Month: May 2016

Numbers don’t lie: Report to the Council of Europe dismantles the narrative of “police brutality” during Maidan

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From Fort Russ

Fort Russ, May 27th, 2016 by Tatzhit

Before we discuss the mindblowing-yet-ignored facts in an official report on the Maidan events written for the Council of Europe, let’s briefly discuss two more subjects:

  1. A) Why should you  care about official reports at all?
    To put it simply, official documents are more useful than mass media reports. They are far less tainted by propaganda or scaremongering – simply because such reports are written by government agencies for other government agencies, not by incompetent journalists for the gullible masses.

Almost always, time dedicated to watching or reading the mainstream “news” would be better spent going through official documents and reports. Today’s theoretically “open” governments leave a lot of detailed information buried in their websites, as no one reads it anyway. Oftentimes, very interesting findings are just a couple Google searches away.

  1. B) How does this pertain to the Ukrainian conflict?
    One could say that all this senseless bloodshed and economic collapse was, in a large part, caused by people failing to read an official treaty. I haven’t met a single pro-Maidan person that has actually studied the EuroAssociation agreement.

Let me repeat that: THE VAST MAJORITY OF PROTESTERS DIDN’T EVEN READ THE DOCUMENT THAT WAS SUPPOSEDLY THE MAIN REASON THEY OVERTHREW THE GOVERNMENT.

I can’t even express how crazy this is.

Let me try to explain by comparing to Russia’s Bolshevik revolution:

In 1917, even the rank-and-file members of revolutionary factions knew the key ideological points, what were the main laws/reforms their parties wanted to implement, and why. Many/most activists actually read the source material, and could competently argue economics and government policy. Political factions were formed around councils that discussed all of these things.

On the other hand, the Maidan “revolutionary” structure wasn’t built around individual groups of thinkers. The organization included fighting units, the medical branch, the food&shelter branch, a transport/car branch… But no branch concerned with analysis and making decisions. Maidan was an animal with horns, stomach and legs, but no brain. And it was largely intentionally engineered that way – by outside forces, for their gain. The same is true of many other modern social movements [note 1].

<somewhat related video on the genesis and anatomy of Maidan, part of THIS larger article – ed.>

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Swiss Airbus avoids U.S. spy plane; Russia warns U.S.– Leave your transponders ON near our borders

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From Fort Russ

“It’s a Boeing RC-135 of the type that the pilots had to avoid over the Sea of Japan”
Le Matin, May 25, 2016

 Translator note: A transponder is connected to a plane’s altimeter, and answers radar with two points of information: the registration and the altitude. Further, an airplane’s onboard equipment to spot other air traffic also depends on the transponders in the other aircraft. (I am a pilot, and there is a transponder in my Cessna 150.) — Tom Winter

 A Swiss Airbus avoids a US spy plane

 Big scare for the pilot of a jetliner returning from Japan who quickly changed altitude on seeing an unidentified Boeing. [Further translation: dived!]

  Seeing a big plane over the Sea of Japan which did not emit any signal, the pilots of an Airbus of the Swiss company had only seconds to decide to change altitude and prevent a possible collision, reports the news agency Interfax.

 The Ministry of the Russian Defense has since announced spotting a US Air Force RC-135 flying in the region with its transponder turned off for a reconnaissance mission. The American crew had provided no information to air traffic controllers while flying at about 11,000 meters, the altitude of civilian flights. In addition to the Swiss aviation, a KLM Boeing-777 aircraft also had to change course.

 “Because of this lack of professionalism, the US plane was running the risk of a collision,” denounced the Russian Defense Ministry, adding that they have asked officials to take steps to prevent such incidents near its border.

 In January, a US spy plane was intercepted over the Black Sea by a Russian jet, and in April it was over the Baltic Sea that a US aircraft had been intercepted. Following this latest episode, the Russian Defense Ministry officially asked the United States “not to approach Russian borders without turning on the transponders to be identified by our radar.”

 

Putin: Romania ‘in crosshairs’ after opening NATO missile defense base

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From RT

May 27, 2016

During a visit to Greece intended to repair ties with the EU, Vladimir Putin said that Russia has “no choice” but to target Romania, which has recently opened a NATO missile defense base, and Poland, which plans to do so within two years.

“If yesterday people simply did not know what it means to be in the crosshairs in those areas of Romania, then today we will be forced to carry out certain measures to ensure our security. And it will be the same with Poland,” Putin said during a joint press conference with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens on Friday.

The Russian President was referring to the Deveselu facility that officially became operational in May after nearly a decade and $800 million of planning and construction.

“At the moment the interceptor missiles installed have a range of 500 kilometers, soon this will go up to 1000 kilometers, and worse than that, they can be rearmed with 2400km-range offensive missiles even today, and it can be done by simply switching the software, so that even the Romanians themselves won’t know,” said Putin, who is in Greece for a two-day tour.

“We have the capability to respond. The whole world saw what our medium-range sea-based missiles are capable of [in Syria]. But we violate no agreements. And our ground-based Iskander missiles have also proven themselves as superb,” continued Putin.

Russia’s political and military leadership has repeatedly spoken out against the missile defense shield since it was proposed during the George W. Bush administration, and Putin reiterated that Moscow does not believe the European part of it is targeted against a potential threat from Iran.

“NATO fend us off with vague statements that this is no threat to Russia… That the whole project began as a preventive measure against Iran’s nuclear program. Where is that program now? It doesn’t exist,” said Putin, referring to the nuclear treaty that was concluded between the world’s major powers and Tehran last year. “We have been saying since the early 2000s that we will have to react somehow to your moves to undermine international security. No one is listening to us.”

Alexis Tsipras in his turn reiterated that Russia is a player in the European security theater and that current attempts to alienate Moscow with measures such as sanctions reminds him of Cold War times.

European security cannot be achieved without cooperation and dialogue with Russia,” Tsipras said in an interview with Sputnik. “I don’t believe that we can move forward or ensure compliance with international law while caught in a vicious circle of sanctions, militarization and Cold War rhetoric.”

President Putin arrived in Greece on Friday for a two-day visit that involves meetings with his Greek counterpart, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, and other top-level discussions.

It is the Russian president’s first EU trip in seven months, and comes just weeks before Brussels decides on whether to extend EU sanctions against Russia.

Bilateral trade and investment, as well as joint energy and transport projects, were said to be major issues on the agenda for the visit. Another pressing matter for both Athens and Moscow, the economic sanctions against Russia, will also be on the table. Prime Minister Tsipras has already told RIA Novosti that the restrictions have had a negative impact on Russian-Greek economic ties, but added there are areas not covered by the sanctions where business between the two countries could perform well.

The Greek PM laid a foundation of trust with the Russian leader and even proposed a visa-free travel regime in the EU for Russian nationals.

“We overcame all the difficulties that arose due to changes in the issuance of Schengen visas, strengthened the work of our consulates in Russia by attracting dozens of new employees, and we are ready to meet the high demand of Russian nationals for travel to Greece. At the same time, I find it necessary, as I have already mentioned at a European level, that dialogue is relaunched on easing the visa regime for Russian citizens,” Tsipras said.

Promoting international security and tackling illegal migration, which is the hot issue in Greece, are also points of mutual interest.

On Saturday, President Putin will attend a prayer service at Mount Athos, which is home to 20 monasteries and is an important spiritual site for Orthodox Christians. Joined by Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, the president is expected to take part in millennial celebrations of the Russian monastic presence on Athos.

https://www.rt.com/news/344642-putin-visit-greece-tsipras/

Kosovo: Hillary Clinton’s legacy of terror

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By Justin Raimondo
Global Research, May 26, 2016
Antiwar 24 May 2016

The “liberation” of Kosovo unleashed radical Islamism in Europe

Kosovo is Clinton Country: a 10-foot-high statue of Bill overlooks “Bill Clinton Boulevard” in the capital city of Pristina. Hillary is also memorialized in what has become the crime capital of Europe: right off the street named for her husband is a store named “Hillary,” featuring women’s clothing modeled after the putative Democratic party nominee for President. Pantsuits figure prominently. As Vice puts it: “While former President Bill Clinton has had a boulevard named after him, it’s without a doubt that his wife’s the real star out here.” Why is that?

As Gail Sheehy pointed out in her biography of Hillary, it was Mrs. Clinton who hectored her husband into bowing to a chorus of neoconservative and liberal interventionist voices and finally giving the order to bomb the former Yugoslavia. Traveling to Kosovo when Serbs in the northern part of the country were demanding some form of local autonomy to stave off violent attacks by Kosovar ultra-nationalists, Mrs. Clinton reassured her hosts that the US would stand behind Pristina: “For me, my family and my fellow Americans this is more than a foreign policy issue, it is personal.” She then physically embraced Kosovo President and Mafia chieftain Hacim Thaci – who has since been credibly accused by the Council of Europe of stealing human organs from Serb victims and selling them on the black market.

Hillary owns Kosovo – she is not only personally responsible for its evolution from a province of the former Yugoslavia into a Mafia state, she is also the mother of the policy that made its very existence possible and which she carried into her years as Secretary of State under Barack Obama.

As the “Arab Spring” threatened to topple regimes throughout the Middle East, Mrs. Clinton decided to get on board the revolutionary choo-choo train and hitch her wagon to “moderate” Islamists who seemed like the wave of the future. She dumped Egyptian despot Hosni Mubarak, whom she had previously described as a friend of the family, and supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s bid for power. In Libya, she sided with Islamist rebels out to overthrow Moammar Ghaddafi, celebrating his gruesome deathby declaring “We came, we saw, he died.” And in Syria, she plotted with Gen. David Petraeus to get around President Obama’s reluctance to step into the Syrian quagmire by arming Syrian rebels allied with al-Qaeda and other terrorist gangs.

The Clintonian legacy of enabling Islamist terrorists extends to present day Kosovo, where the New York Times has revealed an extensive network of ISIS-affiliated madrassas – indoctrination centers – funded by the Saudis, the Qataris, and the Kuwaitis. The Times reports:

“Every Friday, just yards from a statue of Bill Clinton with arm aloft in a cheery wave, hundreds of young bearded men make a show of kneeling to pray on the sidewalk outside an improvised mosque in a former furniture store.”

“The mosque is one of scores built here with Saudi government money and blamed for spreading Wahhabism” in the 17 years since the war ended with Kosovo’s independence, says the Times.

“Since then – much of that time under the watch of American officials – Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.”

Kosovo is jihadi heaven. The Times informs us that “Over the last two years, the police have identified 314 Kosovars – including two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children – who have gone abroad to join the Islamic State, the highest number per capita in Europe.”

The Wahabist ideology carried by radical imams is directly financed by the Saudis, the Qataris, the Kuwaitis, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. All of these countries, by the way, are major donors to the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton’s Islamist-friendly foreign policy created a terrorist base in Kosovo, and her friends the Saudis are instrumental in setting up the conditions whereby ISIS has gained a foothold in the heart of Europe. At sprawling Camp Bondesteel, where US troops have been stationed since the “liberation,” radical imams recruited three Kosovar employees, including Lavdrim Muhaxheri, who is today a commander of the Islamic State: his claim to fame is that he was videotaped executing a Syrian by blowing him to bits with a rocket-propelled grenade. (“I did not do anything less or more than what KLA soldiers did during the war,” he declared in an interview with an Albanian newspaper.)

Hillary Clinton and Hashim Thaci

After ignoring the problem for years, the authorities are making a show of rounding up terrorist suspects: five were recently arrested and given long sentences, but there are hundreds more where that came from.

Kosovo today is a fulcrum of terrorism, violence, crime, and virulent nationalism. The Parliament is in chaos as Albanian ultra-nationalists demanding union with Albania shut down sessions with smoke bombs and mob action. This is the legacy of the Clintons in the Balkans: a terrorist state run by Mafia chieftains that has become the epicenter of radical Islamism in the midst of Europe.

This is “blowback” with a vengeance, and Hillary Clinton and husband Bill have their fingerprints all over this outrage: but of course the “mainstream” media isn’t holding them to account. The Times story on the rise of ISIS in Kosovo never mentions the dubious duo, and is vague when it reports on the three employees of Camp Bondesteel who wound up in Syria’s terrorist camps. Who are the other two besides Muhaxheri? Did  they receive any military training? This Reuters report confirms that NATO brought Muhaxheri to Iraq, where he worked for two years at a military base.

And there’s more where he came from. As Reuters informs us:

“Thousands of Kosovars have moved on from Bondsteel to work with U.S. contractors on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, earning the kind of money they can only dream of in Kosovo.”

The terrorist pipeline runs from Kosovo, to Iraq and Afghanistan, and then on to Syria – where they fill the ranks of ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Could there be a more perfect illustration of how the principle of “blowback” works, and how we’re creating an army of Frankenstein monsters?

All this brings back memories  of Antiwar.com’s first days: this site was born as a protest against US intervention in the former Yugoslavia. Back then we warned again and again (and again!) about the specter of Islamist extremism as the energizing ideology of the Albanian separatists, both in Kosovo and Bosnia.

We were right on target.

That’s the great advantage of being a regular reader of Antiwar.com – we bring you the news before it happens. That’s years before it happens.

But we can’t continue to do it without your support – your financial assistance is critical to our continued existence.

Unlike the War Party, we here at Antiwar.com don’t get seven-figure donations from big foundations, foreign countries, or anybody else for that matter. We depend on you – our readers and supporters – for the funds we need to do our work…

The original source of this article is Antiwar

Underfunded, unready’: John McCain wants $17 billion more for “defense”, including for Ukraine

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From Sputnik

Underfunded, Unready’: John McCain Wants $17 Billion More for US Defense
May 25, 2016

Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain is expected to ask for an additional $17 billion in defense funding, via an amendment to the $602 billion 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that arrives on the Senate floor this week.

Democratic members of the Senate have demanded that each dollar spent on defense be matched in domestic spending, which may make the Republican’s amendment much more difficult to pass.

“I don’t know whether or not this amendment will succeed, but the Senate must have this debate and senators must choose a side,” McCain said at an event at the Brookings’ Center.

In a six-page letter to the Senate by McCain on May 20, he requested additional funding for the Afghan Security Forces Fund, increased spending to fight Daesh and the Taliban, as well as money for Ukraine, in addition to what is already being spent on new fighter jets and ship building.

McCain also called for a freeze on the drawdown of the Army and Marines.

“By the end of the next fiscal year, the Army will be cut down to 450,000 Active-Duty personnel soldiers, down from a wartime peak of 570,000. This budget-driven reduction was made before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of ISIL,” he states in the letter, reiterating ungrounded accusations US Republicans often use to justify more military expenditures. “Given the current threats facing the Army and the demands they impose upon our soldiers, the Senate should stop the planned reduction of 15,000 Active-Duty soldiers and 10,000 reserve component soldiers in fiscal year 2017.”

He argued that the military is being left “underfunded, undersized, and unready to meet current and future threats.”

“My instinct that Sen. McCain’s amendment would just be about increasing defense spending in the NDAA, and that kind of dollar-for-dollar increase on other issues wouldn’t be germane there, so you have a vote for the first time, in recent memory at least, on whether we should increase defense spending or not, without the ancillary issues,” Justin Johnson, a senior defense policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, told Defense News.

The White House issued a statement saying it will veto any legislation that includes these changes.

http://sputniknews.com/us/20160524/1040191295/mccain-defense-budget-ndaa.html

Are US-backed Iraqi militias committing ethnic cleansing under the cover of fighting Daesh?

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From Sputnik

25.05.2016) Get short URL
Iraqi forces and affiliated Shiite militias are accused of ethnic cleansing and mass atrocities in Iraq, under the cover of fighting to liberate territory from Daesh.

On Monday, the Iraqi Army announced plans to begin an offensive to retake the city of Fallujah from Daesh forces. The heavily-populated Iraqi city was the first to fall to the extremist group in 2014, but in recent months Iraqi forces have been able to sharply reduce the militants’ stronghold over the city.

The city also played site for one of the bloodiest battles following the US-led invasion of Iraq, leading to mass casualties of US service members and leaving a once-prominent city in ruins.

Following the ouster of Saddam Hussein, Fallujah, like many other multicultural cities in the country, descended into sectarian strife leading then-Senator Joe Biden to call for the partitioning of Iraq in 2006.

The Sunni-dominated city faced the worst of the systematic effort to expunge loyalists of Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’ath Party, in a process now known as de-baathification, from positions within the Iraqi government, including ordinary social sector positions in education, medicine, and engineering.

The once prominent Sunni middle class found themselves the subject of persecution at the hands of the Shia-led government, and violent Shiite militias, notably Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

The widespread alienation of Sunnis and the repeated violent tides of ethnic cleansing by Shiite militias forced many secular Sunnis into league with the violent Daesh extremist group, whose Iraqi branch is now dominated by a cadre of former Saddam Hussein loyalists.

With the government unravelling in Iraq, and the violent Mahdi army once again threatening to seize control of the country, the situation has been described as waves of ethnic cleansing by competing and increasingly extremist sectarian militias – the Mahdi Army, supported by Iraqi forces on the Shia side, and Daesh, along with al-Qaeda, on the Sunni side.

In this descent into social cataclysm, the Iraqi army, along with loosely-affiliated Shia militias, looks to ‘liberate’ Fallujah, using American weapons and support, but with many residents of the Daesh-occupied city fearing another violent round of ethnic cleansing. On Tuesday, Loud & Clear’s Brian Becker sat down with Iraqi-American and foreign policy analyst Raed Jarrar to discuss the latest offensive.

https://www.spreaker.com/embed/player/standard?episode_id=8590888&autoplay=false

Has the offensive on Daesh-controlled Fallujah begun?

“The news coming from Iraq indicates that there are no signs that the offensive has begun yet, but the Iraqi government has announced its intentions to start an offensive,” explained Jarrar. “US sources have been denying that any operations have started taking place so there is some confusion about that.”

The foreign policy analyst observed that people remaining in Fallujah are frightened by the Iraqi forces and affiliated militias, who they believe will use the presence of Daesh as a cover for ethnic cleansing.

“Militias affiliated with the Iraqi forces have made shocking announcements of late, calling Fallujah a cancer that has to be cut out, and these proclamations are concerning because the militias have committed war crimes when they attacked towns controlled by ISIS in the past,” said Jarrar. “There is a real concern that the anticipated attacks on Fallujah will follow the pattern of abuses committed by Iraqi forces and affiliated militias in the past.”

What do they mean by ‘liberating’ Fallujah? Ramadi was ‘liberated’ but there was nothing left.

“There was a report by Human Rights Watch that came out last year that was titled ‘After Liberation Came Destruction.’ The word liberation is a very problematic word in this context,” said Jarrar. “Human Rights Watch reported the premeditated and systematic way that Iraqi forces and militias took towns back from ISIS and destroyed towns, committing ethnic cleansing. They targeted some ethnicities against other ethnicities, demolished homes of some sects and kept homes of other sects.”

“I expect that this is just another campaign of ethnic cleansing and they are using ISIS as a pretext to enter these towns and bombard them,” said Jarrar. “This is a premeditated policy of destruction and ethnic cleansing that the Iraqi government has been following since 2003.”

Where should forces attack to get a handle on the unravelling situation in Iraq?

“From my point of view, that is not the discussion that we should be having. It is not about which city to bombard first or what city to allow the US and its allies to bomb first,” said Jarrar. “That is why I wanted to comment on the word ‘liberate,’ because it implies that there is a legitimate force that will come in to kick out an illegitimate group. That is not the situation in Iraq. Iraq has many extremist and violent groups, including the government forces.”

“If the United States wants to give good advice to Iraq, then we need to start by stopping support to groups and the Iraqi government, that have been committing mass violations of human rights, funding these groups is illegal under US and international law,” said Jarrar. “We continue to give funds and weapons to groups committing atrocities in Iraq.”

Jaraa claimed that a more meaningful solution to the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq and throughout the region, would be to focus on policies of division and persecution that pit groups against each other, likening the violence committed by Shia militias to that committed by Daesh, which he referred to as a similar force on the Sunni side.

“The idea of getting rid of all these things will not include dropping more bombs on Iraq, it will not make the country more peaceful and it will not make these groups more moderate. It will actually make more death and destruction and that is what the US has been doing in Iraq since 1991,” stated Jarrar.

Daesh is blocking Fallujah residents from leaving while the Iraqis demand that they leave – what will happen to the civilians?

“They are the ones that pay the hefty price and many of them have been paying a heavy price, not as a consequence of violence, but because that is the actual goal of violence – displacement,” explained Jarrar. “The Iraqi militias, especially those affiliated with the Iraqi government, have been implementing a plan of systematic displacement to gain more territory for their own group.”

“This is a different analysis than you receive in the mainstream media that the violence is part of the medicine, part of the solution, and the US has to support attacks on Fallujah and Mosul because this is the way to get rid of the bad guys and liberate these towns,” explained Farrar.

“That is not what is going on in the real world. In the real world this is more violence that has illegitimate agendas to displace more Iraqi and create more sectarian enclaves,” he said.

http://sputniknews.com/news/20160525/1040198115/iraq-shia-sunni-daesh-fallujah.html

Kerry threatens war-without-end on Syria

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From Sputnik

21.05.2016
Finian Cunningham
Alleged peace-maker John Kerry threatened to wage war-without-end on Syria – if the Middle East country does accept the US demand for regime change.

That’s hardly the language of a supposed bona fide diplomat who presents an image to the world as a politician concerned to bring about an end to the five-year Syrian conflict.

The US Secretary of State repeatedly sounds anxious to alleviate the appalling suffering of the Syrian nation, where over the past five years some 400,000 people have been killed and millions displaced as refugees.

Anyone who has not been brainwashed by Western media propaganda knows full well that the suffering of Syria has been caused by Washington and its allies sponsoring a covert war for regime change in that country.

Kerry was speaking during another round of failed negotiations — this time in Vienna — along with other leaders from the 17-nation International Syria Support Group that includes Russia, as well as the United Nations.

The “support group” is a disgustingly erroneous name, given that certain members of this entity — primarily the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — have done everything in their power to sponsor a proxy terrorist war on Syria. If the truth were not so abject, it would be laughable.

In a Voice of America report headlined “US still has leverage in Syria,” Kerry is quoted thus: “He said the greatest leverage [on Syria] was the fact that [President] Assad and his backers would never be able to end the war in Syria if they declined to negotiate a political settlement.”

Consider the pernicious import of that for a moment. In other words, America’s top “diplomat” is laying down a criminal ultimatum to the sovereign state of Syria and its elected government of President Bashar al-Assad. Kerry is saying in no uncertain terms that unless the Syrian authorities do not accept Washington’s demand for regime change, then the country is facing never-ending war.

Of course, being a weasel-worded diplomat, Kerry does not use the illegal term “regime change”. He instead talks about “political transition”. And he has set a date in August for this “transition” to take place. But what Kerry’s euphemistic jargon boils down to is this: the Syrian president and his administration must vacate government — or else face more violence and destruction.

This is the political objective that Washington and its allies in NATO, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have wanted all along. They want what is an independent, anti-imperialist Syrian government to give way to some composite regime that would be a puppet for Washington’s geopolitical interests in the oil-rich, strategically vital Middle East region.

Any replacement regime would spurn its erstwhile allies of Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement to become an American vassal.

In reality, the supposed pro-democracy change that Washington allegedly wants to install in Syria would be dominated by a repressive, fundamentalist regime that would betray the interests of the Syrian people. We can count on this outcome because the proxies who are waging Washington’s covert war are dominated by extremists fully aligned with their despotic sponsors in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Kerry’s apparent confidence in predicting that Syria faces a war of attrition if it does capitulate is a tacit admission by Washington that it controls the illegally armed factions in Syria.

The United States may officially proscribe terror groups like al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al Nusra and the so-called Islamic State (also known as Daesh). The US pays lip service to “defeating terrorism”.

But anyone with an informed understanding of what is really happening in Syria and other countries subjected to US-led regime change knows that Washington has orchestrated these same terror groups for its criminal political objectives.

This is corroborated by the fact that Washington refuses to coordinate its (ineffectual) bombing campaign with Russia to eliminate the terror groups. It is corroborated by the fact that Washington and its allies point-blank refuse Russia’s proposals at the UN Security Council to designate other known terror outfits — Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Shams — as terrorist.

Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Shams are every bit as vile and barbaric as the other al Qaeda-affiliated franchises. They all espouse the same twisted death-cult ideology; fight alongside each others (when they are not feuding, that is, over war spoils); and ultimately they all share the same sponsors and American-supplied weaponry.

Syrian government forces in Palmyra, central Syria.
© SPUTNIK/
‘Fair Game’? What Kerry’s ‘Absolute Lines’ in Syria Really Mean

It is openly admitted that America’s allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Qatar, bankroll Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Shams and that this nexus serves as a conduit for American weapons from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Why else would John Kerry begin his week of “diplomacy” in Vienna by first making an urgent visit to Saudi King Salman last weekend. Kerry was reportedly appealing to the 9/11-sponsoring Saudi regime to support his diplomatic push in Vienna. The Western media “reported” Kerry’s Saudi visit as if it were a benign mission, as they usually do. Whenever it should be obvious that what he was really doing was trying to get the Saudis to ease off on the terror war in Syria.

Washington is currently trying to wrangle regime change in Syria through a political track. That is a world of difference from gullible Western media projections of Kerry’s pretensions of “negotiating peace”.

Yet all the while the US and the Saudis are reserving the right to use “Plan B” if the political track should not materialize in regime change.

That is what Kerry really means when he said in Vienna that “Assad and his backers would never be able to end the war in Syria if they declined to negotiate a political settlement.”

Washington’s “leverage” in Syria is due to the simple, diabolical fact that it and its despotic allies ultimately can turn on and off the violence when it is expedient for their interests. And that violence relies on the deployment of known terrorist organizations, including the ones that Washington’s double-think refuses to recognize as “terrorist”.

So let’s put this into stark perspective. Despite his Orwellian title of diplomat and peace-maker, US Secretary of State John Kerry is the public face of a terrorist enterprise.

What other world power gives itself the right to threaten nations with “regime change or war”? And yet this same nation considers itself a paragon of democracy, human rights and law-abiding probity.

The United States of America is a rogue regime on a criminal scale that exceeds the very worst in history.

As a parting footnote, John Kerry is a decorated American “war hero”. He served four months as a navy officer during the US genocidal war on Vietnam during the late 1960s. Kerry received a bunch of medals for his “actions”, which according to reliable accounts from veterans on his river-boat patrols, involved shooting fleeing Vietnamese peasants in the back.

This is the same Kerry who is now purporting to bring peace to Syria.

Like everything that Washington says, it is full of lies and deception. The abiding lesson: don’t turn your back on Washington and its terrorist-sponsoring, war-mongering “diplomats”.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.

http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160521/1040021784/kerry-threatens-war-syria.html

Western ‘culture of hatred’ fuels East-West strife

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Very true. I think most Americans are fed hatred and mistrust of Russia with their mother’s milk. It’s very sad to see this, even among so-called peace activists. So few ask, Cui bono? Who benefits from the hatred?

It’s racism, but few people identify it as such.

From Pravda

Western ‘culture of hatred’ fuels East-West strife. 58053.jpeg

AP photo

By Dave Harrison

May 24, 2016

For citizens of the West, a ‘culture of hatred’ toward East Europeans and Russians has been ongoing for almost a century. Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the West immediately aligned themselves with the oppressive czar and the aristocracy of Russia. It did not matter that the people of Russia were starving and that their uprising, and resultant revolution, was just.

During Russia’s Civil War (1918-20), the ‘Whites’ were supported with money, arms, and political encouragement from the West sincerely hoping that the revolution would fail. In fact, most of the aristocracy fled to London in hopes of returning once the revolution was put down, but that didn’t happen.

Since then the Western ‘Culture of Hatred’ has continued toward Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, other Soviet and Russian leaders, and particularly against the Russian people even today. Although people of many nations have been made to feel welcome in the West, immigrants from Russia, Ukraine and other East European countries have always been treated as third-class citizens.

During WWI, Ukrainians were rounded up, labelled as ‘enemy aliens’, sent to work camps and used as slave labourers in many parts of Canada including the internationally famous town of Banff, Alberta where tourists today use sidewalks and bridges made by Ukrainian, slave labour.

This ‘Culture of Hatred’ did not begin there. When East Europeans arrived in Canada in the 1890s, they were given the poorest farming lands one can imagine. They were given no tools, no livestock, no seeds, no housing, no expert help, and not even stoves to keep themselves warm in the brutal, Canadian winters. Yet, they survived not‘because of the Canadian government’ but ‘in spite of the Canadian government’ which would easily have watched them perish without any federal help.

Even today, Western newspapers, magazines and television spew a steady stream of venom toward Putin, Russia, and its allies, to whoever will listen to their propaganda. All television ‘news’ reports on Russia are always laced with prejudice and bias and drip with hatred. Nothing positive is ever reported and every positive event involving Russia is twisted into a ‘negative’. This tactic has been used since the end of WWII and shows no signs of abatement.

During WWII, when Stalin begged for the opening of a ‘second front’ in Europe, the West was content to watch Russians be slaughtered by the millions while they dragged their feet for another three years. Meanwhile they reluctantly provided small amounts of materiel through Murmansk to establish basic rapport and good will, but the delayed second front to alleviate the devastating calamity against Russia was nothing less than Western punishment for a people they unnecessarily feared and hated.

As a result, Russian soldiers did most of the dying – more than 20 million – while Americans arrived at the end and claimed victory and glory as ‘their’ own. No sooner WWII ended, Russia became the West’s new enemy in aCold War which lasted the next half-century.

This hatred has manifested itself in other newsworthy events. When Malaysia Flight 17 was downed over Ukraine (July, 2014) by a missile from unknown sources, Western media spewed their hatred against Russia for weeks on end. Even today, the event is repeatedly brought up, but when the USS Vincennes shot down Iranian Air Flight 655 with 290 passengers and crew on board (July 3rd, 1988), it was simply brushed aside as a ‘tragic accident’ which was hardly worthy of mention.

With the recent ISIL attacks in Paris and Brussels, the outpouring of grief and outrage filled front pages in Western newspapers for a full week, but when 224 passengers (men, women and children) and crew of Metrojet Flight 9268 were murdered by a terrorist bomb in Northern Sinai they were hardly given a mention in Western newspaper and television.

No messages of sympathy or condolences from the West were sent to the Russian people and there was no outpouring of grief or outrage. Instead, Charlie Hebdo Magazine made jokes and mocked the air crash as well as the 224 deaths which included seventeen children.

The Western ‘Culture of Hatred’ for people of the Mid-East, East Europe and Russia runs deep and is continually nourished by Western media.

Dave Harrison

http://www.pravdareport.com/society/stories/24-05-2016/134513-culture_hatred-0/

Operation “Sea Breeze”: How US Marines ‘studied’ Russian in Crimea in 2006

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From Fort Russ

May 24, 2016

Blogger Mikhail Sinelnikov-Orishak (@sine-or in Live Journal)

Translated by Kristina Kharlova

In my personal archive I found a photo from the era when Crimea was still Ukrainian:

“From May 27 to June 22 2006 here was held a protest by citizens of Ukraine and Feodosia against the exercises and deployment of NATO forces in Crimea. With gratitude to Feodosians for their civil courage from deputies of 5th City Council”

For those who didn’t know or tried to forget – I will remind: on May 27, 2006 the American ship “Advantage” came into the port of Feodosia where it unloaded several dozen containers with firearms, equipment and construction materials for military exercises “Sea Breeze-2006.”

Immediately began protests of Crimean residents against the presence of NATO troops: rallies, tent cities, peace marches. The tension has boiled to a point when more than 200 US Marines had to be hastily evacuated from the sanatorium of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine near Alushta, where they, as it turns out, have been “studying Russian language”. At least, so said the representatives of the administration of then-President Yushchenko. In the end, the US State Department and the Pentagon have issued a joint statement on suspension of Sea Breeze-2006 due to a crisis … in the Middle East.

It should be noted that such NATO exercises were held in the Black sea 5 (!) times since 1997, and 4 of them in the territorial waters of Ukraine. Why did “Sea Breeze-2006” become a “stumbling block”?

Any military exercise initially has a script according to which further events must unfold. At the time, it went as follows:

Some “Runo peninsula”, formerly part of the country of Sapphire, with a thriving “regime”, hostile to NATO, comes under the jurisdiction of a “democratic state” of Emerald. Thus, the peninsula with all the familiar city names of Evpatoria, Sevastopol, Simferopol gains “political independence”, which Sapphire cannot accept and creates an IRM – “Independent Runo Movement”.
International community for a while ignores sabotage, murders of foreign citizens, committed by IRM. But ‘separatists’ commit a raid on a local university and take hostage a large group of students – citizens of countries-NATO members, and in Simferopol at the same time break out rallies and demonstrations demanding restoration of the previous status of the peninsula as a province of Sapphire. The government of Emerald appeals for help to the United Nations, and the UN gives NATO the permission to conduct the operation to free the hostages, for the establishment of peace and stability “in the Northern part of the Black sea”.

This legend was published in the media which finally infuriated the residents of “Runo Peninsula”. On June 24 2006 all American experts and military equipment finally left the “inhospitable” Crimea aboard a Ukrainian merchant vessel “Anatoly Kolesnichenko”.

P. S. As an expert comment from an interview with ex-NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the Ukrainian TV channel “Inter” on August 7, 2014: “What a ridiculous accusation, NATO never intended to establish military bases in Ukraine…”

http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/05/operation-sea-breeze-how-us-marines.html

Montenegro farmer offers his lands to Russia to build base against NATO

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From Fort Russ

May 24, 2016 –
Translated by J. Arnoldski
In the village of Kralje, several people have taken the initiative to donate their extensive land holdings to Vladimir Putin and the brotherly Russian people.
“I would offer this territory to the Russians for a military base or hotels and vacation. This is my idea, as they’ll know better what exactly to build here. This field is ideal for helicopter landing pads, and stretches another kilometer to the south. As for the forest, where I have fifteen hectares, there is about 150 thousand square meters, enough territory for a Russian missile system to defend against the aggressor,” Dzhagisha Dzhurishich told “Life” in an interview. 
The Orthodox Serbs living in the village of Kralje at the foot of the Komovi mountains are not satisfied with the course of joining NATO which the government of Montenegro has taken. 
“The state of Montenegro is striving to join NATO, but we are against this, and we want to show that the alliance is an aggressive organization that only pursues its own goals in everything. So here is everything – my land, this forest on the mountain, and the field there further south. It’s all mine. Thirty hectares is enough. And, of course, if something happens, then my neighbors will join me and also offer their land. My brothers are for this, and we have one forest and around a hundred hectares total.” 
Besides land, they propose that the Russian state restore and use the barracks there, an historical monument left over from the times of the Ottoman Empire. Built in 1899, the building used to house the Russian Tsarist Army and the weapons of the ancient Serbian Vasojevici tribe, whose history stretches back to the Karageorgevich dynasty. 
“Here were kept the weapons of the Vasojevici tribe, guns that our officers fired at the Turks in the city of Pec. Grain was stored here which the Russians sent, but it was sold instead of given out. But here I had the idea that the barracks could be returned to the Russians so that they could clean it up and use it for their own purposes. It’s crumbling, the roof has collapsed, but the building is all of three hundred blocks,” the chairman of the local government of the village of Kralje, Milutin Dzhurkovich, said. 

https://embed.life.ru/embed/a5ef12ac912ffb38cb6b677a07c9d504
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/05/montenegro-farmer-offers-his-lands-to.html