specific violation was ever cited. And the west prepared a slate of punishing economic sanctions, which was supposed to inspire massive demonstrations of public anger at Vladimir Putin, resulting in the return of Crimea to Ukrainian control and perhaps even a death-blow to Putin’s rule. It is important to note here that this was completely deliberate – Washington intended to impose economic hardship upon the Russian people so as to force the only solution it knows to resistance: regime change. I mention it here because a malady of forgetfulness appears to have seized Washington. President Obama, especially, seems to have forgotten his initial restrained jubilation – expressed as regretful determination – that the United States was tanking the Russian economy, triggered by the wild runaway of the ruble. For a couple of days, long enough for Washington to scent panic, it looked like it was working. But then attempts to prop up the currency were abandoned, and it was allowed to float, and Russia recovered its balance. And Washington forgot it had ever been excited about wrecking the Russian economy, and pretended that had never been a goal at all. Washington is pretty good at pretending – it has had a hell of a lot of practice.

So sanctions failed to force Russia to hand back Crimea. And the west looked the other way and occupied itself with something distracting (reading international law, perhaps; ha, ha; I was just kidding) so that it did not have to see Ukraine cutting Crimea off from water, food and electricity in an attempt to force its surrender. Ukraine gated off the canal which supplied water. Ukraine imposed a blockade which prevented trucks from entering via the land route – which Ukraine exclusively controls – and food spoiled in the tractor-trailers as they idled at the roadside. Members of Ukraine’s ‘patriotic’ militia units, often thin cover for Nazi sympathies, blew up the pylons which carried the power cables to Crimea, and the west smirked behind its hand as Kiev called them ‘persons unknown’ although they had posed for pictures, and had used an anti-tank weapon – surely not all that common in private hands – to destroy the metal pylons.

And that didn’t work, either. Polls in Crimea revealed that the people were willing to accept severe hardship rather than return to Ukrainian rule. Russia moved quickly to provide alternate water and electricity supplies, and accelerated work on a massive bridge – 19 km long – across the Kerch Strait which will join Crimea and the Russian homeland and remove the last lingering dependence on Ukraine. Kiev’s attempts to bully Crimea into capitulation served only to harden hearts against its temporary and entirely unsatisfactory former master.

Which brings us to now. Having been batted aside in every one of its attempts to recover momentum, what is left to the west? Well, if it cannot string Crimea on its rosary, at least it can tell a wild tale of the misery, degradation and squalor the Russian return has brought to Crimea. The folks back home would probably be satisfied to know the Crimeans deeply regret their choice, and would get right down on their scabby bare knees and beg Kiev to take them back – if only that vile imp of Satan, Vladimir Putin, would quit standing on their necks.

Cue Newsweek‘s terrible, awful, disgraceful tapestry of lies and fabrications, “The Misery and Terror of Life Under Putin in Crimea”.

It’s not entirely fair that Newsweek should absorb the whole of the blame; it was originally published on The Atlantic Council’s site, and the co-author – Melinda Haring – is the Editor of UkraineAlert at The Atlantic Council. The other author – Alina Polyakova – is Deputy Director at The Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. The Atlantic Council, for those not familiar with it, is another neoconservative Washington think tank, actually a hub of think tanks, you can hardly swing a dead cat by the tail in Washington without hitting one of them. Suffice it to say that it includes Anders Aslund, Evelyn Farkas and the balloon-faced CEO of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins as ‘experts‘, among its membership. A word to the wise is sufficient. It was, however, a low-water mark in journalistic integrity to publish such a collection of fabrications and selective metrics without checking to see if any of them were accurate.

Let me tell you something for nothing, just as an aside – there will be a price to be paid, down the road, for lying to people the way these neoconservative circle-jerk clubs for preservation of American global dominance are doing. All I and others can do is tell you the truth as best we can determine it to be, and it will have to be up to you what you believe. But just like when you get pulled over for talking on your cellphone while driving, and pretend like this is the first you ever knew that was against the law; ignorance is not an excuse.

A commenter on this blog, UCG (I can reveal that this stands for “University of California Graduate” – because I guessed it on my own – and that he is an ethnic Russian living in the Golden State, but that’s all I know) whipped this article like a redheaded stepchild, dribbling it up and down the court until it was just a wrinkly skin with all the bullshit squeezed out; listen.

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“On March 16, 2014, Crimeans voted in a sham referendum for Russia to annex Crimea. Has life improved for the approximately 2 million people who live there?”

Yes, yes it has according to the people living there. But I’m sure Eurasia Center will blatantly lie about it.

“Not at all. On every measure, from the economy to its treatment of minorities, the beautiful peninsula has become a shell of what it once was. The economic situation in Crimea is desperate. Tourism, one of the peninsula’s main economic engines, took a serious nosedive in 2014, when Crimea received fewer than 3 million visitors—half the number who vacationed there in 2013. That is because Ukrainians made up the largest portion of tourists in Crimea prior to annexation. But for political and economic reasons, many now choose not to go. The Russian tourists who were supposed to flood into Crimea never came.”

First, the treatment of minorities actually improved, as is documented by the UNHCR. Second, because of the coup in Ukraine, fewer Ukrainians would’ve been going to Crimea. Third, the majority of tourists were Russians, not Ukrainians.

“Crimeans have experienced a sharp decline in their standard of living. Western sanctions prevent European and American companies from operating on the peninsula, cutting into potential revenue and jobs from foreign investment. The Ukrainian government has imposed restrictions on trade with Crimea as well. Since switching to the Russian ruble, Crimeans have been subject to that currency’s massive depreciation, from an exchange rate of about 35 rubles per dollar in 2014 to 70 rubles per dollar today. While Crimeans’ pensions under Russian occupation may be nominally higher, their rubles have lost more than half of their purchasing power.”

Would it have been better with Ukraine’s currency? In 2014, it was at 8.23. In 2016, it’s at roughly 26.23. Hmm; that’s substantially worse than the Ruble’s performance, and yet the article implies that Crimeans wouldn’t have been subject to such a depreciation. The lies continue.

“The situation for the peninsula’s minorities is even worse. Russian authorities have forced Crimean Tatars to become Russian citizens and curtailed their freedoms of speech, language, education and residence—as well as their right to a fair trial. The new authorities have shut down Tatar language media, and Tatar leaders face harassment, detention and threats to their lives. Now, Russia appears ready to outlaw the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, the representative body of the largest indigenous people of the peninsula. “They’re stepping up repressive measures against Crimean Tatars,” Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group analyst Halya Coynash said in a March 15 interview.”

Odd, because according to the UNHCR, the linguistic freedoms have actually increased, and according to Ukraine’s very own electoral data, the support for Mejlis was decreasing. But please, don’t let facts get in the way of bullshitting.

“There’s “huge pressure on religious communities,” Taras Berezovets, founder of Free Crimea, said in a May 2015 interview. After Crimea’s annexation, the FSB raided homes, mosques, schools and churches, forcing religious leaders to flee. Russia extended its stricter laws regulating religious activity to the peninsula. The new authorities have issued a legal order putting all mosques under the control of the Mufti Office of Crimea, while establishing the Mufti Office of Tavriya, reportedly a political organization with close ties to Russia. Crimean Tatars aren’t the only ones facing persecution. After annexation, the first wave of repression targeted mainly pro-Ukrainian activists and Crimean Tatars, while Ukrainians and Russians were the Kremlin’s victims in 2015.”

And the Mejlis aren’t a political organization? Is that why they ran for office? Also, they’re saying that Russia’s oppressing religious minorities, but that Russia’s also oppressing religious majorities? Perhaps atheists too? Much like Russia weaponizing everything, Russia’s oppressing everyone. What’s next?

“Between the 2001 and the 2014 census, the number of people identifying as ethnic Ukrainian in Crimea declined from 24 to 15 percent. Many moved to the mainland, while others feared identifying themselves as ethnic Ukrainian in occupied Crimea. In March 2015, Russia’s FSB charged Crimean journalist Andrii Klymenko with challenging the annexation’s legitimacy and threatening Russian sovereignty by writing a report that was published by the Atlantic Council and Freedom House. The report showed how Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea has unleashed an ongoing chain of human rights violations across the peninsula.”

Between 1989 and 2001 the number of people identifying themselves as Russians in Ukraine fell by three million. Where’s the outrage, Newsweek? Where’s the outrage? Oh, and the number of Crimean Tatars rose from 11 percent to 12 percent, whereas the number of Mejlis supporters declined. Why don’t you mention that, Newsweek?

“Under Article 280 of Russia’s criminal code, Klymenko faces up to five years in jail. As a result, Klymenko cannot visit Crimea, where his parents are buried. Nor can he enter Russia or any territory the Russian Federation controls without risking immediate arrest. Klymenko’s case is emblematic of a broader pattern of human rights abuses and freedom of speech violations that take place in Crimea on a daily basis. The Russian authorities have clamped down on all independent media. In 2015, numerous journalists and activists were arrested and harassed. All voices of dissent—journalists, academics and artists—face harassment, trumped up criminal allegations and accusations of being “undesirables” under Russia’s foreign-agent law, which stipulates that all media (including Internet sites) register as foreign agents if they receive any non-Russian support. This effectively opens all independent media up to expulsion.”

No, it doesn’t. It prevents a whopping zero percent of organically grown protests from being banned. A whopping zero percent.

“Any actions “violating Russia’s territorial integrity,” such as peaceful protests or social media posts challenging the annexation, are subject to criminal prosecution. Consequently, Crimea has become an information vacuum. Human rights and freedom of expression in Crimea today are more tightly restricted than in Russia, where the Kremlin cannot exert the same level of control. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, Crimea is nothing more than a domestic propaganda tool, a military asset for exerting influence in the Black Sea, and a potential bargaining chip for his geopolitical chess game with the West. The Crimean people are the main victims of this game. Melinda Haring is the editor of UkraineAlert at the Atlantic Council, and Alina Polyakova is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.”

Crimea is such an information vacuum, that over half of the Crimeans can access that article. And there goes my respect for Newsweek for running that crap. No one can obliterate its own soft power like the US Department of Hopeless Causes.

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You can’t see me, of course, but I’m clapping from the sidelines. Bravo, UCG; well done. I just have a couple of things to add. First, the contention of the Atlanticists that the referendum in Crimea was a ‘sham referendum for Russia to annex Crimea’. It was nothing of the kind, and ample precedent exists for using a Facultative Referendum to measure the electorate’s will on major questions, including secession from or accession to a union. The west did not even blink when Ukraine announced it would decide by national referendum whether or not to join NATO, and the west knows full well that it is not a question to be decided by referendum – there’s no ‘opt in’ for NATO, you have to be invited, and satisfy a lengthy list of criteria, although it’s true the west mostly just waves a magic wand when gaining turf is to its strategic and tactical advantage. After all, it agreed with a straight face that acceptance of Lithuanian membership would materially contribute to the security of the alliance, and the Lithuanian Air force has one ‘fighter’. Actually, it is a jet trainer optimistically classified as a ‘light attack aircraft’, although the preferred method of attack must be to crash onto the target, since it…uhhh…does not appear to carry any weapons.

There was also considerable guff about the referendum question being confusing. Here’s what it asked:

1. Do you support reunifying Crimea with Russia as a subject of the Russian Federation? or;
2. Do you support the restoration of the 1992 Crimean constitution and the status of Crimea as a part of Ukraine?

The Beeb says the latter option is confusing because “The wording “restoring the 1992 constitution” does not make it clear whether this refers to the original version of the constitution, declaring Crimea an independent state, or the later amended version, in which Crimea was an autonomous republic within Ukraine”. The question clearly spells out that success of the option would result in Crimea remaining a part of Ukraine, and anyone who did not understand that had no business voting – presumably even members of an autonomous republic within Ukraine know their own constitution.

The ballots were printed in Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. That reminds me – a referendum is fast approaching for the British electorate to decide if the country wishes to remain within the European Union. Will the ballots be in English, Punjabi and Polish? Why not? The British electorate contains more than 600,000 ethnic Poles, and Indians are more numerous than that in the UK. What if they’re confused? Physician, heal thyself.

Moving on, the contention that tourism has collapsed in Crimea is comically hypocritical. Ukraine controls all the land access to Crimea, and NATO has sanctioned the piss out of it to make sure westerners are forbidden by law from investing any money in it, while no tourist groups are allowed to sell excursions to it as a destination. There is more than a thread of self-fulfilling prophesy there, as the west hopes devoutly to be able to strangle Crimea’s tourist trade, because it has no other way of punishing it: despite all the squalling that its secession was illegal under international law, nobody wants to cite a specific piece of legislation, lest the Kosovo precedent rear its ugly head.

Deliberately sanctioning the tourist trade can be effective – although the west does not rush to trumpet it, Russia’s sanctions against Turkey have cut its tourist trade in half. Some of the terrific losses are due to an unstable security environment, but if NATO really cares about helping its ally, it will encourage its citizens to visit anyway, won’t it?

Is that what happened in Crimea? Well, no, actually; it’s not. As Jon Hellevig highlights, the outlook is actually fairly bright, and Jon’s economic chops make Anders Aslund look like he is in a deep vegetative state. Oh..wait. Well, never mind that now. Although inflation shot up in Crimea as the economy transitioned away from the truly horrid Ukrainian model, salaries shot up still further, resulting in a net gain of about 40%. Unemployment in Sevastopol was cut in half.

Industrial production grew by 12% in 2015, with a 25% gain year-on-year in December, and was up still further going into the first quarter of 2016. But we were talking about tourism, and for that particular bullet, I want to quote Jon verbatim:

“The tourism industry is coming along very nicely, indeed, with a 21% growth of visitors in 2015 bringing the total to 4.6 million. This is often contrasted with the 6 million tourists, of which 4 million Ukrainians, that used to come before the liberation. The comparison is however quite misleading as the purchasing power and habits of that segment of Ukrainian visitors was quite different. They did not require a high standard of service in accommodation and catering and so did not bring in a profitable business and thus did not stimulate investments. Already in the difficult transition year of 2014, the proceeds from the tourist industry doubled to a value of about $1.5 billion from the level of the Ukrainian years of $700 million.

This year promises to be even better with an expected 20% growth of both amount of visitors and prices (net increase about 10% considering inflation). What is interesting is that Russians have taken to visit Crimea all-year round and not only in the hot summer months.”

Got that, Melinda? Did that rattle your Atlanticist cage any, Alina? Revenue from tourism in Crimea doubled in 2014, and 2015 saw a gain in visitors of 21%. When the bridge is complete, and alternate access to Crimea is restored for cars, you are going to see it do even better, and I would venture to guess Crimea will reap a lot of the Russian tourist trade that used to go to Turkey.

But Melinda and Alina prefer to listen to their sources, which include Halya Coynash, Ukrainian activist and frequent columnist for The Kyiv Post. Here’s Halya, referring to the rise of Naziism in Ukraine as “honest historical debate”, while yelling, “Look!! Over there!! Russia has neo-Nazis in eastern Ukraine to do its dirty work!!”. She also describes a conversation which was ‘intercepted’ (Ukraine is getting nearly as expert as Israel at coming up with these miraculously incriminating telephone intercepts), and very conveniently features ‘local militant’ Dmitry Boitsov saying that he won’t be able to hold the [Lugansk] referendum without Russian support – including troops – and that he might have to cancel it, only to be told by the head of the neo-Nazi Russian National unity Movement that the referendum cannot be cancelled: he is then provided with instructions on how to rig the referendum question. Two things need hardly be said; one, the ‘intercept’ came from the SBU, Ukraine’s legendary Security Service, and two, this recorded conversation was never broadcast as evidence by any serious news outlet. Coynash is at pains to point out that it ‘might be a fake’, but is happy to use her platform as a launch vehicle to get it out there in circulation nonetheless.

The report that Russia is forcing the poor Tatars to accept Russian citizenship is likewise nonsense, and another lie in a seemingly-unending parade of lies; Russia ruled that Crimeans could not hold dual citizenship. You must make a choice. Russia does not order that the choice be Russian.

Once upon a time, a great while ago and for a brief window, the United States really was exceptional, and had only to wave its stick to make much of the rest of the world flinch. As we have often discussed, much of the world at that time was ravaged by war, weak and sick, and the United States was young, strong and mostly untouched; additionally, it had just negotiated a currency agreement that would make its dollar dominant for the foreseeable future. This was a tremendous opportunity.

And slowly at first, piecemeal, but steadily gathering speed, this opportunity was wasted, cast aside, spurned. Foreign policy in Washington is now completely in the hands of civilian ideologues like the authors of the subject piece, who consider America’s massive military as simply a blunt instrument; used to force compliance with its directives, which are only spoken politely once and couched as suggestions. The country’s ideals have become suborned to a neoconservative entity which pulls the levers and emits blasts of steam from behind a curtain, like Oz The Great And Terrible. Its press releases do not reflect reality so much as they do satire; Washington has become The Onion. Never a truer word was spoken than that offered by the anonymous White House staffer to whom is attributed, “You see, when we act, we create our own reality”. Through a series of weak, self-centered and egotistical leaders, America slowly came around to a new course, where the compass needle points to crazy.

It could have been different, but now the die is cast. Let the record so reflect.