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IMF demands will make most Ukrainians homeless – Finance Minister of Ukraine

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So, is Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko waking up to reality?

From Fort Russ

May 14, 2015
Rusvesna
Translated by Kristina Rus

Fulfilling the requirements of the IMF will make the majority of Ukrainians homeless – said the Minister of Finance of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian portal MIGnews.

The International Monetary Fund expects the Ukrainian authorities to adopt such laws which will make the majority of the population in the country homeless, said the Finance Minister of American origin Natalie Jaresko.

According to her, one of the outstanding issues before the transfer to the Ukrainian authorities of the next IMF loan is the failure of the Verkhovna Rada to pass some bills.

In particular, the following: “The bills related to improving the capabilities of “Naftogaz” to collect their receivables. We are talking about the removal of various existing barriers, which currently do not allow this,” – said Jaresko.

According to her, there are two such problem bills. “One of these bills, I know, is on the agenda of the Verkhovna Rada on Thursday, and the second one the government will have to submit a second time, since it failed to pass”, — said the Minister of Finance.

Currently in Ukraine there is a moratorium on forced evictions of debtors. This is justified under conditions of a severe economic crisis in Ukraine, frozen wages and social benefits.

The consequence of the crisis was the rise in unemployment and a sharp fall in real incomes. People are objectively unable to pay the utility bills, which the government of Arseniy Yatsenyuk raised several times.

The second bill will make the rates profitable for the utility companies. Currently the utility companies are mostly municipal and are subsidized from the budget, operating without profit or at low profit.

The adoption of the law, rejected by Parliament, will allow to raise utility prices several more times — now by decisions of the enterprises themselves, which will be granted such a right.

The adoption of this law will make Ukrainian housing and utility services attractive for foreign companies, emphasized earlier Prime Minister of Ukraine Yatsenyuk.

In case of adoption of these IMF bills the utility rates will increase several more times, the housing sector will pass to foreign companies, which will begin evicting Ukrainians from their homes for non-payment.

Ukraine in the framework of the joint program with the International Monetary Fund expects to receive a second tranche of approximately $1.7 billion.

Partners in crime, McCain teams up with his friend, fugitive Saakashvili, on Ukraine “reform” advisory group

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McCain and Saakashvili may cause a radical redefinition of the word “reform”.

Besides their open encouragement of and support for the far-right radical leaders of Ukraine, their war crimes, and the gutting of due process and civil rights, these two will, no doubt, have additional schemes for privatization (i.e. stripping Ukraine of its assets and handing them over to banks and investors), and further austerity measures which target the public.

More bad news for Ukraine.

Posted on Global Research, May 15, 2015
From RT

Georgia’s fugitive ex-president Mikhail Saakashvili and hawkish US Senator John McCain have been approved as members of the newly-formed International Advisory Group that will help Ukraine’s president in “conducting reforms.”

Saakashvili has been appointed as head of the new advisory group, says the statement on Ukraine’s presidential website.

The list of members included in the advisory group mostly includes current and former European politicians. Among them are the German member of the European Parliament and the current Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs Elmar Brok, Sweden’s former Prime and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister of Slovakia Mikulas Dzurinda, and Lithuania’s former Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius.

Back in February Saakashvili was appointed as a non-staff adviser to Poroshenko. The ex-Georgian president, who was in power from 2004 to 2013, faces numerous charges at home, including embezzlement of over $5 million, corruption and brutality against protesters during demonstrations in 2007. Georgia’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office launched proceedings to indict Saakashvili and place him on the international most wanted list, but Kiev refused to hand over the fugitive president, despite an existing extradition agreement between Ukraine and Georgia.

Saakashvili is known for his strong anti-Russian stance, which garnered heavy US support. In August 2008 during his term in office Georgia launched an offensive against South Ossetia, killing dozens of civilians and Russian peacekeepers stationed in the republic. Georgia’s shelling of Tskhinval prompted Russia to conduct a military operation to fend off the offensive. Despite Saakashvili’s claims that the conflict was “Russian aggression,” the 2010 EU Independent Fact Finding Mission Report ruled that Tbilisi was responsible for the attack.

Image from Facebook (Mikheil Saakashvili's Page)Image from Facebook (Mikheil Saakashvili’s Page)

Meanwhile Senator John McCain, for years spearheading the anti-Russian and particularly anti-Putin crusade, said that while he “would love to do anything” to help Ukraine, he has not yet cleared his new appointment under the US Senate rules.

“I was asked to do it both by Ukraine and Saakashvili and I said I would be inclined to do it but I said I needed to look at all the nuances of it, whether it’s legal under our ethics and all that kind of stuff,” McCain told BuzzFeed.

At the onset of the Ukraine’s Maidan protests against former president Viktor Yanukovich, McCain appeared in Kiev to support the uprising that months later culminated in a coup.

“We … want to make it clear to Russia and Vladimir Putin that interference in the affairs of Ukraine is not acceptable to the United States,” the US Senator told a crowd of some 200,000 anti-government protesters in the central square of Ukraine’s capital.

Image from Facebook (Mikheil Saakashvili's Page)Image from Facebook (Mikheil Saakashvili’s Page)

Following the new Kiev authorities’ attempt to suppress dissent in the east of the country and Crimea’s ascension into the Russian Federation, McCain became the main engine of lobbying for lethal arms supplies to Ukrainian forces to “defend themselves” and Europe from “Russian aggression.”

“The Ukrainian people don’t want US or Western troops to fight for them; they are simply asking for the right tools to defend themselves and their country,” he said late last month at a hearing on US security policy in Europe. “Russia’s invasion and dismemberment of Ukraine should remind everyone of the true nature of Putin’s ambitions and the fragility of peace in Europe.”

McCain’s statements following the Minsk II ceasefire agreement make it clear that peace in Ukraine is not something the hawkish politician supports. Despite the general agreement that Minsk Accords is the only way forward for a political resolution to the crisis, McCain rejected the agreement as “solidifying the gains of Russian aggression.”

In addition, the Senator is a strong supporter of the NATO buildup on Russian borders. McCain insisted recently that the Baltic allies should help secure eastern borders of the alliance as they cannot “continue with business as usual” claiming that Russia poses a “geopolitical challenge… to our entire vision of Europe.”

McCain has also been hinting at starting a new nuclear arms race with Russia. “Negotiating further strategic nuclear reductions with Russia would be a dangerously naive non-starter with the US Senate. It simply defies common sense to negotiate nuclear reductions with Vladimir Putin,” he said last month following US administration’s call for further strategic nuclear reductions.

McCain Appointed to Ukraine “Reform Advisory Team” Headed by Fugitive Georgian Leader Saakashvili

http://rt.com/news/258389-saakashvili-mccain-ukraine-advisors/

NATO attempt at “interim” government in Syria echoes Libya model

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Posted on Syria Solidarity Movement.org
From Activist Post, May 6, 2015

The immediate clamor from the Western mainstream press regarding the fall of Idlib to Western-backed al-Qaeda/ISIS forces revealed part of the NATO plan as much as it involved the simultaneous participation of a media campaign designed to weaken the morale of the Syrian people and present a sense of inevitability amongst Syrian and all other populations following the crisis that the Syrian government was on its way out.

Such media hysteria has been the norm in the West in regards to Syria. However, in terms of the recent media blitz over Idlib, the goal, which has been part of the NATO-Turkish plan since early on in the conflict was to enable the capture of a major Syrian city so as to provide a physical seat of what would then be presented as the “government in exile” in the form of an “interim” or “transitional” government.

While the GIE/interim government would be painted as a modern-day grouping of Founding Fathers and freedom lovers bravely standing up to a dictator, the reality would be a gaggle of terrorists and jihadists bent on imposing Sharia law and washing themselves in bathtubs full of Western money.

Such can be seen in the fact that, only a matter of days after taking the city, the death squads that can barely govern their interactions with one another announced that they were well on their way to establishing a “civilian government” in Idlib.

As the Wall Street Journal reported in its article, “Syrian Opposition Tries To Govern Newly Won Idlib City,”

The rebel groups that took over a provincial capital in northwest Syria over the weekend are now trying to consolidate control and establish civil governance.

After days spent tearing down the ubiquitous images of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the coalition of Islamist groups, which includes al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, say they will help form a civilian government to run Idlib, capital of Idlib province. For now the streets are full of armed fighters with little organizational direction.

[…]

The opposition has a lot to prove in terms of governance as much of the territory it controls is beset by crime, corruption and a lack of services— in addition to regular attacks by the Syrian regime. The political opposition in exile, the Syrian National Coalition, has provided funding for local councils but the money has often been scarce and unreliable.

Note how the WSJ refers to the “opposition,” “al-Qaeda,” “al-Nusra Front,” and “rebels” as they should rightly be described – as the same entity.

Still, as Tony Cartalucci of Land Destroyer Report and New Eastern Outlook wrote, the Turkish media also seized upon the jihadist victory and began calling for Idlib to be used as the Capital seat for an “interim” government. Of course, such an “interim” government would be presented as the legitimate government of Syria that finally found a physical seat of power after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad.

There is little doubt that such an interim government would not only consist of jihadists and the subsequent imposition of Sharia law, but also of the parasites and traitors that make up the Syrian National Coalition, a group of pathetic individuals who lap up the luxury of five star hotels paid for by Saudi and American money.

The forming of an “interim” (albeit illegitimate) government would follow the model of Libya, the NATO conquest that preceded Syria. Indeed, the goal of developing an “interim” government located inside Syria and protected by NATO bombing campaigns by virtue of the establishment of a “buffer zone” or “no-fly zone” has been one that NATO and the GCC have drooled over for quite some time.

Early on, it appeared that Aleppo was the preferred target for NATO in its bid to establish a “transitional” government but that attempt was ultimately defeated by the Syrian military, with Syrian control over Aleppo only growing in recent months. Damascus also seemed to have been a target if, for no other reason than the fact that it is the Syrian Capital city. However, those attempts have brought little favor to the death squads either.

Idlib, however, has been another story, with the jihadists sweeping in to take control of the territory in a manner so swift as to confuse many onlookers unfamiliar with the details of the Syrian crisis. For this reason, it is important to note that the city of Idlib lies only miles away from the Turkish border.

The location of Idlib in relation to Turkey is important because it is from Turkey that a steady supply of weapons and fighters are entering Syria. It is thus no coincidence that the presence of Jobhat al-Nusra is strongest in the areas bordering Turkey (as well as those bordering Jordan, another supporter of jihadist forces).

While the mainstream Western press is busy presenting Assad as having lost control of the overwhelming majority of the country and providing maps that are inconsistent with the realities on the ground, the truth is that the Syrian forces are on their way to returning Idlib to government control but are attempting to do so in a way that minimizes loss of civilian life. Indeed, the SAA is already in control of the Southern portion of Idlib, it is only a matter of time before the SAA is able to retake the city, providing there are no more mass injections of jihadists into the fray.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that the U.S. airstrikes and its attempts to create a “buffer zone” inside Syria are nothing more than a farce. The death squads running amok in Syria are themselves entirely creatures of NATO and they remain under NATO’s command. The true enemy of ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and the cannibals of the Levant has always been and continues to be Bashar al-Assad.

There will be no “interim” government or “transitional phase” that will ever be legitimate in the context of the NATO, Anglo-American assault on Syria.

http://www.activistpost.com/2015/05/nato-attempt-at-interim-government-in.html

http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/2015/05/08/nato-attempt-at-interim-government-in-syria-echoes-libya-model/

How to fight Western propaganda

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Posted on Dissident Voice
by Andre Vltchek / May 15th, 2015

First they manufacture monstrous lies, and then they tell us that we should be objective!

Is love objective; is passion?

Are dreams defendable, logically and philosophically?

When a house is attacked by brigands, when a village is overran by gangsters, when smoke, fire and cries for help are coming from every corner, should we award ourselves with the luxury of time to calculate, analyze and aim at complete logical, ethical, holistic and objective solutions?

I strongly believe no! We are obliged to fight those who are burning our dwellings, to hit with full force those who are attempting to rape our women, and to confront fire with fire when innocent beings are slaughtered.

When the most powerful and the most destructive force on earth employs all its persuasive might, utilizing everything from the mainstream media to educational facilities, in order to justify its crimes, when it spreads its poisonous propaganda and lies in order to oppress the world and suppress hope, do we step back and begin endless and detailed work on precise and objective narratives? Or do we confront lies and propaganda with our own narrative, supported by our intuition, passion and dreams for a better world?

*****

The Empire lies continuously. It lies in the morning, during the day, in the evening, even at night, when most of the people are sound asleep. It has been doing it for decades and centuries. For grand deceits it relies on countless numbers of propagandists who pose as academics, teaches, journalists and “public intellectuals”. Perfection in the art of disinformation has been reached. Western advertising (so much admired and used by the German Nazis) has some common roots with propaganda, although propaganda is much older and “complete”.

It appears that even some leaders of the Empire now believe in most of their fabrications, and most of the citizens certainly do. Otherwise, how could they sleep at night?

The western propaganda apparatus is enormously efficient and effective. It is also brilliant in how it ensures that its inventions get channeled, distributed, and accepted in all corners of the world. The system through which disinformation spreads, is incredibly complex. Servile local media and academia on all continents work hard to guarantee that only one narrative is allowed to penetrate the brains of billions.

The results are: intellectual cowardice and ignorance, all over the world, but especially in the West and in its client states.

*****

What are we, who oppose the regime, supposed to do?

First of all, things are not as hopeless as they used to be.

This is not the morbid unipolar world that we experienced in the early 90’s. Now Venezuela, Russia, China, and Iran support large media outlets that are opposed to the Empire. Powerful television stations emerged: RT, Press TV, TeleSUR, and CCTV. Huge English language Internet-based magazines and sites in the United States, Canada and Russia are also exposing the lies of the official Western propagandists: Dissident Voice, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Veterans News, Strategic Culture, New Eastern Outlook quickly come to mind. And there are hundreds of important sites doing the same in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese and French languages.

The fight is on: the fight for an intellectually multi-polar world. It is a tough, mortal fight! It is a crucial battle, simply because the metastases of the Western propaganda cancer have spread everywhere, contaminated all continents, and even some of the most courageous countries and brains that are earnestly fighting against the Western imperialism and fascism! No one is immune. To be frank, all of us are contaminated.

Unless we win this battle, by first clearly identifying and proving “their narrative” as fraudulent, and later by offering humanist and compassionate perceptions, we cannot even dream about the revolution, or about any significant changes in arrangement of the world.

*****

How do we achieve victory? How do we convince the masses, those billions of people? How do we open their eyes and make them see that the Western regime is dishonest, toxic, poisonous and destructive? Most of humanity is hooked on the Empire’s propaganda; that propaganda which is not only spread by mainstream media outlets, but also by pop music, soap operas, social media, advertisement, consumerism, ‘fashion trends’ and by many other covert means; cultural, religious and media junk that leads to total emotional and intellectual stupor and is administered like some highly addictive narcotic, regularly and persistently.

Do we counter the tactics and strategy of the destructive and ruthless Empire with our honesty, with research, with telling and writing meticulously investigated facts?

The Empire perverts facts. It repeats lies through its loudspeakers and tubes. It shouts them thousands and thousands of times, until they sink into the sub conscious of people, penetrate the skin, spread all through their brains.

Good will, naive honesty, “speaking truth to power”, could this change the world and the power itself? I highly doubt it.

The Empire and its power are illegitimate, and they are criminal. Is there any point of speaking truth to a gangster? Hardly! Truth should be spoken to people, to masses, not to those who are terrorizing the world.

By talking to villains, by begging them to stop torturing others, we are legitimizing their crimes, and we are acknowledging their power. By trying to appease gangsters, people are putting themselves at their mercy.

I absolutely refuse to be in such position!

*****

To win over billions of people, we have to inspire them, to fire them up. We have to outrage them, embrace them, shame them, make them laugh and make them cry. We have to make sure that they get goose bumps when they see our films, read our books and essays, listen to our speeches.

We have to detox them, make them feel again, wake up natural instincts in them.

Simple truth as a detox agent will not work. The poison of our adversaries has sunk too deeply. Most of the people are too lethargic and too immune to simple, quietly stated truths!

We have tried, and others have tried as well. My acquaintance (but definitely not my comrade) John Perkins, former US apparatchik educated by the State Department, wrote a detailed account of his horrid deeds in Ecuador, Indonesia and elsewhere – Confession of An Economic Hitman. It is a meticulous, detailed account of how the West destabilizes poor countries, using corruption, money, alcohol, and sex. The book sold millions of copies, worldwide. And yet, nothing changed! It did not trigger a popular revolution in the United States. There were no protests, no demands for regime change in Washington.

In the recent past, I wrote and published two academic, or at least semi-academic books, packed with great details, quotes and tons of footnotes: one on Indonesia, a country used by the West as a model horror scenario for the rest of the world, after the 1965-US-sponsored military coup. The coup killed 2-3 million people, murdered all intellectualism, and lobotomized the 4th most populous country on earth. The book is called Indonesia – Archipelago of Fear. The second book, unique because it covers an enormous part of the world – Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia (Oceania – Neocolonialism, Nukes and Bones), showed how the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and France, literally divided and destroyed the great South Pacific island cultures and the people. Now classes are being taught using my books, but only a very limited number of people are influenced by the facts exposed in them. The elites in both Indonesia and Oceania made sure that the books are not widely read by the people.

I have spent years and years compiling facts, researching, investigating. The revolutionary effectiveness of my academic work is – I have to admit – nearly zero.

It is easy to see the contrast: when I write an essay, a powerfully crafted, emotional essay, demanding justice, accusing the Empire of murder and theft, I get millions of readers on all continents, as well as translations to dozens of languages!

Why do I write this; why do I share this with my readers? Because we should all be realistic. We have to see, to understand, what people want – what they demand. The people are unhappy and scared. Most of them don’t know why. They hate the system, they are lonely, frustrated, they know that they are lied to and exploited. But they cannot define those lies. Academic books exposing the lies are too complex for them to read since the masses have no time to read thousands of indigestible pages or the necessary education to allow them to understand what they are reading.

It is our duty to address those people, the majority, otherwise what kind of revolutionaries are we? After all, we are supposed to create for our brothers and sisters, not for a few researchers at the universities, especially when we realize that most of the universities are serving the Empire by regurgitating official nomenclature and supporting demagogues.

*****

The Empire speaks, writes and then repeats some outrageous lies, about its benevolence, and exceptionality of its rule, or about the “evils” of the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea or Cuba. This is done daily. In fact it is designed so that almost every human being gets his or her dose of the toxin at least several times a day.

We feel we have to react – we begin spending years of our lives, meticulously proving, step by step, that the Empire’s propaganda is either one big fat lie, or exaggeration, or both. After we compile our arguments, we publish the results in some small publishing house, most likely in the form of a slender book, but almost nobody reads it because of its tiny circulation, and because the findings are usually too complex, too hard to digest, and simply because the facts do not shock anybody, anymore. One million more innocent people were murdered somewhere in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia; what else is new?

Researching and trying to tell the truth, fully and honestly, we feel that we are doing great, professional, scientific work. All the while the propagandists of the Empire are dying of laughter watching us! We are representing little danger to them. They are winning effortlessly!

Why is that? Doesn’t the detailed truth matter?

It does – from the point of higher principles it matters. Ethically it matters. Morally it matters. Philosophically it matters.

But strategically, when one is engaged in an ideological war, it does not matter that much! The truth yes, always; the truth matters! But simplified, digestible truth, presented powerfully and emotionally!

When immorality is ravishing the world, when it is charging mercilessly, when innocent millions are dying, what matters is to stop the slaughter, first by identifying the murderous force, then by containing it.

Language has to be strong, emotions raw.

When facing murderous hordes, poetry, emotionally charged songs, and patriotic odes have always been more effective than deep academic studies. And so were political novels and films, passionate documentaries, even explicit cartoons and posters.

Some would ask: “Just because they are lying, should we lie as well?” No! We should try to be as truthful as we can. But our message should be often “abridged”, so the billions, not just those selected few, could understand it.

It does not mean that the quality of our work should suffer. Simplicity is often more difficult to achieve than encyclopedic works with thousands of footnotes.

Sun Tzu’s Art of War is short, just a pamphlet, straight to the point. And so is the Communist Manifesto, and J’accuse!

Our revolutionary work does not have to be necessarily brief, but it has to be presented in a way that could be understood by many. I am constantly experimenting with the form, while never compromising on substance. My recent book, Exposing Lies of the Empire has more than 800 pages, but I made sure that it is packed with fascinating stories, with testimonies of people from all corners of the globe, with colorful description of both victims and tyrants. I don’t want my books to collect dust in university libraries. I want them to mobilize people.

*****

I truly believe that there is not much time for “objectivity” in any battle, including those ideological ones, especially when these are battles for the survival of humanity!

The lies of the enemy have to be confronted. They are toxic, monstrous lies!

Once the destruction stops, millions of innocent men, women and children will cease being sacrificed, and we can return to our complex philosophical concepts, to details and to nuances.

But before we win our final battles against imperialism, nihilism, fascism, exceptionalism, selfishness and greed, we have to fully and effectively utilize our most powerful weapons: our visions of a better world, our love for humanity, our passion for justice. Our determination and our beliefs have to be presented in a loud, potent, even “dogmatic” manner, our voice should be creative, artistic, powerful!

The house is on fire, comrades! The entire town is turning to ashes. The entire planet is plundered, devastated, lobotomized.

We cannot confront bigots with nukes and battleships. But our talents, our muses, and our hearts are here, with us, ready to join the battle.

Let us outsmart our enemies; let us make sure that the world begins laughing at them! Have you seen them, those pathetic losers, the buffoons – the CEO’s? Have you listened to those Prime Ministers and Presidents, those servants of the “market”? Let us convince the masses that their tyrants –the imperialists, the neo-colonialists and all their dogmatic preachers – are nothing more than pitiful, greedy, poisonous fools! Let us discredit them! Let us ridicule them.

They are robbing and murdering millions. Let us begin by at least pissing on them!

Let us fight Western propaganda by first exposing those who are really behind it. Let’s get personal.

Let’s turn this revolution into something creative, hilarious, truly fun!

André Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker, and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest book is Exposing Lies of the Empire. He also wrote, with Noam Chomsky, On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare. His critically acclaimed political revolutionary novel Point of No Return is re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and market-fundamentalism is called Indonesia: The Archipelago of Fear. He completed a feature documentary Rwanda Gambit (2013) about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website. Read other articles by Andre.

How to Fight Western Propaganda

2015 Women’s Walk for Peace in Korea

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From Women Cross DMZ.org

Mobilizing Women Globally for Peace in Korea

On May 24, 2015, thirty international women peacemakers from around the world will walk with Korean women, north and south, to call for an end to the Korean War and for a new beginning for a reunified Korea. We will hold international peace symposiums in Pyongyang and Seoul where we can listen to Korean women and share our experiences and ideas of mobilizing women to bring an end to violent conflict. Our hope is to cross the 2-mile wide De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) that separates millions of Korean families as a symbolic act of peace.

2015 marks the 70th anniversary of Korea’s division into two separate states by Cold War powers, which precipitated the 1950-53 Korean War. After nearly 4 million people were killed, mostly Korean civilians, fighting was halted when North Korea, China, and the United States representing the UN Command signed a ceasefire agreement. They promised within three months to sign a peace treaty; over 60 years later, we’re still waiting.

Meanwhile, thousands of Korean elders die every year waiting on a government list to see their children or siblings after being separated by the DMZ. In North Korea, crippling sanctions against the government make it difficult for ordinary people to access the basics needed for survival. The unresolved Korean conflict gives all governments in the region justification to further militarize and prepare for war, depriving funds for schools, hospitals, and the welfare of the people and the environment. That’s why women are walking for peace, to reunite families, and end the state of war in Korea.

“Reassuring NATO allies” or asserting power? U.S. troops plan 400-kilometer march through Romania

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War preparations continue.

From Stop NATO

U.S. Army Europe
May 13, 2015
2d Cavalry Regiment preps for Cavalry March across Romania
By Sgt. William A. Tanner, 2d Cavalry Regiment Public Affairs

MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania: Troopers assigned to 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, participated in a rehearsal of concept drill alongside soldiers belonging to the Romanian Land Forces, in preparation for the unit’s upcoming Cavalry March at Mikhail Kogalniceanu Air Base, Romania, May 11, 2015.

Soldiers from the 18th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, the 4-3 Assault Helicopter Battalion and the 709th Military Police Battalion were also in attendance.

During the drill, plans for the 400 Kilometer vehicle road march from MK air base to the Cincu Training Center, were discussed and finalized.

“The purpose of this mission is simply reassurance to our NATO Allies, especially Romania,” said Lt. Col. Theodore A. Johnson, 2nd Squadron Commander. “This will also be a combined effort to show interoperability and we will defer to the Romanian Armed Forces on all coordination and emerging issues.”

The event, though focused on the transportation of troopers and their vehicles, will also include stops in local townships…

Other events, such as a World War II Wreath Laying Ceremony and the Brasov Welcoming Ceremony, will bring a touch of realism to the soldiers involved, by symbolizing both respect for the past and hope for the future.

To follow along with the unit as they make their way across Romania in preparation for their training at the Cincu Training Center, make sure to look out for the hash tags posted above.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/reassuring-nato-allies-u-s-troops-400-kilometer-march-through-romania/

Look at the 2nd Cavalry’s long history. Reassuring or disquieting?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Cavalry_Regiment_(United_States)

CONFIRMED: U.S. “operation rooms” backing Al Qaeda in Syria

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“For those that fail to see how Syria is linked to the survival of many nations beyond its borders and the very concept of a multi-polar world built upon the concept of national sovereignty, they invite not just Damascus’ defeat, but that of the world as we know it.”

By Tony Cartalucci
May 11, 2015
New Eastern Outlook

US policy think-tank Brookings Institution confirms that contrary to propaganda, US-Saudi “moderates” and Turkey-Qatar “Islamists” have been coordinating all along. 

The war in Syria continues to drag on, with a recent and renewed vigor demonstrated behind an opposition long portrayed as fractured and reflecting a myriad of competing foreign interests. Chief among these competing interests, the public has been told, were the US and Saudis on one side, backing so-called “moderate rebels,” and Turkey and Qatar on the other openly backing Al Qaeda and its various franchises including the Islamic State (ISIS).

However, for those following the conflict closely, it was clear from the beginning and by the West’s own admissions that success hinged on covertly providing arms, cash, equipment, and both political and military support to Al Qaeda and other sectarian extremists, not opposed by Saudi Arabia, but rather by using Saudi Arabia as the primary medium through which Western material support could be laundered.

And this fact is now confirmed in a recent article published on the Brookings Institution’s website titled, “Why Assad is losing.”

It states unequivocally that (emphasis added):

The involvement of FSA groups, in fact, reveals how the factions’ backers have changed their tune regarding coordination with Islamists. Several commanders involved in leading recent Idlib operations confirmed to this author that the U.S.-led operations room in southern Turkey, which coordinates the provision of lethal and non-lethal support to vetted opposition groups, was instrumental in facilitating their involvement in the operation from early April onwards. That operations room — along with another in Jordan, which covers Syria’s south — also appears to have dramatically increased its level of assistance and provision of intelligence to vetted groups in recent weeks.

Whereas these multinational operations rooms have previously demanded that recipients of military assistance cease direct coordination with groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, recent dynamics in Idlib appear to have demonstrated something different. Not only were weapons shipments increased to the so-called “vetted groups,” but the operations room specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.

Overall, Brookings is pleased to report that with the infiltration and overrunning of much of Idlib in northern Syria, it appears their long-stated goal of creating a seat of power for their proxies within Syria’s borders and perhaps even extending NATO aircover over it, may finally be at hand. Brookings still attempts to perpetuate an adversarial narrative between the West and Al Qaeda, despite admitting that it was only with Western backing that recent offensives spearheaded by Al Qaeda itself were successful.

In reality, as far back as 2007, it was the admitted policy of the then Bush-led White House to begin arming and funding sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda, through the use of intermediaries including Saudi Arabia. Veteran journalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh in his report “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?“would lay bare this conspiracy which has since then unfolded verbatim as described in 2007.

The above mentioned Brookings article also alludes to a grander geopolitical landscape taking shape beyond the Syrian conflict. It states in regards to the US now openly backing what is for all intents and purposes an Al Qaeda-led offensive that:

The most likely explanation for such a move is pressure from the newly emboldened regional alliance comprising Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. The United States also is looking for ways to prove its continued alignment with its traditional Sunni Gulf allies, amid the broader context of its rapprochement with Iran.

The continuation, even expansion of the US-backed conflict in Syria is the most telling evidence of all regarding the disingenuous nature of America’s rapprochement with Iran. The entire goal of destabilizing and potentially overthrowing the government in Syria is to weaken Iran ahead of a similar campaign of encirclement, destabilization, and destruction within Iran itself.

The fact that events in Syria are being accelerated, with Brookings itself admitting that “international and ideological differences,” have been “pushed to the side,” illustrates a palpable desperation among the West to finish the conflict in Syria in hopes of moving forward toward Iran before regional dynamics and Iran’s own defensive posture renders moot the West’s entire regional agenda, jeopardizing its long-standing hegemony across North Africa and the Middle East.

Similarly rushed operations appear to be underway in Yemen. With Western-backed conflicts embroiling virtually every nation surrounding Iran, the idea that the US seeks anything but Iran’s eventual destruction, let alone “rapprochement” must surely have no one fooled in Tehran.

While Brookings enthusiastically reports on the continued destruction in Syria it itself played a part in engineering and promoting, it still admits that overthrowing Syria’s legitimate government is not inevitable. While it attempts to portray Syria’s allies as withdrawing support for Damascus, the reality is that if and when Syria falls, Syria’s allies are indisputably next in line.

Iran will face an entire nation handed over to Al Qaeda and other heavily armed and well-backed sectarian extremists dreaming of a cataclysmic confrontation with Tehran, fueled by a global network of US-Saudi backed madrases turning out legions of ideologically poisoned zealots. And beyond Iran, Russia faces the prospect of its Caucasus region being turned into a corridor of terror aimed straight at the heart of Russia itself.

The conflict in Syria is but a single battle among a much larger war — a global war constituting what is basically a third World War, fought not upon vast but clearly defined fronts, but rather through the use of fourth generation warfare, proxies, mercenaries, economics, and information. For those that fail to see how Syria is linked to the survival of many nations beyond its borders and the very concept of a multi-polar world built upon the concept of national sovereignty, they invite not just Damascus’ defeat, but that of the world as we know it.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
http://journal-neo.org/2015/05/11/confirmed-us-operation-rooms-backing-al-qaeda-in-syria/

Poem: А на Земле быть добру! And in the world to be good!

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From Bytdobru.info

А на Земле быть добру!
Быть на Земле рассвету
Песней своей эту мечту
Я разнесу по свету.
Будет она с ветром лететь
И верю воплотится.
И на ладонях птицы
Будут свободно петь.

Олесь из Любоистока

And in the world to be good!
Be on Earth at dawn
The song of those that dream
I’ll blow over the world.
It will fly with the wind
And I believe be embodied.
And on our hands the birds
Will be free to sing.

Oles of Lyuboistoka

 

http://gazeta.bytdobru.info/statya/737-press-konferentsiya-v-itar-tass-s-v-megre-o-dvizhenii-v-podderzhku-rodovyh-pomestii-rossii

This is an amazing website.
http://bytdobru.info/
There was a way to translate the pages, but it seemed to be missing this time.

Engdahl: Why I wept at the Russian parade

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Posted on New Eastern Outlook, May 13, 2015
by F. William Engdahl

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Something extraordinary just took place in Russia and it may have moved our disturbed world one major step nearer to peace and away from a looming new world war. Of all unlikely things, what took place was a nationwide remembrance by Russians of the estimated 27 to perhaps 30 million Soviet citizens who never returned alive from World War II. Yet in what can only be described in a spiritual manner, the events of May 9, Victory Day over Nazism, that took place across all Russia, transcended the specific day of memory on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in 1945. It was possible to see a spirit emerge from the moving events unlike anything this author has ever witnessed in his life.

The event was extraordinary in every respect. There was a sense in all participants that they were shaping history in some ineffable way. It was no usual May 9 annual show of Russia’s military force. Yes, it featured a parade of Russia’s most advanced military hardware, including the awesome new T-14 Armata tanks, S-400 anti-missile systems and advanced Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets. It was indeed impressive to watch.

The military part of the events also featured for the first time ever elite soldiers from China’s Peoples’ Liberation Army marching in formation along with Russian soldiers. That in itself should shivers down the spines of the neoconservative warhawks in the EU and Washington, had they any spines to shiver. The alliance between the two great Eurasian powers—Russia and China—is evolving with stunning speed into a new that will change the economic dynamic of our world from one of debt, depression, and wars to one of rising general prosperity and development if we are good enough to help make it happen.

During his visit, China’s President XI, in addition to his quite visible honoring of the Russian Victory event and its significance for China, met separately with Vladimir Putin and agreed that China’s emerging New Silk Road high-speed railway infrastructure great project will be integrated in planning and other respects with Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union which now consists of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia with several prospective candidates waiting to join. While it may seem an obvious step, it was not at all certain until now.

The two great Eurasian countries have now cemented the huge oil and gas deals between them, the trade deals and the military cooperation agreements with a commitment to fully integrate their economic infrastructure. Following his meeting with Xi, Putin told the press, “The integration of the Eurasian Economic Union and Silk Road projects means reaching a new level of partnership and actually implies a common economic space on the continent.”

It’s Zbigniew Brzezinski’s worst geopolitical nightmare come to fruition. And that, thanks to the stupid, short-sighted geopolitical strategy of Brzezinski and the Washington war faction that made it clear to Beijing and to Moscow their only hope for sovereign development and to be free of the dictates of a Washington-Wall Street Sole Superpower was to build an entire monetary and economic space independent of the dollar world.

The Parade of the Good

Yet the most extraordinary part of the day-long events was not the show of military hardware at a time when NATO is not only rattling sabres at Russia, but even intervening militarily in Ukraine to provoke Russia into some form of war.

What was extraordinary about the May 9 Victory Day Parade was the citizens’ remembrance march, a symbolic parade known as the March of the Immortal Regiment, a procession through the streets of Moscow into the famous and quite beautiful Red Square. The square, contrary to belief of many in the West was not named so by the “Red” Bolsheviks. It took its name from Czar Alexei Mikhailovich in the mid-17th Century from a Russian word which now means red. Similar Immortal Regiment parades involving an estimated twelve million Russians took place all over Russia at the same time, from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg to Stevastopol in what is now Russian Crimea.

In an atmosphere of reverence and quiet, some three hundred thousand Russians, most carrying photos or portraits of family members who never returned from the war, walked on the beautiful, sunny spring day through downtown Moscow into Red Square where the President’s residence, the famous Kremlin, is also located.

To see the faces of thousands and thousands of ordinary Russians walking, optimism about their future beaming from their faces, young and the very old, including surviving veterans of the Great Patriotic War as it is known to Russians, moved this writer to quietly weep. What was conveyed in the smiles and eyes of the thousands of marchers was not a looking back in the sense of sorrow at the horrors of that war. Rather what came across so clearly was that the parade was a gesture of loving respect and gratitude to those who gave their lives that today’s Russia might be born, a new, future-looking Russia that is at the heart of building the only viable alternative to a one-world dictatorship under a Pentagon Full Spectrum Dominance and a dollar system choking on debt and fraud. The entire Russian nation exuded a feeling of being good and of being victorious. Few peoples have that in today’s world.

When the television cameras zoomed in on President Vladimir Putin who was also marching, he was walking freely and open amid the thousands of citizens, holding a picture of his deceased father who had served in the war and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin was surrounded not by bulletproof limousines that any US President since the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 would have, were he even to dare to get close to a crowd. There were three or four presidential security people near Putin, but there were thousands of ordinary Russians within arm’s length of one of the most influential world leaders of the present time. There was no climate of fear visible anywhere.

My tears

My tears at seeing the silent marchers and at seeing Putin amid them was an unconscious reaction to what, on reflection, I realized was my very personal sense of recognition how remote from anything comparable in my own country, the United States of America, such a memorial march in peace and serenity would be today. There were no “victory” marches after US troops destroyed Iraq; no victory marches after Afghanistan; no victory marches after Libya. Americans today have nothing other than wars of death and destruction to commemorate and veterans coming home with traumas and radiation poisonings that are ignored by their own government.

That transformation in America has come about in those same 7o years since the end of the war, a war when we–Americans and Russians, then the Soviet Union of course—had fought side-by-side to defeat Hitler and the Third Reich. Today the Government of the United States is siding with and backing neo-nazis in Ukraine to provoke Russia.

I reflected how much my countrymen have changed over those few decades. From the world’s most prosperous nation, the center of invention, innovation, technology, prosperity, in the space of seven decades we have managed to let our country be ruined by a gaggle of stupid and very rich oligarchs with names like Rockefeller, Gates, Buffett and their acolytes in the Bush dynasty. Those narcissistic oligarchs cared not a whit for the greatness of the American people, but saw us as a mere platform to realize their sick dream of world dominion.

We let that happen.

I’ll let you in on a secret that I recently discovered. The American oligarchs ain’t all-powerful; they ain’t some new Illuminati or gods as some try to convince us. They ain’t omniscient. They get away with murder because we allow them. We are hypnotized by their aura of power.

Yet were we to stand tall and clear in the open and say, “These silly would-be Emperors have no clothes!,” their power would evaporate like cotton candy in hot water.

That’s what they’re terrified of. That’s why they are deploying the US Armed Forces into Texas to stage war games aimed at US citizens; that’s why they have torn up the Constitution and Bill of Rights after 911. That’s why the Created a Department of Homeland Security. It’s why they try to terrify our citizens to vaccinate with untested Ebola or other vaccines. It’s why they are desperate to control free expression of political ideas in the Internet.

Now, when I reflect on the true state of America today compared with Russia, it brings tears. Today the economy of the USA is in ruins. It has been “globalized” by its Fortune 500 global companies and the banks of Wall Street. Its industrial jobs have been outsourced to China, Mexico, even Russia over the past 25 or so years. Investment in the education of our youth has become a politically-correct sick joke. College students must go deep into debt to private banks, some $1 trillion worth today, to get a piece of paper called a degree in order to look for non-existent jobs.

Our Washington government has become serial liars who have lied to us about the true state of the economy ever since Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War ordered the Commerce and Labor departments to find ways to fake the numbers to hide the developing internal economic rot. The consequence, followed by every president since, is that we live in a fairy tale world where the mainstream media tells us we are in the “sixth year of economic recovery” and have a mere 5.4% unemployment. The reality is that more than 23% of Americans today are unemployed but through clever tricks have been defined out of the statistics. Some 93 million Americans are unable to get full time work. It isn’t the fault of Obama or Bush before him or Clinton, Bush, Reagan or Jimmy Carter. It’s our own fault because we were passive; we gave them the power because we did not believe in ourselves enough. We let billionaires decide for us who will be our President and Congress because we no longer believed that we were good.

By the same token, Russians today, amid brutal Western economic and financial warfare sanctions; amid a NATO war in Ukraine that has led more than one million Russian-speaking Ukrainians to flee to Russia for safety, despite the demonization in the western media of their country, exude a new optimism about their future. What makes Vladimir Putin so extraordinarily popular, with over 83% approval, is that he acts out that growing sense of representing that Russian soul, the people who are good, being just, being right, the sense that the vast majority of Russians today have.

That was overwhelmingly visible in the faces of the May 9 marchers. You could feel that Putin on the speaker’s podium felt it when he looked into the vast crowd. It was clear when Defense Minister Shoigu, a Russian-Mongolian Tuvan-born Buddhist, respectfully and humbly made the Orthodox sign of the cross with bowed head as he passed through the Kremlin’s Saviour Tower to take his place aside Putin. As Victor Baranets, a noted Russian journalist put it: ”At that moment I felt that with his simple gesture Shoigu brought all of Russia to his feet. There was so much kindness, so much hope, so much of our Russian sense of the sacred in this gesture.“  The legendary Russian Soul was manifest on May 9 and its alive and very well, thank you.

And that’s why I shed the tears on May 9, watching hundreds of thousands of peaceful Russians walk through their capital city, the city that saw the defeat of Napoleon’s army and of Hitler’s. I was moved deeply watching them slowly and deliberately walking into the Red Square next to their President’s residence at a time when Washington’s White House is surrounded by concrete barriers, barbed wire and armed guards.

You could see it in the eyes of the Russians on the street: they knew that they were good. They were good not because their fathers or grandfathers had died defeating Nazism. They were good because they could be proud Russians, proud of their country after all the ravages of recent decades, most recently the US-backed looting during the 1990’s Harvard Shock Therapy in the Yeltsin era.

I shed tears being deeply moved by what I saw in those ordinary Russians and tears for what I felt had been destroyed in my country. We Americans have lost our sense that we are good or even perhaps again could be. We have accepted that we are bad, that we kill all around the world, that we hate ourselves and our neighbors, that we fear, that we live in a climate of race war, that we are despised for all this around the world.

We feel ourselves to be anything but good because we are in a kind of hypnosis induced by those narcissistic oligarchs to be so. Hypnosis, however, can be broken under the right circumstances. We only have to will it so.

Postscript:

The last time I wept at a public event was in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down and Germans—east and west—danced together on the symbol of the Cold War division between East and West, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy rang out. The German Chancellor made a speech to the Bundestag proposing the vision of a high-speed rail linking Berlin to Moscow. Then, Germany was not strong enough, not free enough from guilt feelings from the war, to reject the pressure that came from Washington. The architect of that vision, Alfred Herrhausen, was assassinated by the ‘Red Army Fraction’ of Langley, Virginia. Russia was deliberately thrown into chaos by IMF shock therapy and the criminal Yeltsin family. Today the world has a new, far more beautiful possibility to realize Herrhausen’s dream—this time with Russia, China and all Eurasia. This is what was so beautiful about the May 9 parade.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/05/13/why-i-wept-at-the-russian-parade/

European values on display as NATO and Ukraine partner in war: One for all, all for one

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“If Ukraine falls, all of us will fall.”

As Ukraine is eaten with rot from within, directly supported by NATO and its financial partners,  this statement by a NATO foreign minister may be prophetic.

Beware: the NATO alliance is poisoning and stripping each country. The enemy is not outside. The NATO-allied leaders are responsible.

No one at this meeting of ministers apparently objected to the Kiev government’s actions. That means they approve of Kiev attacking its own citizens.  Who’s next?

From Stop NATO

Interfax-Ukraine
May 14, 2015
Ukraine pleased with support from NATO allies – Klimkin

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said his country is pleased with the support it has received from its NATO allies, especially over its territorial integrity.

“Everyone was talking at the meeting about support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Klimkin said on the results of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Antalya, Turkey.

He quoted the statement of one of the ministers who attended the meeting, which impressed him: “If Ukraine falls, all of us will fall.”

Saying it was “extremely important” to hear the messages of support and to hear messages of commitment to the reforms being carried out in Ukraine, Klimkin said: “I especially express my gratefulness to all the allies who have provided for Ukrainian military forces and the National Guard.”

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/nato-and-ukraine-at-war-one-for-all-all-for-one/