Tuesday, May 12, 2015

'If You See Something Say Something': How We've Become a Nation of Snitches | Alternet

A totalitarian state is only as strong as its informants. And the United States has a lot of them. They read our emails. They listen to, download and store our phone calls. They photograph us on street corners, on subway platforms, in stores, on highways and in public and private buildings. They track us through our electronic devices. They infiltrate our organizations. They entice and facilitate “acts of terrorism” by Muslims, radical environmentalists, activists and Black Bloc anarchists, framing these hapless dissidents and sending them off to prison for years. They have amassed detailed profiles of our habits, our tastes, our peculiar proclivities, our medical and financial records, our sexual orientations, our employment histories, our shopping habits and our criminal records. They store this information in government computers. It sits there, waiting like a time bomb, for the moment when the state decides to criminalize us.

Totalitarian states record even the most banal of our activities so that when it comes time to lock us up they can invest these activities with subversive or criminal intent. And citizens who know, because of the courage of Edward Snowden, that they are being watched but naively believe they “have done nothing wrong” do not grasp this dark and terrifying logic.

Tyranny is always welded together by subterranean networks of informants. These informants keep a populace in a state of fear. They perpetuate constant anxiety and enforce isolation through distrust. The state uses wholesale surveillance and spying to break down trust and deny us the privacy to think and speak freely.

A state security and surveillance apparatus, at the same time, conditions all citizens to become informants. In airports and train, subway and bus stations the recruitment campaign is relentless. We are fed lurid government videos and other messages warning us to be vigilant and report anything suspicious. The videos, on endless loops broadcast through mounted television screens, have the prerequisite ominous music, the shady-looking criminal types, the alert citizen calling the authorities and in some cases the apprehended evildoer being led away in handcuffs. The message to be hypervigilant and help the state ferret out dangerous internal enemies is at the same time disseminated throughout government agencies, the mass media, the press and the entertainment industry.

“If you see something say something,” goes the chorus.

In any Amtrak station, waiting passengers are told to tell authorities—some of whom often can be found walking among us with dogs—about anyone who “looks like they are in an unauthorized area,” who is “loitering, staring or watching employees and customers,” who is “expressing an unusual level of interest in operations, equipment, and personnel,” who is “dressed inappropriately for the weather conditions, such as a bulky coat in summer,” who “is acting extremely nervous or anxious,” who is “restricting an individual’s freedom of movement” or who is “being coached on what to say to law enforcement or immigration officials.”

Complete story at - 'If You See Something Say Something': How We've Become a Nation of Snitches | Alternet

War Threat Rises As Economy Declines -- Paul Craig Roberts, - PaulCraigRoberts.org

War Threat Rises As Economy Declines

Paul Craig Roberts, Keynote Address to the Annual Conference of the Financial West Group, New Orleans, May 7, 2015

The defining events of our time are the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, jobs offshoring, and financial deregulation. In these events we find the basis of our foreign policy problems and our economic problems.

The United States has always had a good opinion of itself, but with the Soviet collapse self-satisfaction reached new heights. We became the exceptional people, the indispensable people, the country chosen by history to exercise hegemony over the world. This neoconservative doctrine releases the US government from constraints of international law and allows Washington to use coercion against sovereign states in order to remake the world in its own image.

To protect Washington’s unique Uni-power status that resulted from the Soviet collapse, Paul Wolfowitz in 1992 penned what is known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. This doctrine is the basis for Washington’s foreign policy. The doctrine states:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

In March of this year the Council on Foreign Relations extended this doctrine to China.

Washington is now committed to blocking the rise of two large nuclear-armed countries. This commitment is the reason for the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda. China is now confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington’s control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests.

9/11 served to launch the neoconservatives’ war for hegemony in the Middle East. 9/11 also served to launch the domestic police state. While civil liberties have shriveled at home, the US has been at war for almost the entirety of the 21st century, wars that have cost us, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, at least $6 trillion dollars. These wars have gone very badly. They have destabilized governments in an important energy producing area. And the wars have vastly multiplied the “terrorists,” the quelling of which was the official reason for the wars.

Complete story at - War Threat Rises As Economy Declines -- Paul Craig Roberts, - PaulCraigRoberts.org

What the West Got Wrong: Eastern and Central Europe Turn Away From US » voice of Sevastopol

Once Washington's steadfast allies, some European countries are now "at risk" of drifting into the Kremlin's fold, Dalibor Rohac, a Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, emphasized.

"At the time, these [Eastern and Central European] countries were counted amongst the most staunchly pro-American members of NATO—and also among the boldest economic reformers on the continent, cutting their taxes and privatizing social security systems. Today, the situation could not be more different," the analyst stressed.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico, President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary have been recently boosting their ties with Moscow, Dalibor Rohac noted deprecatingly.

For instance, last year, Viktor Orban closed a €12-billion nuclear energy deal with Russia, ("later overturned by the EU's nuclear energy agency"). This year Robert Fico and Milos Zeman turned a deaf ear to Washington's warnings and went to Moscow to commemorate the end of the Second World War, the expert pointed out.

It seems that Dalibor Rohac is all at sea trying to find out why the post-communist states are seeking to establish close ties with Russia.

The expert suggested that a "lack of American leadership" and Brussels' negligence have weakened the influence of the United States in Eastern and Central Europe.

"Brussels deserves some of the blame. Billions of euros of "structural funds" from the EU often ended in pockets of local oligarchs, encouraging corrupt practices," Mr. Rohac highlighted, adding that "a lack of American leadership in the region played an even more significant role."

According to the expert, America's non-governmental and civil society organizations have been seriously underfunded in Europe in the past few years and therefore become unable to counterbalance "the Kremlin's propaganda."

The Obama administration’s decision to "scrap the plan to build a missile defense shield in Central Europe" has dealt a severe blow to NATO's positions in the region, Dalibor Rohac emphasized.

Complete story at - What the West Got Wrong: Eastern and Central Europe Turn Away From US » voice of Sevastopol
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Friday, May 8, 2015

Why military interventions fail - TransConflict

By Nathaniel K. Powell

The current military escalation against ISIS, French engagement in the Sahel, and numerous UN and regional peacekeeping operations illustrate that military interventions are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Today, most of these interventions, at least nominally, aim at ending armed conflict and (re)building functional states with some degree of inclusive governance. It is a good idea to ask why such policies often fail.

Even when narrow stabilization goals are met, such as in a number of French interventions in Chad and the former Zaire, this often occurs at the expense of long-term stability and democratic governance. Interventions rarely, if ever, positively contribute to improving the political environments that originally generated the crises which sparked the interventions in the first place.

While each case is clearly different, the failure of most of these interventions to achieve the desired stability and accountable governance implies a need for a serious rethink about how interventions are conducted. In some quarters, this has revolved around debates over the effectiveness of counterinsurgency methods. This discussion largely misses the point. Military effectiveness has very little bearing on the success of interventions. Instead, inherently political factors pose nearly insurmountable obstacles to the success of ‘stabilizing interventions’, regardless of the quality and doctrine of intervening forces. Indeed, most such interventions feature a recurring series of obstacles.

Grand narratives

Whether combating Islamist-inspired guerillas, communist expansion, or regionally-backed rebellions, policymakers in intervening countries often view the conflicts of ‘host’ countries through the prism of broader ideological struggles. While these interpretations often contain grains of truth, they can obscure more than they reveal about the character and motivations of civil war dynamics, particularly in its local dimensions. The problem is that flawed analyses of the politics of violence often lead to intervention strategies badly suited to the realities on the ground.

During the Vietnam War, American policymakers minimized the role that Saigon’s corruption, repression, and bad governance played in fuelling the Vietcong insurgency. Instead, an obsessive focus on global communism and American credibility led to massive support for the Saigon regime, a socially destructive counterinsurgency policy, and futile efforts to apply pressure on North Vietnam. This logic also led to western support for a large number of other unsavoury regimes, in order to prevent the spread of communism. However, most Third World socialist-leaning armed groups were not directed by Moscow or Beijing, despite receiving support from Eastern Bloc patrons. Their ideology was often informed by socialist worldviews, but their politics was supremely local or national.

Today, one cannot understand the dynamics of groups like Boko Haram or ISIS without reference to the very local politics that both drives their success and limits their possibilities for action. By not taking these kinds of factors into account, efforts like France’s military interventions in support of Zaire’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, may save repressive regimes, but do little else than postpone bloody civil wars and state collapse. Today, security assistance to many undemocratic states as part of broader counterterrorism efforts may have similar results and facilitate repression and long-term instability.

Complete story at - Why military interventions fail - TransConflictNewImage

Thursday, May 7, 2015

ROCK SOLID POLITICS: I'm Sorry Russia

There is something very wrong, and possibly very evil going on in our world today. Aside from all the conflicts spawned by greed and the desire to control in our world, there is some all too real revisionist history happening. When people, let alone governments, try to recreate history it's an ominous sign. A sign of hatred. Of deep hatred. That's what is happening right now in our world when it comes to the Russian (then Soviet) victory over Germany in World War Two.

The Soviet Union suffered 25 million killed in World War Two. By comparison, the other allied countries suffered:

United kingdom 450,900
United States 418,500
India 2,087,000
China 15,000,000
Poland 5,700,000
Yugoslavia 1,363,500
Dutch East Indies 3,500,000

and there are many more.

The Soviet Red Army suffered the most military deaths of any nation in World War Two at 9,750,000. Almost twice as many as the nearest country, its enemy, Germany. The Soviet people, comprised today of Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus bled the German army white. Of all the German military deaths of World War Two, 2,742,909 were caused by the Soviet army on the Eastern Front. By way of comparison, only 534,683 were killed by all other allies put together on all other fronts. In this way it's clear to see that the vast majority of the German armed forces were wiped out by the Soviets between 1941-1945. For that sacrifice the world owes the old Soviet Union, or Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus our undying gratitude. No question. To believe otherwise is to disrespect the sacrifice of a generation.

Complete story at - ROCK SOLID POLITICS: I'm Sorry Russia

Activist Post: Donetsk Republic Nationalizes Banks, Draws Ire Of NATO and World Banking Cartel

In a tiny corner of Eastern Europe, a fledgling Republic struggling with the day-to-day hurdles of warfare and shaky ceasefires, has succeeded in doing what has long been overdue in the most powerful nation on the face of the earth – it has nationalized its out-of-control banks and put them to use for the good of the people.

While the DPR was not faced with a privatized central bank such as the United States and other nations due to the fact that DPR is a breakaway bloc and a new nation separated from the Kiev central bank, it was nonetheless host to a number of larger banking institutions that not only parasitized the people of DPR and Ukraine but also did nothing to improve the infrastructure of these areas or the living standards of the people there.

Emerging out of the stage of mere bands of militias and governing committees, the Donetsk People’s Republic is now in the process of putting together a formal government. Its plans to nationalize banks that have parasitized Ukraine for years have no doubt drawn the ire of not only the oligarchs that own those banks but the Anglo-American banking cartel that essentially owns the United States and NATO countries and who are bent on world hegemony and submission to their will.

The plans to nationalize banks within the borders of the DPR were announced as early as January, 2015.

By April 2015, however, those banks have now been nationalized and the oligarch owners castrated in their ability to manipulate the economy and political sphere, at least in this specific instance. As Roger Annis wrote for Counterpunch, “A nascent banking system has been established in the two republics by nationalizing the banks of the billionaire bankers, notably the Privat Bank of the rightist oligarch Igor Kolomoisky.”

It should be pointed out that Kolomoisky is not only one of the richest men in Ukraine but one who has been a fervent supporter and contributor to the Euro-maidan color revolution cause as well as the current fascist and Nazi government operating from Kiev along with Western support. Indeed, Kolomoisky was even appointed governor of Dnepropetrovsk by the fascist Ukrainian government.

Complete story at - Activist Post: Donetsk Republic Nationalizes Banks, Draws Ire Of NATO and World Banking Cartel

Mass Exodus: Young People Fleeing From Ukraine to Evade Draft / Sputnik International

In Kiev alone, 95% of working-age men are evading military service, using a variety of methods from bribery to fleeing to other countries.

Evasion of conscription in Ukraine has skyrocketed, the German newspaper Handelsblatt reported.

Companies are struggling to find a false excuse for their employees in order to help them avoid military service. The illegal business is thriving, with doctors trading medical certificates and travel agencies organizing “special trips” for those seeking to leave the country.

Residents of Western Ukraine usually flee to Europe, while men from eastern provinces go to Russia, the article said.

The newspaper recalled the recent arrest of a medical worker from Chernivtsi who issued faked medical certificates with his signature for 3,500 euros. In western Ukraine, more than half of the youth population has left the country over last few months.

Overall, 70% of the working population in the western regions of Ukraine went to neighboring Poland and Romania, and many others fled to Italy, Germany and Austria. All of them have Schengen visas and are working in Europe as seasonal workers, pursuing two main goals: to feed their families and evade military service.

The situation in the eastern regions is similar, with many residents going to neighboring Russia for work and staying there to avoid military service, Handelsblatt reported.

Complete story at - Mass Exodus: Young People Fleeing From Ukraine to Evade Draft / Sputnik International

Chaos – not Victory – is the Empire’s “Name of the Game” | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

“Once again a country “liberated” by the West is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos.” Global Research.

This could be anyone of the countries in conflict, where Washington and its Western and Middle Eastern stooges sow war – eternal chaos, misery, death – and submission.

This is precisely the point: The Washington / NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people, nations and their resources; (ii) to assures the west a continuous need for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious ‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their people.

That’s the name of the game – in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Central Africa, in Libya…. you name it. Who fights against whom is unimportant. ISIS / ISIL / IS / DAISH / DAESH / Al-Qaeda and whatever other names for the mercenary killer organizations you want to add to the list – are just tags to confuse. You might as well add Blackwater, Xe, Academi and all its other successive names chosen to escape easy recognition. They are prostitutes for the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire, prostitutes of the lowest level. Then come elite prostitutes, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf States, plus the UK and France, of course.

President Hollande has just signed a multi-billion euro contract with Qatar for the sale of 24 Rafale fighter jets. He is now heading to Riyadh for talks with the Saudi King Salman, and to sell more Rafale planes – it’s good business and helps killing off the fabricated enemies; and also to attend a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit on 5 May. Topics of discussions at the meeting are the ‘crises’ of the region including in Yemen, planted by the west on behalf of Washington (and its Zionist masters) and blamed on the ‘rebels’ who are seeking merely a more just government.

The west has invented a vocabulary so sick, it’s like a virus ingrained in our brains – or what’s left of it – that we don’t even know anymore what the words really mean. We repeat them and believe them. After all, the MSM drills them into our intestines day-in and day-out. People who fight for their freedom, for survival against oppressive regimes, are ‘terrorists’, ‘rebels’. – The refugees from Africa, from the Washington inflicted conflict-stricken countries, the refugees of whom more than 4,000 have already perished this year trying to cross the Mediterranean for a ‘better life’ – they have been conveniently renamed ‘immigrants’. Often the term ‘illegal’ is added. Thus, the west’s conscience is whitewashed from guilt. Immigrants are beggars. Illegal immigrants belong jailed. They have nothing to do with unrest and chaos planted by the west in the ‘immigrants’ home countries. – Shame on you, Brussels!

Complete story at - Chaos – not Victory – is the Empire’s “Name of the Game” | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

The TTP and TTIP Trade Agreements: “A Dystopian Future in which Corporations Rather Than Elected Governments Call the Shots”

The TTP and TTIP Trade Agreements: “A Dystopian Future in which Corporations Rather Than Elected Governments Call the Shots” | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

The Obama-proposed international-trade deals, if passed into law, will lead to “a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots,” says Alfred De Zayas, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order.

These two mammoth trade-pacts, one (TTIP) for Atlantic nations, and the other (TTP) for Pacific nations excluding China (since Obama is against China), would transfer regulations of corporations to corporations themselves, and away from democratically elected governments. Regulation of working conditions and of the environment, as well as of product-safety including toxic foods and poisonous air and other consumer issues, would be placed into the hands of panels whose members will be appointed by large international corporations. Their decisions will remove the power of democratically elected governments to control these things. “Red tape” that’s imposed by elected national governments would be eliminated — replaced by the international mega-corporate version.

De Zayas was quoted in Britain’s Guardian on May 4th as saying also that, “The bottom line is that these agreements must be revised, modified or terminated,” because they would vastly harm publics everywhere, even though they would enormously benefit the top executives of corporations by giving them control as a sort of corporate-imposed world government, answerable to the people who control those corporations.

Obama is pushing for international cartels to replace important functions of today’s national governments, and De Zayas is saying that, “We don’t want an international order akin to post-democracy or post-law.”

De Zayas told the Guardian that the panels that are proposed to be at the very center of these trade-pacts

“constitute an attempt to escape the jurisdiction of national courts and bypass the obligation of all states to ensure that all legal cases are tried before independent tribunals that are public, transparent, accountable and appealable.”

Complete story at - The TTP and TTIP Trade Agreements: “A Dystopian Future in which Corporations Rather Than Elected Governments Call the Shots” NewImage

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

The Growing China-Russia-Iran Strategic Alliance Has Got the Pentagon Trembling | Alternet

by Pepe Escobar

Whatever happens with the nuclear negotiations this summer, and as much as Tehran wants cooperation and not confrontation, Iran is bound to remain — alongside Russia — a key US geostrategic target.

As much as US President Barack Obama tried to dismiss it, the Russian sale of the S-300 missile system to Iran is a monumental game-changer. Even with the added gambit of the Iranian military assuring the made in Iran Bavar 373 may be even more efficient than the S-300.

This explains why Jane’s Defense Weekly was already saying years ago that Israel could not penetrate Iranian airspace even if it managed to get there. And after the S-300s Iran inevitably will be offered the even more sophisticated S-400s, which are to be delivered to China as well.

The unspoken secret behind these game-changing proceedings actually terrifies Washington warmongers; it spells out a further frontline of Eurasian integration, in the form of an evolving Eurasian missile shield deployed against Pentagon/NATO ballistic plans.

A precious glimpse of what’s ahead was offered at the Moscow Conference on International Security (MICS) in mid-April.

Here we had the Iranian Defense Minister, Brigadier-General Hussein Dehghan, openly stating that Iran wanted BRICS members China, India, and Russia to jointly oppose NATO’s uncontrolled eastward expansion, and characterizing NATO’s for all practical purposes offensive missile shield as a threat to their collective security.

Complete story at - The Growing China-Russia-Iran Strategic Alliance Has Got the Pentagon Trembling | Alternet

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

The Asshole Factory — Bad Words — Medium

My good friend Mara has not one but two graduate degrees. From fine, storied universities. Surprise, surprise: the only “job” she was able to find was at a retail store.

Hey—it’s only minimum wage, but at least she’s working, right? And at a major-league, blue-chip company, An American icon; an institution; a name every man, woman, and child in this country knows; an historic company that rings of the American Dream the world over, besides. Surely, if nothing else, it’s a start.

Perhaps you’re right. Maybe it isn’t the start she always dreamed of…but at least it is one. If so…then awaits her at the finish?

What is Mara’s job like? Her sales figures are monitored…by the microsecond. By hidden cameras and mics. They listen to her every word; they capture her every movement; that track and stalk her as if she were an animal; or a prisoner; or both. She’s jacked into a headset that literally barks algorithmic, programmed “orders” at her, parroting her own “performance” back to her, telling her how she compares with quotas calculated…down to the second…for all the hundreds of items in the store…which recites “influence and manipulation techniques” to her…to use on unsuspecting customers…that sound suspiciously like psychological warfare. It’s as if the NSA was following you around……and it was stuck in your head…telling you what an inadequate failure you were…psychologically waterboarding you…all day long…every day for the rest of your life.

Complete story at - The Asshole Factory — Bad Words — Medium

Land Destroyer: Garland Shooting: Gladio - Texas-Style

Garland shooting involved troupe of practiced war propagandists and patsies long on the FBI's watch list.

May 4, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - ABC News confirms that one of the suspects of the Garland Texas shooting incident, featuring professional war propagandists of the so-called "American Freedom Defense Intitiative" (AFDI), has been under FBI surveillance and investigation since at least as early as 2007.

Their report, "Garland Shooting Suspect Elton Simpson's Father: ‘My Son Made a Bad Choice’," states:
Followers of ISIS had been sending messages about the event in Texas for more than a week, calling for attacks. One referenced January's Charlie Hebdo massacre in France and said it was time for "brothers" in the United States to do their part.

Simpson was well known to the FBI. Five years ago he was convicted for lying to federal agents about his plans to travel to Africa where investigators alleged he planned to join a terror group.

The investigation into Simpson reached back to July 2007, when he was recorded saying of fighting with Islamists, “I know we can do it, man. But you got to find the right people that… Gotta have connects.”
Despite the event allegedly increasing chatter amongst "Islamic State" (ISIS) groups online, and despite the suspect Elton Simpson being long under FBI surveillance and even sentence to 3 years of probation resulting from a terror-related investigation, he was still able to conveniently conspire and carry out an attack on a highly provocative propaganda stunt in the state of Texas.

Garland Shooting Fits Pattern of Larger Staged Terror Campaign

As with all other staged provocations, including similar shootings in Paris, France, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Sydney, Australia, the suspects were well known to state security agencies for years, but allowed to conspire and carry out predictable, deadly, and politically highly convenient attacks. All of this echos the similar and long-since exposed staged provocations of the notorious "Operation Gladio," carried out by NATO.

In Paris, France, the suspects in the so-called "Charlie Hebo Shooting" were under the watch of security forces for years, were in and out of jail specifically for terrorism, were known to have left France to join terrorists fighting with Western-backing in Syria and return, only to be left "unwatched" for precisely the 6 months they would need to plan, assemble the weapons for, and prepare to execute the attack.

Complete story at - Land Destroyer: Garland Shooting: Gladio - Texas-Style
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Russia Did More for Crimea Within 1 Year Than Ukraine Since Soviet Fall / Sputnik International

Russia has done more for Crimean Tatars since the reunification than Ukraine has in over two decades while the peninsula was under its rule, Resit Kemal As, advisor of the head of Crimea Sergei Aksenov, told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to the advisor, Russia has taken significant steps to solve the Crimean Tatars' issue in the region.

"Unlike Ukraine, which has not taken a single step in 23-24 years to fix the issue of Crimean Tatars who returned from deportation, the authorities of the Crimean Republic first made sure that the language of Crimean Tatars was fixed in the Constitution as an official language," Kemal As said.

According to the advisor, Russian President Vladimir Putin created special benefits to aid the people who had returned from deportation, something Ukraine has not done.

Several reforms are being implemented on the peninsula targeting education, land management, the economy and the development of the Crimean Tatar language, Kemal As said.

Complete story at - Russia Did More for Crimea Within 1 Year Than Ukraine Since Soviet Fall / Sputnik International

Ukraine the Epicenter of Global Geopolitical Transformation – Stephen Cohen / Sputnik International

Prominent American historian Stephen Cohen believes that Ukraine is the epicenter of a global geopolitical transformation, and that the world as it existed before the crisis will never be the same again.

Speaking on the John Batchelor radio program, Dr. Cohen observed that while "we talk each week about the micro and macro events emanating from the Ukraine crisis, we're living through a geopolitical transition, and to what we do not know." In any case, "the world will not again be the way looked 5-6 years ago, at least in Europe. These are historic times, and the epicenter is Ukraine."

Noting that the "essential confrontation" in the conflict "is between the United States and Russia," Cohen believes that Europe and China too are reconfiguring and reorienting themselves around events in Ukraine.

Fears of Ukrainian Military Conflict Reigniting

Speaking about the dangers of the military conflict in Ukraine spreading into a wider regional war, Professor Cohen warned that "very loud and authoritative voices in Kiev, Washington and in the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, are saying almost daily that a larger war is coming and coming soon. Each blames the other; Kiev, Washington and Brussels are saying that Russia is going to launch this war. But Moscow is warning that all this war talk is preparation for a Kiev-led US-backed assault on eastern Ukraine. The appearance of American, Canadian and UK trainers to train Ukrainian National Guard makes Moscow think that this too is part of the preparation."

Russia Does Not Seek to Rebuild the USSR, or a Traditional Sphere of Influence

Commenting on the growing tendency by Western politicians and media to say that Russia is looking to rebuild the Soviet Union, Dr. Cohen argues that "there is absolutely no evidence" to confirm this claim. The academic notes that Russia "doesn't have the resources, the ideology, the inclination, or the popular support. The leaders have another mission in mind: They are busy rebuilding at home the Russian state that collapsed in 1991, 25 years ago," which had tremendous negative ramifications in every sphere of national life.

Complete story at - Ukraine the Epicenter of Global Geopolitical Transformation – Stephen Cohen / Sputnik International

Countries Around World Revoke Freedom of Assembly | Al Jazeera America

Faced with mounting unrest and unwilling to offer reforms, democratic governments are rolling back traditional rights

May 4, 2015 2:00AM ET
by Willie Osterweil @WilbotOsterman

On March 26, without much fanfare or attention from U.S. media, the Spanish government ended freedom of assembly. In the face of popular opposition (80 percent of Spaniards oppose it), the upper house passed the Citizens’ Security Law. Under the provision, which goes into effect on July 1, police will have the discretionary ability to hand out fines up to $650,000 to “unauthorized” demonstrators who protest near a transport hub or nuclear power plant. They will be allowed to issue fines of up to $30,000 for taking pictures of police during protest, failing to show police ID, or just gathering in an unauthorized way near government buildings.

The law doesn’t technically outlaw protest, but it’s hard to see what difference that makes in practice. Imagine if the NYPD, without judicial oversight, could give $650,000 fines to every Black Lives Matter protester participating in a die-in at Grand Central. Never mind that they could never pay: Would anyone have come back day after day, racking up millions of dollars more in fines?

Spain is only the latest “democracy” to consign freedom of assembly to the dustbin. While earlier eras of protest and riot sometimes wrested concessions from the state, today the government’s default response is to implement increasingly draconian laws against the public exercise of democracy. It raises the question: How many rights must be abrogated before a liberal democracy becomes a police state?

In Quebec, where student strikes against austerity once again disrupt civil society, marches are being declared illegal before they’ve even begun. At the height of the last wave of student strikes in 2012, the Quebec legislature passed Bill 78, which made pickets and unauthorized gatherings of over 50 people illegal, and punished violations with fines of up to $5,000 for individuals and $125,000 for organizations. Similar fines are once again imposed on protesters.

Last October, a new law was passed in Turkey allowing police to search demonstrators and their homes without warrants or even grounds for suspicion, a much looser definition and harsher punishment for resisting arrest, and making covering your face at a protest or shouting particular slogans crimes punishable by years of jail time. This February in London police forced climate protest organizers to hire private security for marshaling a rally, making protesting not a free public right but an expensive private service.

Complete story at - Countries Around World Revoke Freedom of Assembly | Al Jazeera America

Restoration of Historical Truth: Russia Won World War II -- Secret History -- Sott.net

Irene Martinez
Sott.net
Mon, 04 May 2015 22:06 UTC

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."

¬ George Orwell


Today, the deliberate inversion of historical fact by Western media and officials is so widespread that it is subverting the very foundation of historical reasoning. The principal aim of these distortions of public perception is the conquest of our minds, and corruption of our ability to separate truth from lies, all for the purpose of deluding people into accepting servitude and atrocities.

The Western media machine attempts to rewrite the history of WWII by blaming the Soviet Union for starting the war in Europe , or at least for being a major aggressor and partner-in-evil alongside Nazi Germany. Just as the US promoted the Nazi regime in Germany to target the Soviet Union 70 years ago, the monied interests controlling the US are today using fascism as a tool to weaken Russia and prevent its potentially powerful alliance with Germany and other European countries. As Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said on April 22nd: "Americans do a lot to prevent Germany from developing closer ties with Russia."

The US played an important role in the initiation of the Second World War and the major events that lead to it. (See: Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War for background on the Anglo-American 'Secret Elite' and how they rule the world through war) Before and during World War II, the U.S. eugenics movement, comprising extremely wealthy individuals, and American corporations like IBM, Ford, General Motors, ITT, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Chase Bank, National City Bank of New York, and others, supported the fascist propaganda and military institutions of the Nazi regime. Hitler called American eugenics leader Madison Grant‟s book The Passing of the Great Race, his "bible".

In 1940, the Vice President of General Motors Graeme K. Howard, in his book America and a New World Order, expressed an opinion - popular among his kind at the time - that the European fascists should be supported as the 'better alternative to the spread of Communism'. The 33rd President of the United States, Harry Truman, speaking, while still a Senator, to the U.S. Senate on June 5, 1941 proclaimed: "If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible."

Western media, including William Randolph Hearst, an American media tycoon whose influence extended to politics, motion pictures and art, continued to popularize the Nazi regime in a positive manner until the US finally entered the war in 1943. The US decision to enter WWII was undoubtedly induced by the success of Soviet troops in the titanic Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 - 2 February 1943) and the largest ever tank battle (at Kursk from 5 July 1943 - 23 August 1943), which resulted in an unrecoverable crisis for Nazi Germany's war machine. From then on, it became obvious that victory for the Soviet Union in the Second World War was only a matter of time. Winston Churchill acknowledged that the Battle of Kursk was one of the battles that "heralded the downfall of the German Army on the Eastern Front."

Complete story at - Restoration of Historical Truth: Russia Won World War II -- Secret History -- Sott.net
NewImage

Soviet soldiers hoist the red hammer and sickle flag over Berlin's Reichstag on May 2, 1945

CFR Says China Must Be Defeated, & TPP Is Essential to That - Washington's Blog

Eric Zuesse

Wall Street’s Council on Foreign Relations has issued a major report, alleging that China must be defeated because it threatens to become a bigger power in the world than the U.S.

This report, which is titled “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,” is introduced by Richard Haass, the CFR’s President, who affirms the report’s view that, “no relationship will matter more when it comes to defining the twenty-first century than the one between the United States and China.” He says that the report he is publishing argues that “strategic rivalry is highly likely if not inevitable between the existing major power of the day and the principal rising power.” Haass says that the authors “also argue that China has not evolved into the ‘responsible stakeholder’ that many in the United States hoped it would.” In other words: “cooperation” with China will probably need to become replaced by, as the report’s authors put it, “intense U.S.-China strategic competition.”

Haass gives this report his personal imprimatur by saying that it “deserves to become an important part of the debate about U.S. foreign policy and the pivotal U.S.-China relationship.” He acknowledges that some people won’t agree with the views it expresses.

The report itself then opens by saying: “Since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals, first on the North American continent, then in the Western hemisphere, and finally globally.” It praises “the American victory in the Cold War.” It then lavishes praise on America’s imperialistic dominance: “The Department of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration presciently contended that its ‘strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor’—thereby consciously pursuing the strategy of primacy that the United States successfully employed to outlast the Soviet Union.”

The rest of the report is likewise concerned with the international dominance of America’s aristocracy or the people who control this country’s international corporations, rather than with the welfare of the public or as the U.S. Constitution described the objective of the American Government: “the general welfare.”

The Preamble, or sovereignty clause, in the Constitution, presented that goal in this broader context: “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

The Council on Foreign Relations, as a representative of Wall Street, is concerned only with the dominance of America’s aristocracy. Their new report, about “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,” is like a declaration of war by America’s aristocracy, against China’s aristocracy. This report has no relationship to the U.S. Constitution, though it advises that the U.S. Government pursue this “Grand Strategy Toward China” irrespective of whether doing that would even be consistent with the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble.

Complete story at - CFR Says China Must Be Defeated, & TPP Is Essential to That Washington's Blog

Friday, May 1, 2015

Even More News For You

Not enough news for you yet?  Just click one of the links below...

The new pages each contain a scrolling news widget. The news widgets are Russia News, Ukraine News, Novorossiya News, and Elsewhere in Ukraine News. This news widgets will allow access to a greater number of news stories than I could hope to post myself. Here's some basic information on each widget.

1. Russia News – the latest news concerning events and developments regarding Russia.

2. Ukraine News – the latest news regarding events and developments in Ukraine. This also includes NATO news, since we know that NATO is deeply involved in events in Ukraine.

3. Novorossiya News – news regarding the events Donetsk, Luhansk, and Novorossiya.

4. Elsewhere in Ukraine News – news regarding events elsewhere in Ukraine, with specific emphasis on cities and regions that may not remain in Ukraine for whole lot longer.

•• Even More News for You - All four of the above feeds together on one page.  Note:  This one contains all four scrolling news widgets.  Because of this, it's possible that not all will load correctly the first time.  Doing a reload/refresh should fix the problem.

- Aaron Talka

More Evidence of Ukraine's Reign of Terror RINF Alternative News & Alternative Media | Breaking News Real Independent

A previous article discussed how Obama-installed fascist thugs eliminate anyone opposing their ruthlessness.

They’re harassed, brutalized, imprisoned, disappeared or murdered in cold blood – including assassinating political opponents reported as “suicides.”

Independent journalists, human rights workers and democracy advocates are vulnerable – anyone criticizing regime policy.

CyberBerkut is a Ukrainian hacker collective. It hacked into Kharkov regional state administration deputy head Vyacheslav Abbakumov’s emails.

It reported the following, saying:

“We, the CyberBerkut, hereby present for public access materials confirming that the physical liquidation of public and political figures opposed to the Kiev Junta was authorized by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and was supervised by the Kharkov political elite; the ‘cleaners of Free Ukraine’ turned out to be Kharkov-based nationalist groups.”

They discovered “correspondence between (Abbakumov) and an unknown leader of an extreme-nationalist group in the Kharkov region.”

A critical Abbakumov email to one of the alleged state-sponsored assassins said:

“You bastards, what are you doing? You consider this to be an intimidation measure?”

“Do you know how much barking there will be on Moskal TV (a Ukrainian ethnic Russian slur) after this?”

“I understand that this bald head murdered journalist (Oles Buzina) had been asking for a brick to the head for a long time, but it was supposed to be a brick, (not a gun) understand?”

“You were given license to shut this trash up, but not permanently. You had told me about knocked out teeth, broken fingers.”

“As for the fate of your team of thugs: Dublon (a nickname for Ukrainian Security Service Major General A. Dublik), called me personally three times.”

“Now get back to Kharkov and return to base. The remaining orders are canceled for now.”

The alleged assassin responded as follows:

“Do not ever dare to humiliate me or my boys again! We took up arms in order to clean our native land of garbage and traitors to the national idea, and not in in order to make you sad about the fact that another traitor to Ukraine went to a place from where he will never bark again!”

Complete story at - More Evidence of Ukraine's Reign of Terror RINF Alternative News & Alternative Media | Breaking News Real Independent

Finian Cunningham - Washington Choreographing All-Out War with Russia? - Strategic Culture Foundation

The reckless American leaders are putting in place incendiary elements that heighten the risk of all-out war with Russia.

For several weeks now the Ukrainian self-defence militia in the breakaway eastern Donbas region have been warning that the US-backed Kiev regime is readying to break a fragile ceasefire and resume its offensive. The refusal, as mandated by the truce, to fully withdraw heavy artillery and the ongoing practice of live-fire drills near the conflict zone are evidences cited.

With the reported arrival of 300 American paratroopers in Ukraine collaborating with Kiev’s Neo-Nazi National Guard brigades – the worst offenders over the past year’s fighting in eastern Ukraine – that development is an alarming harbinger of imminent conflict.

The Minsk ceasefire – brokered by Russia, Germany and France – has up to this moment held for over two months. Given the Kiev regime’s past breach of previous ceasefires, the duration of the truce signed on February 12 surprised many. But now it seems the levee is about to burst ushering more violence in the region.

Of utmost concern is that the US military forces have reportedly moved into the Donetsk region near the conflict zone.

The arrival of the US troops was already described by Moscow as a breach of the Minsk ceasefire. Bad enough was that the Americans were supposed to conduct their military exercises in the far west of the country, near the city of Lviv. Inexplicably, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence, US troops belonging to the 173rd Airborne Brigade have taken up «training» positions in Donetsk only 20-30 kilometres from the conflict zone. Those positions include the towns of Artemivsk, Severodonetsk and Volnovakha.

Complete story at - Finian Cunningham - Washington Choreographing All-Out War with Russia? - Strategic Culture Foundation

The May 2nd Odessa Massacre: Why Obama's Coup-Regime Still Runs Ukraine Washington's Blog

Eric Zuesse

The May 2nd Ukrainian massacre of anti-regime pamphleteers last year at the Odessa Trade Unions Building, burning these pamphleteers alive there, was crucial to the Obama Administration’s solidification of its control over Ukraine. That massacre was designed to, and it did, terrorize the residents in all areas of Ukraine which had voted overwhelmingly for the man whom Obama had just ousted, Viktor Yanukovych. Especially in the Donbass region, Yanokovych had received 90%+ of the votes. In Odessa, he had received three-quarters of the votes. (Later will be explained why this terror against the residents of such regions was necessary for Obama’s purpose of solidifying his control over Ukraine’s government.)

So, the shocking methods of executing these people, and its being done in public and with no blockage of video images being recorded of these events by their many witnesses, and with the newly-installed Obama government in Kiev doing nothing whatsoever to prosecute any of these horrific murderers, there was a clear message being sent to the people who had voted for Yanukovych: If you resist the new authorities in any way, this is how you will be treated by them. This is how you will be treated (and that video was posted to the Internet by the perpetrators and their supporters, by headlining, “48 Russian Subversives Burned To Death In Fire At Trade Unions Building Fire In Odessa,” so that any other ‘Russian Subversives’ would have no doubt. However, those victims’ identities were subsequently published, and all of the victims were actually Odessa locals, none were Russians. The perpetrators were racist fascists, after all; and, so, being a ‘Russian’ meant, to them, being from a hated ethnicity, not necessarily being a citizen of Russia.) Terror was the obvious purpose here, and Obama was behind it, but nazis were in front of it, and they were proud of their handiwork — proud enough to film it and then to display it to the public.

If the President that you had voted for were subsequently to be overthrown in an extremely bloody coup — or even if it had happened in an authentic revolution — then how would you feel? And, if, two months later, people who were peacefully printing and distributing flyers against the illegally installed replacement regime were publicly treated this way, then would you want to be ruled by that regime?

Yanukovych had been elected in 2010 in an election that was declared free and fair by international observers; and, furthermore, according to wikipedia, “All exit polls conducted during the final round of voting reported a win for Viktor Yanukovych over Yulia Tymoshenko.[162][163][164].” But, starting in Spring of 2013, which was as soon as Obama got into position all of his key foreign-affairs appointees for his second Presidential term, after the 2012 U.S. election, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine immediately started organizing, for Maidan square in Kiev, public demonstrations to bring Yanukovych down, and they placed at the head of this operation the co-founder of the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, Andriy Parubiy, a man who had long studied Hitler’s methods of political organization. The troops, actually mercenaries, that provided the snipers who fired down onto the demonstrators and police in Maidan square in Kiev in February 2014 and pretended to be from Yanukovych’s security forces, were trained not by Parubiy but instead by Dmitriy Yarosh, who was the head of Ukraine’s other large racist-fascist, or nazi, organization, the Right Sector, whose CIA-and-oligarch-backed army numbered probably between 7,000 and 10,000. Yarosh selected the best of them for this operation. Whereas Parubiy was the main political organizer and trainer of Ukraine’s far-right, Yarosh was the main military organizer and trainer of Ukraine’s far-right.

Complete story at - The May 2nd Odessa Massacre: Why Obama's Coup-Regime Still Runs Ukraine Washington's Blog

Recommended Reading via Amazon



If you're seeking more information about how the world really works, and not how the media would want you to believe it works, these books are a good start. These are all highly recommended.

If you don't see pictures above, you likely have an adblocker running.  If so, here are the links.

1. The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein
2. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - John Perkins
3. Manufacturing Consent - Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky
4. Gladio - NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe - Richard Cottrell
5. Profit Over People - Noam Chomsky
6. Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives - Stephen Cohen
7. The Divide - American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap - Matt Taibbi

How this works.  Follow one of the links.  Should you decide to buy that item, or any item, I get a small percentage, which helps to maintain this site.  Your cost is the same, whether you buy from my link or not.  But if the item remains in the cart too long, I don't get a thing.  
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