Victoria Nuland

Stratfor: Ukraine coup plotted by U.S. due to Russian stance on Syria

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From Sputnik News, December 19, 2014

MOSCOW, December 19 (Sputnik) – The United States is behind the February coup in Kiev, which came in response to Russia’s stance on Syria, said George Friedman, the founder and CEO of Stratfor, a global intelligence company.

Russia has repeatedly said that the coup in Kiev was organized by the US, Friedman told Kommersant newspaper. Indeed, it was the most overt coup in history, the political analyst stressed.

The United States decided to act following Russia’s successes in the Middle East, a key region for the US. Americans saw that Russians could influence what was happening in the Middle East, Friedman said. Russians are one of the many challenges in the region that the US faces, he stated. The US thought Russia’s activities were an attempt to harm Washington, the political analyst told the newspaper, adding that events in Ukraine should be viewed in this context.

Russians seem to have underestimated how seriously the US would react to Moscow’s activities in the region and that they would easily respond, Friedman said. The US understood that the thing Russia wants the least is instability in Ukraine, he added.

Related article: Lavrov: Ukraine Freedom Act to Undermine US-Russia Relations for Long Time

The head of Stratfor, also known as “The Shadow CIA,” insisted that Russia’s involvement in Syria was not the only reason for the Ukrainian crisis. However, many in Washington started to perceive Russia as a problem, the expert told the newspaper, adding that at that time the US decided to divert Russia’s attention away from the Middle East.

Syria has been in a civil war since March 2011. Over 100,000 people have died as a result of the armed conflict. Russia repeatedly stated that the election of Syria’s president Bashar Assad was legitimate, and that the people of Syria should control their future. From the beginning of the war the US supported the opposition and stated that the conflict would not be over with Assad in power.

 

http://sputniknews.com/politics/20141219/1016024377.html

Robert Parry: How the New York Times falsifies the Ukraine narrative

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Posted on Helen Caldicott Foundation, January 28, 2015

Robert Parry is one of the speakers at the Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction on February 28 to March 1 in New York City. Here he writes about the New York Times’ false narrative of the Ukraine crisis.
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In late February, a conference is scheduled in New York City to discuss the risk of nuclear war if computers reach the level of artificial intelligence and take decisions out of human hands. But there is already the old-fashioned danger of nuclear war, started by human miscalculation, fed by hubris and propaganda.

That possible scenario is playing out in Ukraine, where the European Union and the United States provoked a political crisis on Russia’s border in November 2013, then backed a coup d’etat in February 2014 and have presented a one-sided account of the ensuing civil war, blaming everything on Russia.

Possibly the worst purveyor of this Cold War-style propaganda has been the New York Times, which has given its readers a steady diet of biased reporting and analysis, including now accusing the Russians for a resurgence in the fighting.

One way the Times has falsified the Ukraine narrative is by dating the origins of the crisis to several months after the crisis actually began. So, the lead story in Saturday’s editions ignored the actual chronology of events and started the clock with the appearance of Russian troops in Crimea in spring 2014.

The Times article by Rick Lyman and Andrew E. Kramer said: “A shaky cease-fire has all but vanished, with rebel leaders vowing fresh attacks. Civilians are being hit by deadly mortars at bus stops. Tanks are rumbling down snowy roads in rebel-held areas with soldiers in unmarked green uniforms sitting on their turrets, waving at bystanders — a disquieting echo of the ‘little green men’ whose appearance in Crimea opened this stubborn conflict in the spring.”

In other words, the story doesn’t start in fall 2013 with the extraordinary U.S. intervention in Ukrainian political affairs – spearheaded by American neocons, such as National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain – nor with the U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, which ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych and put one of Nuland’s chosen leaders, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in as Prime Minister.

No, because if that history were included, Times readers might actually have a chance for a balanced understanding of this unnecessary tragedy. For propaganda purposes, it is better to start the cameras rolling only after the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from the failed state of Ukraine and rejoin Russia.

Except the Times won’t reference the lopsided referendum or the popular will of the Crimean people. It’s better to pretend that Russian troops – the “little green men” – just invaded Crimea and conquered the place against the people’s will. The Russian troops were already in Crimea as part of an agreement with Ukraine for maintaining the Russian naval base at Sevastopol.

Which leads you to the next paragraph of the Times story: “The renewed fighting has dashed any hopes of reinvigorating a cease-fire signed in September [2014] and honored more in name than in fact since then. It has also put to rest the notion that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, would be so staggered by the twin blows of Western sanctions and a collapse in oil prices that he would forsake the separatists in order to foster better relations with the West.”

That last point gets us to the danger of human miscalculation driven by hubris. The key error committed by the EU and compounded by the U.S. was to assume that a brazen bid to get Ukraine to repudiate its longtime relationship with Russia and to bring Ukraine into the NATO alliance would not prompt a determined Russian reaction.

Russia sees the prospect of NATO military forces and their nuclear weapons on its borders as a grave strategic threat, especially with Kiev in the hands of rabid right-wing politicians, including neo-Nazis, who regard Russia as a historic enemy. Confronted with such a danger – especially with thousands of ethnic Russians inside Ukraine being slaughtered – it was a near certainty that Russia’s leaders would not succumb meekly to Western sanctions and demands.

Yet, as long as the United States remains in thrall to the propagandistic narrative that the New York Times and other U.S. mainstream media outlets have spun, President Barack Obama will almost surely continue to ratchet up the tensions. To do otherwise would open Obama to accusations of “weakness.”

During his State of the Union address, Obama mostly presented himself as a peacemaker, but his one major deviation was when he crowed about the suffering that U.S.-organized sanctions had inflicted on Russia, whose economy, he boasted, was “in tatters.”

So, with the West swaggering and Russia facing what it considers a grave strategic threat, it’s not hard to imagine how the crisis in Ukraine could escalate into a violent clash between NATO and Russian forces with the possibility of further miscalculation bringing nuclear weapons into play.

The Actual Narrative

There’s no sign that the New York Times has any regrets about becoming a crude propaganda organ, but just in case someone is listening inside “the newspaper of record,” let’s reprise the actual narrative of the Ukraine crisis. It began not last spring, as the Times would have you believe, but rather in fall 2013 when President Yanukovych was evaluating the cost of an EU association agreement if it required an economic break with Russia.

This part of the narrative was well explained by Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, even though it has generally taken a harshly anti-Russian line. But, in a retrospective piece published a year after the crisis began, Der Spiegel acknowledged that EU and German leaders were guilty of miscalculations that contributed to the civil war in Ukraine, particularly by under-appreciating the enormous financial costs to Ukraine if it broke its historic ties to Russia.

In November 2013, Yanukovych learned from experts at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine that the total cost to the country’s economy from severing its business connections to Russia would be around $160 billion, 50 times the $3 billion figure that the EU had estimated, Der Spiegel reported.

The figure stunned Yanukovych, who pleaded for financial help that the EU couldn’t provide, the magazine said. Western loans would have to come from the International Monetary Fund, which was demanding painful “reforms” of Ukraine’s economy, structural changes that would make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder, including raising the price of natural gas by 40 percent and devaluing Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, by 25 percent.

With Putin offering a more generous aid package of $15 billion, Yanukovych backed out of the EU agreement but told the EU’s Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Nov. 28, 2013, that he was willing to continue negotiating. German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded with “a sentence dripping with disapproval and cool sarcasm aimed directly at the Ukrainian president. ‘I feel like I’m at a wedding where the groom has suddenly issued new, last minute stipulations,” according to Der Spiegel’s chronology of the crisis.

After the collapse of the EU deal, U.S. neocons went to work on one more “regime change” – this time in Ukraine – using the popular disappointment in western Ukraine over the failed EU agreement as a way to topple Yanukovych, the constitutionally elected president whose political base was in eastern Ukraine.

Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, a prominent neocon holdover who advised Vice President Dick Cheney, passed out cookies to anti-Yanukovych demonstrators at the Maidan Square in Kiev and reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.”

Sen. McCain, who seems to want war pretty much everywhere, joined Ukrainian rightists onstage at the Maidan urging on the protests, and Gershman’s U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy deployed its Ukrainian political/media operatives in support of the disruptions. As early as September 2013, the NED president had identified Ukraine as “the biggest prize” and an important step toward toppling Putin in Russia. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit.”]

By early February 2014, Nuland was telling U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt “fuck the EU” and discussing how to “glue this thing” as she handpicked who the new leaders of Ukraine would be; “Yats is the guy,” she said about Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

As violent disorders at the Maidan grew worse – with well-organized neo-Nazi militias hurling firebombs at police – the State Department and U.S. news media blamed Yanukovych. On Feb. 20, when mysterious snipers – apparently firing from positions controlled by the neo-Nazi Right Sektor – shot to death police officers and protesters, the situation spun out of control – and the American press again blamed Yanukovych.

Though Yanukovych signed a Feb. 21 agreement with three European countries accepting reduced powers and early elections, that was not enough for the coup-makers. On Feb. 22, a putsch, spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias, forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives.

Remarkably, however, when the Times pretended to review this history in a January 2015 article, the Times ignored the extraordinary evidence of a U.S.-backed coup – including the scores of NED political projects, McCain’s cheerleading and Nuland’s plotting. The Times simply informed its readers that there was no coup. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]

But the Times’ propaganda on Ukraine is not just wretched journalism, it is also a dangerous ingredient in what could become a nuclear confrontation, if Americans come to believe a false narrative and thus go along with more provocative actions by their political leaders who, in turn, might feel compelled to act tough because otherwise they’d be attacked as “soft.”

In other words, even without computers seizing control of man’s nuclear weapons, man himself might blunder into a nuclear Armageddon, driven not by artificial intelligence but a lack of the human kind.

http://www.helencaldicott.com/nyt-lost-ukraine-propaganda/

Czech President says ‘only poorly informed people’ don’t know about Ukraine coup

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Eric Zuesse, January 4, 2015
Posted on Washington’s Blog

The Czech Republic’s President Milos Zeman said, in an interview, in the January 3rd edition of Prague’s daily newspaper Pravo, that Czechs who think of the overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, on 22 February 2014, as having been like Czechoslovakia’s authentically democratic “Velvet Revolution” are seeing it in a profoundly false light, because, (as Russian Television translated his statement into English) “Maidan was not a democratic revolution.” He said that this is the reason why Ukraine now is in a condition of “civil war,” in which the residents of the Donbass region in Ukraine’s southeast have broken away from the Ukrainian Government.

He furthermore said that, “Judging by some of the statements of [Ukrainian] Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, I think that he is rather a prime minister of war because he does not want a peaceful solution, as recommended by the European Union (EU), but instead prefers to use force.” (By contrast, George Soros, who has invested in Ukrainian bonds, and whose International Renaissance Foundation — also called The International Renaissance Fund — helped finance the overthrow of Yanukovych, as well as the hate-mongering Hromadske TV in Ukraine, is proud of it, and has repeatedly said that the EU must invest whatever is necessary for Ukraine to win its war against the residents of Donbass, and carry the war to victory against Russia. His alleged passion for ‘democracy’ has evidently been actually a hatred of Russians; it wasn’t an opposition to communism, after all; he hates Russians even after they have abandoned communism. Today’s Czech President is instead committed to democracy, not to hatred and bigotry of any sort. He’s a real democrat.)

Zeman added, by way of contrast to Yatsenyuk, the possibility that Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko “might be a man of peace.” So: though Zeman held out no such hope regarding Yatsenyuk (who was Obama’s choice to lead Ukraine), he did for Poroshenko (who wasn’t Obama’s choice, but who became Ukraine’s President despite Obama’s having wanted Yatsenyuk’s sponsor, the hyper-aggressive Yulia Tymoshenko, to win the May 25th Presidential election, which was held only in Ukraine’s pro-coup northwest, but claimed to possess authority over the entire country).[Editor: Further events have confirmed that Poroshenko is not at all a man of peace, including his lie at Davos that 9000 Russian troops had invaded Ukraine.]

What this statement from Zeman indicates is that the European Union is trying to deal with Poroshenko, as the “good cop” in a “good cop, bad cop” routine, with Yatsenyuk playing the bad cop; and, so, the EU’s policies regarding Ukraine will depend upon what comes forth from Poroshenko, not at all upon what comes from the more clearly pro-war, anti-peace, Yatsenyuk.

Furthermore, Zeman’s now publicly asserting that the overthrow of Yanukovych was a coup instead of having merely expressed the democratic intentions of most of the Maidan demonstrators, constitutes a sharp break away from U.S. President Barack Obama, who was behind that Ukrainian coup and who endorses its current leaders. Continue reading →

Saker: End of 2014 report and a look at what 2015 might bring

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http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/12/2014-end-of-year-report-and-look-into.html

Introduction:
By any measure 2014 has been a truly historic year which saw huge, I would say, even tectonic developments. This year ends in very high instability, and the future looks hard to guess. I don’t think that anybody can confidently predict what might happen next year. So what I propose to do today is something far more modest. I want to look into some of the key events of 2014 and think of them as vectors with a specific direction and magnitude. I want to look in which direction a number of key actors (countries) “moved” this year and with what degree of intensity. Then I want to see whether it is likely that they will change course or determination. Then adding up all the “vectors” of these key actors (countries) I want to make a calculation and see what resulting vector we will obtain for the next year. Considering the large number of “unknown unknowns” (to quote Rumsfeld) this exercise will not result in any kind of real prediction, but my hope is that it will prove a useful analytical reference.

The main event and the main actors
A comprehensive analysis of 2014 should include most major countries on the planet, but this would be too complicated and, ultimately, useless. I think that it is indisputable that the main event of 2014 has been the war in the Ukraine. This crisis not only overshadowed the still ongoing Anglo-Zionist attack on Syria, but it pitted the world’s only two nuclear superpowers (Russia and the USA) directly against each other. And while some faraway countries did have a minor impact on the Ukrainian crisis, especially the BRICS, I don’t think that a detailed discussion of South African or Brazilian politics would contribute much. There is a short list of key actors whose role warrants a full analysis. They are:

  1. The USA
  2. The Ukrainian Junta
  3. The Novorussians (DNR+LNR)
  4. Russia
  5. The EU
  6. NATO
  7. China

I submit that these seven actors account for 99.99% of the events in the Ukraine and that an analysis of the stance of each one of them is crucial.  So let’s take them one by one:

1 – The USA

Of all the actors in this crisis, the USA is by far the most consistent and coherent one.  Zbigniew Brzezinski, Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland were very clear about US objectives in the Ukraine:

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Without Ukraine Russia ceases to be empire, while with Ukraine – bought off first and subdued afterwards, it automatically turns into empire…(…)  the new world order under the hegemony of the United States is created against Russia and on the fragments of Russia. Ukraine is the Western outpost to prevent the recreation of the Soviet Union.

Hillary Clinton: There is a move to re-Sovietise the region (…) It’s not going to be called that. It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be called Eurasian Union and all of that, (…) But let’s make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.

Victoria Nuland: F**k the EU!

Between the three, these senior US “deep-staters” have clearly and unambiguously defined the primary goal of the USA: to take control of the Ukraine to prevent Russia from becoming a new Soviet Union, regardless of what the EU might have to say about that.  Of course, there were other secondary goals which I listed in June of this year (see here):

As a reminder, what were the US goals in the Ukraine: (in no particular order) [Editor: I’ve substituted Saker’s colors for words]

  1. Sever the ties between Russia and the Ukraine [Still possible ]
  2. Put a russophobic NATO puppet regime in power in Kiev [Still possible ]
  3. Boot the Russians out of Crimea [Failed ]
  4. Turn Crimea into a unsinkable US/NATO aircraft carrier [Failed ]
  5. Create a Cold War v2 in Europe [Compromised ]
  6. Further devastate the EU economies [Still possible ]
  7. Secure the EU’s status as “US protectorate/colony” [Still possible ]
  8. Castrate once and for all EU foreign policies [Still possible ]
  9. Politically isolate Russia [Failed ]
  10. Maintain the worldwide dominance of the US dollar [Compromised ]
  11. Justify huge military/security budgets [Achieved ]

I have color-coded these objectives into the following categories:
Achieved – black 
Still possible – too early to call – blue
Compromised – pink
Failed – red

Current “score card”: 1 “achieved”, 5 “possible, 2 “compromised” and 3 “failed”.

Here is how I would re-score the same goals at the end of the year:

  1. Sever the ties between Russia and the Ukraine [Achieved ]
  2. Put a russophobic NATO puppet regime in power in Kiev [Achieved ]
  3. Boot the Russians out of Crimea [Failed ]
  4. Turn Crimea into a unsinkable US/NATO aircraft carrier [Failed ]
  5. Create a Cold War v2 in Europe [Still possible ]
  6. Further devastate the EU economies [Achieved ]
  7. Secure the EU’s status as “US protectorate/colony” [Achieved ]
  8. Castrate once and for all EU foreign policies [Achieved ]
  9. Politically isolate Russia [Failed ]
  10. Maintain the worldwide dominance of the US dollar [Compromised ]
  11. Justify huge military/security budgets [Achieved ]

New score card: 6 “achieved”, 1 “possible”, 1 “compromised” and 3 “failed”

At first glance, this is a clear success for the USA: from 1 achieved to 6 with the same number of “failed” is very good for such a short period of time.  However, a closer look will reveal something crucial: all the successes of the USA were achieved at the expense of the EU and none against Russia.  Not only that, but the USA has failed in its main goal: to prevent Russia from becoming a superpower, primarily because the US policy was based on a hugely mistaken assumption: that Russia needed the Ukraine to become a superpower again.  This monumental miscalculation also resulted in another very bad fact for the USA: the dollar is still very much threatened, more so than a year ago in fact.

This is so important that I will repeat it again: the AngloZionist Empire predicated its entire Ukrainian strategy on a completely wrong assumption: that Russia “needed” the Ukraine.  Russia does not, and she knows that.  As we shall see later, a lot of the key events of this year are a direct result of this huge miscalculation.

The US is now facing a paradox: “victory” in the Ukraine, “victory” in Europe, but failure to stop a rapidly rising Russia.  Worse, these “victories” came at a very high price which included creating tensions inside the EU, threatening the future of the US shale gas industry, alienating many countries at the UN, being deeply involved with a Nazi regime, becoming the prime suspect in the shooting down of MH17 and paying the costs for an artificially low price of gold.  But the single worst consequence of the US foreign policy in the Ukraine has been the establishment of a joint Russian-Chinese strategic alliance clearly directed against the United States (more about that later). Continue reading →

Engdahl: Foreign bankers rape Ukraine

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Published in New Eastern Outlook
December 18, 2014

If it were not for the fact that the lives of some 45 million people are at stake, Ukrainian national politics could be laughed off as a very sick joke. Any pretenses that the October national elections would bring a semblance of genuine democracy of the sort thousands of ordinary Ukrainians demonstrated for on Maidan Square just one year ago vanished with the announcement by Victoria Nuland’s darling Prime Minister, “Yat” Yatsenyuk, of his new cabinet.

The US-picked Ukraine President, billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko called “snap” elections at the end of August for October 26. He did so to make sure genuine opposition to his regime of murderers, gangsters and in some cases outright Nazis would be able to push an unprepared genuine opposition out of the Verkhovna Rada or Parliament. Because the parliament had significant opposition parties to the US-engineered February 22 coup d’etat, they had blocked many key pieces of legislation that the Western vultures were demanding, from changing key land ownership laws to privatization of precious state assets. By law, the old parliament would have sat until its five year term ended in October, 2017. That was clearly too long for State Department neo-con Ukraine puppet-mistress Victoria Nuland and her backers in Washington.

Now, with a new parliament that is controlled by the Petro Poroshenko bloc as largest party and the boyish-looking former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is also new Prime Minister as head of the second largest party, the way was clear to get on with the rape of Ukraine. What shocked some is the blatant foreign takeover that followed, like a Wall Street vulture fund raid on a distressed debtor country of the Third World.

The ridiculous charade

Yatsenyuk, former finance minister in a previous criminal regime, and a suspected senior member of the US-intelligence-friendly “Church of Scientology,” has named three complete foreigners as cabinet ministers in key economic posts. And in an extraordinary act, the three have been made instant Ukrainian citizens by Poroshenko in a ridiculous ceremony. Ukraine is looking more and more like the US-occupied Philippines after the Spanish-American War of 1898 when General Arthur MacArthur, father of the mentally-dis-ordered Douglas, was Washington’s dictator on the spot.

The new Ukrainian Finance Minister, the one who will control the money and decides where it goes, is one Natalia A. Jaresko. She speaks fluent Ukrainian. Only problem—she is an American citizen, a US State Department veteran who is also a US investment banker. Now, the Ukrainian Constitution, prudently enough, stipulates that government ministers be Ukrainian. How then does our sweet Natalia come in? Continue reading →

U.S. House of Representatives votes 98% to donate U.S. weapons to Ukraine. U.S. public is 67% against. Is this democracy?

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By Eric Zuesse, December 7, 2014

In a remarkable disjunction between voters and their elected (supposed) representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, the members of the House voted on December 4th, by  411 “Yea” to 10 “Nay,” to donate U.S. weapons to the bankrupt Ukrainian Government, which is engaged in trying to eliminate the civilian population of the portion of Ukraine that had voted 90% for the former Ukrainian President whom the U.S. Government (CIA, State Department, USAID, etc.) had overthrown in a violent coup in February of this year. (Click onto that link for full documentation.)

This 411 to 10 vote margin is 98%, and it contrasts starkly against the 62% of Americans who, in the most recent poll, opposed sending U.S. arms to the Ukrainian Government; 30% favored sending those weapons. (8% had no opinion.) (The above link includes also that poll-result.) So, 67% of those who had an opinion (62% divided by 92% is 67%) shared the view of the 10 members (2%) of the U.S. House who voted against this measure. Only 33% of the surveyed Americans who had an opinion on it shared the view of the 411 House members (98%) who voted in favor of this measure.

This is a war-and-peace issue, so the U.S. Constitution assigns it to the Congress; the President is assigned the executive function of carrying out the will of Congress, as the Commander-in-Chief and U.S. Chief Executive Officer.

However, the situation here is actually even a bit more extreme than that, because the way that the Pew poll of the U.S. public was phrased, it had the U.S. “sending arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government,” and not “donating arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government.” The Ukrainian Government cannot possibly actually pay back all of the financial obligations that it already has, much less pay those plus interest, and buy more weapons. As was documented in the first of the links within the linked report above, “The only reason that things haven’t totally imploded [for the Ukrainian Government] is because of the $18 billion package of assistance from the IMF and the $9 billion in additional assistance pledged by the United States and the European Union.” All of the weapons that the U.S. will be technically ‘selling’ to Ukraine will now go to the back of the line of creditors for Ukrainian debt — never be paid. U.S. arms-makers will receive payment for those arms from U.S. taxpayers (the sale won’t be merely technical for them, nor for the lobbyists they pay), it won’t be paid actually by the Ukrainian Government. Consequently, the U.S. taxpayer is totally funding Ukraine’s bombing campaign going forward, to eliminate the residents in the area which overwhelmingly supported the previous Ukrainian President.

In fact, on September 18th, when the U.S.-installed new Ukrainian President was greeted with standing ovations by a special Joint Session of the U.S. Congress, he addressed them and the weapons-lobbyists to cheers as if he were a hero; he said that this was “the forefront of the global fight for democracy,” and said “I urge America to help us, I urge America to lead the way.” He was doing a sell-job for them and their financial backers. Of course, those financial backers also fund the sale of these politicians to the public.

His use of the term “democracy” there was interesting. A secretly recorded phone conversation on 25 February 2014, right after the coup, was subsequently uploaded to the Internet, and the discussants were Catherine Ashton, the EU’s Foreign Affairs Minister, and her appointed investigator into how Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych came to be ousted on February 22nd, Urmas Paet. In it, was revealed that the snipers who precipitated the coup had been hired by “somebody from the new coalition” (perhaps the U.S. CIA) that replaced Yanukovych, and that, “it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, … they don’t want to investigate [since they were its beneficiaries].” Paet told Ashton that, “what was quite disturbing, the same oligarch [Poroshenko — and so when he became ‘democratically elected’ as President of all of Ukraine on May 25th, he already knew this] told [Paet] that well, all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers, from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, [this will shock Ashton, who had just said that Yanukovych had masterminded the killings] that they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides.” So, Poroshenko himself knows that his regime is based on a false-flag (meaning set up so as to falsely blame the other side) U.S.-controlled coup d’etat against his predecessor. So, there can be no reasonable doubt that, despite his rhetoric when speaking before the Special Joint Session of the U.S. Congress on September 18th, Poroshenko actually knew, by no later than February 25th, that the regime that replaced Yanukovych was being appointed by the United States Government, hardly a ‘democratic Maidan’ event (though it is sold as if it were). Continue reading →

U.S. Congress approves “No Social Security for Nazis” Act, while providing ongoing U.S. military and logistical aid for Ukrainian Nazis

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“Congress never intended for participants in Nazi persecution[i] to be allowed to enter the United States or to reap the benefits of United States residency or citizenship, including participation in the Nation’s Social Security program.”

Last week, Congress unanimously approved the “No Social Security for Nazis” Act – HR 5739.[ii] It was a reaction to a scandal that broke out this fall.

In October, the news media reported that Nazi immigrants, some brought to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip, were induced to leave the country by allowing them to retain Social Security benefits.

Outrage reigned in this pseudo-scandal. Taxpayer dollars were spent to support Nazis? How could this be?

Lawmakers quickly put together HR 5739 to show their opposition to Nazis… that is “1940s Nazis who directly supported Hitler” Nazis, not American Nazis, not Nazis in other countries since then. Conveniently, there are reportedly only 4 of the HR 5739 Nazis left.

The rules about who may not enter the United States are here: http://www.uscis.gov/iframe/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-29/0-0-0-2006.html

Read the very carefully defined scope of Nazis.
———————————————————————-
From the Immigration and Nationality Act — INA:

(E) PARTICIPANTS IN NAZI PERSECUTION, GENOCIDE, OR THE COMMISSION OF ANY ACT OF TORTURE OR EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLING 

(i) Participation in nazi persecutions.-Any alien who, during the period beginning on March 23, 1933, and ending on May 8, 1945, under the direction of, or in association with- 

(I) the Nazi government of Germany, 

(II) any government in any area occupied by the military forces of the Nazi government of Germany, 

(III) any government established with the assistance or cooperation of the Nazi government of Germany, or 

(IV) any government which was an ally of the Nazi government of Germany, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion is inadmissible.
————————————————————-

Notice the very narrow time frame and geographical reference. Notice that it does not include current governments or organizations. However, the U.S. government even violated these provisions for programs such as Operation Paperclip and Operation Nightingale (Nachtegall) (not to be confused with the current Nightingale program, named perhaps to confuse, and providing archaeological training to veterans).[iii]

Interestingly, there are INA provision that apply to these Ukrainian officials and leaders, including Voldymyr Parasiuk[iv] and President Poroshenko. For instance,

(ii) Participation in genocide.-Any alien who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide, as defined in section 1091(a) of title 18, United States Code, is inadmissible.

There is also a lengthy section on terrorism.

However, these individuals are not just allowed into the United States. They are welcomed, feted, and given standing ovations in Congress if they serve a specific foreign policy objective.

And what about the Americans who assist and train them?

The House just approved supporting Ukrainian Nazis in H. Res 758. And the National Defense Authorization Act 2015 has specific provisions supporting these same ultra-nationalist and Nazi groups. The CIA and FBI provide assistance and training to these groups. The California National Guard continues to train and assist the Ukrainian National Guard, including bringing them into the United States. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland stated in May that the U.S. had spent $5 billion on Ukraine thus far. She was directly involved in selecting the current Kiev regime leaders.

When Congress gave its robust welcome to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko this fall, it clearly demonstrated either a profound and dangerous ignorance about events and history in Ukraine (an example of ignorance about other critical areas of U.S. policy) or a warm support for U.S. historical intervention, covert operations, and regime change in Ukraine.

The United States recently refused to approve the latest UN resolution condemning Nazism and hate crimes, and it has refused to approve the previous ones.

So, don’t lie to me about United States condemnation of Nazism. This hypocritical action will be used as a PR stunt together with the powerful Jewish lobby to show opposition to Nazism, when the exact opposite is true — support for ongoing, current Nazi, ultra-nationalist actions and genocide in the Ukraine, and a welcome mat into the United States and other Western nations.

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[i] It’s not clear what they’re saying: persecution by Nazis or persecution of Nazis. Currently, it seems that the latter definition applies.

[ii] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/5739/text

[iii] http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-and-americas-global-war-on-terrorism-is-us-nato-applying-the-syria-model-in-ukraine/5380611

[iv] http://journal-neo.org/2014/11/12/stewart-colbert-and-the-upcoming-nazi-terrorist-conference-in-new-york-city/

Ron Paul: Reckless Congress Declares War on Russia

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From Strategic Culture Foundation, December 5, 2014

Today the US House passed what I consider to be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever. H. Res. 758 was billed as a resolution “strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.”

In fact, the bill was 16 pages of war propaganda that should have made even neocons blush, if they were capable of such a thing.

These are the kinds of resolutions I have always watched closely in Congress, as what are billed as “harmless” statements of opinion often lead to sanctions and war. I remember in 1998 arguing strongly against the Iraq Liberation Act because, as I said at the time, I knew it would lead to war. I did not oppose the Act because I was an admirer of Saddam Hussein – just as now I am not an admirer of Putin or any foreign political leader – but rather because I knew then that another war against Iraq would not solve the problems and would probably make things worse. We all know what happened next.

That is why I can hardly believe they are getting away with it again, and this time with even higher stakes: provoking a war with Russia that could result in total destruction!

If anyone thinks I am exaggerating about how bad this resolution really is, let me just offer a few examples from the legislation itself:

The resolution (paragraph 3) accuses Russia of an invasion of Ukraine and condemns Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The statement is offered without any proof of such a thing. Surely with our sophisticated satellites that can read a license plate from space we should have video and pictures of this Russian invasion. None have been offered. As to Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, why isn’t it a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty for the US to participate in the overthrow of that country’s elected government as it did in February? We have all heard the tapes of State Department officials plotting with the US Ambassador in Ukraine to overthrow the government. We heard US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bragging that the US spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine. Why is that OK?

The resolution (paragraph 11) accuses the people in east Ukraine of holding “fraudulent and illegal elections” in November. Why is it that every time elections do not produce the results desired by the US government they are called “illegal” and “fraudulent”? Aren’t the people of eastern Ukraine allowed self-determination? Isn’t that a basic human right?

The resolution (paragraph 13) demands a withdrawal of Russia forces from Ukraine even though the US government has provided no evidence the Russian army was ever in Ukraine. This paragraph also urges the government in Kiev to resume military operations against the eastern regions seeking independence.

The resolution (paragraph 14) states with certainty that the Malaysia Airlines flight 17 that crashed in Ukraine was brought down by a missile “fired by Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.” This is simply incorrect, as the final report on the investigation of this tragedy will not even be released until next year and the preliminary report did not state that a missile brought down the plane. Neither did the preliminary report – conducted with the participation of all countries involved – assign blame to any side.

Paragraph 16 of the resolution condemns Russia for selling arms to the Assad government in Syria. It does not mention, of course, that those weapons are going to fight ISIS – which we claim is the enemy — while the US weapons supplied to the rebels in Syria have actually found their way into the hands of ISIS!

Paragraph 17 of the resolution condemns Russia for what the US claims are economic sanctions (“coercive economic measures”) against Ukraine. This even though the US has repeatedly hit Russia with economic sanctions and is considering even more!

The resolution (paragraph 22) states that Russia invaded the Republic of Georgia in 2008. This is simply untrue. Even the European Union – no friend of Russia – concluded in its investigation of the events in 2008 that it was Georgia that “started an unjustified war” against Russia not the other way around! How does Congress get away with such blatant falsehoods? Do Members not even bother to read these resolutions before voting?

In paragraph 34 the resolution begins to even become comical, condemning the Russians for what it claims are attacks on computer networks of the United States and “illicitly acquiring information” about the US government. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations about the level of US spying on the rest of the world, how can the US claim the moral authority to condemn such actions in others?

Chillingly, the resolution singles out Russian state-funded media outlets for attack, claiming that they “distort public opinion.” The US government, of course, spends billions of dollars worldwide to finance and sponsor media outlets including Voice of America and RFE/RL, as well as to subsidize “independent” media in countless counties overseas. How long before alternative information sources like RT are banned in the United States? This legislation brings us closer to that unhappy day when the government decides the kind of programming we can and cannot consume – and calls such a violation “freedom.”

The resolution gives the green light (paragraph 45) to Ukrainian President Poroshenko to re-start his military assault on the independence-seeking eastern provinces, urging the “disarming of separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine.” Such a move will mean many more thousands of dead civilians.

To that end, the resolution directly involves the US government in the conflict by calling on the US president to “provide the government of Ukraine with lethal and non-lethal defense articles, services, and training required to effectively defend its territory and sovereignty.” This means US weapons in the hands of US-trained military forces engaged in a hot war on the border with Russia. Does that sound at all like a good idea?

There are too many more ridiculous and horrific statements in this legislation to completely discuss. Probably the single most troubling part of this resolution, however, is the statement that “military intervention” by the Russian Federation in Ukraine “poses a threat to international peace and security.” Such terminology is not an accident: this phrase is the poison pill planted in this legislation from which future, more aggressive resolutions will follow. After all, if we accept that Russia is posing a “threat” to international peace how can such a thing be ignored? These are the slippery slopes that lead to war.

This dangerous legislation passed today, December 4, with only ten (!) votes against! Only ten legislators are concerned over the use of blatant propaganda and falsehoods to push such reckless saber-rattling toward Russia.

Here are the Members who voted “NO” on this legislation. If you do not see your own Representative on this list call and ask why they are voting to bring us closer to war with Russia! If you do see your Representative on the below list, call and thank him or her for standing up to the warmongers.

Voting “NO” on H. Res. 758:

1) Justin Amash (R-MI)
2) John Duncan (R-TN)
3) Alan Grayson, (D-FL)
 4) Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
5) Walter Jones (R-NC)
6) Thomas Massie (R-KY)
7) Jim McDermott (D-WA)
8 George Miller (D-CA)
 9) Beto O’Rourke (D-TX)
 10 Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)

Source:

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/12/05/ron-paul-reckless-congress-declares-war-on-russia.html

6,000 Ukrainian Jewish refugees to be granted Israeli citizenship, as Israel and West support neo-Nazi regime

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From NSNBC International
By Dr. Christof Lehmann, November 19, 2014
http://nsnbc.me/2014/11/19/6000-ukrainian-jews-may-be-granted-israeli-citizenship-while-west-supports-nazi-parties/

The Israeli government is holding closed-door meetings about receiving some 6,000 Jewish citizens who have been displaced due to the Ukrainian civil war, reports the Israeli Maariv newspaper. Meanwhile, western support for overtly National Socialist and Ultra Nationalist parties and militants in Ukraine continues. 

The cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly plans on the construction of “refugee camps” to receive the “6,000 displaced” Ukrainian Jews, reports Maariv. The construction of refugee camps to receive the 6,000 Ukrainians is reportedly being planned under the supervision of Israel’s Minister of Economy, Naftali Bennett. Maariv didn’t specify where these 6,000 Ukrainians should be settled.

The news comes as the death toll of a recent attack on a Jewish Synagogue in Jerusalem has risen to five and a row between the Netayahu government and the Palestinian government under President Mahmoud Abbas. While Netanyahu blames Fatah and Hamas for terrorism and for the attack, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded, blaming Israel’s occupation of Palestine for causing conflict and driving people into terrorism.

The rapid spread of ultra nationalism, overtly Nazi Parties and militia, and their rapid rise to power during the Western-backed “Euro-Maidan” protests in Kiev has resulted in pogroms and threats against Jews and Jewish communities throughout Ukraine with the exception of the areas in the rebelling Donbass region which are firmly under the control of the rebelling regional governments, as well as with the exception of Crimea, which acceded into the Russian Federation after a referendum in  Crimea on March 16, 2014.

Ukranian M.P. for Svoboda, Oleg Tyahnbok, here after his reelection as Svoboda “Leader”.

Ukraine risks becoming a failed state after the pogroms, wrote contributing editor of Route magazine and nsnbc contributor Igor Alexeev as early as December 2013. Alexeev forecast the detrimental effects of the developments on Ukraine’s economy which has ground to a halt. Alexeev also warned about the rise of Ukraine’s Svoboda party to power.In his December 2013 article Alexeev warned:

Originally known as the Social-National Party, Svoboda is rooted in Nazi collaboration. Svoboda also honors “Ukrainian veterans” who fought with the Nazis against the Soviet Union during the Second World War in the Waffen SS-Galicia and the party is fighting against a threat which they describe as “Jew Communism.” The issue has been described in an article by Michael Goldfarb in the Global Post, titled “Ukraine’s nationalist party embraces Nazi ideology“.

The also overtly National Socialist paramilitary UNA-UNSO, associated to Ukraine’s Pravy (Right) Sector, has since morphed into the so-called “special military units” or ADS corps which are operating semi autonomously, and are associated to command structured within Pravy Sector, the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry as well as foreign and NATO intelligence. The UNA-UNSO has been linked to NATO’s so-called stay-behind a.k.a. “Gladio” network.

Senator John McCain (r) here with Svoboda leader Oleg Tyahnbok (m) and current Ukrainian PM Arseniy Yatzenyuk (l).

The U.S. and other western governments have consistently passed their “partners” in Ukraine off as “moderates and rejected allegations about cooperation with Ukrainian parties and organizations with Nazi ideology.

In May 2014, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, however, admitted during a two-hour hearing before the House of Representatives, that the U.S. Administration cooperates with Ukrainian Nazis.

The cooperation with Ukrainian Nazis was, however, not limited to official members of the Obama administration. Among those directly involved in cooperating with e.g. Svoboda “leader” Tyahnbok was U.S. Senator John McCain, who is also known for making “deals” with ISIS “Caliph Ibrahim“, a.k.a. al-Badri or al-Baghdadi.

Israeli military units were reportedly also involved in the coup d’état in Ukraine that lead to the rise of Nazi ideologists and the threat against Jewish citizens and communities in Ukraine.

In an article from march 14, 2014, the director of the Canada-based Centre for Research on Globalisation, Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, noted that the Jewish News Agency JTA reported about the presence of units associated to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Ukraine. JTA quotes “Delta”, a member of the IDF’s Givati Infantry Brigade as confirming the presence of Israeli forces during the coup d’état.

The Givati Infantry Brigade was, among others, involved in Israel’s 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” against Palestine’s Gaza Strip as well as in massacres in Tel El-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza, reports Chossudovsky.

While the threat against members of Ukraine’s Jewish community is real, the situation poses the question whether the Netanyahu administration participated in creating the threat with the purpose to create potential new Israeli immigrants and citizens. Over the last two years, Israel experienced a marked increase of Israeli citizens who are leaving Israel for Germany, the USA, and other western countries. 6,000 new Ukrainian Jews could help the Netanyahu administration with maintaining Israel’s policy of aggressive settlement expansion in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

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  – Dr. Christof Lehmann is the founder and editor of nsnbc. He is a psychologist and independent political consultant on conflict and conflict resolution and a wide range of other political issues. His work with traumatized victims of conflict has led him to also pursue the work as political consultant. He is a lifelong activist for peace and justice, human rights, Palestinians rights to self-determination in Palestine, and he is working on the establishment of international institutions for the prosecution of all war crimes, also those committed by privileged nations. On 28 August 2011 he started his blog nsnbc, appalled by misrepresentations of the aggression against Libya and Syria. In March 2013 he turned nsnbc into a daily, independent, international on-line newspaper. He can be contacted at nsnbc international at nsnbc.wordpress@gmail.com

Nuland says Americans are ready to die for Latvia

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Worrisome increase in war hype from the West.

From the Institute of Modern Russia[i]
Paul Goble, November 22, 2014

Staunton, November 22 – When the Ukrainian crisis began, some commentators in the West suggested that NATO would not in the end fight to defend the Baltic countries even though the latter are full members of NATO by asking “who is prepared to die for Narva?” But now a senior US State Department has given a clear and unequivocal answer: Western countries are.

During a visit to Latvia this week, Victoria Nuland, US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said that “when NATO and the US as part of NATO took new members into the alliance, this means that we are ready to participate in the defense of the security of these countries, and this means that we are ready to give our lives for the security of these countries.”

That is why there are young American soldiers in Latvia now, she continued, suggesting that there should be “absolute clarity” that if someone attacks Latvia, we will be here to help defend Latvia” because “no one has the right to shoot at Latvia because no one has the right to shoot at the territory of NATO.”

In other comments, Nuland said that the sanctions the West had imposed on Russia were having an effect, “unfortunately” on the Russian people as well as the regime. But she said that the reason for that lies “in the actions of the Russian government” and not in the ill intentions of the West. If Russia lives up to its commitments on Ukraine, the West will lift the sanctions.

The assistant secretary added that “not only Americans but all people who consider themselves part of the North Atlantic space, including the European Union, are extremely disappointed by Russian actions which have undermined the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” actions that have continued “even after the signing of the Minsk accords.”[ii]

Russia has continued to send “arms and fighters to Ukraine,” Nuland said, and now “Russia must make a choice” about what kind of a future it will have.

Source: http://www.interpretermag.com/americans-are-prepared-to-die-for-latvia-nuland-says/
See opinion below about the purpose of this organization before risking a visit to this website.

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[i] WikiSpooks says IMR “is a typical example of what is referred to in domestic Russian policy circles as “Russia’s 6th Column” – ie those ex-patriot organisations working against the domestic Russian establishment…The president of IMR is Pavel Khodorkovsky, the son of Russian former multi-billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky (who was released from prison in Dec 2013).

…A 2013 Commonwealth Club of California seminar-note said that Pavel Khodorkovsky (President, Institute of Modern Russia) maintains close relationships with many Russian opposition leaders and will relay his thoughts on the current political situation and how Americans can support the democratic process.”[1]

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/The_Institute_of_Modern_Russia

 

[ii] Who torpedoes the Minsk peace agreement?
See http://nsnbc.me/2014/09/22/ukraine-general-breedhate-another-sabotage-sortie/
Ukraine: General ‘Breedhate’ in Another Sabotage Sortie
A very different opinion.