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War Reparations and Germany’s 1952 Debt Reduction Plan

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This is in addition to the huge sums that Germany owes Greece.

Posted on Global Research
Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt
5 March 2015
by Oscar Ugarteche

The largest debt problems in terms of GDP faced in financial history have belonged either to the United States or to European Governments. Large debt problems in developing and emerging nations have usually stemmed out of a drop in GDP size due to a fall in export earnings and a rise in interest rates. The reason is that creditors stop lending at a certain point and start restructuring existing debt which leads to debt growth but it is not really new lending. In major nations, lending goes on as the strategic reason for borrowing has normally been justified: a war. As a result, the leading debt reduction and innovative management schemes are related to these.

Contrary to the impression generated by extensive works on the Latin American and African debt, it is the under researched European and US historical debt that must be looked into in order to understand some historical solution patterns to debt problems. Current European very high debt levels (over 90% of GDP) are due partially to accumulated current account deficits of over 3% of GDP for over a decade plus the cost of bank rescues in 2009-2010 plus some countercyclical policy costs. Greece has additional debt due to major infrastructure works. It entered the Euro with a high debt level (around 100% of GDP) but the total GDP amount shrunk 33.3% from 55,318 million euros to 36,866 million euros in constant terms between 2007 and 2013 as a result of austerity policies. |1| If GDP had remained stagnant, the index would be 131% and not 174.9% and rising.

Historically the debt that arose from the Confederate States of the United States was not recognised by the US Federal Government and was subject to complicated negotiations with British private bondholders until the late 1920’s when it was finally agreed that it would not be repaid. (Corporation of Foreign Bondholders, First Annual Report of the Council, London, February, 1904 and Fifty Seventh Annual of the Council, London, 1930) What was agreed finally in the League of Nations was that State debts have always to be guaranteed by the National Governments in order for creditors to be able to collect their debts.

The debt discussion revived after WWI, as the European war was financed locally in each country and internationally by the United States from 1915 onwards. This implied two things: first, the UK borrowed from the United States and onlent to third parties; and secondly the warring countries additionally borrowed directly from the US. At the end of the war this had to be solved somehow in order for those countries to recover growth. This is dealt with in H. Fisk’s The Inter Ally Debts. An Analysis of War and Post War Public Debts. New York, Banker’s Trust, 1924. Germany was not able to float bonds in New York after the War was declared so they only borrowed in Marks and dealt with through hyperinflation that did away with most of its value in 1922-1923.

Another aspect of the German debt was the introduction of reparation payments that although just from an ethical point of view, were extremely large for the economic capacity of the country as Keynes pointed out in his Economic Consequences of the Peace. According to Professor Albrecht Ritschl |2| from the LSE Germany managed to keep afloat borrowing money from the US during the 1920’s. The two largest loans are the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan but there were other loans adding up to 840.7 million dollars in 1939. The Young Plan contained massive debt reduction. Reparations payments were never met in full in the 1920’s and were suspended in 1932. They were reinitiated in 1990 without any readjustment in value after the reunification. The last quota was paid in 2010. |3|

In October 1929, U.S. President Hoover, under pressure from US academia, announced the creation of a Hoover Year that was meant to restructure debts payments due from July 1, 1931 to June 30, 1932, into ten yearly quotas. The mechanism would be in place as long as it was needed. The object was to relieve the UK from its payments to the US and to transfer this benefit on to the other allies that in turn would transfer them to German reparations. This relief was later eschewed by Chancellor Hitler who, after winning the elections, declared a debt cease payment in June 1933.

After WWII, in May 1951 a tripartite commission was formed by the US. UK and France in order to discuss post war and pre war debts. All creditors met in London in July 1951 to see what to do with the German debts and the solution proposed by Germany and widely accepted by the US and UK was that as Germany was divided into two, the debt would have to be divided equally and only 50% of the total public debt would be negotiated. Reparations would not be restored until after reunification. The other half would be left for negotiations also after the reunification, someday.

The Tripartite Commission announced that they were prepared to make important concessions in terms of the amounts and priorities of their claims some referred to post war assistance (1945-1951), making it clear that post war debts were conditioned by satisfactory and equitable agreement on pre-war debt. The amounts owed in 1939 were: 840.7 million dollars, 51.5 million pounds and 2,775.2 million French Francs, to name the debts of the leading three creditors. In 1939 constant US dollars the equivalent would be 206 billion dollars.

This plus the debt to the other 67 countries was reduced first by 50% and then the remaining 50% was reduced by half and made payable over a 25 year period (1953 to 1979). More interestingly, when the German unification finally came about, The German Federal Government demanded that the winning countries (of WWII) do not place a debt burden on the defeated countries, I.E. on East Germany. If they had respected the 1953 London agreement it would have meant recognising the other 50% of the debt and doping something with it. Instead, Germany was given a massive debt reduction in exchange for restoring reparations payments without any adjustment in value.

The German people should be grateful and remember the massive debt reductions and the concessional terms it received in time of need and despair after World War II. No one at the time either in the US, UK nor France, to name the three largest creditors, said “the taxpayers were unwilling to bail out those people.” History serves a purpose and we should all learn from it.

Source : Alainet

Oscar Ugarteche, a Peruvian economist, is the Coordinator of the Observatorio Económico de América Latina (OBELA), IIE-UNAM, Mexico – www.obela.org. Member of the SNI/Conacyt and president of ALAI. His most recent book is Arquitectura Financiera Internacional: una Genealogía de 1850-2008, México DF., IIEC-UNAM, 2014. 392pp. The material presented here uses that source except when stated otherwise.

http://cadtm.org/The-Debt-Reduction-Germany

http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-reparations-and-germanys-1952-debt-reduction-plan/5438502

IMF: Ukraine must now steal $1.5 Billion+ from Russia to buy weapons

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Originally from Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten
March 24, 2015
Posted on Global Research

IMF: Ukraine will not pay back [part of] its debts to Russia

German Economic News  |  Published: 03/24/15 00:25 clock [Translation, and interspersed notes, by Eric Zuesse.]

In December, a multi-billion-dollar loan [variously stated as $3-$3.5 billion] to Ukraine comes due, which Ukraine had received from Russia. The IMF has provided a new debt plan, however, dictating that existing loans to Ukraine that have an expiration-date are to be subjected to a haircut. Thus, the resource gap of the country totaling $40 billion is to be reduced.

Since the crisis, Ukraine has received several loans from the IMF and the EU [and the U.S.]. These loans must be repaid in a few years from now. However, the financial situation of the country remains vulnerable. Over the next four years overdue loans totaling $15 billion need to be paid [they’re mostly loans from Russia]. Only three billion of them are an old loan Russia that has to be paid in December of this year. The IMF might prevent it [from being repaid in full, even though it has seniority over the new loans that are coming from the West].

The IMF has developed a program for Ukraine, under which the current financial hole is to be filled in the amount $40 billion. The due debts [the senior debt] are part of the plan, and will be restructured, according to the IMF. Exactly how it is to happen, the IMF does not explain. Experts say that the IMF believes that Russia should participate in a haircut. The Financial Times reports [“Bailout projections indicate Ukraine will not repay Russia debt” 5:21 PM, 22 March 2015] that the IMF requires that Russia’s $3.5 billion bond issue be included in the restructuring. Charles Blitzer, a former IMF employee, has informed the FT of this.

However, Blitzer is uncertain how large the haircut will be. ”It is up to the Ukrainian authorities to determine the extent and nature of the debt restructuring,” he said. [In other words: the IMF will grant Ukraine the right to determine how much of that $3-3.5B will be repaid to Russia. The Kyiv Post puts it this way: “Kyiv does not intend to fully repay a $3 billion bond owed to Russia this year according to official projections underpinning Ukraine’s new international bailout, say credit experts.”] Government sources close to the matter estimate that there will be a planned debt reduction of 50 percent. ”But creditors would rather try to agree on a term extension,” said Blitzer.

Whether all international creditors will accept a haircut, and if so, to what extent, is not yet clear. Last week, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanow said that Russia still expects that the $3.5B debt will be repaid this December in full. And Franklin Templeton [Funds], the largest bondholder of Ukraine, has brought in Blackstone legal help for debt negotiations.

Last week, the Ukrainian Finance Minister [the American] Natalija Jaresko told the WSJ that so far pledged loans to Ukraine [$40B] will not be enough to bring Ukraine back onto its feet. ”The package will stabilize the banking system, but it is not enough to seriously re-stimulate growth,” said Jaresko. ”I need more support.” She said that no nation currently pays more to protect the entire world from a nuclear power [Russia] than does Ukraine, and that, “if our partners, for whatever reason, are not able to assist us with defensive military means, then they should provide us more financial assistance [so that we can buy the weapons against Russia ourselves].”

This past Friday, the Ukrainian central bank had to explain why three of Ukraine’s banks were being declared insolvent. The VAB Bank, Astra Bank and the City Commerce Bank are now deprived of their licenses. At the same time, Ukraine is already planning an expansion of military resources. In sum, for the year of 2015, a total of $3.8 billion will be spent on armaments. [This by a country that cannot even pay its bondholders, when all of the new Ukrainian bonds are actually paying only for Ukraine’s war against the residents of its own former Donbass region.]

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

http://www.globalresearch.ca/imf-ukraine-must-now-steal-1-5-billion-from-russia-to-buy-weapons/5438508

The West won’t admit: Crimeans still saying no to Ukraine

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From Consortium News, March 22, 2015
By Robert Parry

A central piece of the West’s false narrative on the Ukraine crisis has been that Russian President Vladimir Putin “invaded” Crimea and then staged a “sham” referendum purporting to show 96 percent support for leaving Ukraine and rejoining Russia. More recently, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland claimed that Putin has subjected Crimea to a “reign of terror.”

Both elements have been part of the “group think” that dominates U.S. political and media circles, but this propagandistic storyline simply isn’t true, especially the part about the Crimeans being subjugated by Russia.

Consistently, over the past year, polls conducted by major Western firms have revealed that the people of Crimea by overwhelming numbers prefer being part of Russia over Ukraine, an embarrassing reality that Forbes business magazine has now acknowledged.

An article by Kenneth Rapoza, a Forbes specialist on developing markets, cited these polls as showing that the Crimeans do not want the United States and the European Union to force them back into an unhappy marriage with Ukraine. “The Crimeans are happy right where they are” with Russia, Rapoza wrote.

“One year after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, poll after poll shows that the locals there — be they Ukrainians, ethnic Russians or Tartars are all in agreement: life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine,” he wrote, adding that “the bulk of humanity living on the Black Sea peninsula believe the referendum to secede from Ukraine was legit.”

Rapoza noted that a June 2014 Gallup poll, which was sponsored by the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, found that 82.8 percent of Crimeans said the March 16 referendum on secession reflected the views of the Crimean people. In the poll, when asked if joining Russia would improve their lives, 73.9 percent said yes and only 5.5 percent said no.

A February 2015 poll by German polling firm GfK found similar results. When Crimeans were asked “do you endorse Russia’s annexation of Crimea,” 93 percent gave a positive response, with 82 percent saying, “yes, definitely.” Only 2 percent said no, with the remainder unsure or not answering.

In other words, the West’s insistence that Russia must return Crimea to Ukraine would mean violating the age-old U.S. principle of a people’s right of self-determination. It would force the largely ethnic Russian population of Crimea to submit to a Ukrainian government that many Crimeans view as illegitimate, the result of a violent U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

The coup touched off a brutal civil war in which the right-wing regime in Kiev dispatched neo-Nazi and other extremist militias to spearhead a fierce “anti-terrorism operation” against resistance from the ethnic Russian population in the east, which – like Crimea – had supported Yanukovych. More than 6,000 Ukrainians, most of them ethnic Russians, have been killed in the fighting.

Despite this reality, the mainstream U.S. news media has misreported the crisis and distorted the facts to conform to U.S. State Department propaganda. Thus, many Americans believe the false narrative about Russian troops crushing the popular will of the Crimean people, much as the U.S. public was misled about the Iraq situation in 2002-03 by many of the same news outlets.

Or, as Forbes’ Rapoza put it: “At some point, the West will have to recognize Crimea’s right to self rule. Unless we are all to believe that the locals polled by Gallup and GfK were done so with FSB bogey men standing by with guns in their hands.” The FSB is a Russian intelligence agency.

The GfK survey also found that Crimeans considered the Ukrainian media, which has been wildly anti-Russian, unreliable. Only 1 percent said the Ukrainian media “provides entirely truthful information” and only 4 percent said it was “more often truthful than deceitful.”

So, the people at the frontline of this conflict, where Assistant Secretary Nuland, detected a “reign of terror,” say they are not only satisfied with being restored to Russia, which controlled Crimea since the 1700s, but don’t trust the distorted version of events that they see on Ukrainian TV.

Practical Reasons

Some of the reasons for the Crimean attitudes are simply pragmatic. Russian pensions were three times larger than what the Ukrainian government paid – and now the Ukrainian pensions are being slashed further in compliance with austerity demands from the International Monetary Fund.

This month, Nuland boasted about those pension cuts in praising the Kiev regime’s steps toward becoming a “free-market state.” She also hailed “reforms” that will force Ukrainians to work harder and into old age and that slashed gas subsidies which helped the poor pay their heating bills.

Last year, the New York Times and other U.S. news outlets also tossed around the word “invasion” quite promiscuously in discussing Crimea. But you may recall that you saw no images of Russian tanks crashing into the Crimean peninsula or an amphibious landing or paratroops descending from the skies. The reason was simple: Russian troops were already in Crimea.

The Russians had a lease agreement with Ukraine permitting up to 25,000 military personnel in Crimea to protect the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. About 16,000 Russian troops were on the ground when the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch occurred in Kiev – and after a crisis meeting at the Kremlin, they were dispatched to prevent the coup regime from imposing its control on Crimea’s people.

That Russian intervention set the stage for the March 16 referendum in which the voters of Crimea turned out in large numbers and voted overwhelmingly for secession from Ukraine and reintegration with Russia, a move that the Russian parliament and President Putin then approved.

Yet, as another part of its false reporting, the New York Times claimed that Putin denied that Russian troops had operated inside Crimea – when, in fact, he was quite open about it. For instance, on March 4, 2014, almost two weeks before the referendum, Putin discussed at a Moscow press conference the role of Russian troops in preventing the violence from spreading from Kiev to Crimea. Putin said:

“You should note that, thank God, not a single gunshot has been fired there. … Thus the tension in Crimea that was linked to the possibility of using our Armed Forces simply died down and there was no need to use them. The only thing we had to do, and we did it, was to enhance the defense of our military facilities because they were constantly receiving threats and we were aware of the armed nationalists moving in. We did this, it was the right thing to do and very timely.”

Two days after the referendum, which recorded the 96 percent vote in favor of seceding from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, Putin returned to the issue of Russian involvement in Crimea. In a formal speech to the Russian Federation, Putin justified Crimea’s desire to escape the grasp of the coup regime in Kiev, saying:

“Those who opposed the [Feb. 22] coup were immediately threatened with repression. Naturally, the first in line here was Crimea, the Russian-speaking Crimea. In view of this, the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol turned to Russia for help in defending their rights and lives, in preventing the events that were unfolding and are still underway in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and other Ukrainian cities.

“Naturally, we could not leave this plea unheeded; we could not abandon Crimea and its residents in distress. This would have been betrayal on our part.”

But to make it appear that Putin was denying a military intervention, the Times and other U.S. news outlets truncated Putin’s statement when he said, “Russia’s Armed Forces never entered Crimea.” The Western press stopped there, ignoring what he said next: “they were there already in line with an international agreement.”

Putin’s point was that Russian troops based in Crimea took actions that diffused a possibly violent situation and gave the people of Crimea a chance to express their wishes through the ballot. But that version of events didn’t fit with the desired narrative pushed by the U.S. State Department and the New York Times. So the problem was solved by misrepresenting what Putin said.

But the larger issue now is whether the Obama administration and the European Union will insist on forcing the Crimean people – against their will – to rejoin Ukraine, a country that is rapidly sliding into the status of a failed state and a remarkably cruel one at that.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon andbarnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Crimeans Keep Saying No to Ukraine

http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimeans-keep-saying-no-to-ukraine/5438563

NATO commander urges warfare against “the false narrative”

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The false narrative — such a disruptive,  murderous force which can destroy nations.

Commander Breedlove is right: The way to attack the false narrative is to drag the false narrative into the light and expose it.

The problem is that he is peddling the false narrative, not someone else. More and more people realize this and are exposing it. Factual, accurate narratives love the light, and that’s what Breedlove wants to eliminate — the truth. So, though he uses the language of truth and of honor, what he actually proposes is something very different. He says it is necessary to wage war on this information.

It’s increasingly difficult to “sell” the US/Pentagon/NATO false narrative as true. They can do it with higher volume, by slander and libel, and by trying to eliminate any fact-based narratives.

There will be more computer and website attacks, greater pressure put on the mainstream media to keep out any contrary narrative, political pressures and laws, personal attacks, and probably physical attacks in the myriad ways which the military has at their disposal. Anyone espousing “Russia’s” position will be targeted.

The truth and everyone telling the truth have become the enemy to Commander Breedlove and his allies. What they want, they intend to get if at all possible. However, truth does shine brightly, along with the  people who share it.

It is critical now more than ever to give information to as many as we can in as many ways as we can.

Posted by Rick Rozoff

Ukrinform
March 23, 2015
Breedlove urges West to start information warfare with Russia

images

KYIV: The western countries, primarily the NATO member states, should engage in the informational confrontation with aggressive Russian propaganda.

NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Philip Breedlove said this in Brussels on Sunday, Ukrinform reports.

“We need as a western group of nations or as an alliance to engage in this informational warfare. The way to attack the false narrative is to drag the false narrative into the light and expose it,” Breedlove said.

…

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/top-nato-commander-calls-for-information-warfare-against-Russia/

NATO ready to consider Ukraine bid for membership: Stoltenberg

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From Rick Rozoff

Ukrinform
March 21, 2015
NATO ready to consider Ukraine’s bid for membership

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KYIV: NATO is ready to consider the Ukraine’s bid for membership in the alliance, if Ukraine decides to submit it.

This has been stated by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels at the forum organized by the German Marshall Fund.

“It is up to Ukraine decide whether to submit the bid for NATO membership or not. Ukraine should decide that. If it submits, we will consider the application in the same way as we consider the application of any other country,” Ukrainian media telegraf.com.ua quotes him.

In 2015, the units and the individual officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will take part in 237 events of the individual partnership program [Individual Partnership Action Program] with NATO.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/nato-ready-to-welcome-ukraine-as-full-member-Stoltenberg/

Atlantic Resolve — continuous NATO war games on Russia’s western, southern borders

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Washington and NATO control the narrative. Here, Lt. Gen. Hodges meets with “defense writers”, and tells them the spin.

Was he able to talk about diplomacy with a straight face?

From Rick Rozoff

U.S. Department of Defense
March 19, 2015
Army Commander in Europe Details Assurance Efforts
By Jim Garamone

nato2-aa05c-2-e50f3

WASHINGTON: Thirteen months after Russia began its occupation of Crimea, the United States and its European allies must remain steadfast against the threat such actions pose, the commander of U.S. Army Europe said here this week.

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told the Defense Writers Group at a March 17 breakfast that the Russian action of illegally annexing Crimea from Ukraine and its continuing threat to the eastern part of Ukraine is a game-changer on the continent.

…

Atlantic Resolve Enables Cooperation

…Hodges told reporters to think of Atlantic Resolve as a continuous series of exercises, with American troops operating with troops in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, demonstrating America’s commitment to the defense of these NATO allies. Later this month, Atlantic Resolve exercises will expand to include Bulgaria and, later in the year, Romania, he said.

An airborne battalion from Vicenza, Italy, will jump into Romania and link up with a Stryker squadron coming by rail from Vilseck, Germany, Hodges said. “That will begin the introduction of [Operation Atlantic Resolve] into the south,” he added.

U.S. Army Europe also is working with countries in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, including Georgia and Ukraine. Beginning next month, troopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade will train Ukrainian Interior Ministry troops, and in May, U.S. paratroopers and tankers will exercise in Georgia, Hodges said.

Using Diplomatic, Economic Pressures

Reporters pressed Hodges on whether the United States should provide weapons to Ukraine. He said he can see both sides of the argument, but that the focus should not be on the weapons decision. “The focus should be on what is the desired end state, and can we get there using diplomatic and economic pressures and support,” he said.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/atlantic-resolve-continuous-nato-war-games-on-russias-western-southern-borders/

Pentagon admits supporting and encouraging Kiev’s ethnic cleansing “security operations” campaign

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“This assistance is part of our ongoing efforts to help sustain Ukraine’s defense and internal security operations,” Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez.

This is a shocking admission from the Pentagon that this is part of ongoing assistance by the U.S. in Kiev’s military campaign against the Ukrainian people. The United States has been helping to sustain this ethnic cleansing — i.e.. keep it going.

“Ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” are renamed “security operations” by Kiev and the Pentagon — the semantics and propaganda game.

300 U.S. soldiers going into Ukraine, in violation of Minsk, to assist in genocide — what happens when soldiers engaging in these types of operations come home to America?

Interfax-Ukraine
March 20, 2015
Pentagon to begin training Ukrainian forces next month

The Pentagon has said that it is moving forward with plans to train six Ukrainian National Guard companies and headquarters staff next month.

The training is scheduled to begin in late April and will focus on “internal defense capabilities,” according to Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez, who is quoted by The Hill online edition.

“This assistance is part of our ongoing efforts to help sustain Ukraine’s defense and internal security operations,” Lainez said.

A total of 300 U.S. soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vincenza, Italy, will conduct the training in western Ukraine near the border with Poland, she said.

The training was originally scheduled to begin this month, but was delayed after Ukraine and Russia reached a second ceasefire agreement

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/pentagon-to-begin-training-ukrainian-military-next-month/

U.S. paratroopers to train Ukrainian troops despite Minsk prohibition

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“Beginning of the training absolutely does not signify an assessment that [the Minsk agreement] has failed,” Hodges said.

This is not about the agreement already having failed. This is the United States torpedoing the Minsk 2 agreement. The US is making it fail.

What part of  this plain English provision in the Minsk 2 agreement don’t Lt Gen Ben Hodges, President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the Pentagon understand?

Pullout of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and also mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision.

Have they even read the Minsk 2 agreement? Or is it just that they feel above any law and simply don’t care?

Stars and Stripes
March 19, 2015
US training of Ukraine forces to go forward
By Jon Harper

WASHINGTON: The U.S. military is moving forward with plans to deploy U.S. paratroopers to war-torn Ukraine to train local forces, the Pentagon said Thursday.

The training will likely begin in late April, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters.

The mission, which was scheduled to occur this month, was delayed due to concerns that the training effort would undermine the Minsk II cease fire agreement between Kiev’s forces and Russia-backed insurgents, according to Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe.

That deal was brokered in February, but fighting has continued in eastern Ukraine.

Approximately 290 U.S. soldiers from the Army’s Pullout of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and also mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision. “Sky Soldiers” Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy, will deploy to western Ukraine to train three battalions of the Ukrainian national guard, Warren said.

When asked why the training was moving forward, Warren said, “As the situation in Ukraine continued to develop and evolve … we put this training event under some review” and “the decision [was] made that conducting this exercise is a good idea.”

At a breakfast with defense reporters in Washington on Tuesday, Hodges said he anticipated that the training would go forward next month, but he had not received any orders to that effect.

Hodges said that U.S. troops will try to improve the Ukrainian national guard’s ability to conduct route security, protect critical infrastructure, provide emergency medical care, survive artillery and rocket fire, and operate in an electronic warfare environment.

“Beginning of the training absolutely does not signify an assessment that [the Minsk agreement] has failed,” Hodges said.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/u-s-paratroopers-to-train-ukrainian-troops-for-second-year-of-war/

Military vehicles on the way, Biden says U.S. troops to train Ukrainian National Guard soon

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From Rick Rozoff

UNIAN
March 19, 2015
Biden: US military to train Ukraine’s National Guard soldiers soon

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has discussed the situation in the Donbas with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and informed him about the latest laws adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements, the Ukrainian president’s press service reported on Wednesday.

Speaking by phone with Poroshenko, Biden said U.S. President Barack Obama had decided to send U.S. servicemen to conduct the training of 780 Ukrainian soldiers of the Ukrainian National Guard in the near future.

The Vice President also said that a first shipment of U.S. military vehicles, which Washington is sending to enhance the country’s defense, would arrive in Ukraine in late March.

Ukrainian President thanked the United States for its strong stance with regard to Crimea and consistent support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/military-vehicles-on-the-way-biden-says-u-s-troops-to-train-ukrainian-national-guard-soon/

Why the Western media will never show Putin’s three hour press conference

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From Russia Insider, December 19, 2015
By Alex Christoforou

Imagine a western leader doing a live, three hour Q&A session with a hostile media?

Could President Obama speak in front of hundreds of journalists for over three hours, unscripted and without a teleprompter? Highly doubtful.

How about Hillary? Can Mrs. Clinton take on the local and international press in an honest, nothing off limits, press Q & A….once again for over three hours and no teleprompter to assist. No chance.

What about John McCain. Could Senator McCain field intelligent questions for over three hours (let alone 15 minutes) without resorting to name calling, warmongering or regime change rhetoric? Please!

Cameron, Hollande, Merkel…no way. European leaders are puppets to US policy and could probably not even string together thirty minutes of independent thought, let alone three hours of live debate.

What we saw today, for the 10th time, is about as transparent as any world leader can get…and western man stream media hates Putin, and Russia for this.

Putin’s tenth annual press conference format, length, and total transparency are all the facts any sane, brain functioning human being needs in order to easily deduce that all the western leader rants and main stream media propaganda about Russian aggression, Hitler comparisons, and dictator aspirations are all flat out lies.

Their is not one dictator on the planet, not one ruler alive today, not one President or Prime Minister in power, who has the balls and guts to sit in front of so many local and international journalists and answer every single question thrown at him or her with just a pen and paper handy.

Putin took questions from Ukrainian journalists, the BBC, Reuters, FT…just about every news outlet that crudely crucifies him on a daily basis, he engaged with in an open and honest debate in front of the whole entire world to see.

Nothing was hidden, and man was it refreshing to watch. If only my President was this open and forthcoming.

What we saw today was exactly why America, Europe, and the entire main stream media cabal despises Vladimir Putin.

The last thing any of the western nations want is transparency and public debate. They prefer to operate in the shadows, keep their citizens fully zombified.  They would never expose their leaders to unscripted events like this tenth annual press conference.

The closest thing western countries have to what we saw today in Moscow is Jen Psaki’s State Department press briefings, which are more stand up comedy, than intelligent discussion.

The west can hate on Putin all they want…until I see Obama, Cameron, or Merkel pull off what this man just did (for the tenth consecutive year in a row) then step off. ‘Haters gonna hate.’

Confidence

 

Crowd listens

http://russia-insider.com/en/2014/12/18/2013