NATO

NATO’s terror hordes in Iraq a pretext for Syria invasion

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From New Eastern Outlook
Originally published 6-13-14

All roads lead to Baghdad and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is following them all, north from Syria and Turkey to south. Reading Western headlines, two fact-deficient narratives have begun gaining traction. The first is that this constitutes a “failure” of US policy in the Middle East, an alibi as to how the US and its NATO partners should in no way be seen as complicit in the current coordinated, massive, immensely funded and heavily armed terror blitzkrieg toward Baghdad. The second is how ISIS appears to have “sprung” from the sand dunes and date trees as a nearly professional military traveling in convoys of matching Toyota trucks without explanation.

In actuality, ISIS is the product of a joint NATO-GCC conspiracy stretching back as far as 2007 where US-Saudi policymakers sought to ignite a region-wide sectarian war to purge the Middle East of Iran’s arch of influence stretching from its borders, across Syria and Iraq, and as far west as Lebanon and the coast of the Mediterranean. ISIS has been harbored, trained, armed, and extensively funded by a coalition of NATO and Persian Gulf states within Turkey’s (NATO territory) borders and has launched invasions into northern Syria with, at times, both Turkish artillery and air cover.  The most recent example of this was the cross-border invasion by Al Qaeda into Kasab village, Latikia province in northwest Syria.

In March, ISIS withdrew its terror battalions from Latikia and Idlib provinces and repositioned them in the east of Syria, now clearly in preparations for invading northern Iraq. The Daily Star reported in a March 2014 article titled, “Al-Qaeda splinter group in Syria leaves two provinces: activists,” that:

On Friday, ISIS – which alienated many rebels by seizing territory and killing rival commanders – finished withdrawing from the Idlib and Latakia provinces and moved its forces toward the eastern Raqqa province and the eastern outskirts of the northern city of Aleppo, activists said.  

The alleged territorial holdings of ISIS cross over both Syrian and Iraqi borders meaning that any campaign to eradicate them from Iraqi territory can easily spill over into Syria’s borders. And that is exactly the point. With ISIS having ravaged Mosul, Iraq near the Turkish border and moving south in a terror blitzkrieg now threatening the Iraqi capital of Baghdad itself, the Iraqi government is allegedly considering calling for US and/or NATO assistance to break the terror wave. Adding to the pretext, ISIS, defying any sound tactical or strategic thinking, has seized a Turkish consulate in Mosul, taking over 80 Turkish hostages – serendipitous giving Turkey not only a new pretext to invade northern Iraq as it has done many times in pursuit of alleged Kurdish militants, but to invade Syrian territory where ISIS is also based.

Turkey Has Already Attempted to Use Al Qaeda False Flag Attacks to Justify Invading Syria 

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It had been revealed that NATO has been planning a false flag attack against Turkey to justify the Turkish invasion of northern Syria, the International Business Times reported in its article, “Turkey YouTube Ban: Full Transcript of Leaked Syria ‘War’ Conversation Between Erdogan Officials.” It released the full transcript of a leaked conversation between the head of Turkish intelligence Hakan Fidan and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. The Times reported:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ban of YouTube occurred after a leaked conversation between Head of Turkish Intelligence Hakan Fidan and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu that he wanted removed from the video-sharing website.

The leaked call details Erdogan’s thoughts that an attack on Syria “must be seen as an opportunity for us [Turkey]”.

In the conversation, intelligence chief Fidan says that he will send four men from Syria to attack Turkey to “make up a cause of war”.

The report would also state:

In the leaked video, Fidan is discussing with Davutoğlu, Güler and other officials a possible operation within Syria to secure the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman empire.

Instead of four men carrying out a false flag to secure a tomb, it appears now that an entire mercenary army will be used as a pretext to secure all of northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

Banks Robbed After Invasion Funded the Invasion? Western Media Puts Cart Before the Horse 

Tales of ISIS looting armories, vehicle depots, and banks are being carefully planted throughout the Western media in an attempt to portray the invasion as a terrorist uprising, sustaining itself on plundered supplies, weapons, and cash. In reality, ISIS already possessed all that it needed before beginning its campaign from Syrian and Turkish territory.

The International Business Times in its article, “Mosul Seized: Jihadis Loot $429m from City’s Central Bank to Make Isis World’s Richest Terror Force,” claims:

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (Isis) has become the richest terror group ever after looting 500 billion Iraqi dinars – the equivalent of $429m (£256m) – from Mosul’s central bank, according to the regional governor.

Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi confirmed Kurdish televison reports that Isis militants had stolen millions from numerous banks across Mosul. A large quantity of gold bullion is also believed to have been stolen.

Following the siege of the country’s second city, the bounty collected by the group has left it richer than al-Qaeda itself and as wealthy as small nations such as Tonga, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Falkland Islands.

This cover story is the latest in a long propaganda campaign designed to cover up the extensively documented state sponsorship of ISIS and other Al Qaeda franchises by the United States, NATO, and the Persian Gulf monarchies. Previous attempts to explain why alleged “moderates” being funded billions by the West were being displaced by Al Qaeda in Syria have included claims that “Twitter donations” were eclipsing the combined aid provided by the US, EU, NATO, and Persian Gulf states.

The US, NATO, and Persian Gulf States are Behind ISIS 

Published in 2007 – a full 4 years before the 2011 “Arab Spring” would begin – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article titled, “”The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” stated specifically (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Throughout the Syrian conflict, which began in 2011, the West and its regional partners have sent billions in cash, weapons, and equipment. In the March 2013 Telegraph article titled, “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’,” it is reported:

It claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November
The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.
The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came “from several other European countries including Britain”, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.
British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.

Additionally, The New York Times in its article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid,” admits that:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

With the pledge of fresh aid, the total amount of nonlethal assistance from the United States to the coalition and civic groups inside the country is $250 million. During the meeting here, Mr. Kerry urged other nations to step up their assistance, with the objective of providing $1 billion in international aid. 

The US has also admitted that it is now officially arming and equipping terrorists inside of Syria. The Washington Post’s article, “U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels,” reported:

The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.

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The Western media and the governments providing them their talking points now expect the general public to believe that somehow “Twitter donations” and “bank robberies” have managed to outpace this unprecedented multinational logistical feat and give Al Qaeda the edge over the West’s nonexistent “moderate” forces in Syria and give rise to phantom terrorist legions capable of seizing entire provinces across multiple national borders. The evidence simply doesn’t add up. 

Combined with reports from the US Army’s West Point Countering Terrorism Center, “Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout: al-Qa’ida’s Road In and Out of Iraq,” and “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” it is clear that Iraq’s Al Qaeda/ISIS legions were created, funded, and armed by Persian Gulf states and are augmented with foreign fighters drawn from Libya’s terror epicenter of Benghazi, and Saudi Arabia in particular. These legions have been in operation in one form or another since they were first created by the US CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistani intelligence during the 1980’s to combat Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

A Pretext for NATO Invasion 

The alleged territory of ISIS overlaps the Iraqi-Syrian border constituting a region nearly the size of Syria itself. With Baghdad asking for foreign intervention, and ISIS giving NATO the perfect pretext to do so by seizing a Turkish consulate in Mosul, making the case for (re)invading Iraq may be feasible. With the Western media capitalizing on ISIS’ notorious brutality, including mass beheadings and hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing before them, a demonstrable campaign to sway public opinion toward intervention is clearly under way.

Invading northern Iraq will allow NATO to then justify cross-border operations into eastern Syria. In reality what NATO will be doing is establishing their long desired “buffer zone” where terrorists can launch attacks deeper and more effectively into Syrian territory. With western Syria returning to peace and order after a series of victories for the Syrian government, the last front NATO’s proxy forces have is Al Qaeda’s arch of terror running along Turkey’s border and now, across eastern Syria and northern Iraq. NATO’s presence in northern Iraq would also provide an obstacle for Iranian-Syrian trade and logistics.

The idea of such a buffer zone has been in the works since at least March 2012, where the idea was proposed by the US corporate-financier funded Brookings Institution in their “Middle East Memo #21″ “Assessing Options for Regime Change” where it stated specifically (emphasis added):

“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.” 

Through Iraq, NATO has used its terrorist proxies to create a pretext to put this “buffer zone” strategy back into motion. The prospect of the US, NATO, or the Persian Gulf states delivering Iraq from ISIS is an ironic tragedy – as definitive evidence reveals ISIS’ brutal incursion was of this collective coalition’s own doing to begin with, and for its own insidious ends. Instead, a joint Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian anti-terror campaign should be conducted to corner and crush NATO’s terrorist mercenary expeditionary force once and for all.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/06/13/nato-s-terror-hordes-in-iraq-a-pretext-for-syria-invasion/

U.S. is blockading Syria — a war crime

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By Christopher Black
Global Research, September 25, 2015
New Eastern Outlook 24 September 2015

The news that the United States asked both Greece and Bulgaria to block Russian flights over their air space headed for Syria is a logical extension of the criminality of the aggression against Syria being conducted by the NATO powers and their allies in the region. The NATO alliance has been conducting a war of aggression against Syria since 2011 when it succeeded in destroying Libya and it was responsible for the waves of humanity who fled the NATO bombing and who now flee the Takfiri militants NATO used as their auxiliaries.

These actions are clearly war crimes of the highest order, contemptuous violations of the UN Charter, international law and of all morality. The resulting misery of the peoples of the countries under attack, who are forced to flee and become refugees in the heart of the very alliance that is attacking them, is beyond words. The images bombard us daily. But the images are not placed in the western media to create a call for peace in the region. Instead, as we see from the recent statements of the British, French and American leaders, they are used to manipulate the emotions of the citizens of the NATO countries to justify a call for more military aggression against Syria which will create more misery, more death and more refugees.

That the flood of stories in the western press about the Syrian refugees is being used as a propaganda tool to is easy to see when we compare the situation regarding refugees from Libya and Ukraine. The Libyan people have been fleeing the hell that NATO created for four years now, with thousands of people arriving in Europe, mostly on the shores of Italy. But there has been no call to attack the vicious thugs that NATO installed in place of the progressive socialist Libyan Republic, no call to bring back the civilized society that existed before Gaddafi was brutally murdered by the same forces, no call for regime change in Tripoli. Instead, chaos and gangsterism prevail, and all is well.

In Ukraine over a million people have fled the Kiev junta’s massive armed attacks on its own people, the type of attacks that NATO countries alleged Gaddafi had used on his own people to justify their attack on Libya. The US puppets in Kiev have used bombing raids on civilians, white phosphorus shells, cluster bombs and other banned weapons and they have used them not on military targets of the peoples resistance forces but on civilian houses, shops, schools, hospitals, power stations and other civilian infrastructure. Food and medical supplies are blockaded. The people of the Donbas are under siege. All these actions are war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet the western media says not a single word about them. There is no call from Washington or London or Paris or Ottawa to bomb Kiev and remove Poroshenko. Instead they supply him and his Nazi friends with weapons, supplies and money and send in their own forces to assist in these criminal attacks. The double standards applied and the deep hypocrisy and cynicism displayed by the NATO governments and the western news media that provide the information flow to the people, must shake anyone’s belief in the viability of western civilization.

In stark contrast, Russia has taken in over a million refugees so far from Ukraine without complaint while the EU countries argue bitterly amongst themselves as to who should take the refugees they have created and while they fan the flames of xenophobia among their own populations. But then the motivations are completely different. The Russians want to help the people being attacked by NATO and its puppet regime in Kiev. The Europeans only want to use the refugees as a means of creating hysteria in Europe so that their people will support a combined NATO attack on Syria.

Since these EU countries in one way or another support the forces attacking Syria they are responsible under international law for receiving and caring for the refugees they have created. They must follow certain humane standards in the treatment of them, but instead we see images of them being fed like animals or being kicked and tripped up by the very media sent to report on the crisis.

But now the situation has escalated further with the United States demanding that Greece and Bulgaria block relief supplies from Russia from using their air space, an attempt to completely block these supplies. Greece has found the courage to refuse the request. Bulgaria to its shame has decided to lick their boots.

The Americans try to justify their demand by claiming that some of those flights are used to deliver military supplies to Syria. Yes, and so what? Russia has every right to support the Syrian government in its fight against the Nato-Saudi, Israeli auxiliaries who are fighting in Syria under the acronyms ISIS or ISIL or Al Qaeda and has been openly doing so since the beginning. There is no UN approved arms embargo against Syria and the United States and its allies are daily dropping supplies to these same groups and have let it be known that their special forces are operating on the ground alongside those forces. Just the other day another story broke of the Israeli Army airlifting wounded from these groups for treatment in Israeli occupied zones and one must wonder if those selectively helped are not indeed Israeli special forces themselves. The Americans and Bulgarians are not just worried about more Russian military supplies from being delivered. They also want the Syrian people to experience the maximum state of misery and despair to punish them for their support of their government and to try to force them to turn against it.

Indeed, the Russian and Syrian governments affirm that many of those flights are delivering much needed humanitarian relief including medical supplies, generators for hospitals, food, tents for internal refugees, and related supplies to relieve the distress of the Syrian people in the face of the American provoked attacks on them. One has to ask, where are the American and European relief supplies for the Syrian people? Where are the ships and planes that should be carrying the same supplies the Russians are delivering? If they had delivered them and if they had insisted that the attacks on Syria stop there would not be any refugees. But they want the refugees to generate war propaganda and so they do not want relief supplies to get through.

The attempt to blockade the delivery of humanitarian assistance amounts to a war crime under international law, including the the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg Principles and the Statute of Rome that sets out the definitions of war crimes under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The attempted blockade of humanitarian assistance constitutes murder, inhuman treatment, collective punishment, an action designed to bring about the physical destruction of the population and the nation, and other related crimes committed against the Syrian civilian population. Every European leader who takes part in this criminal conspiracy should be charged with war crimes. The American president should be Number One in the dock. But international criminal law continues to be administered by criminals and we watch with disbelief the complete silence of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court who sits in her office in The Hague and twiddles her thumbs while Damascus, Aleppo and Donetsk burn.

The cartloads of the dead overflow the cemeteries. The misery of the living mounts. The hope that is left for peace and security, even for a little kindness in this life, drips out of our veins with every drop of blood shed by the victims of these NATO wars. It is very easy to despair. I despair. But we must resist. We must demand these wars stop, We must stop sitting around face booking and surfing the internet, get out of these artificial worlds they have built to turn us into zombies of the living and get back on the streets where we still count, where they still fear us and where we can shout our demands so loud they will shake the walls of the state itself.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-blockade-of-syria-a-war-crime/5478059

The Ambassador of Latvia to NATO: our biggest threats are the inflow of Ukrainian refugees and the outflow of our population

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From Fort Russ

August 4, 2015
Translated by Kristina Rus
The Ambassador of Latvia to NATO, Indulis Berzins announced the list of the biggest threats to the country on the program “900 seconds” on the channel LNT.

Indulis Berzins, who previously held various government posts, entered the position of Ambassador to NATO last week. He shared his perspective about the security of the state on a TV program. The greatest threat is a huge influx of refugees from Ukraine. As the diplomat noted, he was warned about such a scenario by the experts involved in the Ukrainian crisis.

 Additionally, Indulis Berzins said that a threat to Latvia is the pessimistic mood of its inhabitants, many of whom resent their country and move abroad. 

“If the citizens of Latvia will not agree that we need this state, it will create the greatest threat to the security of the country,” – the Ambassador said. 


 He also noted that “a group of professional commentators appeared online, which rejects the transatlantic orientation of Latvia”.

Indulis Berzins added that “the most important thing now is to ensure the security of the entire region.” In his words, “the increased presence of allies in the Baltic States, including Latvia, would enhance security and would give a clear signal to any country, that would want to somehow interfere in our internal affairs”.

Speaking about the possible deployment of NATO bases in the Baltic States, the Ambassador said that “now we are working hard to implement the decisions of the Wales summit, not requiring a permanent presence of military forces of other countries of the Alliance in Latvia”.

At the same time, he said, “various military exercises and maneuvers conducted in Latvia, are the guarantor of the policy of containment”.

Indulis Berzins added: “This format does not involve the need for permanent bases. It involves provision of weapons, ammunition and arms, which is very significant — if the situation gets worse, the soldiers, coming over here, will not have to bring equipment.”

However, he stressed that “a permanent base of the Alliance was established in Latvia or the presence of allies was increased, it would only help its security”. At the same time a new envoy to NATO has recognized that there is no direct military threat to Latvia today.

 

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-ambassador-of-latvia-to-nato-our.html

“Europa braucht Russland und Russland braucht Europa”; Erklärung des Willy-Brandt-Kreises für einen neuen europäischen Umgang mit der Ukraine-Krise

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Sperrfrist: 21. Juli 2015, 12.00 Uhr!

Erklärung des Willy-Brandt-Kreises

Zum bedrohten Frieden –

für einen neuen europäischen Umgang mit der Ukraine-Krise

Europa durchlebt die schwerste Krise seit dem Ende des Ost-West-Konflikts. Nicht nur der Umgang mit Griechenland und den Flüchtlingsströmen hält den Kontinent in Atem, auch der mühsam ausgehandelte Waffenstillstand in der östlichen Ukraine ist brüchig. Solange der Konflikt um die Zukunft der Ukraine ungelöst ist, besteht die ständige Gefahr eines Abstur-zes.

Eine umfassende Friedensordnung für Europa, dieses Versprechen der Charta von Paris von 1990, ist unerfüllt geblieben. Doch Europa kann kein Interesse daran haben, die alte Rivalität der Supermächte USA und Sowjetunion fortzusetzen und Russland in die Knie zu zwingen. Das unterscheidet die europäische von der amerikanischen Interessenlage: Ohne Russland o-der gar gegen Russland kann kaum ein Problem gelöst werden, das Europa als Ganzes betrifft. Das zeigt die jüngste Geschichte: Russland und die Völker der Sowjetunion haben entschei-dend zur Befreiung Europas vom Faschismus beigetragen, aber auch zur deutschen Vereini-gung. Deutschland hat daher eine besondere Verantwortung, Russland als Partner in einer eu-ropäischen Friedensordnung zu gewinnen.

1990 schien diese Frage ein für alle Mal beantwortet: Russland als Mitarchitekt der europäi-schen Einigung, würde natürlich – wie auch die USA – ein Anker und ein gleichberechtigter Partner sein. Russland sah sich seither in seinen Erwartungen enttäuscht: Die Erweiterungspo-litik der EU und vor allem der NATO schloss eine Mitgliedschaft Russlands ausdrücklich aus: zu groß, zu komplex, hieß es damals – während einige Staaten im östlichen Europa das Ziel ihres Beitritts zur westlichen Allianz offen als Sicherheitsvorsorge vor Russland betrieben. Ohne eigene Beitrittsperspektive Russlands nährte die Erweiterung der westlichen Bünd-nisstrukturen alte russische Einkreisungsängste, welche nationalistische Reflexe und den all-mählichen Rückfall in das Denken in geopolitischen Kategorien und Einflusszonen begünstig-ten.

Die ukrainische Krise ist somit Ausdruck eines heraufziehenden russisch -euroatlantischen Großkonflikts, der in eine Katastrophe münden kann, wenn die sich bereits drehende Spirale des Wettrüstens, der militärischen Provokationen und konfrontativen Rhetorik nicht gestoppt wird. Wir wenden uns daher an alle verantwortlichen Politiker und friedensbewegten Bürger, aber vor allem ganz direkt an die SPD:

In dieser Situation ist eine mutige politische Initiative gefordert, vergleichbar jener, die nach Mauerbau und Kubakrise in der Hochzeit des Kalten Krieges den Ausbruch aus der Logik der Konfrontation mit der Sowjetunion wagte. Damals war es in Europa allen voran die deutsche Sozialdemokratie, die mit der neuen Ostpolitik Willy Brandts einer europäischen Entspan-nungspolitik den Weg ebnete. 2015 bedarf es ebensolchen Mutes und politischer Klugheit, um der drohenden Spirale neuerlicher Konfrontation und Spaltung Europas zu begegnen. Wir for-dern daher innezuhalten und einen Neustart der Beziehungen mit Russland zu wagen, bevor es für Alle und Alles zu spät ist!

(1) Die Ukraine-Krise lässt sich durch politische Sanktionen gegen Russland nicht lösen. Die tieferliegenden Ursachen der russisch-europäischen Entfremdung gehören auf die politische Tagesordnung europäisch-russischer Gipfelgespräche. Dauerhafter Interes-senausgleich gelingt nur durch Dialog und Verhandlungen. Die wirtschaftlichen Sank-tionen unterminieren die Entwicklung Europas als gemeinsamer Wirtschaftsraum. Zu-sammenarbeit ist ein Motor der Vertrauensbildung. Eine intakte Energieinfrastruktur, die durch die aktuellen Spannungen bereits in Mitleidenschaft gezogen wurde, liegt genauso im gemeinsamen Interesse wie wechselseitige Handelsbeziehungen.

(2) Die Europäische Union darf sich infolge ihrer Mitverantwortung für das Entstehen dieser Krise nicht der Mitwirkung an deren einvernehmlicher Lösung entziehen. Das Zusammenwirken von Deutschland, Frankreich und Polen mit der Ukraine und Russ-land beim Minsk II-Abkommen, ist ein innovativer Ansatz. Von dessen Umsetzung hängt es ab, gestörtes Vertrauen zurückzugewinnen. Aber eine breitere europäische Einbettung tut not. Deutschland muss hierfür im kommenden Jahr seine Verantwor-tung in der OSZE-Präsidentschaft in die Waagschale werfen und konzeptionell wie di-alogorientiert agieren.

(3) Weil auch die USA als wichtigster Partner der neuen ukrainischen Regierung eine hohe Verantwortung für die Lösung der Krise haben, sind alle Gremien wichtig, die Russland und die USA zusammenbringen. Gerade in Krisenzeiten bedarf es besonders engmaschiger Kommunikation. Daher sollten die G7 Russland sofort wieder einbezie-hen, der NATO-Russland Rat muss seine Arbeit schnellstmöglich wieder aufnehmen. Notwendige Krisenkommunikation darf nicht beschränkt oder gar verhindert, sondern muss ausgebaut werden.

(4) Die Einverleibung der Krim durch Russland ist ein Verstoß gegen internationale Ab-kommen und zugleich eine politische Realität, die nicht gegen den Mehrheitswillen der Bevölkerung der Krim rückgängig gemacht werden kann. Der Status Quo darf die Notwendigkeit der konstruktiven Zusammenarbeit mit den Beteiligten im gemeinsa-men europäischen Interesse nicht unterbinden.

(5) Die Ukraine-Krise ist auch das Ergebnis einer schwachen föderalen Struktur in einem noch jungen Staat. Nur eine starke föderale Ordnung kann das Land vor ethnischer Spaltung und drohender Sezession bewahren. Die Erfahrungen anderer europäischer Staaten mit föderalen Strukturen sollten von den Parteien in der Ukraine abgerufen werden können, wenn sie dies wünschen.

(6) Eine Mitgliedschaft der Ukraine in der NATO würde kein Mehr an Sicherheit bringen. Sie würde im Gegenteil russische Befürchtungen über die Ziele der NATO weiter be-feuern und die Risiken ungewollter militärischer Konfrontation noch erhöhen. Die Vertrauensbildung zwischen den politischen und militärischen Gremien aller europäi-schen Staaten, wie sie im Rahmen des „Wiener Dokuments” der OSZE, zuletzt 2011, vorgesehen ist, ist gerade in Krisenzeiten auszubauen.

(7) Die Ukraine-Krise gefährdet die europäische Rüstungskontrolle. Wettrüsten, die Ver-lagerung von militärischen Ausrüstungen und neue Truppenstationierungen beiderseits der russischen Grenze legen die Axt an das bestehende System von Verträgen. Die Be-teiligung deutscher Truppen bei der Aufstellung von „Eingreiftruppen” kann auf russi-scher Seite Erinnerungen an den deutschen Überfall auslösen und unnötig Öl ins Feuer gießen. Militärische Entflechtung, Nichtverbreitung und die Begrenzung von Waffen-arsenalen und Truppen sind Aufgaben, die keinen Aufschub dulden.

 

(8) Die im Zusammenhang mit der Ukraine-Krise erneut aufgebrochenen Drohungen mit dem Einsatz von Atom-Waffen sind alarmierend. Es droht eine Neuauflage der „Nach-rüstung” der 80er Jahre mit atomaren Mittelstreckenraketen in Europa. Atom-Waffen müssen endlich geächtet werden. In ihrer die ganze Welt erreichenden Vernichtungs-kraft müssen sie als prinzipiell nicht einsetzbar gelten.

(9) Die Friedensordnung Europas ist nicht nur eine Ordnung der Staaten. Sie beruht auf starken Zivilgesellschaften, grenzüberschreitender Zusammenarbeit in den Bereichen Kultur, Medien, Sport, Wissenschaft u.a.m. Auch durch die Neubelebung des europäi-schen Jugendaustauschs mit Russland und der Ukraine können stereotype Denkweisen überwunden und generationenübergreifend Impulse für ein besseres Verständnis von-einander – und ein gutes Verhältnis miteinander – gesetzt werden.

Europa braucht Russland und Russland braucht Europa. Wir stehen vor der Weichenstel-lung, in einen neuen, mehr oder weniger Kalten Krieg mit ungewisser Perspektive abzuglei-ten oder uns auf das Ziel einer gemeinsamen europäischen Friedensordnung zu besinnen.

Die Zeit zum Handeln ist jetzt!

Berlin, den 21. Juli 2015

Prof. Egon Bahr, Prof. Dr. Elmar Brähler, Prof. Dr. Peter Brandt, Volker Braun, Daniela Dahn, Dr. Friedrich Dieckmann, Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Gießmann, Prof. Dr. Lutz Götze, Prof. Dr. Ingomar Hauchler, Dr. Enrico Heitzer, Gunter Hofmann, Prof. Dr. Gustav Horn, Prof. Dr. Dieter Klein, Dr. Rainer Land, Dr. Hans Misselwitz, Dr. Irina Mohr, Prof. Dr. Götz Neuneck, Prof. Dr. Rolf Reissig, Dr. Edelbert Richter, Wolfgang Schmidt, Axel Schmidt-Gödelitz, Prof. Dr. Michael Schneider, Dr. Friedrich Schorlemmer, Ingo Schulze, Prof. Klaus Staeck, Prof. Dr. Walther Stützle, Antje Vollmer, Dr. Christoph Zöpel

Click to access 150721-zum-bedrohten-frieden-erklaerung-des-willy-brandt-kreises_juli2015.pdf

 

Interview with Michel Chossudovsky: US/NATO playing war games on Russia’s doorstep, threatening Russia with a first-strike nuclear attack

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By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, June 28, 2015
Press TV

Press TV has conducted an interview with Michel Chossudovsky, of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, concerning NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg calling on Moscow to stop “supporting” pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine.
Press TV: Do you think it is in the role of NATO Secretary General to warn Russia against the situation in eastern Ukraine?

Chossudovsky: I think NATO has the ability of turning the realities upside down, because recent reports confirm that it is not Russia which is supporting the rebels but NATO and the United States which are supporting Ukraine not only with so-called nonlethal weapons but also with military advisers, training and so on. Moreover, they are now providing core support not only to the armed forces but also to the neo-Nazi National Guard. And the US Congress has debated this issue and they said yes, we will support the National Guard but we will not support the Neo-Nazi Azov battalion.

Other countries such as Canada are supporting the Azov battalion, but I should say that while the Azov battalion has been recognized as a neo-Nazi entity, the Right Sector Nazi party has an oversight and control over the entire National Guard.

In recent developments, Ukraine’s military has been bombing civilian areas including schools. There is ample evidence to that effect, and ironically NATO is accusing the separatist forces of Donbass of killing their own people, so to speak, when in fact those strikes were perpetrated by the Ukrainian armed forces.

Press TV: Basically you are saying that the US and NATO have set the grounds to ensure this grace period that there is of relative calm in eastern Ukraine is used to basically once again increase hostilities and ensure that there is no separatist movement left within eastern Ukraine. However, my question to you is what does NATO get out of it?

Chossudovsky: I think we have to look at the broader military agenda, because NATO – and when we say NATO we are saying the United States – the United States and NATO are involved in war games on Russia’s doorstep.

They have several initiatives, they are moving military hardware to Eastern Europe, and this serves as an act of provocation directed against the Russian Federation; and they accuse Russia without evidence of supporting the rebels when in fact they have their own troops right on Russia’s doorstep supporting the Ukrainian government, which is an illegitimate government.

And I think there is another element which has not been understood or even reported in the media, is that the president of Ukraine, President Poroshenko, has made the statement and it is with Ukraine Constitutional Court that the coup directed against his predecessor Yanukovych was an illegal act rather than a “transition towards democracy” n.

So within Ukraine there is there is division within the leadership. The country is in crisis situation following the imposition of the IMF’s deadly microeconomic reforms and the impoverishment of large sectors of the population. And within the armed forces there are also divisions and there is also a movement at the grassroots to refuse to fight, in other words not to join the armed forces, not to be involved in a civil war in eastern Ukraine.

Press TV: So if Russia is the big enemy here, what do you make of that? Is Russia a threat to the West – militarily or strategically speaking?

Chossudovsky: I think that Russia is not a threat and neither is China. The United States is engaged on a very dangerous path, because they have adopted the doctrine of preemptive war and they are in fact also saying that they can use nuclear weapons against Russia on a preemptive first strike basis.

Now that type of discourse is extremely dangerous, because it could ignite a World War III scenario.

First of all, they say that the new generation of nuclear weapons, namely the tactical nuclear weapons, are harmless to civilians and can be used against non-nuclear states; this is an outright lie.

And now they that they are threatening Russia with nuclear weapons, and this is very clear, the nuclear option has been debated in the US Congress.

We are at a very dangerous crossroads in our history – the unthinkable: a possible World War III scenario.

And this is no longer at the abstract level, it has been envisaged by decision makers in the Pentagon and it could unleash World War III.

Order Michel Chossudovsky’s Book directly from GR,  

Towards a World War III Scenario, TheDangers of Nuclear War,

Global Research, Montreal, 2011, also available in pdf.

WWIII Scenario

Nuclear war has become a multibillion dollar undertaking, which fills the pockets of US defense contractors. What is at stake is the outright “privatization of nuclear war”.

The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.

Central to an understanding of war, is the media campaign which grants it legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion. A good versus evil dichotomy prevails. The perpetrators of war are presented as the victims. Public opinion is misled.

Breaking the “big lie”, which upholds war as a humanitarian undertaking, means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force. This profit-driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.

The object of this book is to forcefully reverse the tide of war, challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/06/26/417607/Russia-Ukraine-NATO-US-Europe

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-nato-playing-war-games-on-russias-doorstep-threaten-russia-with-a-first-strike-nuclear-attack-michel-chossudovsky/5458752

Why is NATO in Yugoslavia?

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Excellent historical perspective on present day problems.

By Sean Gervasi
Global Research, June 22, 2015

Why Is NATO In Yugoslavia?

Editor’s Note

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

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

See also Sean Gervasi’s 1993 video interview

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NATO in Yugoslavia

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

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

Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

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

From Deutsche Welle:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His Basic ‘History’ Is False

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

French military intelligence chief testifies that NATO/U.S. intel got it wrong

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From Fort Russ

Here is a brief, but significant, extract from General Christophe Gomart’s report to the Assemblée Nationale. General Gomart is head of French Military Intelligence.  His complete report, given March 25, 2015, is here. 
Translator’s note: NATO’s credibility is also suspect in the German Chancellery, as may be seen here.
May 28, 2015
Translated from French by Tom Winter
“The real difficulty with NATO is that the American intel is in preponderance there, while the French intel is more or less taken for granted, hence the importance for us to supply the NATO commanders with enough information of French origin. 
NATO announced that the Russians were going to invade Ukraine, the while that according to our information at the DRM (Direction du Renseignement Militaire), there was nothing to support this hypothesis — we had in fact stated that the Russians had not deployed either command nor the logistics, that would permit envisaging a military invasion, notably field hospitals, and that the second-line units had been exhibiting no movement. 
The outcome demonstrated that we got it right, since, if any Russian soldiers had been sighted in Ukraine, it would have been a matter of a pressuring maneouvre on Ukrainian president Poroshenko than of any prelude to an invasion.”
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/cr-cdef/14-15/c1415049.asp