Month: November 2014

Alexander Mercouris: Putin just made the most important speech of his career. The West should listen more closely

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For President Putin’s speech at the Valdai Club, October 24, 2014:
https://freeukrainenow.org/2014/10/27/russian-president-vladimir-putins-speech-at-the-valdai-club-october-24-2014/

From Russia Insider, October 29, 2014
By Alexander Mercouris

What he really wants are stability, rules, and a global balance of power – traditional conservative ideas. He thinks the rest of the world needs to rein-in out-of-control US global activism.

Last Friday, Vladimir Putin delivered the single most important speech on foreign policy since he became President in 2000.  Mikhail Gorbachev said he thought it was the best, and most significant speech Putin has ever made.

In it he charted a clear course for Russia, defining its place in international affairs and setting out the principles and objectives of its foreign policy.

The response of the western political and media elite has been pitifully inadequate.  The speech has attracted surprisingly little attention.  The emphasis has been not on what Putin said about Russia or international relations in general but on what he specifically said about the US.

Western commentary wrongly but overwhelmingly treats the speech as simply a critique of US foreign policy (a “diatribe”) with Putin hypocritically condemning a US foreign policy he feels is targeted against him.  Behind this is the assumption that the speech is Putin’s defiant response to the US sanctions policy imposed on Russia since the start of the Ukrainian crisis even though the actual speech barely touches on this question.

Putin did have a lot to say about US foreign policy and what he said was very critical.  However to focus purely on that part of the speech is to fail to do it justice and to ignore its very coherent intellectual framework.

Putin came across a very different person from the aggressive expansionist and nationalist demagogue and gambler of western commentary.  It is also different from the Putin some other people want him to be.  Anyone looking to Putin to lead some great crusade against the US is on the evidence of this speech going to be disappointed.  As some have noticed, what he actually wants from the US is not conflict but cooperation.

Putin’s vision of the international system is a profoundly conservative one – a fact he actually admitted himself after the speech in answer to a question.  Running like a thread throughout the speech is a typical conservative’s yearning for stability and mistrust of change, a wish for a predictable rule based system in which the sovereign rights of nations are respected and in which change when it happens is contained and managed and never encouraged.

Since Putin’s concern is for stability, an aspect of his vision, which would be instantly familiar to an old style European conservative but which is totally alien to a modern western liberal, is that it is totally value neutral.  Where westerners today habitually divide nations into democracies and dictatorships and decide their attitudes to them on that basis, Putin treats them all the same, considering their domestic arrangements to be something for them to worry about.

Underpinning everything is a belief in the need for an orderly system preserved by a balance of power.  For Putin, the USSR’s greatest contribution was precisely in that by providing a counter weight to the US it secured international stability.  Much of the speech is a lament for the loss of the counterweight provided by the USSR.

The part of the speech that criticises US foreign policy draws on these assumptions: the US became intoxicated by the unexpected position it achieved as a result of the USSR’s collapse and rather than acting to preserve the stability of the international system went instead on a rampage through a sequence of violent unilateral actions designed to reshape the world according to its image and interests and in order to perpetuate its dominance.

In the process order and stability have been thrown away and the result is violence and chaos.  Putin recites the list: Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan (where he traces the story back to US support for jihadism against the Soviet army in the 1980s), Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, pointing out that none of these places is better off than it was before the US began to take an interest in them.

In a striking phrase that may cause offence in the US Putin compares the US to a nouveaux riche fecklessly squandering away the windfall.

The speech also shows where Putin wants to position Russia.  In another striking phrase Putin says that he wants Russia to assume leadership of nothing save possibly the defence of international law.

Running like a thread through the speech is a deep commitment to international law interpreted in the most conservative way on the basis of legal documents, treaty texts and Court decisions.  The creative efforts of (as Putin would put it) self-interested western reinterpretation of international law (such as R2P) are spurned as rationalisations for violating it.

By contrast Putin’s response to Western criticism of his Crimean policy is to defend it in the most traditional way by citing the UN Charter and the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Kosovo.

Putin’s training as a lawyer is an aspect of his background that few in the west are aware of.  Judging from his words, it is at least as formative as was his service in the KGB.

This is a vision of Russia as the sheet anchor of the international system, acting together with its allies China and the other BRICS states to restrain the US where possible, rescuing the US from its follies whilst upholding international law, world order and stability.

It is a vision European statesmen of the nineteenth century would have instantly recognised but which political leaders in the US and Europe today barely understand, which is one reason why his speech is little understood.

It is a vision that is very popular in Russia, a country with a history of turmoil where order and stability are highly prized.  It is also arguably a vision that corresponds with Russia’s interests.  As an emerging economy Russia needs a stable and orderly international environment to allow space for its economy to develop.

Importantly throughout the speech Putin made it repeatedly clear that economic development remains for Russia an overriding priority and that the government would take no retaliatory action that might get in the way.

It is also a vision that is likely to be very popular around the world outside the Western camp, where governments and people have become increasingly wary of western interference in their affairs.

In the west, and in the US especially, it will inevitably be seen as a challenge.
 

Alexander Mercouris is a writer on international affairs with a special interest in Russia and law.  He has written extensively on the legal aspects of NSA spying and events in Ukraine in terms of human rights, constitutionality and international law.  He worked for 12 years in the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a lawyer, specializing in human rights and constitutional law.

His family has been prominent in Greek politics for several generations.  He is a frequent commentator on television and speaker at conferences.  He resides in London.

Source:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics_ukraine_opinion/2014/11/04/02-02-43pm/putin_just_made_most_important_speech_his_career_west

Media blackout as U.S. sponsors genocide in Southeastern Ukraine

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Posted on Washington’s Blog, November 13, 2014
By Eric Zuesse

Here’s a typical example of what’s being blacked-out:

This is a photo of a Ukrainian soldier guiding a truck-full of prisoners toward a ditch, to which the prisoners are then dragged one-by-one, and thrown in, and shot — then covered over with dirt after all the corpses (and perhaps some living bleeding survivors) are piled in it. (Of course, any survivors then quickly choke to death, from the dirt):

http://rinf.com/alt-news/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Screen-Shot-2014-11-10-at-1.21.09-PM.png

And here’s an explanation of how this extraordinary video of a genocide being carried out, came to be found by the resistance-fighters against Ukraine’s war to exterminate the residents in Ukraine’s southeast, Ukraine’s region where the vast majority of the people are ethnic Russians, or commonly called “Moskals” by many people in northwestern Ukraine, which term employed by them is equivalent to the terms “nigger,” and “kike” that are used in some other countries: all psychological terms of de-humanization.

Though this video of a genocide-in-action is rare, the event itself is routinely happening in southeastern Ukraine, so that the Ukrainian Government can reduce the population in the area of Ukraine that had voted over 80% for the Ukrainian President whom the Obama Administration overthrew in a violent CIA-paid, U.S.-State-Department planned-and-run, coup, that climaxed on 22 February 2014. The new Government is trying to eliminate enough of the people who had voted for him so that the coup-imposed regime will be able to stay in power ‘democratically,’ with those Russia-friendly voters gone — enough of those voters gone so that America’s coup-regime can continue even as a democracy.

This is the video from which that still-photo is taken — you can see this entire event (except the burial), here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3f9_1413978229. The victims who are shoved into, then shot in the ditch, are all dressed in civilian clothes. They’re not soldiers.

As is evident from that video, the troops who are executing these people don’t care whether any one of the bodies down in that ditch are still alive; the next victim just gets thrown promptly on top, and shot. These troops are interested only in speed, without concern for victims.

Their only “concern” for the victims is to rape the ones they want, and to kill as many of the residents who live there as possible. The objective is officially called “punishment.” That’s the Ukrainian Government’s term. The aim is to make them suffer.

Here is how deeply immersed in hatred of “Moscals” these people are. The Ukrainians who fought on Hitler’s side in WWII are heroes to them. An American friend who happens to live in the conflict-zone, the southeast, where the “Moskals” are predominant, wrote me today about the city of “Mariupol. The hospital there is being inundated with rape victims. A lot of girls are just going missing. People are disappearing constantly. The photo enclosed is from Artemosk yesterday. The Ukraine army ran over the car killing two people. It got stuck on top of the car.” Kill them however you can, is their assignment. Soldiers in the Ukrainian Army are taught that everyone who lives in these areas is the enemy. Killing the residents there is considered to be ‘patriotic.’

There is also plenty of bombing, and firing missiles at, the cities and villages there, to destroy people and buildings, so that many of the surviving residents will flee over the border into neighboring Russia, from whence they’ll never again be allowed to vote in a Ukrainian election — thereby further reducing the number of those voters in Ukrainian national elections. Such bombing and shelling seem to be the Government’s main methods of eliminating residents in the southeast. Also, white phosphorous and other illegal weapons of terror are used, in order to especially induce the residents to evacuate into Russia.

This is a “genocide” against ethnic Russians whose families have lived inside Ukraine, in many cases, for centuries. It is also, and in the very same sense, an “ethnic cleansing,” to lock-in the anti-Russian regime that Obama installed earlier this year.

Here are some of the people who have been fleeing into Russia. Every one of those busloads of refugees exiting Ukraine is further success for Obama’s plan, because it means fewer pro-Eastern, anti-Western, voters.

So, as you can see, the new Ukrainian Government is having considerable success in its efforts to murder and terrorize enough of the residents there, for Ukraine’s electoral map to be no longer as favorable as it formerly was toward political candidates who prefer Russia over the United States. This is a way to gain a new ally against Russia, right next door to Russia. It’s conquest of Ukraine’s southeast, by Ukraine’s northwest.

Here is a Gallup poll that had been taken throughout Ukraine in April 2014, just after the coup. As you can see, the northwest liked the U.S., the European Union, and NATO, while the southeast liked Russia and didn’t want to join either the EU or NATO. Furthermore, Crimeans, the residents in what had been the far-southernmost part of Ukraine, loathed Ukraine, and were relieved to be restored again to Russia. Sectional differences in Ukraine are extreme. Obama forced the Russia-haters into power, and wants to keep them in power.

Moreover, Gallup had polled 500 Crimeans during May 16-30 in 2013, and found that only 15% considered themselves “Ukrainian” at all. This was when Crimea was still part of Ukraine. 24% considered themselves simply “Crimean,” which nonetheless was a renunciation of any Ukrainian identity for themselves; so, that’s 24% who didn’t think of themselves as being Ukrainian. And additionally, 40% — a number virtually matching the totality of the other two, and nearly three times larger than the percentage who called themselves “Ukrainian” — considered themselves already to be “Russian,” even before the coup. The people there overwhelmingly wanted to secede from Ukraine, and they preferred to be part of Russia, just as Crimea had been prior to 1954.

Immediately after the coup, Russia sent troops into Crimea to preserve its Black Sea Fleet which has always been stationed there; and this military presence protected Crimeans, too, against the ethnic cleansing that was quickly started by the new Ukrainian regime to eliminate the residents in other areas of Ukraine’s southeast than Crimea. You’ll see those areas in purple on Ukraine’s 2010 electoral map, with the purple areas being the ones where the election’s pro-Russian winner, Viktor Yanukovych, had received over 80% of the vote. Here is the map of that 2010 vote, with the purple areas being the same areas that are now being ethnically cleansed. This map shows the exact voting-percentages: the three districts that voted more than 80% for the man whom Obama overthrew are now the ones that either broke away from Ukraine or are trying to. This is where the genocide is being concentrated. The people who live there aren’t wanted by Kiev’s new Government; only their land is.

Back when the U.S-engineered “Maidan” demonstrations had first placed into power a pro-U.S. Ukrainian President, Yanukovych’s opponent in 2004, here is the election map, which showed just the same areas that were strongly pro-Russian then as now.

Obviously, the U.S. CIA, and State Department, and President Barack Obama, can read electoral maps; and, as long as those voters in Ukraine’s far-east stayed alive where they were, inside Ukraine, no anti-Russian regime in Ukraine would be able to remain securely in power.

However, a pretext needed to be established in order to ‘justify’ this ethnic cleansing; and that pretext was that they were separatists who threatened the presumed (but always fictional) unity of the Ukrainian culture and State.

In order to scare the residents in the pro-Russian areas and get them to become separatists — to become terrified enough for them to want to become part of Russia or else flee into safety inside Russia rather than to be attacked, bombed, and shot, by this new regime in Kiev — the Government, or actually one of its officials who happens to be one of Ukraine’s oligarchs, with a fortune over five billion dollars, held a massacre of peaceful pro-Russian demonstrators they trapped inside the Odessa Trade Unions Building on 2 May 2014, and then the army itself invaded other cities in the southeast on May 9th. By this time, many residents throughout the southeast, basically in the areas where Yanukovych had received over 80% of the vote, formed themselves into militias and moved to secede from Ukraine (to protect themselves and their families from the new regime), which this new Ukrainian Government promptly called ‘terrorism,’ and the Government announced an “Anti-Terrorist Operation,” or “ATO,” in order to exterminate them. Also, many people in Ukraine’s northwest openly mocked the people who had been burnt and clubbed to death at the Trade Unions Building massacre. The victims of that massacre were blamed for the massacre, because they had been ‘terrorists.’

Here is how Ukraine’s Defense Minister described his plan:

“There will be a thorough filtration of people. There will be special filtration measures put in place. We will filter out people, including women, who are linked to separatism, who were committing crimes on Ukrainian territory, crimes related to terrorist activities. We have a lot of information regarding this, and we have a formidable framework to combat this, and respective power structures will carry out this operation. Besides, this is a serious issue, related to the fact that people will be resettled to other regions.”

The new Government is also training Ukraine’s children to view extermination of Russians as being a patriotic necessity for Ukrainians. There are summer camps to which children are sent to be taught Ukrainian nazi ideology, where they march under both the Ukrainian flag and also various nazi flags, sometimes including the swastika. Both at such camps, and inside the parliament, the German nazi salute of the stiff right arm raised upward, with the hand and fingers positioned stiffly forward, is commonly given, as a sign of the individual’s loyalty to the country. Also, Ukraine’s military is increasingly filled with men who are tattooed with the swastika and other German nazi insignia. The common heritage back to Adolf Hitler (whom America’s WWII veterans went to war to defeat, of course) is being honored, not merely more overtly, but also more privately, by right-wing Ukrainians, as having been the leading edge of the new Ukraine, which U.S. President Barack Obama — the United States Government — installed on February 22nd, and which perpetrated the Odessa massacre on May 2nd, as well as the civil war that followed. These are America’s new  allies.

But it’s all being blacked-out, in countries that claim to represent democracy. This black-out adds insult to the injury that the present regime is causing, and not only to Ukraine, but to US. It’s complicity in this Administration’s criminality. And it is dangerous.

This is no mere game. The public needs to know that this is happening, and why it’s happening. Otherwise, there is no democracy, because what’s at stake here is not only the character of today’s America, but is America’s future, and the world’s. If the American people are manipulated about this, then they are no free people, and American democracy is then itself fake, no longer real, in any significant sense. Just a sham. And a shame — not of the public, but of the people who hide the truth from the public.

Due to the Internet, this is the first genocide that is being documented in real time, as it occurs. Historians will note this genocide, and will also note where it was reported, and where it was not reported.

———-

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010,  and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Source:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/11/media-blackout-u-s-sponsors-genocide-southeastern-ukraine.html

Former CIA officer says the CIA won the midterm elections

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The grounds for such a reversal of fortune has been well prepared by the intelligence community’s persistent overhyping of what Clapper refers to as a “perfect storm” of “diverse” threats currently confronting the United States, most notably ISIS and associated groups together with the manufactured crisis in Ukraine

From American Conservative, November 13, 2014
The CIA Won the Midterms
By Philip Giraldi

Note: Midterm elections are the elections halfway through an American president’s 4-year term.

Incoming intel committee chair Richard Burr will end any hope of holding out of control spy agencies accountable.

The wheels up party is a venerable CIA tradition, normally celebrated at overseas stations when a particularly incompetent Chief of Station or a hostile ambassador was in the process of permanently leaving post. The drinking would begin at a time estimated to coincide with the moment when the dearly departed’s aircraft lifted off from the tarmac on its way to Washington.

Wheels ups are rarer at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., though celebrations were reported when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980; but as a number of senior officers in the Agency actually had a hand in that development, there was probably a measure of self-congratulation at a job well done.

One might well imagine that the partying began at Langley shortly after the polls closed last Tuesday, as soon as it became clear that there would be a GOP Senate majority. More to the point, Sen. Dianne Feinstein would be performing her own wheels up, relinquishing her position as Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) chair to be replaced by the little known Richard Burr of North Carolina. Burr is regarded by the Agency as a good friend, someone who had already staked out a position in favor of protecting government secrecy, stating “I personally don’t believe that anything that goes on in the intelligence committee should ever be discussed publicly.” He also basically supports the CIA position that torture produced information critical to the killing of Osama bin Laden, commenting that “The information that eventually led us to this compound was the direct result of enhanced interrogations…” Burr is regarded as a right-wing conservative and has earned the ultimate accolade of a zero rating from the American Civil Liberties Union. Continue reading →

Dozens of “near miss” incidents have brought NATO and Russia to the brink of war

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From World Socialist Website, November 11, 2014
By Alex Lantier

According to a report published yesterday by the London-based European Leadership Network think tank (ELN), there have been at least 40 “near misses” in which the Russian military and NATO forces, sent to Eastern Europe following last February’s far-right, NATO-backed putsch in Kiev, came close to military conflict.

The ELN writes that NATO-Russian relations since March 2014, have been in “a situation in which mistrust, fear, and shortened leadership decision times characterize a volatile stand-off between a nuclear-armed state and a nuclear-armed alliance.” The report continues: “To perpetuate that reality in the circumstances described in this report is risky at best. At worst, it could prove catastrophic.”

The ELN is comprised of top-level security officials from a number of European imperialist countries. Its board includes Munich Security Conference Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, former Defense Secretaries Des Browne and Malcolm Rifkind (UK), Volker Ruehe (Germany), and Alain Richard (France), and former UN Special Commissioner on Iraq Rolf Ekeus. In its report, it carefully selects the incidents it describes to falsely cast Russia as the aggressor.

Nonetheless, the reported incidents clearly illustrate the immense dangers posed to the survival of humanity by NATO’s reckless escalation in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the US-led NATO regime-change operation in Ukraine.

Armies worldwide are on a hair trigger, with NATO jets patrolling the skies of the Baltic republics and other Eastern European states as little as a quarter hour’s flight time from Russian cities. Minor miscommunications between Russian forces and the NATO troops, fighter jets and warships flooding into Eastern Europe—or deployed in North America and the Pacific, where other “near misses” occurred—could rapidly escalate into a global nuclear conflagration.

One so-called “high-risk” incident occurred on September 5, two days after US President Barack Obama visited Estonia to assure it of Washington’s “eternal support” against Russia. “On 5 September 2014, an Estonian security service operative, Eston Kohver, was abducted by Russian agents from an Estonian border post. He was later taken to Moscow and accused of espionage,” the ELN writes. “Had the incident resulted in loss of life, there could have been a dangerous and uncontrolled escalation.”

As with most of the incidents the ELN reports, this event shows that the main war danger comes from NATO’s aggressive policies. Estonia is a tiny, non-nuclear Baltic country of 1.3 million people near the Russian city of St. Petersburg. It would use diplomatic channels to resolve the matter and not risk military escalation against Russia, if it were not receiving encouragement and strong assurances of support against Russia, including direct military support, from NATO and the United States.

Another “high-risk” incident was Sweden’s bellicose but fruitless hunt for a Russian submarine it believed to be in its territorial waters between October 17 and October 27. “Supreme Commander General Sverker Goranson underlined that Sweden was ready to use ‘armed force’ to bring the vessel to the surface if necessary,” the ELN writes. “Had the submarine been found and force used by Swedish authorities, this may have resulted in casualties and a further Russian military response.”

The last “high-risk” incident was the near-collision on March 3 of an SAS passenger plane and a Russian reconnaissance aircraft that was not transmitting its position to civilian air authorities. According to the ELN, a collision leading to passenger deaths would have led NATO to classify “further un-logged or blind air activity over Europe as a possible threat to life requiring forceful pre-emptive interdiction.”

That is, NATO would adopt the incendiary policy of tracking and destroying all unidentified flying objects in European air space—rapidly risking war with Russia.

The conflicts and the danger of nuclear war raised in this report underscore the catastrophic implications of the crisis of world capitalism. A quarter century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism, a new world war is being prepared as the imperialist powers manipulate ethnic divisions within the former USSR to encircle and divide Russia.

The central danger to the working class is the aggressive policy of the NATO powers, led by the United States and Germany. They backed a putsch in Kiev spearheaded by forces of the Ukrainian fascist Right Sector militia. They then seized upon the resulting civil war that broke out between the far-right Kiev regime and ethnic Russian areas in eastern Ukraine to denounce Russia and dispatch military forces to Poland, the Baltic republics, the Black Sea region and Ukraine itself.

This offensive was justified in the NATO countries with lying claims that the US-led military alliance was intervening to support freedom. The risk of nuclear war resulting from the offensive against Russia was concealed from working people in America and Europe.

Recognizing the central role of NATO aggression in the Ukraine crisis does not imply support for reckless policies the Kremlin might employ as it tries to work out a new modus vivendi with Western imperialism. Representing a layer of super-rich oligarchs that emerged from the looting of public property in the Soviet Union, the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin can make no appeal to opposition to war in the global working class.

Its Russian nationalist appeals are reactionary. They aid the imperialists in their efforts to stir up divisions between Russian and Ukrainian workers and within the international working class more generally.

Significantly, the ELN avoids mentioning nuclear weapons in the incidents it describes. However, both NATO and Russia are preparing their nuclear forces.

Washington has never issued a so-called “no-first-use” pledge, i.e., a guarantee that it will not be the first power to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Top Russian officers are pushing for the Kremlin to explicitly define scenarios in which they would launch nuclear strikes against NATO countries.

In May, Russian and US strategic nuclear forces carried out dueling exercises. According to Kremlin outlet Russia Today, the Russian drills “demonstrated how the missile corps, artillery, aviation, and anti-aircraft defenses can be used—for instance, to destroy troops on the ground or to counter massive missile, aviation, or nuclear strikes by an enemy. Plus, it was shown how to inflict a launch-through-attack strike with nuclear missiles”—that is, a retaliatory Russian nuclear strike carried out as a NATO nuclear attack on Russia took place.

In September, as Russia carried out a further round of nuclear exercises, Russian General Yury Yakubov told Interfax: “In my view, our primary enemy is the US and the North Atlantic bloc … it is necessary to hash out the conditions under which Russia could carry out a preemptive strike with the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces.”

The ELN does report the following incident:

“In early September 2014, Russian strategic bombers in the Labrador Sea near Canada practiced cruise missile strikes on the United States. The Russian aircraft stayed outside of Canada’s ADIZ, but this was still a provocative move in light of the NATO summit ongoing at the time. Cruise missiles launched from the Labrador Sea would have Ottawa, New York, Washington, Chicago, and the Norfolk Naval Base in range.”

The cruise missiles the Russian bombers could fire at these cities could be armed with nuclear warheads.

Prior to the ELN report, this event was reported only in a Washington Free Beacon article by journalist Bill Gertz. Otherwise, this event—which illustrates all too clearly the risks posed by US policy in Ukraine—was totally blacked out by the US media.

Source:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/11/nato-n11.html

Re-posted at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/dozens-of-near-miss-incidents-have-brought-nato-and-russia-to-the-brink-of-war/5413371

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Eyewitness account from Eastern Ukraine: National Guard and Right Sector battalions killing civilians

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Posted on Slavyangrad.org, October 28, 2014

Preamble: What follows is a first-hand account of events that took place in the area of the MH17 crash site in August of this year, written by someone who was part of the team of OSCE inspectors and observers. The Slavyangrad team was approached by this individual with a view to publishing their account as they believed that more mainstream news sources would either distort or censor the account. Accordingly, we have made only minor alterations to improve the English and to iron out typographical and/or grammatical errors (the author’s first language is not English). For obvious reasons (evident from the final paragraph of this account) we have substituted a pseudonym for the author’s real name.

Written by “Col. Tulip”
Edited by @GBabeuf & Olga Luzanova

On August 8, we received information that a farmer located in the most southern area of the crash site had reported that he had found materials which he believed had originated from the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. According to the report, the farmer also believed that there might be human remains on his fields and he was asking for instructions on what to do. On Sunday, August 10, we attempted to reach the farmer. For this we had to cross from Ukrainian-held territory into rebel-held territory, crossing the no-man’s-land between the front lines. In reality, this basically means the space between the final road-blocks on the main roads.

Azov Battalion emblem

Azov Battalion emblem

At the last Ukrainian-manned road-block (manned by a volunteer unit wearing the insignia of the Azov Battalion), well within the twenty kilometre perimeter around the crash site, we were prohibited from continuing because there were ongoing military operations in the area ahead of us. In response to our questions about the operations, we were told “none of your business,” and “be glad we let you leave.” We decided to take a detour in order to try our luck at another road-block. At this road-block, in the hands of the regular army, we were simply waved through after having our papers checked. We asked if there were any military operations ongoing in the area ahead of us; the answer was “not that we know of—we have orders to hold our position and only to defend ourselves.”

Knowing that road-blocks are a regular target for both sides, we decided to move on quickly and see how far we would get. Our designated fixer told us that he expected another road-block ahead of us and a few kilometres along the road his suspicion was confirmed: an improvised road-block constructed from burned out cars and felled trees, manned by irregular troops. They seemed very excited, urging us “go back, go back, we are fighting!” One soldier with Azov badges and the black-red Right-Sector identification, seemingly the commander of this group, came over to our car and told us: “You have already been told that there is a military operation going on and that you are not allowed to proceed.” This made it clear to us that while irregular or volunteer units were communicating with each other, they were not communicating with the regular army unit holding the road-block we had previously passed through.

We took this man aside and reminded him of his government’s commitment to ensuring access to the crash site and to maintaining a twenty kilometre cease-fire zone around it. The reply was, to us, shocking: “I don’t take orders from Kiev,” and after this his tone became threatening. We decided to drive back to the army held road-block and ask around there. The commander at the army road-block said he did not know where the “amateurs” (as he referred to the irregulars) had their road-blocks or what they were doing. His exact statement was “I don’t know who gives them orders, we have no communication with them. My orders are to hold this position and to act only to defend ourselves, so that is what we do.” We asked him again if he knew about any ongoing military operation in the area we were attempting to visit, and his reply was very straightforward: “Did your translator misunderstand something? We have orders to hold this position.” His annoyance seemed real—despite lacking any real insight into his actual orders, I believed he was telling the truth.

We decided to leave the area that was visible from the road-block and instead to try to find access by taking back-roads since our fixer was sure he would be able to find a way to bypass the road-blocks and get to the farmer who was awaiting us. Using back-roads and dirt tracks through fields, we were able to bypass the road-blocks of both sides, including those controlled by Ukrainian irregular forces.

Close to the village we met the farmer. While we were introducing ourselves we could hear artillery fire and explosions in the distance, which was a regular occurrence in this area despite the supposed commitment to a cease-fire around the crash site. The farmer, Gennady, explained to us what he had found and that he wanted to make sure he was not disturbing anything, but that he also needed to start preparing for harvesting his crop. When we approached the path into his fields I noticed two candles, some flowers and a cross. Gennady knelt down to take some dirt away and sat there for a moment. Our translator whispered, “he is praying.” When he got up, he said something which apparently touched our translator so much that she at first replied to Gennady in English, “tell him,” before continuing in Russian.

What Gennady had said was: “I thanked God you are here because they will not attack us now that you are.” What followed was a description, shocking to me, of regular artillery barrages against the villages and settlements in this area. Gennady told us that the villagers say “they are playing tennis, because they play three sets every match to try and kill us.” We had heard about people using the term ‘tennis’ for those actions before, but so far we had thought this meant watching the shells flying over like a tennis ball during a game. Evidently it was not; we were shocked by the cold description. Gennady pointed out some of the sites which he knew to have been hit—all farms, settlements and the two villages in the immediate vicinity. No military emplacements, no military objectives. Continue reading →

American Conservative article: “The Hawks’ Solution to Everything–Throw More Weapons at the Problem”

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Posted at American Conservative
November 10, 2014
By Daniel Larson

The Republican foreign policy agenda in the new year promises to be lousy:

Authorizations to send heavy weapons to Ukrainian forces battling pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine and sophisticated arms to moderate opposition rebels in Syria have “languished on the Senate floor” over the past two years because Majority Leader Harry Reid “wouldn’t let them through,” said one senior adviser to a key Republican lawmaker.

Those initiatives “will now go for up-or-down votes,” once Sen. Mitch McConnell assumes the majority leadership post and key committee chairmanships are filled by GOP critics of the Obama administration’s foreign policy — such as Sen. John McCain helming the Senate Committee on Armed Services, the adviser said.

Increasing aid to Syria’s rebels is likely to be among the first priorities [bold mine-DL].

None of this is surprising, but it is still remarkable how the Republicans would choose to start off their new Senate majority by confirming so quickly why they can’t be trusted with power. Throwing more weapons at the conflict in Ukraine is worse than useless, since it will encourage the Ukrainian government to fight a war it can’t win and will make the conflict that much harder to resolve. The new Senate majority leader can bring this measure to a vote, but Obama would be a fool to sign anything they send him on this. Sending more arms to the Syrian opposition is more ridiculous than ever in light of Jabhat al-Nusra’s recent capture of weapons that had already provided to “moderate” rebel groups. If the U.S. sends more arms and supplies to the “moderate” opposition, it will likely just be a matter of time before that aid ends up in the wrong hands.

In addition to being wrong on the merits, the Senate GOP is closely identifying itself with deeply unpopular positions. A majority is against arming Syrian rebels now, just as a majority has been against this for the last several years. Americans have also been against sending arms to Ukraine since the early stages of the conflict. Besides being foolish and irresponsible, the hawks’ solution of throwing weapons at every problem that arises overseas has very little popular support.

Source:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-hawks-solution-to-everything-throw-more-weapons-at-the-problem/

 

Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Commander: “The U.S. is Training and Funding Us”

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Posted on Russia Insider, September 26, 2014
By Federico Pieraccini

A commander of one of the Ukrainian neo-nazi battalions, the Donbass, Semyon Semyonchenko, has just returned from the US, where he met with senior senators from both parties, and received commitments of material support.

He posted a comment on Facebook in which he gives a detailed explanation of this assistance.

He was also received by IRI (International Republican Institute) and NDI (National Democratic Institute), the international branches of the two main American political parties, and met with democratic Senator Robert Menendez and republican senator Robert Corker.

“Menendez and Corker are the two senators who have sponsored the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, a bill that will allocate money to provide assistance to Ukraine, including the supply of weapons. Radar, anti-tank weapons, drones, communications systems and many other useful things for our army. “

One of the main goals of his trip was to get training and much more from the US military.  Judging by his FB post, it seems he has accomplished this.

“Yesterday I signed a contract to organize training courses for the fighters and officers of the battalion Donbass by mobile groups of instructors from the United States, held by military that are not currently in service.

They will work under the traditional training system used by the Navy Seals and Delta Force. Standards have been developed for each department (reconnaissance, special forces, security, etc.) and for each non-commissioned officer.

Particular attention will be paid to the individual training and teamwork. We will use the maximum number of practical exercises.

Another important point is the training of sergeants (NCOs) to allow it to act independently and managing a team.

The instructors will also be used to prepare the internal security forces, and that training is one of the forms of indirect assistance that Ukraine is receiving.”

After his meeting with NDI and IRI he also added:

“They were very useful talks. We explained to them the situation in Ukraine as objectively as possible. We are confident that everything will go according to plan as we hoped, “

Source:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics_ukraine/2014/11/04/02-09-55pm/ukrainian_neo-nazi_commander_us_training_and_funding_us
Re-posted at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukrainian-neo-nazi-commander-the-us-is-training-and-funding-us/5413538

Also, this post on the California National Guard’s longstanding relationship with the Ukrainian National Guard.
https://freeukrainenow.org/2014/08/29/u-s-army-and-california-natl-guard-to-train-and-arm-ukraine-natl-guard-in-2015-cng-has-worked-with-ung-for-21-years/

 

Former German newspaper editor says the CIA bribes journalists

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I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I’ve been educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public

The new book by Udo Ulfkotte —
Gekaufte Journalisten, meaning “Purchased Journalists”
(available only in German)

From Russia Insider, October 3, 2014:

Members of the German media are paid by the CIA in return for spinning the news in a way that supports US interests, and some German outlets are nothing more than PR appendages of NATO, according to a new book by Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany’s largest newspapers.

Ulfkotte is a serious mainstream journalist.  Here he is on Germany’s leading political talk show a couple of years ago.  The book is a sensation in Germany, #7 on the bestseller list.  Its political dynamite, coming on the heels of German outrage of NSA tapping of their phones.  Check out the RT.com story on it in the video below.

Here at Russia Insider, it has long been apparent to us that there is something distinctly odd about the German media regarding Russia.  We follow it, and it is much more strident than even the anglo-saxon media regarding Russia,

Another interesting thing about it is that it is very disparate.  Some major voices are very reasonable about Russia, but most are negative, and some are comically apocalyptic.  This is what one would expect if there was some financial influence ginning the system.

We’ve been talking about this for a while now.  German public opinion is becoming more and more fed up with the what they increasingly believe to be a rigged media, and its starting to come out everywhere.

The allegations, while shocking, are consistent with the CIA’s long and well-established history of media infiltration.

Operation Mockingbird, which began in the 1950s, was a secret CIA operation which recruited journalists to serve as mouthpieces for the American government. The program was officially terminated after it was exposed by the famous Church Committee investigations, but evidence of ongoing CIA influence over the media continues to accumulate.

Just last week Glenn Greenwald’s (of Edward Snowden fame) new groundbreaking investigative website, The Intercept, charged that the CIA leveraged its considerable influence – some might even say friendship – with media in order to discredit Gary Webb, the fearless American journalist who uncovered CIA cocaine trafficking as part of the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

From The Intercept (emphasis our own):

On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry.

Excerpts from Russia Today interview
Posted on Washington’s Blog by Eric Zuesse
October 7, 2014

I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I’ve been educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public. … The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say … it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe. … I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don’t like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too. … We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war. … I don’t want this anymore, I’m fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic, and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom. …

The German media, especially, my colleagues …, day by day, write against the Russians, [these journalists] who are in transatlantic organizations, and who are supported by the United States to do so. … Continue reading →

Dangerous crossroads: NATO plans large scale military deployments on Russia’s doorstep

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By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, November 08, 2014

The World is at a dangerous crossroads. US-NATO is carrying out a fresh set of military drills in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States involving the deployment of several thousand troops.  These drills follow earlier military deployments in the Baltic States in October.  

According to NATO  General  Hans-Lothar Domrose, Commander of Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum:

“Previously, we conducted maneuvers involving 25,000-40,000 soldiers in the western NATO countries alone, and I can imagine that in the future we will also organize a similar event in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States,” (quoted by Die Welt)

These deployments consist of  ”rapid reaction forces numbering 5,000-7,000 troops that can reach the combat area within two to five days.”

The so-called action plan directed against the Russian Federation was decided upon at the September 2014 Wales summit of the Atlantic Alliance.

As part of this broader endeavour, NATO’s Iron Sword 2014 military exercises involving the participation of nine member countries of the Atlantic Alliance were launched in Lithuania on November 2nd.

”US tanks rolled in to Lithuania earlier this month is a show of force to Russia that it’s not welcome in the region.”

According to General Hans-Lothar Domrose (in his September 15 statement)  the deployments  were planned to take place in the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He underscored that NATO  would “respect agreements with Russia and the troops will not be there permanently”.

The military exercises are explicitly directed against Russia. According to Moscow, they consist in “increasing operation readiness” as well the transfer of NATO “military infrastructure to the Russian borders”.  According to Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov:

“I believe that NATO expansion is a mistake. To a certain degree, it is certainly a provocation, … It is an irresponsible policy that undermines commitments to build a common security system in Europe, based on equality of rights for all, regardless of alignment or non-alignment with any military-political bloc,” (Statement on margin of UN General Assembly in September, RIA Novosti)

It is worth noting that NATO war games were held in Latvia in October coinciding with country’s national elections. NATO also conducted war games in Turkey in October.

In response to NATO deployments on Russia’s borders,  the Russian Federation also conducted in early November extensive  war games in the sea of Barent.  The Russian drills consisted in testing “its entire nuclear triad consisting of strategic bombers; submarines and the “silo-based Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile  launched from Plesetsk in Arkhangelsk Oblast” on November 1st.

In an open letter to president Obama published by Global Research, Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark points to the dangers of  military confrontation with the Russian Federation

The overwhelming majority of the population of the U.S. is against being dragged into another disastrous war. Nothing is more dangerous than the aggressive U.S./NATO troop movements right on the borders of Russia.

Sending U.S. destroyers into the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea; scheduling threatening U.S./NATO war games and troop movements in East Europe; and imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation is a threat to peace on a world scale. We have seen the cost of past and continuing U.S. wars, which enrich the military corporations while impoverishing the targeted countries as well as poor and working people here in the U.S.

What is disturbing, to say the least, is that the antiwar movement in the US, Canada and the European Union has not taken a firm position with regard to US-NATO deployments in Eastern Europe. While piecemeal antiwar actions are carried out, the protest movements  fail to address the broader issue of global warfare, namely the dangers of a third world war.

War is presented by the media as a humanitarian endeavor. Sections of the antiwar movement in Western countries (supported by corporate foundations) tacitly endorse this perspective and pay lip service to NATO’s  ”Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). While mass demonstrations are conducted in relation to the threat of climate change, public opinion is largely unaware of the fact that the US and its allies are involved in a global military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of  a forthcoming book entitled The Globalization of War. America’s Long War against Humanity, Global Research Publishers, Montreal, 2014

Source:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/dangerous-crossroads-nato-plans-large-scale-military-deployments-on-russias-doorstep/5412736

 

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark to Pres. Obama: Stop the war in Ukraine! And petition

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TO: President Obama, Senator McCain, Secretary Kerry, Secretary-General Ban, Members of Congress, and Members of the Media:

The overwhelming majority of the population of the U.S. is against being dragged into another disastrous war. Nothing is more dangerous than the aggressive U.S./NATO troop movements right on the borders of Russia.

Sending U.S. destroyers into the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea; scheduling threatening U.S./NATO war games and troop movements in East Europe; and imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation is a threat to peace on a world scale. We have seen the cost of past and continuing U.S. wars, which enrich the military corporations while impoverishing the targeted countries as well as poor and working people here in the U.S.

The years of U.S. funding of fascist forces in Ukraine and the recognition of a government in Kiev that overthrew the elected government, seized power and appointed extreme right-wing groups to head the police, army and national guard in order to pull Ukraine into NATO membership makes the U.S. complicit in the complete denial of the rights of the Ukrainian people. It is also a provocation against the entire region.

People in East and South Ukraine, outraged by this coup government, have attempted to resist the illegal junta, have declared an independent People’s Republic of Donetsk, and have called for referendums. In response, the right-wing coup government has allowed its military forces and other fascists to terrorize the Ukrainian people. In the most recent incident, some 40 people were massacred in the city of Odessa on May 2 by fascist militants, loyal to the Kiev government, who set the Trades Union Building on fire. In addition, 23 people were killed at Slavyansk and in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region in attacks by Ukrainian military forces from May 2-3.

Despite mass desertions by Ukrainian police and military personnel, so-called “anti-terrorist” campaigns against activists in southeastern Ukraine were launched immediately after visits to Kiev by U.S. officials. Washington has spent $5 billion to effect “regime change” in Ukraine, helping to bring into power a junta dominated by fascist, racist, anti-Semitic organizations like Svoboda, Fatherland and Right Sector. Meanwhile, the U.S. has pledged up to $10 billion in loans to the illegal coup regime, and Washington has been instrumental in securing a $17 billion aid and austerity package from the International Monetary Fund.

This massive U.S. intervention in the Ukraine and ever-increasing campaign to surround and isolate Russia must end. I therefore demand:

  1. That the U.S. government and all its public, secret, official and unofficial agencies immediately cease all forms of intervention in Ukraine, including ceasing all material and political aid to fascist and right-wing organizations within the country;
  2. That all sanctions and threats of sanctions against the Russian Federation be dropped — sanctions are an act of war;
  3. That U.S. military forces immediately be withdrawn from the Eastern European region and that NATO’s expansion and provocative actions against Russia be ended.

Tragically, neither the US nor the EU honored the February 21 comprmise accord between the Maidan coalition and the Yanukovich govenment that was brokered by Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and Poland. It is upon the US government to save the honor of Western democracies as promoters of peace, legality and moderation. Return to the February 21 Accords before the hell of war breaks loose!

Sincerely,
Ramsey Clark
Former US Attorney General
Founder of International Action Center
New York

Sign the petition
http://www.iacenter.org/ukrainepetition/

Editors notes: International Action Center founder Ramsey Clark, a former US Attorney General and internationally renown human rights defender, received the respected United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights on the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at United Nations Headquarters in New York on 10 December 2008.Article published with permission from Ramsey Clark.

Source:
http://www.raga.org/news/petition-to-the-white-house-stop-the-war-in-ukraine-byramsey-clark-former-us-attorney-general

Posted at http://www.globalresearch.ca/ramsey-clark-to-barack-obama-stop-the-war-in-ukraine/5411389

Note: both articles have an incorrect link to the petition. The correct link is posted above.