Month: June 2015

10,000 Ukrainian soldiers have deserted since April 2014

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From Macedonia Online — MINA
June 23, 2015

More than 10,000 cases of desertion have been registered in the Ukrainian Army since the outbreak of the Donbass war in April 2014, Ukrainian Vesti reported.

In 2014 the army suffered heavy desertion and nearly 30 percent of the servicemen called up in the first wave of mobilization (March 17) abandoned their positions, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada has announced six waves of mobilization so far. By the end of 2014 the strength of Ukrainian Armed Forces grew from 130,000 to 232,000.

Ukrainians have been protesting against the mobilization. They travel to work abroad or simply reside at their relatives’ in other countries. Almost 1,3 million Ukrainian draftees live in Russia.

Since April 7, 2014 the Kiev authorities have been waging war against Donbass self-defense forces who rejected the legitimacy of the coup-imposed Ukrainian government and declared the independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Official figures estimate the number of victims to near 6,500. But the German intelligence reported of 50,000 victims in February 2015.

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/27592/53/

Why is NATO in Yugoslavia?

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Excellent historical perspective on present day problems.

By Sean Gervasi
Global Research, June 22, 2015

Why Is NATO In Yugoslavia?

Editor’s Note

This paper was presented by the late Sean Gervasi at the Conference on the Enlargement of NATO in Eastern Europe and the Mediterrenean, Prague, 13-14 January 1996. It was published on Global Research when the Global Research website was launched on September 9, 2001.

The late Sean Gervasi had tremendous foresight. He understood the process of NATO enlargement several years before it actually unfolded into a formidable military force.  He had also predicted the breakup of Yugoslavia as part of a US-NATO project.

See also Sean Gervasi’s 1993 video interview

Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has recently sent a large task force into Yugoslavia, ostensibly to enforce a settlement of the Bosnian war arrived at in Dayton, Ohio at the end of 1995. This task force is said to consist of some 60,000 men, equipped with tanks, armor and artillery. It is backed by formidable air and naval forces. In fact, if one takes account of all the support forces involved, including forces deployed in nearby countries, it is clear that at least two hundred thousand troops are involved. This figure has been confirmed by U. S. defense sources. [ 1 ]

By any standards, the sending of a large Western military force into Central and Eastern Europe is a remarkable enterprise, even in the fluid situation created by the supposed end of the Cold War. The Balkan task force represents not only the first major NATO military operation, but a major operation staged “out of area”, that is, outside the boundaries originally established for NATO military action.

However, the sending of NATO troops into the Balkans is the result of enormous pressure for the general extension of NATO eastwards.

If the Yugoslav enterprise is the first concrete step in the expansion of NATO, others are planned for the near future. Some Western powers want to bring the Visegrad countries into NATO as full members by the end of the century. There was resistance to the pressures for such extension among certain Western countries for some time. However, the recalcitrants have now been bludgeoned into accepting the alleged necessity of extending NATO.

The question is: why are the Western powers pressing for the expansion of NATO? Why is NATO being renewed and extended when the “Soviet threat” has disappeared? There is clearly much more to it than we have so far been told. The enforcement of a precarious peace in Bosnia is only the immediate reason for sending NATO forces into the Balkans.

There are deeper reasons for the dispatch of NATO forces to the Balkans, and especially for the extension of NATO to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in the relatively near future. These have to do with an emerging strategy for securing the resources of the Caspian Sea region and for “stabilizing” the countries of Eastern Europe — ultimately for “stabilizing” Russia and the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. This is, to put it mildly, an extremely ambitious and potentially selfcontradictory policy. And it is important to pose some basic questions about the reasons being given for pursuing it.

For the idea of “stabilizing” the countries which formerly constituted the Socialist bloc in Europe does not simply mean ensuring political stability there, ensuring that the regimes which replaced Socialism remain in place. It also means ensuring that economic and social conditions remain unchanged. And, since the so-called transition to democracy in the countries affected has in fact led to an incipient deindustrialization and a collapse of living standards for the majority, the question arises whether it is really desirable.

The question is all the more pertinent since “stabilization”, in the sense in which it is used in the West, means reproducing in the former Socialist bloc countries economic and social conditions which are similar to the economic and social conditions currently prevailing in the West. The economies of the Western industrial nations are, in fact, in a state of semi-collapse, although the governments of those countries would never really acknowledge the fact. Nonetheless, any reasonably objective assessment of the economic situation in the West leads to this conclusion. And that conclusion is supported by official statistics and most analyses coming from mainstream economists.

It is also clear, as well, that the attempt to “stabilize” the former Socialist bloc countries is creating considerable tension with Russia, and potentially with other countries. Not a few commentators have made the point that Western actions in extending NATO even raise the risks of nuclear conflict. [2]

It is enough to raise these questions briefly to see that the extension of NATO which has, de facto, begun in Yugoslavia and is being proposed for other countries is to a large extent based on confused and even irrational reasoning. One is tempted to say that it results from the fear and willfulness of certain ruling groups. To put it most bluntly, why should the world see any benefit in the enforced extension to other countries of the economic and social chaos which prevails in the West, and why should it see any benefit in that when the very process itself increases the risks of nuclear war?

The purposes of this paper are to describe what lies behind the current efforts to extend NATO and to raise some basic questions about whether this makes any sense, in both the narrow and deeper meanings of the term.

NATO in Yugoslavia

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949 with the stated purpose of protecting Western Europe from possible military aggression by the Soviet Union and its allies.

With the dissolution of the Communist regimes in the former Socialist bloc in 1990 and 1991, there was no longer any possibility of such aggression, if there ever really had been. The changes in the former Communist countries made NATO redundant. Its raison d’etre had vanished. Yet certain groups within the NATO countries began almost immediately to press for a “renovation” of NATO and even for its extension into Central and Eastern Europe. They began to elaborate new rationales which would permit the continuation of business as usual.

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Pentagon says U.S. will provide weapons and NATO commandos to attack E. Ukraine self-defense forces

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By Kurt Nimmo
Infowars, June 22, 2015
Posted on Global Research, June 23, 2015

Pentagon boss Ashton Carter has announced the United States “will contribute weapons, aircraft and forces, including commandos, for NATO’s rapid reaction force” to defend against “Russia from the east and violent extremists from the south,” according to the Associated Press.

Carter did not specify who the “extremists from the south” are, but a recent NATO military exercise in Poland left little doubt.

During the largest maneuver by NATO since the end of the Cold War, a rapid reaction force in Poland staged a mock raid in the fictional country of Botnia.

From Deutsche Welle:

“Birdman” is the name that maneuver planners have given the opponent in the Bothnian enemy camp. He must be retrieved from a wooden house in the middle of the military training grounds in the forest. Stationed in the nearby village of “Alpha” are his followers, armed militiamen, who have begun to destabilize the region in southwestern Poland.

The scene is recognizable as it is loosely based on the situation in eastern Ukraine, except this time, a NATO member has been threatened by “little green men”. After all, the planners want to make the situation as lifelike as possible.

On Sunday a senior Pentagon official told the media Carter and the United States will urge NATO allies to “dispose of the Cold War playbook” in an effort to counter “hybrid warfare,” in short the ongoing effort in Eastern Ukraine to resist the coup government in Kiev.

“Carter … will really push the alliance to think about new threats, new techniques, urge them to kind of dispose of the Cold War playbook and think about new ways to counter new threats,” the official said.

On Monday in Munster, Germany, Carter said the United States “will contribute intelligence and surveillance capabilities, special operations forces, logistics, transport aircraft, and a range of weapons support that could include bombers, fighters and ship-based missiles” for the effort.

The Pentagon has yet to reveal the number of troops that will participate in the battle against “extremists.”

The announcement coincides with the defection of a onetime aide to the Ukrainian defense minister to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Alexander Kolomiyets took a wealth of classified intelligence information along with his family, according to the Sputnik News.

The US-installed coup government in Kiev has suffered a number of humiliating defeats in Eastern Ukraine as it attempts to assert its control over the area.

“The initial attempts of the Kiev regime and its CIA backers to subjugate east Ukraine by sheer military terror, relying on fascist militias and select units of the Ukraine army that it considered to be reliable, have failed. Popular opposition and covert Kremlin support for east Ukrainian forces has sufficed to defeat those units that Kiev could throw against the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” Alex Lantier wrote in February.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-will-provide-weapons-for-nato-commandos-to-attack-ukrainian-separatists/5457606

Poroshenko tells Constitutional Court that ousting of ex-President Yanukovich was illegal

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From Macedonia Online — MINA
20 June 2015

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appealed to the country’s constitutional court, asking the court to recognize the ousting of former President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 as illegitimate.

“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional,” Poroshenko said in a court statement published on the website of the Ukrainian constitutional court.

The current Ukrainian president said the law violates the constitution, according to which the President of Ukraine is protected by law and his title remains with him forever. He also added that by enacting the law in February of 2014, the parliament of Ukraine undermined the constitution.

Now, the amusing fact is that Poroshenko himself actively supported the Euromaidan protests between November 2013 and February 2014 in Kiev that resulted in the overthrow of Yanukovych.

As the current head of Ukraine, who became the president after the illegal coup, Poroshenko’s statement seems strange at best. By admitting that the overthrow of Yanukovych was illegal and stressing that the President of Ukraine should be forever protected by the country’s law, Poroshenko might be insinuating that his own presidency is put in jeopardy.

Otherwise, why would someone else who became the president after the coup all of a sudden defend the former leader of the country? Seems illogical.

Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Lower House of Russia’s parliament, commented on Poroshenko’s bizarre revelation.

“Here we go, Poroshenko acknowledged the unconstitutional nature of Yanukovych’s removal from power. The EU and PACE both denied it. Now it’s recognized,” Pushkov wrote on his Twitter account.

Last year, Yanukovych became the scapegoat of Ukrainian politics after his government was accused of all the misfortunes in the country. Now, more than a year after the former president was gone, his legacy is still around. Mikheil Saakashvili, the new governor of Ukraine’s Odessa Region, said that in the best case scenario, Ukraine will need 20 more years to reach the economic level of Yanukovych’s government in 2013.

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/27583/53/

Eric Zuesse writes on Global Research (June 23, 2015) — excerpt–

In a remarkable document, which is not posted at the English version of the website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, but which is widely reported outside the United States, including Russia, Poroshenko, in Ukrainian (not in English), has petitioned the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (as it is being widely quoted in English):

“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional.”

I had previously reported, and here will excerpt, Poroshenko’s having himself admitted prior to 26 February 2014, to the EU’s investigator, and right after the February 22nd overthrow of Yanukovych, that the overthrow was a coup, and that it was even a false-flag operation, in which the snipers, who were dressed as if they were Ukrainian Security Bureau troops, were actually not, and that, as the EU’s investigator put his finding to the EU’s chief of foreign affairs Catherine Ashton:

“the same oligarch [Poroshenko] told that well, all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers, from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides … Behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.”

If the Court grants Poroshenko’s petition, then the appointment of Arseniy Yatsenyuk by the U.S. State Department’s Victoria Nuland on 4 February 2014, which was confirmed by the Ukrainian parliament (or Rada) at the end of the coup on February 26th, and the other appointments which were made, including that of Oleksandr Turchynov to fill in for Yanukovych as caretaker President until one of the junta’s chosen candidates would be ‘elected’ on May 25th of 2014, which ‘election’ Poroshenko won — all of this was illegal.

However, this illegality had already been known. It was already explained in detail on 28 February 2014, that, “Yanukovych’s removal was unconstitutional.” That’s for lawyers; but, now, finally, Ukraine’s Constitutional Court is faced with the shocking predicament of Ukraine’s own President, who won his post as a result of this coup, requesting them to “acknowledge” that it was a coup, much as the founder of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor had even called it, “the most blatant coup in history.” (It was that because the authentic video and other evidence of its having been a Washington job was so massive.)

Also in the news now is that Dmitriy Yarosh‘s Right Sector — the same group that Washington had hired for the coup and for the ethnic cleansing campaign in Ukraine’s former Donbass region — have announced that they will assemble in Kiev on July 3rd to overthrow Petroshenko unless he restarts right now the war against Donbass. The people whom Washington paid to oust Yanukovych are planning to do the same to Poroshenko. There is a struggle inside the Obama Administration about how far they can successfully go with their Ukrainian nazis not formally leading the country.

Washington is having a hard time keeping in line the Ukrainian nazis upon whom Washington’s plan for Ukraine has been based. Ukraine’s nazis are thirsting for Russian blood, and want to slake their thirst faster than the Obama Administration is willing to go along with. Washington’s previous “F—k the EU!” hasn’t worked as well as they had hoped. There is thus increasingly bad blood between the Obama Administration and the Ukrainian enforcers upon whom Obama has been relying.

Basically, Poroshenko now is torn between the EU, on one side, and Ukraine’s well-armed nazis, on the other; and, thus far, the ultimate decider, U.S. President Obama, who has needed cooperation both from Ukraine’s nazis and from the EU, in order for his Ukrainian gambit against Russia to work, is on the fence between those two sides. John Kerry sides with the EU; Victoria Nuland sides with the nazis. But Obama himself hasn’t yet played his hand.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraines-president-poroshenko-says-overthrow-of-yanukovych-was-a-coup/5457631

Gen. Dempsey tells U.S. troops: America wants to play an “away game”, not a “home game”

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Absolutely deplorable, equating war with sports and amusements. This is very revealing of the Pentagon’s mindset and values.

By Jim Garamone
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, makes comments and addresses questions from Sailors and civilians stationed at Naval Air Station Naples, Italy, June 11, 2015. (Photo by D. Myles Cullen)

NAPLES, Italy, June 11, 2015 —

The United States military needs to be forward-deployed because America does not want to “play a home game,” Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said in an all-hands call at the naval air facility here.

During the event, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke to service members, DoD civilians and local nationals, answering questions about the extremist threat, Russia and cyber security.

Dempsey said that when the budget gets tight, there is an inclination for many to think the best way to save is by bringing troops back from overseas postings and doing everything from the continental United States. “The truth is, in our line of work, the very last thing we want to do is play a home game,” he said.

Shaping Conflict

“We really want to play an away game and we need teammates to do it. We need to be forward. You need to be forward,” he continued. “We need to be closely partnered with NATO allies and other partners who share our values. And we need to be sure that as conflict approaches — and conflict will approach — we have a shot at shaping it before we’re in it.”

Dempsey quoted Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, saying “The side that understands when to fight and when not to fight will take away the victory.”

The American military expends great effort training for the fight, the chairman said, but equal thought is placed on when and when not to fight. “We need to make sure that we have friends and partners in a web, a network of allies so that we bear this burden together,” he said.

This security network — tended by service members around the world — is what sets America apart from other large powers, Dempsey said. They do not have these allies and partners, the chairman said, and this worries them. “We’ve got to preserve that system of alliances and we’ve got to play away games,” he said.

ISIL’s Threat

Dempsey took questions from service members, and many wanted to know if the United States is doing enough to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The extremist group is the latest manifestation of extremist ideology and is operating in the Middle East, North Africa and West Africa.

The chairman said part of the campaign against such extremists is military, and part of it is building regional partners so they “don’t get sucked into this crucible.”

He said the United States is providing capabilities and ensuring regional partners provide the capabilities that they should provide, but asked, “Will it continue to be enough?”

Dempsey detailed the recent decision to open a new training base in Anbar province to train Iraqi forces and reach out to Sunni tribes. It is one of a number of bases in the country to train and supply Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

“If we get to the point where we have to protect our interests, our people [and] our facilities and to guarantee the success, then we’ll have to do that,” he said. “But in the meantime, the strategy is to enable them to do it, to have them develop the strategy and we enable it.”

The United States military can do a lot, but it’s up to the Iraqis, Saudis, Israelis and Turks to create an environment where these groups don’t keep appearing, the chairman said. “I’m not portraying for you that I think this will be easy or quick,” he said. “I think we’ve got the right outcome identified and now we have to navigate toward it.”

Addressing Cyber, Budget Issues

On cyber, Dempsey told the service members that there is a healthy debate going on in America over privacy versus security. He said some modest progress has been made. “We do need cyber standards, we do need information sharing agreements between the government and the private sector,” he said. “As to the future, I think like most things we will figure it out. I just hope it doesn’t take a crisis to get us there.”

The DoD budget continues to concern service members. Dempsey explained the situation in Washington and said that the service chiefs are united in telling Congress that American defense is endangered.

“Since we testified to that, we’ve had the following issues manifest themselves: We’ve had an emerging threat from Russia as it becomes aggressive in Eastern Europe, we’ve had ISIL increase its capabilities, we had a deployment because of Ebola, [and] Libya and the Chinese reclamation project in the South China Sea,” the chairman said.

On Russia, Dempsey said the need is to harden allies in Eastern Europe. NATO has to maintain a technological advantage, and the United States must ensure the trans-Atlantic link cannot be severed.

“All of which makes it clear to the Russian Federation that may have had success in eastern Europe with countries that are not NATO allies, that it won’t work on countries that are NATO allies,” he said.

(Follow Jim Garamone on Twitter: @GaramoneDoDNews)

defense(dot)gov/news/newsarticle.aspx!id=129026

 

NATO General Ben Hodges lies to National Public Radio (NPR)

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By Eric Zuesse
Posted on Global Research, June 19, 2015

On June 17th, U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed NATO’s and America’s General Ben Hodges, who is the Commanding General of the U.S. Army in Europe, which is “NATO’s most senior land forces command.” He said (after 4:54 in the audio):

This notion that somehow, Russia, you know, has no choice but to respond or that the West is being provocative, really, I don’t think rings true at all. … We’re building up on NATO’s borders. These are NATO countries, these are allies of ours, that are concerned based on what Russia is doing on their borders, and they’ve asked for assurance that their allies are there.

The interviewer asked, “President Putin said that only an insane person could imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. I mean, is NATO insane for worrying about a Russian attack?” Hodges replied (6:41):

I think that’s an irresponsible question. It is completely unimaginable to me that Russia would ever invade Crimea. I mean, this was the day after the Sochi Olympics, after the Russians had spent millions and millions of dollars, and then threw away whatever goodwill they had earned the following day by invading Crimea.

That’s so many lies in such a short span, so that unpacking all of them will produce a long article; but, those lies are the mainstream view in America’s news media, so, here goes the reality that demolishes them:

His Basic ‘History’ Is False

Everything he says about what preceded Crimea’s switching back to Russia (of which it had always been a part until 1954) is false.

The Sochi Olympics ended on 23 February 2014. Contrary to what Ben Hodges says, there was no Russian invasion of Crimea the next day (nor actually ever, but we’ll get to that later). According to wikipedia, which is edited by the CIA (and so it must be right, if not far-right — like Hodges is), the “2014 Ukrainian Revolution” started on 18 February 2014. This overthrow of a government was occurring in the one nation, Ukraine, that Zbigniew Brzezinski and others have said is the most crucial nation of all that must be turned hostile toward Russia in order for America to win against Russia. (Ending communism and the Soviet Union doesn’t slake the sheer bloodthirst of people such as Brzezinski and Hodges — and Obama: Russia must simply be crushed; the communist-v.-capitalist thing was just an excuse for these psychopaths; and the only reason why Obama in 2012 denied Romney’s “our number one geopolitical foe” remark about Russia, was in order to fool the electorate about Obama himself.)

Thus, grabbing Ukraine is more important to them (and their billionaire sponsors) than getting any of the twelve former Warsaw Pact nations that the U.S. had already brought into NATO. It’s not for what’s in Ukraine; it’s for what’s in Russia. (The Warsaw Pact itself had ended when the Soviet Union itself did, in 1991. The GHW Bush Administration promised Gorbachev that NATO would move “not one inch eastward,” but the U.S. constantly violates that promise, and then blames Russia for responding to its brazenness, as Russia must do for its own defense. If Obama and the U.S. Congress continue this, there will be a nuclear war.)

What happened five days before February 23rd, on 18 February 2018? Here is video of it; and, as is obvious there, Putin must have been fully informed of these rabidly anti-Russian riots in next-door Ukraine, even while he was at the Sochi Olympics. This video is from Hromadske TV. Hromadske TV was financed by three entities as shown in their 2014 Financial Report, a snippet of which is seen here, but the totality of which Financial Report was then removed from the Web because this information didn’t fit the West’s propaganda-line. I had read that Financial Report before it was taken down. This snippet published there is accurate. It shows that “Total cash inflows” during the second half of 2013 were $2,576,596, of which “Individual contributions” (by Ukrainian oligarchs) were $1,135,997; “The Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands” was $793,089; “The Embassy of the United States of America” was $399,650; and George Soros’s “International Renaissance Fund” was $247,860. Consequently, that ’news’ report on Hromadske favored the people who were rioting against Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych; and this Hromadske report said: “New wave of riots tonight in Ukraine…. and the president of Ukraine does nothing about it.” It blamed Yanukovych, for those riots against Yanukovych.

Here is more from Hromadske TV about the riots on that day,February 18th.

And here is the bloodshed on 20 February 2014, BBC Newsnight’s telecast about the violence.

Here is more of that bloodshed 20 February 2014, film-footage which was never telecast by BBC, their cut-outs.

Here is an independent video that was uploaded to the Web on 20 February 2014, showing a sniper reloading his rifle.

And here is Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, simply assuming that the snipers on 20 February 2014 are “Police Snipers,”not U.S.-paid mercenaries who were merely dressed as if they were police.

But here is a video presenting evidence that U.S.-paid mercenaries is what they actually were.

And here is the shock that the EU’s foreign-affairs chief experienced when her own investigator told her that this was a coup, and not actually a revolution at all. (And yet, the EU went along with Obama’s sanctions.)

Well, what happened, then, on the day after the Sochi Olympics ended — the day that Hodges says that Russia “threw away whatever goodwill they had earned the following day by invading Crimea.”? Here is from the Guardian, reporting on Monday, February 24th:

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Book review: Ukraine — Zbig’s Grand Chessboard and How the West Was Checkmated

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Ukraine and the Apocalyptic Risk of Propagandized Ignorance
By David Swanson
June 16, 2015
davidswanson.org

I’m not sure if there’s been a better written book published yet this year than Ukraine: Zbig’s Grand Chessboard and How the West Was Checkmated, but I’m confident there’s not been a more important one. With some 17,000 nuclear bombs in the world, the United States and Russia have about 16,000 of them. The United States is aggressively flirting with World War III, the people of the United States have not the foggiest notion of how or why, and authors Natylie Baldwin and Kermit Heartsong explain it all quite clearly. Go ahead and tell me there’s nothing you’re now spending your time on that’s less important than this.

This book may very well be the best written one I’ve read this year. It puts all the relevant facts — those I knew and many I didn’t — together concisely and with perfect organization. It does it with an informed worldview. It leaves me nothing to complain about at all, which is almost unheard of in my book reviews. I find it refreshing to encounter writers so well-informed who also grasp the significance of their information.

Nearly half the book is used to set the context for recent events in Ukraine. It’s useful to understand the end of the cold war, the irrational hatred of Russia that pervades elite U.S. thinking, and the patterns of behavior that are replaying themselves now at higher volume. Stirring up fanatical fighters in Afghanistan and Chechnya and Georgia, and targeting Ukraine for similar use: this is a context CNN won’t provide. The partnership of the neocons (in arming and provoking violence in Libya) with the humanitarian warriors (in riding to the rescue for regime change): this is a precedent and a model that NPR won’t mention. The U.S. promise not to expand NATO, the U.S. expansion of NATO to 12 new countries right up to the border of Russia, the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and pursuit of “missile defense” — this is background that Fox News would never deem significant. U.S. support for the rule of criminal oligarchs willing to sell off Russian resources, and Russian resistance to those schemes — such accounts are almost incomprehensible if you’ve consumed too much U.S. “news,” but are explained and documented well by Baldwin and Heartsong.

This book includes excellent background on the use and abuse of Gene Sharp and the color revolutions instigated by the U.S. government. A silver lining may be found, I think, in the value of nonviolent action recognized by all involved — whether for good or ill. The same lesson can be found (for good this time) in the civilian resistance to Ukrainian troops in the spring of 2014, and the refusal of (some) troops to attack civilians.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, and Ukraine II in 2013-2014 are recounted well, including detailed chronology. It’s truly remarkable how much has been publicly reported that remains buried. Western leaders met repeatedly in 2012 and 2013 to plot the fate of Ukraine. Neo-Nazis from Ukraine were sent to Poland to train for a coup. NGOs operating out of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev organized trainings for coup participants. On November 24, 2013, three days after Ukraine refused an IMF deal, including refusing to sever ties to Russia, protesters in Kiev began to clash with police. The protesters used violence, destroying buildings and monuments, and tossing Molotov cocktails, but President Obama warned the Ukrainian government not to respond with force. (Contrast that with the treatment of the Occupy movement, or the shooting on Capitol Hill of the woman who made an unacceptable U-turn in her car with her baby.)

U.S.-funded groups organized a Ukrainian opposition, funded a new TV channel, and promoted regime change. The U.S. State Department spent some $5 billion. The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State who handpicked the new leaders, openly brought cookies to protesters. When those protesters violently overthrew the government in February 2014, the United States immediately declared the coup government legitimate. That new government banned major political parties, and attacked, tortured, and murdered their members. The new government included neo-Nazis and would soon include officials imported from the United States. The new government banned the Russian language — the first language of many Ukrainian citizens. Russian war memorials were destroyed. Russian-speaking populations were attacked and murdered.

Crimea, an autonomous region of Ukraine, had its own parliament, had been part of Russia from 1783 until 1954, had publicly voted for close ties to Russia in 1991, 1994, and 2008, and its parliament had voted to rejoin Russia in 2008. On March 16, 2014, 82% of Crimeans took part in a referendum, and 96% of them voted to rejoin Russia. This nonviolent, bloodless, democratic, and legal action, in no violation of a Ukrainian constitution that had been shredded by a violent coup, was immediately denounced in the West as a Russian “invasion” of Crimea.

Novorossiyans, too, sought independence and were attacked by the new Ukrainian military the day after John Brennan visited Kiev and ordered that crime. I know that the Fairfax County Police who have kept me and my friends away from John Brennan’s house in Virginia have had no clue what hell he was unleashing on helpless people thousands of miles away. But that ignorance is at least as disturbing as informed malice would be. Civilians were attacked by jets and helicopters for months in the worst killing in Europe since World War II. Russian President Putin repeatedly pressed for peace, a ceasefire, negotiations. A ceasefire finally came on September 5, 2014.

Remarkably, contrary to what we’ve all been told, Russia didn’t invade Ukraine any of the numerous times we were told that it had just done so. We’ve graduated from mythical weapons of mass destruction, through mythical threats to Libyan civilians, and false accusation of chemical weapons use in Syria, to false accusations of launching invasions that were never launched. The “evidence” of the invasion(s) was carefully left devoid of location or any verifiable detail, but has all been decidedly debunked anyway.

The downing of the MH17 airplane was blamed on Russia with no evidence. The U.S. has information on what happened but won’t release it. Russia released what it had, and the evidence, in agreement with eye-witnesses on the ground, and in agreement with an air-traffic controller at the time, is that the plane was shot down by one or more other planes. “Evidence” that Russia shot the plane down with a missile has been exposed as sloppy forgeries. The vapor trail that a missile would have left was reported by not a single witness.

Baldwin and Heartsong close with the case that U.S. actions have backfired, that in fact whether the people of the United States have any idea what is going on or not, the power brokers in Washington have Second Amendmented themselves in the foot. Sanctions against Russia have made Putin as popular at home as George W. Bush was after he’d managed to exist as president while planes were flown into the World Trade Center. The same sanctions have strengthened Russia by turning it toward its own production and toward alliances with non-Western nations. Ukraine has suffered, and Europe suffers from a cut-off of Russian gas, while Russia makes deals with Turkey, Iran, and China. Evicting a Russian base from Crimea seems more hopeless now than before this madness began. Russia is leading the way as more nations abandon the U.S. dollar. Retaliatory sanctions from Russia are hurting the West. Far from isolated, Russia is working with the BRICS nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and other alliances. Far from impoverished, Russia is buying up gold while the U.S. sinks into debt and is increasingly viewed by the world as a rogue player, and resented by Europe for depriving Europe of Russian trade.

This story begins in the irrationality of collective trauma coming out of the holocaust of World War II and of blind hatred for Russia. It must end with the same irrationality. If U.S. desperation leads to war with Russia in Ukraine or elsewhere along the Russian border where NATO is engaging in various war games and exercises, there may be no more human stories ever told or heard.

 

Protest the U.S. Navy’s war games in Alaska

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Two excellent articles on the situation:
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/war_games_set_to_begin_today_ in_the_pristine_gulf_of_alaska/v
http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-navy-gears-up-for-huge-war-games-in-alaska-wildlife-and-environment-be-damned/

A letter of protest to the US Navy can be sent directly from the Eyak Preservation Council’s website, with a letter that can be customized.

From the Eyak Preservation Council
http://www.eyakpreservationcouncil.org/navy-training-facts/write-letter-navy-2/

Make Your Voice Heard!

Send a letter to the Navy 

Background: In June 2015 the US Navy is going to conduct military training activities in the Gulf of Alaska to “achieve and maintain military readiness.” (Source www.goaeis.com).

The Navy is planning to use active and passive sonar for submarine exercises, plus a wide variety of live weapons and explosives (bombs, missiles, torpedoes, etc.) This area is vital habitat for many species of marine life including whales and salmon. The water here supports the most sustainable and economically valuable fisheries left in the USA.

If these trainings occur it will set a dangerous precedent for unchecked military expansion in the most pristine waters left on earth.

Please send the letter below to let the Navy know that you oppose the use of live ordnance and sonar in the Gulf of Alaska.

This letter will be sent to: 

– Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert
– Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Harris Harris Jr.

Copies of this letter will be sent to:

Alaska Command Leadership:

–       Lt. Gen. Russell Handy
–       Maj. Gen. Michael Shields
–       CMSgt. Gay L.C. Veale
Tommie Baker – Public Affairs at JBER
Jeffrey Fee – Director of Training, Readiness and Exercises at JBER
Jon Montague – Tribal Coordinator at JBER

This letter is at the Council’s link above. The letter can be customized.

Dear Admiral Greenert & Admiral Harris,

I would like to request that the Navy’s ‘Northern Edge’ combined training exercise scheduled for June 2015 be postponed until after mid-September and not use any live ordnance or sonar in Gulf of Alaska waters. There is no question that military preparedness drills are of national importance. However, I am gravely concerned about the risk and potential damage to Alaska’s subsistence, commercial and recreational fisheries, marine habitats, fish and wildlife resources, and the regional economy.

The coastline around the GOA is home to many coastal communities and Alaska Native people who rely on marine and freshwater resources. The Temporary Maritime Activities Area is 20-24 nautical miles from communities on Kodiak Island, and other communities on the South Central Alaskan coast including Cordova, Valdez, Homer, Seward, and Yakutat.

These exercises are planned during the most prolific breeding and migratory periods of the marine supported life in the region (salmon, whales, birds and more).

The waters of the GOA include Essential Fish Habitat for many species of subsistence and commercial fisheries, including those found in Prince William Sound, which has still not fully recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The area of the TMAA also supports the most sustainable and economically valuable fisheries in the USA. Commercial fishing is the largest private sector employer in Alaska, providing some 80,000 jobs as well as a healthy food source. Nearly 100% of sockeye salmon in the USA comes from Alaska. Alaska is also home to the largest wild sockeye salmon run in the world, Bristol Bay.

The Navy’s Environmental Impact Statement includes a long list of potential stressors and effects of these trainings on fish (disruption of habitat; exposure to chemical by-products; disturbance, injury, or death from the shock (pressure) wave; acoustic impacts; and indirect effects including those on prey species and other components of the food web). As the Navy states in its EIS, no studies have established the short-or long-term population-level effects of cumulative exposure of fish to any type of sound.

Given this information, I/we are extremely concerned about the potential impact the Navy’s proposed plan may have on Alaska’s fish and wildlife resources, Native subsistence activities, commercial and recreational fisheries and the regional economy. I formally object the Navy’s use of live ordnance and sonar in the GOA this June and request that all trainings be postponed until after mid September and be moved a minimum distance of 200 nautical miles offshore.

Sincerely,

 

U.S. Navy’s massive war games in pristine Gulf of Alaska — wildlife and ocean be damned

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The war “games” run from June 15 – June 26, 2015.

War Games Set to Begin Today in the Pristine Gulf of Alaska
by Sonia Luokkala – June 15, 2015
Earth Island Journal

As the Navy unleashes 6,000 personnel for training exercises, local communities protest impacts on wildlife and fisheries

Today the US Navy plans to unleash 6,000 sailors, soldiers, airmen, Marines and Coast Guard members along with three Navy Destroyers, 200 aircrafts, untold weaponry, and a submarine to converge in war games in the Gulf of Alaska. The training exercises are scheduled to continue through June 26.

The Navy’s choice of the Gulf of Alaska – one of the most pristine places left on Earth, and at the peak of migration and breeding periods of marine life – has left locals baffled and upset.

In the last month, protests have been held in Cordova, Kodiak, and Homer, Alaska. Emily Stolarcyk, a program manager with the Eyak Preservation Council, an environmental and social change organization based in Cordova, says local communities have never before united in such a way, pointing to the 100-plus fishing vessels that joined the protest against the Navy.

“It was incredible to see the commercial fleet turnout and unite like that with tons of support from people on shore as well,”
she says.

Regional tribal villages have also been vocal in their opposition, worried that the Navy’s trainings could affect their subsistence foods. Several tribes have passed resolutions opposing the trainings and others are requesting formal government-to-government consultations regarding the plans. Local people are also concerned about the possible impacts on marine life.

According to Stolarcyk, the Navy has not been receptive to these concerns. “The Navy is refusing to negotiate at all with local communities,” she says.

The Navy has conducted Northern Edge training exercises in Alaska every two years since 1994. In 2011, the Navy expanded the scope of their training exercises and the use of the highly controversial low-frequency active sonar was authorized for the first time. The 2013 training was cancelled due to the federal government’s budget crisis.

The Gulf of Alaska training area includes more than 42,000 nautical miles of surface and subsurface waters. The area of impact spans more than 8,429 nautical miles, including Alaskan Marine Protected Areas and NOAA designated Fisheries Protected Areas

Residents of Homer, Alaska have been vocal in their opposition to the Navy’s war games in the Gulf of Alaska.

The pristine waters of the Gulf of Alaska provide critical habitat for over 383 species of marine life. Its nutrient-rich waters call forth as many as 20 different species of whales every summer, including three different species of elusive beaked whales that are especially sensitive to the effects of the Navy’s active sonar.

Training exercises will be carried out simultaneously with the key breeding and migratory season for marine life in the area, including five species of Pacific Salmon that return from the ocean to lay their eggs in the rivers and streams of their origin.

Continue reading →

European Parliament surrenders to Washington on Russia policy

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By Stephen Lendman
Posted on Global Research, June 13, 2015

The European Parliament, Council of the European Union and European Commission share EU legislative functions separate from individual member states’ right of initiative power to propose and enact new laws for their respective countries.

During a June 10 plenary session in Strasbourg (two days ahead of Russia’s National Day), MEP’s adopted a resolution (494 to 135 with 69 abstentions) urging EU reassessment of relations with Moscow because of Ukraine crisis conditions.

The measure includes a litany of “Russia-bashing” accusations and Big Lies claiming:

  • “Russia’s direct and indirect involvement in the armed conflict in Ukraine…”
  • it’s annexing Crimea;
  • violating Georgian territory; and
  • regional economic coercion and political destabilization.

“(B)ecause of its action in Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine, (Russia) can no longer be treated as, or considered, a “strategic partner,” the resolution said.

It urged countering Russian hard truths irresponsibly called propaganda – wanting important sources of news, information and analysis like RT International and Sputnik News replaced by Western-style government sponsored disinformation and Big Lies on issues mattering most.

Fact: Russia-bashing has nothing to do with its nonexistent interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs, violating its sovereignty, annexing its territory, or waging war.

Fact: It has everything to do with attacking Russia’s sovereign independence and vitally important opposition to America’s imperial agenda.

Fact: It’s about promoting regime change – wanting pro-Western stooge governance replacing Putin.

Fact: It’s wanting Russian resources and population exploited – strip-mining the country for profit, transforming its people into serfs.

Fact: It’s about European nations partnering with America’s dirty agenda at the expense of their own interests – risking another major war on their territory.

Russian lower house State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin said “(e)verybody understands who tells the Europeans what they should do, and why.”

Fact: It’s about America wanting other nations doing its fighting and dying for it to enrich its privileged interests more than already.

On Thursday, US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey said America needs “a network of allies.”

“We really want to play an away game, and we need teammates to do it. The very last thing we want is to play a home game.”

Fact: It’s about letting police state justice override fundamental human and civil rights.

Fact: It’s about replacing democracy with money-controlled tyranny.

Fact: It’s about creating a world more unfit to live in than already.

Fact: It’s a loud and clear call to everyone to unite against a monster threatening fundamental liberties too precious to lose.

The European Parliament’s resolution was based on a report by hardline Lithuanian MEP Gabrielius Laandsbergis irresponsibly saying:

“With its aggression against Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, the Russian leadership has put our policies at a crossroads. It’s up to the Kremlin to decide now which way it will go – cooperation or deepening alienation.”

Not a shred of credible evidence suggests Russian direct or indirect aggression in Ukraine. If any existed it would have been revealed long ago.

During his 13th annual marathon Q & A session in April, Putin forthrightly said “(i)n regard to the question of whether or not our troops are in Ukraine, I’ll say directly and definitely that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine.”

An April 16 Kremlin tweet said “Putin on the rumours that Russian troops are deployed in #Ukraine: I want to make this clear, there are no Russian troops in Ukraine.”

Russia alone continues forthright efforts for diplomatic conflict resolution. Anti-Russian propaganda drowns out hard truths. It exceeds the worst of Cold War vitriol. It risks the unthinkable – possible confrontation between the world’s two most formidable nuclear powers.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net .

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/european-parliament-surrenders-to-washington-on-russia-policy/5455362