tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4519261234689975952024-03-14T01:17:30.490+02:00No Bread And Circuses For YouLooking beyond the mainstream media's Bread and Circuses Freak Show.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1888125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-57724713572286984652015-09-15T16:00:00.000+03:002015-09-15T16:00:00.296+03:00War and Politics - September 15, 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong>• Who’s Going to Foot the Bill for Ukraine? </strong><br />
<strong>• Putin: The Only World Leader Speaking Sense on Syria & The Migrant Crisis </strong><br />
<strong>• IMF head is "extremely encouraged" by the economic disaster in Ukraine </strong><br />
<strong>• Cyber Berkut's Latest Hack May Reveal UAF deliberately targeted Schools </strong><br />
<strong>• Half a million refugees gather in Libya to attempt perilous crossing to Europe </strong><br />
<strong>• Refugee Crisis: What The Media Is Hiding </strong><br />
<strong>• Sovereign Debt as Weapon: Subverting Democracy in Greece </strong><br />
<strong>• Media Rubbish about Venezuelans Who Have Left to Live Abroad </strong><br />
<strong>• Uruguay To Withdraw From Free Trade Deal on Services </strong><br />
<strong>• China intends to oust dollar from oil trade</strong><br />
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<b>• Russia/Ukraine •</b></h3>
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<b>Who’s Going to Foot the Bill for Ukraine? | Russia! Magazine</b><br />
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The standoff with Russia over Ukraine is, on the one hand, generally acknowledged to be “the most serious security crisis in a generation.” Military tensions between NATO and Russia are now sharper than they’ve been since before Gorbachev came to power, and arguably even before that. Barely a day goes by without some Western diplomat or politician intoning solemnly about the need to “stand up to Russian aggression” or “support Western values.” I hope this doesn’t come across as glib, because the reality is that, largely due to Ukraine, Russia and the West are further apart than they have been in my entire lifetime. That is a big deal.<br />
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Indeed the need to thwart Moscow’s meddling in Eastern Ukraine is one of those rare issues on which there is no partisan disagreement. The Labour party’s statements could easily be confused for the Tory party’s, just as Republicans and Democrats are reading from identical scripts. Even Germany and France have consolidated around a consensus position that, a year or two ago, would have seemed radically hawkish. Anti-Russia economic sanctions have gone further for longer than I would have ever thought possible, and the odds of them getting even tighter are much greater than the odds of their being loosened.<br />
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Truth be told Russia has never been a topic of particularly deep partisan discord in the West. But while there has tended to be agreement on the big picture issues (NATO expansion, missile defense, democracy promotion) there used to be a caucus in favor of limited engagement with Moscow. This group was alternately called “Doves,” “realists,” or, in a rather less flattering term, “Russia understanders,” but ever since the annexation of Crimea they have virtually disappeared from the halls of power. To suggest engagement with the Kremlin now is somewhat akin to suggesting accommodation with ISIS. Russia is now politically toxic in a way few other countries are.<br />
But while the West has been in virtual unanimity in its rhetoric about Ukraine and its searing condemnations of Russia, its actions have been… well, rather less impressive.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://readrussia.com/2015/08/17/whos-going-to-foot-the-bill-for-ukraine/" target="_new">Who’s Going to Foot the Bill for Ukraine? | Russia! Magazine</a><br />
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<b>Putin: The Only World Leader Speaking Sense on Syria & The Migrant Crisis</b><br />
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The only world leader speaking sense on the migrant crisis is the same one who is also subject to an international demonization campaign.<br />
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Russia’s President Putin has presented the unadulterated truth on the migrant crisis to the world, saying the following:<br />
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“I think the crisis was absolutely expected. We in Russia, and me personally a few years ago, said it straight that pervasive problems would emerge, if our so-called Western partners continue maintaining their flawed … foreign policy, especially in the regions of the Muslim world, Middle East, North Africa, which they pursue to date.“<br />
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Putin highlighted the necessity to find out “what is happening, and what to do next“, while branding Western policies as “shortsighted“. He also noted that the U.S. was not feeling any impact at all from the current crisis, despite playing a huge role in creating it.<br />
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Speaking specifically on Syria, Putin said “Of course, we know that there are different approaches to Syria. By the way, people are running away not from the regime of Bashar Assad, but from Islamic State, which seized large areas in Syria and Iraq, and are committing atrocities there. That is what they are escaping from. They kill hundreds and thousands of people, burn them alive or drown them, cut off people’s heads. How are people supposed to live there? Of course, they run away.“<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/07/putin-the-only-world-leader-speaking-sense-on-syria-the-migrant-crisis/" target="_new">Putin: The Only World Leader Speaking Sense on Syria & The Migrant Crisis</a><br />
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<b>IMF head is "extremely encouraged" by the economic disaster in Ukraine - New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond</b><br />
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New Cold War.org, Sept 7, 2015<br />
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Ukraine’s economy is in a severe freefall. GDP is expected to contract this year by nine per cent. GDP fell by 14 per cent in the first six months of the year. Inflation is projected at 47 per cent for 2015. In 2014, the economy retracted by seven per cent and inflation was 24 per cent.<br />
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Exports from Ukraine to the European Union collapsed by 35 per cent in the first six months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014. The drop in exports to Russia was even sharper. The country’s debt to GDP ratio is rising. The government in Kyiv is cutting spending on pensions, medical care and health care while it is sharply increasing its military spending. It has recently told its non-government debtors that 20 per cent of the money they are owed will not be paid to them, a so-called ‘haircut’ which they must swallow.<br />
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According to the enclosed news report by AFP, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund finds something “encouraging”, nay, “extremely encouraging” in all of this. What Christine Lagarde means by her bizarre pronouncement is that the deal with creditors to lop 20 per cent off of what they are owed means that the Ukrainian government has avoided going into default AND it gains a longer repayment period for the $11.5 billion in new loans which the IMF promised to Ukraine in March 2015. Translating that into IMF-speak, it means that Ukraine continues to hand over its economic sovereignty to the imperialist financiers in the IMF and other Western-controlled financial institutions. The 20 per cent “haircut” has bought bought short-term avoidance of default, but its terms will tighten even further the control by foreigners over Ukraine’s budget.<br />
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The government’s next magic act is to figure out what to do with the $3 billion loan it owes to Russia, payment of which is due in December and which, to make an understatement, it does not have the funds to pay. That debt is “official debt”, meaning it was contracted with another government. According to IMF rules, failure to meet the payments of official debt automatically means the delinquent country enters into default and is disqualified from further IMF loans (aka further financial ensnaring).<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://newcoldwar.org/imf-head-is-extremely-encouraged-by-the-economic-disaster-in-ukraine/" target="_new">IMF head is "extremely encouraged" by the economic disaster in Ukraine - New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond</a><br />
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<b>Cyber Berkut's Latest Hack May Reveal UAF deliberately targeted Schools - Fort Russ</b><br />
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We, # CyberBerkut, finally have undeniable evidence of the use of artillery against women and children troops, controlled by Ukrainian Government! This is from back in March.<br />
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We, #CyberBerkut!, continue to denounce the Ukrainian fascist regime. This time, from computer networks of the General staff of the Armed Forces of # Ukraine, we extracted the package tactical documents. Among the large number of encrypted messages about moving and reconnaissance troops of the Ukrainian State, there were # documents that contained data about the objectives on the territories of the# DPR and # LPR, and orders their immediate suppression by artillery fire.<br />
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Nevertheless, given the fact that operational maps the numbering of the squares of X and Y is always applied in a chaotic manner with the aim of concealing information about the attacker's purposes – until the last moment we could not determine the real goals that Kiev gave the order to destroy.<br />
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However, in early September 2015 we finally managed to get shots of several operational maps, which "deployed" the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the winter of 2014-2015.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/cyber-berkuts-latest-hack-may-reveal.html" target="_new">Cyber Berkut's Latest Hack May Reveal UAF deliberately targeted Schools - Fort Russ</a><br />
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<b>• Middle East •</b></h3>
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<b>Half a million refugees gather in Libya to attempt perilous crossing to Europe | World news | The Guardian</b><br />
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Up to half a million refugees are gathering in Libya to attempt the crossing to Europe on the deadly boats that have killed thousands already.<br />
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The toll of misery was revealed by senior Royal Navy officers leading Britain’s Mediterranean rescue mission off the Libyan coast. Britain’s amphibious assault ship HMS Bulwark has helped save around 4,000 refugees before they drowned having set sail in unseaworthy boats.<br />
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The ship’s 350-strong company of sailors and Royal Marines is bracing itself to rescue a further 3,000. Captain Nick Cooke-Priest said: “Indications are that there are 450,000 to 500,000 migrants in Libya who are waiting at the border.”<br />
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As he spoke, intelligence reports were warning Bulwark’s crew, which is among about 11 rescue vessels in the central Mediterranean, of thousands more migrants in the water. Britain is working with the Italian navy on Operation Weald to rescue migrants who have fallen prey to people smuggling gangs in Libya.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/06/cameron-merkel-at-odds-resettle-refugees-europe-migration" target="_new">Half a million refugees gather in Libya to attempt perilous crossing to Europe | World news | The Guardian</a><br />
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<b>Refugee Crisis: What The Media Is Hiding -- Youtube - SyrianGirlpartisan</b><br />
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There are a few things you should know about the refugee crisis which Syrian Girl answers<br />
Its being used to justify bombing the country the refugees are running from<br />
The war was started by the US, and those now crying about the refugees in the first place<br />
The majority of the refugees are not Syrian, but the media are calling them all Syrian anyway.<br />
The Gulf Arab states won't let Syrians in, they don't see them as Arab and they'd rather give the money to ISIS<br />
Why doesn't Israel accept refugees?<br />
Syrians want to go home, you can't relocate them all.<br />
Syrians had a great life before the war began<br />
Syria is the birth place of civilization<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pHFnvFbThDE/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="532" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pHFnvFbThDE?feature=player_embedded" width="640"></iframe></div>
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Complete story at - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHFnvFbThDE" target="_blank">RefugeeCrisis: What The Media Is Hiding</a><br />
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<b>• EU Death Watch •</b></h3>
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<b>Sovereign Debt as Weapon: Subverting Democracy in Greece</b><br />
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At this 4th World Conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, on placing democracy at the service of peace, sustainable development and building the world that people want, I stand before you and among you, as President of the recently dissolved Hellenic Parliament to address you with a call for solidarity to the Greek people and to Greece: The place where democracy was born and where it is now being bluntly attacked and violated.<br />
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Greece and its people have been victimized during the last five years by policies purported to provide a sustainable solution to the country’s over-indebtment and a way out of the economic crisis<br />
These policies, contained in agreements called “Memoranda of Understanding” and concluded by the Greek governments and a trio of international institutions (namely the IMF, the EC and the ECB) known as the TROIKA and acting as Greece’s creditors, have resulted to severe violations of human rights, especially social rights, fundamental freedoms and the very rule of law.<br />
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What has been presented as “bail-out” loan agreements has resulted to misery, unemployment at unprecedented rates (72% among young women and 60% among young men), hundreds of thousands of young people emigrating, an explosion of suicides, the marginalization of the young, the old, the weak, the poor, the immigrants the refugees, half of the country’s children living under the poverty line, a situation amounting to a humanitarian crisis and documented in the UN Independent Experts’ on Debt and Human Rights reports and public statements, as well as in a series of international court decisions and findings.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/07/sovereign-debt-as-weapon-subverting-democracy-in-greece/" target="_new">Sovereign Debt as Weapon: Subverting Democracy in Greece</a><br />
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<b>• Empire Watch •</b></h3>
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<b>ZCommunications » Media Rubbish about Venezuelans Who Have Left to Live Abroad</b><br />
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Girish Gupta of Reuters wrote in a recent article<br />
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“Around 5 percent of Venezuela’s population of 30 million has left the country since [the late President] Chavez came to power in 1999, said Caracas-based sociologist Tomas Paez, who has published papers and books on migration.”<br />
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I wrote to Gupta arguing that the claim that 1.5 million Venezuelans have left since 1999 is far-fetched. In his reply Gupta accused me of “cherry picking” a “tangential” piece of his article. Presumably, if he found the claim tangential, he would not have mentioned it. I’ve since discovered the claim to be even more ridiculous than I thought.<br />
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Before addressing that, one should note that Venezuela has twice as many immigrants as it has emigrants according to the World Bank figures cited below. Also, according to the UNHCR, about 200,000 Colombians are living as refugees in Venezuela. Less than 237 Venezuelan refugees are in Colombia. People who believe the international media would assume it is the other way around. Venezuela has long been depicted as a hell from which people are desperate to escape, Colombia as an oasis of human rights and prosperity, or at least a country where nothing particularly bad is happening. An Aug. 23 Financial Times op-ed, for example, claimed that Colombia has “emerged as a superstar economic performer.” I’ve written before about the gruesome way Colombia really stands out in the region.<br />
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Returning to the claim that 1.5 million Venezuelans have left since 1999, the U.S. has been widely reported as the top destination for Venezuelans who have left their country. The U.S. government has the resources to produce reliable statistics on Venezuelan immigrants and has no incentive to produce underestimates. Combining U.S. Census Bureau with Homeland Security data, it is clear that about 100,000 Venezuelans immigrated to the United States from 2000-2011 and that, overwhelmingly, they have either done so legally or obtained legal residency very quickly. As of 2013, according to U.S. Homeland Security, about 9,500 Venezuelans per year were getting legal residency, suggesting no recent change in the average number arriving. Judging by overseas voting statistics from 2013, it appears that about a third of Venezuelan immigrants live in the U.S. Assuming one out of every three Venezuelans who left since 1999 came to the U.S., the data above would yield an estimate of 392,000 leaving Venezuela by 2013, or about 28,000 per year from 1999-2013.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/media-rubbish-about-venezuelans-who-have-left-to-live-abroad-2/" target="_new">ZCommunications » Media Rubbish about Venezuelans Who Have Left to Live Abroad</a><br />
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<b>• Miscellaneous •</b></h3>
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<b>Uruguay To Withdraw From Free Trade Deal on Services | News | teleSUR English</b><br />
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Jose Pepe Mujica, who initiated the negotiations when president, supports the new president’s decision as the BRICs are excluded from the deal. Uruguay’s president eventually ceded Monday to the pressure of his progressive coalition Broad Front, which voted on Saturday to withdraw the country from negotiations on an international free-trade deal.<br />
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“President Tabare Vazquez took responsibility for Broad Front's resolution (not to participate in the negotiations) and asked the Minister of Foreign Relations Rodolfo Nin Novoa to inform the withdrawal of Uruguay from the negotiations of TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement),” said Minister of Tourism Liliam Kechichian after the weekly Council of Ministers.<br />
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Senator and former President Jose “Pepe” Mujica commented shortly after that he would have supported Vazquez' decision which does “not give as much importance to the negotiations of TiSA as it has been given.”<br />
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The negotiations stopped bearing importance to him when the BRICs countries’ demand to be part of them was denied. “This represents the exclusion of half of humanity, which is a powerful sign,” he added. “This is another trick of the main powers like the United States to contain the Chinese competitivity in the world economy,” said the former president, recalling that China was the main economic partner of Uruguay.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Uruguay-To-Withdraw-From-Free-Trade-Deal-on-Services--20150908-0032.html" target="_new">Uruguay To Withdraw From Free Trade Deal on Services | News | teleSUR English</a><br />
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<b>China intends to oust dollar from oil trade — RT Business</b><br />
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China is planning to launch its own oil benchmark in October, similar to Brent and WTI, striving for a more important role in establishing crude prices. Unlike the Western benchmarks, the Chinese contracts will be nominated in the yuan, not the US dollar. Shanghai International Energy Exchange sent a draft futures contract to market players in August, Reuters reported quoting sources.<br />
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Oil futures will be the first Chinese contract to permit direct participation of foreign investors. However, this is not the first step for greater oil market openness in China. In July, Beijing allowed private companies to import crude. Previously importing was only done by state-run majors such as Sinopec, China National Petroleum Corporation and China National Offshore Oil Corporation, the Xinhua news agency reported.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.rt.com/business/314732-china-oil-contracts-dollar-yuan/" target="_new">China intends to oust dollar from oil trade — RT Business</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-30866570054840379022015-09-15T09:34:00.000+03:002015-09-15T10:06:42.602+03:00War and Politics - September 14, 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
im<br />
<strong>• Ukraine: The Market Does Not Care About Your Values </strong><br />
<strong>• The Murky Myth of the “2000 Russian War Dead” in Ukraine </strong><br />
<strong>• Kyiv one of the world's most unliveable cities, survey finds </strong><br />
<strong>• New Ukrainian Textbook Erases Crimea From Country’s List of Territories </strong><br />
<strong>• Land Destroyer: US Seeks Occupation as US Fighters Flood Syria </strong><br />
<strong>• U.S. Drops Bombs; EU Gets Refugees & Blame. This is insane. </strong><br />
<strong>• How Neocons Destabilized Europe </strong><br />
<strong>• Lebanon Protest Leaders Reveal Connections To Western Color Revolution Apparatus </strong><br />
<strong>• Read This Before the Media Uses a Drowned Refugee Boy to Start Another War </strong><br />
<strong>• "Some People Just Don't Fit In The Economy" Buffett Explains: "We'll Send Them Off To Afghanistan"</strong><br />
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<strong>• Russia/Ukraine •</strong></div>
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<strong>Ukraine: The Market Does Not Care About Your Values | Russia! Magazine</strong><br />
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Kiev’s new government, for all of its aggressively pro-market rhetoric and its constant invocation of “reform,” appears to not entirely understand the way that markets actually work. Not to wax overly philosophical, but markets are wonderfully efficient at allocating scarce resources and at balancing risks and rewards. They’re not terribly effective at passing moral judgements on who is “good” or “bad.”<br />
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Bond markets, for example, present investors with extremely stark tradeoffs between security and profit: investors can get substantial returns, but in order to do so they need to expose themselves to much greater risks. It would be great if investments as safe and liquid as US Treasuries yielded 8 or 9 percent a year, but they don’t. And that’s the whole point: in order to get yields of that magnitude, you need to swim in much murkier waters, investing in countries whose abilities to repay their debts on time is much less certain.<br />
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When investors are evaluating whether or not to buy a particular country’s bonds, the only thing they care about is if the country is going to be able to make the requisite payments. Politics enters into the equation not in any kind of comparative analysis of “values,” but in an analysis of stability (i.e. “will this country’s government get overthrown before the last payment is due”). A stable autocratic government is, from the market’s perspective, greatly preferable to an unstable democratic one. And vice versa. The merits of democracy or authoritarianism are entirely beside the point, and what matters first and last is the ability to pay.<br />
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That might seem exceedingly obvious, but as basic an overview of the bond market as that is, it appears to be substantially beyond the expertise of Ukraine’s current Prime Minister, Arseny Yatsenyuk.<br />
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Yatsenyuk has, for reasons I can’t even begin to grasp, made a large number of public statements about how “unfair” it is for the country to be saddled with the debts of the old regime. In recent comments, Yatsenyuk said the following:<br />
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“Private creditors need to realize they need to contribute and support the Ukrainian people…the government will do everything in order to lift this huge debt burden that was made under the Yanukovych regime… [Investors] were all aware they can easily go into arrears as they financed an entirely kleptocratic pro-Russian president”<br />
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In an interview with CNBC, Yatsenyuk struck a broadly similar note, encouraging investors to understand that a haircut on bond payments was “their contribution to the Ukrainian people” while also whining that “the former regime of Yanukovych collected $40 billion and we succeeded in collecting only $25 billion.”<br />
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The reason why “the former regime of Yanukovych” was able to raise more money than the current one was because investors had greater faith in the ability of that government to service its debt obligations. And, on the merits, that seems like the right decision: Ukraine is currently an economic disaster area, and it is already on the brink of technical default. Why on earth would an investor have any faith whatsoever that such a government could pay its debts?<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://readrussia.com/2015/08/27/ukraine-the-market-does-not-care-about-your-values/" target="_new">Ukraine: The Market Does Not Care About Your Values | Russia! Magazine</a><br />
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<strong>The Murky Myth of the “2000 Russian War Dead” in Ukraine | Russia! Magazine</strong><br />
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Despite Moscow’s litany of denials, Russian regular troops – not holidaying volunteers, not Cossack patriots, not just mercenaries and adventurers – are fighting in the Donbas. That we know, and for many in the West the Kremlin’s very mendacity has become an insidious, burning irritant. Hence the time and effort some put into debunking claims, assembling intricate geolocated and photo-backed evidence proving… what everyone already knows. Perhaps no wonder then that when what seemed like evidence of Russia’s presence in Ukraine appeared, so many gleefully jumped on it. A shame that it so quickly unraveled, in some ways a depressingly perfect metaphor for the way truth has become such an uncertain and negotiable process in this miserable conflict.<br />
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The story is quite well known by now. Of all places a Forbes blog seemed, as near as I can tell, to be the first place which splashed that “Russia Inadvertently Posts Its Casualties In Ukraine: 2,000 Deaths, 3,200 Disabled.” The story was that the website of the Delovaya zhizn’ (no, I’d never heard of it, either, but it’s one of those conveniently anonymous names everyone thinks they might) accidentally leaked a document on payments for dead and disabled servicemen that proved a year’s fighting had led to 2,000 Russian soldiers on duty dying and 3,200 being disabled. The page was quickly removed, apparently because of censorship – after all, disclosing data on losses is a crime.<br />
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Not so fast<br />
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So far, so smoking gun, and not surprisingly it then did the rounds as mainstream news outlets jumped on the story. And yet, soon enough different people from different angles were beginning to question it.<br />
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The ever-perceptive Leonid Bershidsky quickly called it a fake, not least because of a grammatical slip and the actual registration of the website: “Bs-life.ru – come on, are you serious?”<br />
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AP’s Nataliya Vasilyeva noted that “two days of Western officials retweeting a Forbes report quoting a Ukrainian web-site quoting a non-existent Russia news web-site re Ukraine” simply demonstrated that “the ease of spreading rumors in the digital world is astonishing.”<br />
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Ruslan Leviev’s WarInUkraine team unequivocally labeled it a fake. They noted that the report referred to a special government decree on supporting the victims which was unnecessary and dug into the Delovaya zhizn’ website to demonstrate its…questionable foundations.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://readrussia.com/2015/08/30/the-murky-myth-of-the-2000-russian-war-dead-in-ukraine/" target="_new">The Murky Myth of the “2000 Russian War Dead” in Ukraine | Russia! Magazine</a><br />
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<strong>bne:Chart - Kyiv one of the world's most unliveable cities, survey finds | Business New Europe</strong><br />
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Kyiv is one of the worst cities in the world to live in, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Liveability Ranking.<br />
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The Ukrainian capital recorded the second-biggest fall in its liveability score over the last five years out of all 140 countries measured in the study, with a 25.8-point fall in its score since 2010. Its overall rank of 132nd placed it eighth-from-bottom overall.<br />
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Despite the ongoing conflict with pro-Russian separatists taking place on the opposite side of the country in eastern Ukraine, the disruption of last years’s sometimes violent Euromaidan street protests that ousted former president Viktor Yanukovych and worsening economic hardship pushed Ukraine’s liveability score down.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.bne.eu/content/story/bnechart-kyiv-one-worlds-most-unliveable-cities-survey-finds" target="_new">bne:Chart - Kyiv one of the world's most unliveable cities, survey finds | Business New Europe</a><br />
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<strong>New Ukrainian Textbook Erases Crimea From Country’s List of Territories</strong><br />
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Very unusual textbooks were given to school students in Kiev on September 1, Obozrevatel reports.<br />
To congratulate schoolchildren with the new school year, a number of presents were given away, including a textbook from the city mayor. The problem is that the chapter "Administrative and territorial division of Ukraine" reads that the country comprises 24 regions, with Crimea left out of the list.<br />
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"Is this official? Or is this a mistake?" a journalist for Obozrevatel wonders.<br />
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A picture of the ill-fated page from the textbook was also published online.<br />
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Following a 96-percent vote in March 2014, Crimea reunified with Russia after over 60 years of Ukrainian rule.<br />
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The republic’s secession – declared illegitimate by the West and Kiev – and the subsequent conflict in southeast Ukraine has drawn several rounds of anti-Russia sanctions from the United States, the European Union and other allied nations.<br />
<br />
Complete story at - <a href="http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150908/1026749817/ukraine-textbooks-without-crimea.html" target="_new">New Ukrainian Textbook Erases Crimea From Country’s List of Territories</a><br />
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<div style="font-size: 15px;">
<strong>• Middle East •</strong></div>
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Land Destroyer: US Seeks Occupation as US Fighters Flood Syria</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
US policy paper called for the occupation of northern Syria with special operations forces. Now Foreign Policy reports northern Syria is being flooded by "volunteers" from America.<br />
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September 8, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - US corporate-funded policy think-tank, the Brookings Institution, published a June 2015 paper titled, "Deconstructing Syria: Towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country." The signed and dated open-conspiracy to divide, destroy, invade, then incrementally occupy Syria using no-fly-zones and both US and British special forces is now demonstrably underway.<br />
<br />
The paper would lay out in no uncertain terms that (emphasis added):<br />
<br />
The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via the presence of special forces as well. The approach would benefit from Syria’s open desert terrain which could allow creation of buffer zones that could be monitored for possible signs of enemy attack through a combination of technologies, patrols, and other methods that outside special forces could help Syrian local fighters set up.<br />
<br />
Were Assad foolish enough to challenge these zones, even if he somehow forced the withdrawal of the outside special forces, he would be likely to lose his air power in ensuing retaliatory strikes by outside forces, depriving his military of one of its few advantages over ISIL. Thus, he would be unlikely to do this.<br />
<br />
Not only does Brookings lay out an open conspiracy to invade and occupy Syria, it does so with the open admission that the goal is not to degrade the fighting capacity of the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS or ISIL), but rather to undermine and eventually overthrow the Syrian government. In fact, Brookings makes a point of stating that the goal would be to seize and hold Syrian territory to further advance American ambitions toward regime change, and would move quickly to degrade the Syrian government's ability to resist ISIS if any attempts were made by Damascus to stop the US invasion.<br />
<br />
Complete story at - <a href="http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/us-seeks-occupation-as-us-fighters.html" target="_new">Land Destroyer: US Seeks Occupation as US Fighters Flood Syria</a><br />
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<div style="font-size: 15px;">
<strong>• EU Death Watch •</strong></div>
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>U.S. Drops Bombs; EU Gets Refugees & Blame. This is insane.</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Starting in 2011 in Libya, the United States dropped bombs on Libya in order to replace its pro-Russian dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. The EU is now tearing itself apart with guilt-feelings at European nations’ responses to the refugee-crisis that was caused by this American bombing-campaign in Libya, and then by the one in Syria. Europe has also received refugees from the American-sponsored bombing-campaign in eastern Ukraine (the bombing-campaign that the 2014 American-installed anti-Russian Ukrainian government calls an ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation,’ or ‘ATO,’ which labels the residents in that pro-Russian area — where the residents reject the February 2014 U.S. coup — as ‘Terrorists’ and thus as being suitable to be bombed, and even firebombed).<br />
And yet, despite these millions of U.S.-caused refugees into Europe, European nations still permit U.S. troops to remain stationed on European soil decades after the entire reason for NATO’s very existence (which was protection of Europe against a communist invasion from the east) ended. (The Soviet Union’s equivalent Warsaw Pact had dissolved and ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union itself did — yet NATO continued on, and constantly touts ‘the Russian threat,’ just as it did the Soviet threat, as if there were no change when communism collapsed, as if the ideological reason for the Cold War had been fake all along. There is no justification whatsoever for “the New Cold War.”) Russia is now responding to this new American-created hostility of Europeans against Russia, by its matching this newly transformed now anti-Russian NATO’s war-games against Russia, with similar Russian defensive maneuvers to prepare for an increasingly possible NATO invasion into Russia.<br />
So: the current refugee-crisis was, in fact, caused by America’s continuing obsession to destroy Russia — an obsession that the EU goes along with, and now suffers greatly from, not only because of loss of their Russian trading-partner, but because of the influx into Europe of millions of refugees that were caused by this New Cold War. This crisis was not caused by Russia’s defensive measures against an increasingly aggressive NATO. It was caused by U.S. aggressions, which the EU continues to endorse.<br />
<br />
Let’s go back to the very beginning of the current crisis:<br />
<br />
The great investigative journalist Christof Lehmann headlined on 7 October 2013 at his nsnbc news site, “Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria,” and he opened: “Evidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry.” (The U.S. has been allied with the Saudi royal family since 1945.) Lehmann discussed the chemical-weapons attack “in the Eastern Ghouta Suburb of Damascus on 21 August 2013,” which attack U.S. President Barack Obama was citing as his reason for planning to bomb to bring down Syria’s pro-Russian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, whom Obama was blaming for the chemical attack. However, much like another great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh subsequently reported (using different sources) in the London Review of Books on 17 April 2014, Lehmann’s even-earlier investigation found that the U.S. had set up the chemical attack, and that it was actually carried out by Islamic jihadists that the U.S. itself was supplying in Syria, through Turkey. Lehmann reported:<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2015/09/08/u-s-drops-bombs-eu-gets-refugees-aamp-bl" target="_new">U.S. Drops Bombs; EU Gets Refugees & Blame. This is insane.</a><br />
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<hr />
<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>How Neocons Destabilized Europe | Consortiumnews</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Exclusive: The neocon prescription of endless “regime change” is spreading chaos across the Middle East and now into Europe, yet the neocons still control the mainstream U.S. narrative and thus have diagnosed the problem as not enough “regime change,” as Robert Parry reports.<br />
<br />
By Robert Parry<br />
<br />
The refugee chaos that is now pushing deep into Europe – dramatized by gut-wrenching photos of Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey – started with the cavalier ambitions of American neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks who planned to remake the Middle East and other parts of the world through “regime change.”<br />
<br />
Instead of the promised wonders of “democracy promotion” and “human rights,” what these “anti-realists” have accomplished is to spread death, destruction and destabilization across the Middle East and parts of Africa and now into Ukraine and the heart of Europe. Yet, since these neocon forces still control the Official Narrative, their explanations get top billing – such as that there hasn’t been enough “regime change.”<br />
<br />
For instance, The Washington Post’s neocon editorial page editor Fred Hiatt on Monday blamed “realists” for the cascading catastrophes. Hiatt castigated them and President Barack Obama for not intervening more aggressively in Syria to depose President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime neocon target for “regime change.”<br />
<br />
But the truth is that this accelerating spread of human suffering can be traced back directly to the unchecked influence of the neocons and their liberal fellow-travelers who have resisted political compromise and, in the case of Syria, blocked any realistic efforts to work out a power-sharing agreement between Assad and his political opponents, those who are not terrorists.<br />
<br />
Complete story at - <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2015/09/07/how-neocons-destabilized-europe/" target="_new">How Neocons Destabilized Europe | Consortiumnews</a><br />
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<div style="font-size: 15px;">
<strong>• Empire Watch •</strong></div>
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Lebanon Protest Leaders Reveal Connections To Western Color Revolution Apparatus</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
By Brandon Turbeville<br />
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Over the past few weeks, Lebanon has found itself embroiled in protests and social unrest the likes of which it has not experienced since 2005. The original issue, legitimate as it may be, surrounded the issue of lack of garbage disposal, yet the protests were soon infiltrated and morphed into an exercise of public rage over shadowy issues like “government corruption.” These protests have gone from peaceful demonstrations to violent clashes between demonstrators and police, with “infiltrators” largely responsible for provocative behavior.<br />
<br />
Sectarian tensions are now beginning to surface, a very real fear and dangerous proposition in Lebanon, with members of the “movement” typically resorting to association with tribal identity groups (Christians with Christians, Sunni Muslims with Sunni Muslims, etc.) even during the protests.<br />
<br />
As I mentioned in my article, “Color Revolution In Lebanon Designed To Weaken Hezbollah, Syria, Iran,” all of these aspects – shadowy reasons like “government corruption” for protesting, lack of demands, violence, and infiltrators – are hallmarks of a color revolution. So are the clever marketing strategies of “Branding” that see a protest movement, allegedly organic and spread across so many differing and various sectarian groups, develop a mutually agreed upon name for itself so early on.<br />
The most telling aspect of whether or not a movement is actually a color revolution, however, is the “leadership” of that movement and the connections that leadership may have to the color revolution apparatus.<br />
<br />
In the case of the You Stink! Movement, those connections are becoming increasingly visible.<br />
Assadd Thebian is represented as one of the leaders of the You Stink! Movement by a number of Western press outlets and, in the Lebanese Press outlet, the Daily Star, he is described as being the “co-founder” of You Stink! Yet, far from being a truly organic Lebanese revolutionary, Thebian is closely connected to the United States Department of State.<br />
<br />
Thebian is a participant in the Middle East Partnership Initiative, a program directed by the US State Department for the purposes of directing NGOs in foreign countries in order to facilitate US foreign policy. In other words, the MEPI is yet another program and initiative in the color revolution apparatus.<br />
<br />
Complete story at - <a href="http://www.activistpost.com/2015/09/lebanon-protest-leaders-reveal-connections-to-western-color-revolution-apparatus.html" target="_new">Lebanon Protest Leaders Reveal Connections To Western Color Revolution Apparatus</a><br />
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Read This Before the Media Uses a Drowned Refugee Boy to Start Another War</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Dan Sanchez September 8, 2015<br />
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(ANTIMEDIA) A baby boy turned to flotsam. Washed up on the shore, face down in the mud. His family, refugees from Syria’s civil war, had tried to reach Greece, but their over-crowded raft overturned in the Mediterranean Sea and he drowned along with his brother and mother. The viral image of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless little body on a Turkish beach has shaken the conscience of the West and wrenched America’s attention to the refugee crisis now rocking Europe.<br />
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Newsflash to the oblivious citizenry of the power-projecting “free world”: this is what war looks like. This times ten million. That which is mere “foreign policy” to you and your government is desperation and death to those on the receiving end of it.<br />
<br />
Children just as innocent and precious as Aylan are being driven into the sea in Libya, incinerated by drone in Pakistan, or starved to death in Yemen all the time, and it is all on your dime. And every single instance creates a sight just as achingly forlorn and horrifically tragic as the one above, even if it isn’t photographed and seen by millions.<br />
<br />
Aylan drowned in the arms of his father, who had been desperately trying to keep his head above water. The prelude to the disaster probably looked something like this photo of another Syrian refugee family.<br />
<br />
It actually shows an arrival and not a departure. Still, especially for anyone with young children, the picture is a punch in the gut. It only takes a shred of empathy to instantly imagine how the father must feel. Overwhelmed and near the end of his rope. His daughter’s arms wrapped around his neck. His son’s face buried in his chest. Both looking to him for protection and provision he ultimately might not be able to give. It is no wonder this visceral photograph has also gone viral.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://theantimedia.org/read-this-before-the-media-uses-a-drowned-refugee-boy-to-start-another-war/" target="_new">Read This Before the Media Uses a Drowned Refugee Boy to Start Another War</a><br />
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<div style="font-size: 15px;">
<strong>• Miscellaneous •</strong></div>
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>"Some People Just Don't Fit In The Economy" Buffett Explains: "We'll Send Them Off To Afghanistan" | Zero Hedge</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Not to be outdone by his partner Charlie Munger (who offended many with his comments that "gold is a great thing to sew onto your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939,"), Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett - having already taken on Europe, comparing Greece to a "dog peeing on the carpet" of Europe, suggesting Germany stop "rewarding behavior you want to get rid of" - takes aim at the military. Speaking on Bloomberg TV, the octagenerian oracle of offense just unfriended every American veteran...<br />
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"You want everybody educated to their potential. You want people to reach their potential. That still won't work for some people in a highly developed market system.<br />
<br />
I mean if this were a sports-based system, you could give me a PhD in football, and I could practice eight hours a day, and I might be able to carry the water from, not onto the field, but from the locker room to the bench. There's just some people don't fit well into a highly skilled market-based economy.<br />
<br />
They're perfectly decent citizens. We'll send them off to Afghanistan, but they are not going to command a big price."<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
So just the words of a funny old man who is losing his marbles, or an elitist "crony" oligarch who knows there are no consequences for his words or actions?<br />
<br />
On the bright side, at least he did not mention illegal immigrants.<br />
<br />
Complete story at - <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-08/some-people-just-dont-fit-economy-buffett-explains-we-send-them-afghanistan" target="_new">"Some People Just Don't Fit In The Economy" Buffett Explains: "We'll Send Them Off To Afghanistan" | Zero Hedge</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-12377192932728543202015-09-11T11:53:00.000+03:002015-09-11T11:53:39.228+03:00War and Politics - September 11, 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong>Following The IMF Billions In And Out Of Ukraine </strong><br />
<strong>Kiev Understands Impossibility of Regaining Crimea - Parliament Speaker </strong><br />
<strong>Ukrainian economist: Goodbye Russia, goodbye economy </strong><br />
<strong>EU president: Refugee crisis is start of real exodus </strong><br />
<strong>Fox News Doesn’t Get it, Blames Russia for Refugee Crisis in EU </strong><br />
<strong>Are Moldova Bank Fraud Protests a 'Creation' of US State Dep't? </strong><br />
<strong>60% of Japanese youth believe the atomic bomb was dropped by the USSR </strong><br />
<strong>Washington Post tells whoppers about Greece and Argentina </strong><br />
<strong>Exceptional Pain Dispensed by the Indispensable Nation </strong><br />
<strong>‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’: The Loss of Our Freedoms in the Wake of 9/11 </strong><br />
<strong>The Long Road From 9/11</strong><br />
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<a name='more'></a><strong><br /></strong>
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<strong>• Russia/Ukraine •</strong></div>
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<strong>Following The IMF Billions In And Out Of Ukraine | Dances With Bears</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
By John Helmer, Moscow<br />
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In Kiev on Sunday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko complained that he isn’t getting cash from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fast enough. Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, told him to stick to the Fund conditions, but she also promised to go soft on whether the IMF will stop the money if Ukraine decides not to repay the $3 billion bond owed for repayment to Russia in December.<br />
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“So far, we have received only 38 percent of the total funds earmarked [for Ukraine] under the Fund’s program,” Poroshenko claimed at a press conference following the round of meetings with the IMF delegation. “We have agreed on a strict schedule,” he added, referring to the first two payments the IMF has transferred to Kiev, totalling $6.7 billion so far, in what is being called the Extended Fund Facility (EFF); this replaced last year’s aborted Stand-By Agreement (SBA). The Ukrainian president implied he wants to go faster than the IMF schedule, published in August, allows.<br />
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Source: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2015/cr15218.pdf -- page 41<br />
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The Fund schedule provides for the next payment to Kiev of $1.7 billion on September 15, after the IMF staff complete their assessment of the Ukrainian government’s compliance with the “performance criteria” as of end-June.<br />
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In fact, according to Poroshenko, the timing has slipped; there will be no Fund payment this month; and he doesn’t like it. “The IMF mission is due to arrive in September and will work here until October 2, and we have agreed that after its work is done it may present its offers at a meeting of the IMF board of directors as early as in October.” That is an admission that there won’t be fresh cash this month, and maybe not until October, or November.<br />
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The assembled reporters from the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg failed to detect the slippage, so noone asked why.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14037" target="_new">Following The IMF Billions In And Out Of Ukraine | Dances With Bears</a><br />
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<hr />
<br />
<strong>Kiev Understands Impossibility of Regaining Crimea - Parliament Speaker</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
The speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament claims that Kiev understands the impossibility of regaining Crimea.<br />
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Kiev understands the impossibility of regaining Crimea, Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said Tuesday. "I believe that Ukraine understands that the Crimean peninsula will not return to it. It will have to come to terms with this situation, as it is the will of the people of Crimea and Sevastopol," Matvienko told the Izvestiya newspaper.<br />
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According to Matvienko, Crimea has fully adapted to being a part of Russia.<br />
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Following a 96-percent vote in March 2014, Crimea reunified with Russia after over 60 years of Ukrainian rule.<br />
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The republic’s secession – declared illegitimate by the West and Kiev – and the subsequent conflict in southeast Ukraine has drawn several rounds of anti-Russia sanctions from the United States, the European Union and other allied nations.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150908/1026713172.html" target="_new">Kiev Understands Impossibility of Regaining Crimea - Parliament Speaker</a><br />
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<hr />
<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Ukrainian economist: Goodbye Russia, goodbye economy - Fort Russ</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
September 7, 2015<br />
Translated from French by Tom Winter<br />
Original title: Ukraine confronted with a massive disindustrialization<br />
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Breaking ties with Russia and other countries of the Eurasian Economic Community has caused many companies to close their doors, says an expert on Ukrainian economy.<br />
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The fall in production recorded in several branches of Ukrainian industry is a very bad sign, said Ukrainian economist Alexandr Koltunovich on the digital information portal "Ukrainian choice".<br />
After analyzing the data on industrial development in Ukraine, Koltunovich indicated that production levels had dropped in mining (23.4%), automotive (22.1%), textiles (8.5 %), iron and steel (25.4%) and in refineries and companies producing coal (38.5%).<br />
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"As we can see, Ukraine has been facing a process of de-industrialisation for two years now. On one hand, the breakdown of cooperation with Russia and other countries of the Eurasian Economic Community has caused many industrial high-tech companies to close. Other joint ventures are also on the brink of bankruptcy. Millions of Ukrainians have been left without work," noted the expert in economics. At the same time, according to the specialist, relevant government policy is "poor, populist, pseudo-economic" and a total failure.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/09/ukrainian-economist-goodbye-russia.html" target="_new">Ukrainian economist: Goodbye Russia, goodbye economy - Fort Russ</a><br />
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<strong>• EU Death Watch •</strong></div>
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>EU president: Refugee crisis is start of real exodus - Al Jazeera English</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
EU President Donald Tusk has warned that the refugee crisis affecting Europe was part of an "exodus" from war-torn countries that could last years.<br />
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Thousands of refugees reach Germany Speaking to the Bruegel Institute think-tank in Brussels on Monday, Tusk said the current movement of people mainly from the Middle East would be a "problem for many years to come".<br />
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"The present wave of migration is not a one-time incident but the beginning of a real exodus," Tusk said.<br />
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European leaders are scrambling for solutions as bloody conflicts in mainly Syria and Iraq send hundreds of thousands of refugees on dangerous voyages through the Balkans and across the Mediterranean to the 28-nation EU.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/eu-president-refugee-crisis-start-real-exodus-150908041234157.html" target="_new">EU president: Refugee crisis is start of real exodus - Al Jazeera English</a><br />
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Fox News Doesn’t Get it, Blames Russia for Refugee Crisis in EU</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Oh, Fox News. We all love your unintentionally funny videos with your experts oftentimes talking out of the lower part of their bodies.<br />
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There is one thing Fox News has learned to do well over the years — that's to blame Russia for all the bad stuff that happens in the world. The Syrian war breaks out — quick to blame the Russians, the US government organized a coup in Ukraine — of course the Russians were behind it, the channel screams. What's next, Fox News? Perhaps the Russians also started the Ebola virus or were behind the extinction of the dinosaurs?<br />
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This time, it was no different after Fox News decided to tackle the refugee crisis in Europe. KT McFarland, a Fox News National Security Analyst invited to talk on the issue, was quick to blame… that's right, none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin for creating the refugee crisis in Europe.<br />
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Where is the logic? Well, there is none to be found, as it's often the case with Fox News. The truth is that Russia has always said it wanted to end the Syrian conflict. Moscow supported the legitimately elected Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and warned Western countries against arming various militant factions, some of whom ended up joining Islamic State, which in turn started chaos in the Middle East that resulted in the influx of refugees to Europe.<br />
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Whether al-Assad is a good guy or a bad guy isn't the point here. The point is that during his presidency before the Syrian civil war started, refugees in Syria simply didn't exist, as there was no war and no ISIL militants running around and cutting people's heads off.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://sputniknews.com/us/20150907/1026710587/fox-news-blames-russia-for-refugee-crisis.html" target="_new">Fox News Doesn’t Get it, Blames Russia for Refugee Crisis in EU</a><br />
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<div style="font-size: 15px;">
<strong>• Empire Watch •</strong></div>
<hr />
<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Are Moldova Bank Fraud Protests a 'Creation' of US State Dep't?</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Anti-government protests in the Republic of Moldova are a creation of the US State Department that has gone out of control, a US anti-war and Democratic Party activist told Sputnik on Monday.<br />
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MOSCOW (Sputnik), Svetlana Alexandrova – Mass protests erupted in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau on Sunday to demand the government’s resignation, sparked by last year’s disappearance of 15 percent of the country’s total gross domestic product from three national banks.<br />
<br />
"It's possible that the new movement in Moldova is to the US State Department what Frankenstein's monster was to Dr. Frankenstein – a creation no longer under its creator's control," David Swanson speculated.<br />
<br />
Swanson, who co-founded the WarIsACrime.org website and directs the Washington, DC section of the Democrats.com online community of progressive activists, argued for greater autonomy in Moldova even if his theory proves otherwise.<br />
<br />
"In any case, we ought to assist them in such and agree on a policy of non-interference by all outside nations and alliances," Swanson stressed.<br />
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Swanson further cited the former Soviet republic’s geographical positioning – wedged between Ukraine and Romania – as a potential target of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastward expansion.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150907/1026708771.html" target="_new">Are Moldova Bank Fraud Protests a 'Creation' of US State Dep't?</a><br />
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>American propaganda success: 60% of Japanese youth believe the atomic bomb was dropped by the USSR - Fort Russ</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda<br />
Translated by Kristina Rus<br />
<br />
Mikhail Delyagin (a prominent Russian author, politician and economist): When we take offence at the Japanese about their inadequacy on the Kuril islands, our offence is directed at the wrong target. We must remember about the Americans. They suppress everything they don't like in Japan without any sentiments. This is hegemony and domination and it brings it's fruits.<br />
<br />
If you go to the museum of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki you will not find a mention of who dropped the atomic bomb. It's not there.<br />
<br />
Host: It fell by itself...<br />
<br />
Delyagin: A bomb fell by itself, a bomb was dropped, but by whom - sorry, you are not supposed to know.<br />
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Morevover, there is sociological research, which shows that over 60% of Japanese youth under 26 believe that the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan by the USSR.<br />
<br />
Complete story at - <a href="http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/09/american-propaganda-success-60-of.html" target="_new">American propaganda success: 60% of Japanese youth believe the atomic bomb was dropped by the USSR - Fort Russ</a><br />
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>ZCommunications » Washington Post tells whoppers about Greece and Argentina</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
This WAPO article by Michael Birnbaum and Anthony Faiola said<br />
<br />
“But Argentina differs from Greece in deep ways. Argentina is one of the world’s top 25 economies, a commodity-rich nation that exported its way to growth with soybeans, corn and heavy industries such as steel and cars. “<br />
<br />
Aside from putting forth the the magic soybean thesis to explain Argentina’s recovery after its 2001 default, a thesis Weisbrot completely rebutted here, Argentina did not export its way out of a depression. It recovered primarily by breaking free of IMF “advice”. Argentina is also nowhere close to being a “top 25 economy” today, never mind in 2001 when it was in very deep trouble.<br />
<br />
Also, by the typically used measures of GDP (which rank an economy’s size and wealth) Greece is a richer country than Argentina even after several years of catastrophic Troika rule.<br />
<br />
I have to give the WAPO credit for being able to pack so many howlers into only two sentences.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="https://zcomm.org/zblogs/washington-post-tells-whoppers-about-greece-and-argentina/" target="_new">ZCommunications » Washington Post tells whoppers about Greece and Argentina</a><br />
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<div style="font-size: 15px;">
<strong>• 9/11 •</strong></div>
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<hr />
<br />
<strong>Tomgram: Engelhardt, Exceptional Pain Dispensed by the Indispensable Nation | TomDispatch</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Fourteen Years Later, Improbable World By Tom Engelhardt<br />
<br />
<b>Mantra for 9/11</b><br />
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Fourteen years later and do you even believe it? Did we actually live it? Are we still living it? And how improbable is that?<br />
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Fourteen years of wars, interventions, assassinations, torture, kidnappings, black sites, the growth of the American national security state to monumental proportions, and the spread of Islamic extremism across much of the Greater Middle East and Africa. Fourteen years of astronomical expense, bombing campaigns galore, and a military-first foreign policy of repeated defeats, disappointments, and disasters. Fourteen years of a culture of fear in America, of endless alarms and warnings, as well as dire predictions of terrorist attacks. Fourteen years of the burial of American democracy (or rather its recreation as a billionaire’s playground and a source of spectacle and entertainment but not governance). Fourteen years of the spread of secrecy, the classification of every document in sight, the fierce prosecution of whistleblowers, and a faith-based urge to keep Americans “secure” by leaving them in the dark about what their government is doing. Fourteen years of the demobilization of the citizenry. Fourteen years of the rise of the warrior corporation, the transformation of war and intelligence gathering into profit-making activities, and the flocking of countless private contractors to the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, and too many other parts of the national security state to keep track of. Fourteen years of our wars coming home in the form of PTSD, the militarization of the police, and the spread of war-zone technology like drones and stingrays to the “homeland.” Fourteen years of that un-American word “homeland.” Fourteen years of the expansion of surveillance of every kind and of the development of a global surveillance system whose reach -- from foreign leaders to tribal groups in the backlands of the planet -- would have stunned those running the totalitarian states of the twentieth century. Fourteen years of the financial starvation of America’s infrastructure and still not a single mile of high-speed rail built anywhere in the country. Fourteen years in which to launch Afghan War 2.0, Iraq Wars 2.0 and 3.0, and Syria War 1.0. Fourteen years, that is, of the improbable made probable.<br />
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Fourteen years later, thanks a heap, Osama bin Laden. With a small number of supporters, $400,000-$500,000, and 19 suicidal hijackers, most of them Saudis, you pulled off a geopolitical magic trick of the first order. Think of it as wizardry from the theater of darkness. In the process, you did “change everything” or at least enough of everything to matter. Or rather, you goaded us into doing what you had neither the resources nor the ability to do. So let’s give credit where it’s due. Psychologically speaking, the 9/11 attacks represented precision targeting of a kind American leaders would only dream of in the years to follow. I have no idea how, but you clearly understood us so much better than we understood you or, for that matter, ourselves. You knew just which buttons of ours to push so that we would essentially carry out the rest of your plan for you. While you sat back and waited in Abbottabad, we followed the blueprints for your dreams and desires as if you had planned it and, in the process, made the world a significantly different (and significantly grimmer) place.<br />
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Fourteen years later, we don’t even grasp what we did.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176041/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_exceptional_pain_dispensed_by_the_indispensable_nation/" target="_new">Tomgram: Engelhardt, Exceptional Pain Dispensed by the Indispensable Nation | TomDispatch</a><br />
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<strong>The Rutherford Institute :: ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’: The Loss of Our Freedoms in the Wake of 9/11</strong><br />
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By John W. Whitehead September 08, 2015<br />
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“Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.” ― - Alan Moore, V for Vendetta<br />
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What began with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in October 2001 has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse. Since then, we have been terrorized, traumatized, and acclimated to life in the American Surveillance State.<br />
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The bogeyman’s names and faces change over time, but the end result remains the same: our unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has transitioned us to life in a society where government agents routinely practice violence on the citizens while, in conjunction with the Corporate State, spying on the most intimate details of our personal lives.<br />
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Ironically, the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks occurs just days before the 228th anniversary of the ratification of our Constitution. Yet while there is much to mourn about the loss of our freedoms in the years since 9/11, there is virtually nothing to celebrate.<br />
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The Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—which has historically served as the bulwark from government abuse.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/give_me_liberty_or_give_me_death_the_loss_of_our_freedoms_in_the_wake_" target="_new">The Rutherford Institute :: ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’: The Loss of Our Freedoms in the Wake of 9/11</a><br />
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<strong>The Long Road From 9/11 by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com</strong><br />
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I heard it before I saw it: the horror in the voice of a TV anchor on the morning of September 11, 2001. As my father shook me awake – “Wake up, look at this!” – I shot straight up in my bed and beheld the scene unfolding on the television screen: a plane plowing straight into a skyscraper and coming out the other side, sheering off the top like Death wielding a scythe.<br />
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I had arrived in New York a few hours earlier on a plane from California, on the first leg of a trip to Serbia. I was slated to travel with a delegation of writers who had been invited to that recently-bombed country by the government of President Vojislav Kostunica, the liberal nationalist successor to the malevolent Slobodan Milosevic. As virtually the only visible opposition to Bill Clinton’s “humanitarian” crusade to establish the state of Kosovo – today the heroin and human trafficking capital of Europe – Antiwar.com was well known in Serbia, and I was looking forward to visiting the crime scene. But as I watched the drama of 9/11 unfold, I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere.<br />
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As news of the attack on the Pentagon was broadcast by a clearly panicked newscaster a shock of pure fear ran up and down my spine. I recalled that the Indian Point nuclear power plant wasn’t all that far away: my father had worked there at some point in his career. I imagined that it probably wasn’t all that closely guarded – and the hair on my neck stood straight up.<br />
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Day One of the Long War was dawning.<br />
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In the days and months to come, a pall fell over the nation as the smoke emanating from the isle of Manhattan spread out and seemed to cover the whole country. People forget the atmosphere of those dark days: the war hysteria welling up in a collective spasm of fearful vituperation, seeking the closest target. Since Osama bin Laden and the hijackers weren’t available, this hate campaign was directed at anyone who dared question the narrative of a blameless and simon-pure America ambushed by demons.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/09/10/the-long-road-from-911/" target="_new">The Long Road From 9/11 by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com</a><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-22817984432407711262015-09-10T16:00:00.000+03:002015-09-11T11:41:48.509+03:00War and Politics - September 10, 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong>Kiev Chief of Staff: Intelligence reports have 90% margin of error </strong><br />
<strong>New Violence in Kiev - But Nobody Seems to Care Much </strong><br />
<strong>Odessa governor says state machinery in Ukraine demoralized, power may change </strong><br />
<strong>As Major Culprit in Creating Crisis, US Rebuked for Failing Refugees </strong><br />
<strong>Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: Secret Back Story Reveals Why The West Cannot Topple His Government </strong><br />
<strong>Blowback on a NATO beach </strong><br />
<strong>The March of Shame </strong><br />
<strong>There Goes Europe</strong><br />
<strong> US State Dept fails to explain Washington's decision to extend sanctions on Russia </strong><br />
<strong>Something Major Is On The Horizon For This Fall. </strong><br />
<strong>Too Many Big Chess Pieces Have Been Positioning Themselves Around The Table </strong><br />
<strong>The Empire Files — The Rise of History's Biggest Empire</strong><br />
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<a name='more'></a><strong><br /></strong>
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<strong>• Russia/Ukraine •</strong></h3>
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<strong>Kiev Chief of Staff: Intelligence reports have 90% margin of error - Fort Russ</strong><br />
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Translated from German by Tom Winter<br />
Original headline: Ukraine's Chief of Staff rates intelligence reports from eastern Ukraine 90% wrong<br />
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Viktor Muzhenko, head of the Ukrainian General Staff, has assessed the clearance rate of military and intelligence in the "anti-terrorist operation" in the Donbass. According to his remarks, 90 percent of the information collected on the situation in eastern Ukraine would have to be counted as false.<br />
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This perhaps explains assertions of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about the alledged "200,000 Russian soldiers" in the Donbass.<br />
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One might think that Viktor Muzhenko's declaration resembled a late admission. It took more than a year took for the head of the General Staff to designate Kiev's accusations against Russia as wrong. "There are intelligence reports and briefings data. Intelligence reports are what we get, and the data are, what the reports confirm" explained Muzhenko, in the best soldierly bureaucratic form, in an interview with the Ukrainian newspaper ZN.UA, and went on:<br />
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"Last summer 90 percent of the information through official briefings re the Anti-Terrorist Operation -- was wrong." The head of the General Staff said only five to ten percent of the information received was credible. At the same time Muzhenko accused the self-defense militias in Donbass of "active disinformation tactics."<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://fortruss.blogspot.fr/2015/09/kiev-chief-of-staff-intelligence.html" target="_new">Kiev Chief of Staff: Intelligence reports have 90% margin of error - Fort Russ</a><br />
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<strong>New Violence in Kiev - But Nobody Seems to Care Much - Mail Online - Peter Hitchens blog</strong><br />
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Forgive me for mentioning it, but serious violence has returned to Kiev, scene (in February 2014) of the lawless overthrow of the legitimate President of Ukraine. Viktor Yanukovych, by a violent, armed mob. For a list of the 18 police officers incontestably killed in the 2014 events, whose deaths are proof that this was not a wholly one-sided clash between ruthless state and peaceful, unarmed people, see here <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_during_Euromaidan#cite_note-MSV-03.02.14-1">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_during_Euromaidan#cite_note-MSV-03.02.14-1</a><br />
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This supposedly spontaneous events of 2014 (in my experience as a revolutionary, spontaneity takes a lot of organising) , in which serving foreign politicians and diplomats openly showed their partiality towards the demonstrators, and the legitimate President was unconstitutionally removed from office, has now passed into myth as a laudable exercise in idealistic and disinterested people power, supposedly aimed at ending the corruption and general squalor of Ukraine’s oligarch-dominated state.<br />
To which one can only respond with helpless if bitter laughter, as the resulting government is actually headed by an oligarch and entirely dominated by them, and if Ukraine has since ceased in any important way to be Olympically corrupt, then I have to say I have seen no reports of this.<br />
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Now, I have from time to time, in many debate s on this subject, pointed out that grave danger in which the Kiev government finds itself. Having come to power through mob violence, it has no real moral protection from falling in the same way.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/09/new-violence-in-kiev-but-nobody-seems-to-care-much.html" target="_new">New Violence in Kiev - But Nobody Seems to Care Much - Mail Online - Peter Hitchens blog</a><br />
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<strong>TASS: World - Odessa governor says state machinery in Ukraine demoralized, power may change</strong><br />
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KIEV, September 8. /TASS/. State machinery in Ukraine is demoralized and the fact may open the road to a change of state power, believes former Georgian President turned Odessa region governor Mikhail Saakashvili.<br />
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"A big vacuum is emerging due to the weakness of state machinery and the forces of law and order maintenance," he said live on the air of ICTV television channel. "A dangerous situation is taking shape, as all the groups surfacing now and having nothing in common with true volunteers may get a temptation one day to say it’s they who are real power."<br />
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"A general loss of legitimacy of the political class is taking place," Saakashvili said. "It’s just enough to look at the returns from the most recent opinion polls, which show that practically the entire political class is sliding downhill."<br />
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Simultaneously, Saakashvili believes the events in the sub-Carpathian city of Mukachevo where the militants affiliated with the Right Sector ultra-far-right grouping staged an exchange of fire and the protests in front of the Verkhovna Rada building, in the course of which a fighter affiliated with one of the so-called ‘volunteer battalions’ hurled a hand grenade at the at the police cordoning the building off showed that the forces of law and order also fell short of coping with their functions.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://tass.ru/en/world/819453" target="_new">TASS: World - Odessa governor says state machinery in Ukraine demoralized, power may change</a><br />
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<strong>• Middle East •</strong></h3>
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<strong>As Major Culprit in Creating Crisis, US Rebuked for Failing Refugees | Common Dreams </strong><br />
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As refugees are stranded at train stations, attacked by riot police, and killed during the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, Europe's failure to address the rising humanitarian crisis is being met with global outrage and sorrow.<br />
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Now, many are also looking across the Atlantic to the United States, where observers say key responsibility for the crisis lies—not only because the country is lagging in its humanitarian response, but also because its war policies lie at the root of the ongoing displacement.<br />
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"Iraqis, Syrians, Palestinians, and Libyans are not running away from their homes because of a natural disaster," Raed Jarrar, expert on Middle East politics and government relations manager for the American Friends Service Committee, told Common Dreams. "The U.S. should see this crisis as partially caused by its own actions in the region."<br />
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White House press secretary Josh Earnest said at a press briefing on Thursday that the United States sees no "impending policy changes" in light of the worsening crisis. He indicated the U.S. plan will remain focused on lending assistance from afar while letting EU nations take the lead on confronting the crisis. "There is certainly capacity in Europe to deal with this problem," Earnst said, "and the United States certainly stands with our European partners."<br />
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Since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in March 2011, the U.S. estimates it has contributed over $4 billion in aid to those impacted by the conflict. That figure, Earnest declared, is "certainly more than any other country has done."<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/04/major-culprit-creating-crisis-us-rebuked-failing-refugees" target="_new">As Major Culprit in Creating Crisis, US Rebuked for Failing Refugees | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community</a><br />
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<strong>Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: Secret Back Story Reveals Why The West Cannot Topple His Government | SOTN: Alternative News & Commentary</strong><br />
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Why is the Syrian President relentlessly demonized by the Anglo-American Axis?<br />
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Just like President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Syria’s President Bashar Hafez al-Assad has been the victim of unrelenting character assassination and false reporting by the Western Mainstream Media (MSM). Many of the MSM outlets throughout the Anglo-American Axis (AAA) have published one false story after another in a concerted effort to turn the entire world against him. And for what?<br />
Why are they so determined to overthrow one of the very few righteous leaders in the Middle East?<br />
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The true answers to this question are as profound as they are far-reaching. On a quite superficial level, Assad represents the proverbial skunk at the garden party. The Anglo-American Axis has a set agenda and predetermined schedule; and, they will not let any nation or political leader get in its way.<br />
A trained physician like Assad was thought to be the least of their (AAA) troubles during the choreographed Arab Spring events. After all, doctors everywhere take the sacred vow known as the Hippocratic Oath — “First, do no harm.”<br />
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The Israeli-Franco-Anglo-American power-brokers, who have controlled the destiny of most of the Middle Eastern nations for decades, have entered a new and desperate phase of conquest.<br />
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Unfortunately for the entire Mideast, that desperation manifested as the fomenting of a number of revolutionary Arab Spring events. The resulting widespread death and destruction reflects just how determined the AAA is to advance their misguided agenda.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=13286#more-13286" target="_new">Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: Secret Back Story Reveals Why The West Cannot Topple His Government | SOTN: Alternative News & Commentary</a><br />
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<strong>Blowback on a NATO beach — RT Op-Edge</strong><br />
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We’ve had it coming. And when it came, virtually the whole planet reacted with stunned silence. Sometimes it takes just a photograph to put a noxiously complex version of hell in perspective.<br />
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Little did Nilufer Demir, 29, the female photojournalist of the Turkish Dogan News agency know that the moment she saw little Aylan Kurdi, 3, washed ashore at the Ali Hoca Burnu beach near Bodrum, she would be making history.<br />
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Aylan is alone, as if suspended by the immense solitude of death, just as his family’s dream of offering him a new life in a new continent away from death and destruction was about to be fulfilled. It’s as if his lone lifeless body at the shores of a NATO beach was also about to prefigure the death of Europe – or the death of a once pan-European dream of solidarity and compassion.<br />
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Hannah Arendt once wrote movingly about the banality of evil, referring to the mechanism of fascism and Nazism. Aylan’s lifeless body now illustrates the banality of an evil he was trying to flee: the “arc of instability”, a Pentagon self-fulfilling prophecy.<br />
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So to put hell in perspective we must retrace some steps of the arc.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.rt.com/op-edge/314411-refugees-violence-syria-europe/" target="_new">Blowback on a NATO beach — RT Op-Edge</a><br />
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<h3 style="font-size: 15px; text-align: left;">
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<strong>• EU Death Watch •</strong></h3>
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<strong>The March of Shame | The Irate Greek</strong><br />
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They are people, like us.<br />
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They are young, they are old, they are men, women and children, they are lawyers or masons or doctors or barbers or plumbers or computer engineers. They are people, and they are coming.<br />
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Their countries fell apart, their houses were destroyed, their neighbours died. They lost friends and relatives, they lost their loved ones, they lost a limb. They fled. They took trucks or buses or cars or bicycles. They walked. They were smuggled, assaulted, abused, kidnapped on the way. They crossed a border, or two, or three. They were detained, arrested, beaten. They were parked in camps. They were told to live a life without a future, they were told to wait until their country is fixed, they were told to wait with no end in sight.<br />
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And then they came.<br />
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Of course they came.<br />
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They got on those rickety boats to cross the sea. Some of them were pushed back. Some of them sank and had to return to the coast. Some of them drowned. But they kept coming, and instead of greeting them with open arms, our governments screamed, “we’re being overrun!”<br />
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Yes, we’re being overrun. It was about time it happened.<br />
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Because as much as you expect people to stay put and die out of sight, out of mind, they have other plans for their life. As a matter of fact, they want a life worth living. And they are coming to get it.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="https://theirategreek.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/the-march-of-shame/" target="_new">The March of Shame | The Irate Greek</a><br />
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<strong>There Goes Europe | KUNSTLER</strong><br />
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The desperate wish in what is loosely called the West to at least appear morally correct is unfortunately over-matched by the desperation of people fleeing unstable, overpopulated places outside the West, and it is a fiasco beyond even the events of the moment.<br />
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The refugee / immigrant crisis around the Mediterranean is a preview of a horror show to which there is no end in sight, and is certain to escalate. So anyone who indulges in fantasies about organizing an orderly, rational distribution of displaced persons for the current wave, is badly missing the point. Wave beyond wave awaits after the this one. And then what will the well-intentioned sentimentalists say? We wanted to do the right thing… we meant well… we cried when we saw the little boy dead on the beach….<br />
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Yes, the tragic intrusions of the US military in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and elsewhere have been reckless and stupid. But that is not the whole story. The desert nations of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have populations abnormally swollen by a century of oil-and-gas-based agriculture, really by the benefits of Modernity in general. Now that the oil age is chugging to an unruly crack-up, and Modernity with it, and the earth’s climate is doing wonky things, and the rich nations to the north have faked their finances to the point of bankruptcy, well, circumstances have changed.<br />
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In the years ahead, populations will be fleeing and shifting from many more unfavorable corners of the world. The pressures are mounting all over. Alas, the richer nations in which the fleeing poor aspire to gain a foothold, will also be contending with the disabling effects of a universal economic contraction — the winding down of the techno-industrial system and the global economy with it. That process has the potential to shatter political unions, overthrow established social orders, and provoke wars between the demoralized countries who still possess dangerous military hardware. At the least, it will produce economic conditions in Europe and North America probably worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/there-goes-europe/" target="_new">There Goes Europe | KUNSTLER</a><br />
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<h3 style="font-size: 15px; text-align: left;">
<strong>• Empire Watch •</strong></h3>
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<strong>US State Dept fails to explain Washington's decision to extend sanctions on Russia — RT News</strong><br />
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Washington has extended its sanctions against Russia, but the US State Department failed to offer specifics of what exactly Moscow did wrong this time. It referred to a “larger picture,” which supposedly proves Russia’s guilt in destabilizing Ukraine. On Wednesday, the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) explained that it took action to sanction 29 Russian entities to ensure the “efficacy of existing sanctions... for violating international law and fueling the conflict in eastern Ukraine.”<br />
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Considering that the situation in eastern Ukraine has been unusually calm recently, RT’s Gayane Chichakyan asked State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner what Russian violations now warrant such tightening and strengthening of the sanctions list.<br />
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“We’ve seen ongoing violations of the ceasefire and I know we’ve been back and forth on that, or who is to blame for that. We believe the preponderance of the ceasefire violations are on the part of separatist forces, again supplied and also helped by Russian military,” Toner said.<br />
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Asked to provide any specifics on the ceasefire violations, the State Department deputy spokesperson referred RT correspondent to the OSCE and offered to look at “larger picture,” rather than focusing on specifics.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.rt.com/news/314398-russia-sanctions-state-department/" target="_new">US State Dept fails to explain Washington's decision to extend sanctions on Russia — RT News</a><br />
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<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Something Major Is On The Horizon For This Fall. Too Many Big Chess Pieces Have Been Positioning Themselves Around The Table</strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
Russians supporting legal government in Syria, US supporting rebels. Russia supporting rebels in Ukraine and USA supporting ukrainian goverment! This just political game, but simple people suffering!<br />
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COLD, COLD WAR: USA builds Arctic spy network as RussiaChina increase presence…<br />
As China and Russia boost their military presence in the resource-rich far north, U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to study potential threats in the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War, a sign of the region’s growing strategic importance.<br />
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Over the last 14 months, most of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have assigned analysts to work full time on the Arctic. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently convened a “strategy board” to bring the analysts together to share their findings.<br />
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In addition to relying on U.S. spy satellites orbiting overhead and Navy sensors deep in the frigid waters, the analysts process raw intelligence from a recently overhauled Canadian listening post near the North Pole and a Norwegian surveillance ship called the Marjata, which is now being upgraded at a U.S. Navy shipyard in southern Virginia.<br />
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The administration’s growing concern was dramatized Wednesday when the Pentagon confirmed it was tracking five Chinese warships in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia, for the first time. Officials said the Chinese ships were steaming in international waters toward the Aleutian Islands but posed no threat.<br />
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The growing focus shows how the United States and other polar powers are adjusting as global warming opens new sea lanes and sets off a scramble for largely untapped reserves of oil, natural gas and minerals. The United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway are pursuing jurisdiction over the Arctic seabed.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.therussophile.org/something-major-is-on-the-horizon-for-this-fall-too-many-big-chess-pieces-have-been-positioning-themselves-around-the-table.html/" target="_new">Something Major Is On The Horizon For This Fall. Too Many Big Chess Pieces Have Been Positioning Themselves Around The Table</a><br />
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<br /><hr />
<strong>• Miscellaneous •</strong></h3>
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<strong>The Empire Files — The Rise of History's Biggest Empire - YouTube</strong><br />
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Abby Martin returns to TV in a big way!<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sZLLpgsK_pg" width="560"></iframe></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-20840493986214859732015-09-09T20:47:00.000+03:002015-09-09T20:47:08.086+03:00War and Politics - September 9, 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>• Why Are Leaders of Arab States Flocking to Moscow?</b><br />
<b>• Putin Achieves Political Draw in Sanctions War with Europe </b><br />
<b>• Putin’s Asia-Eurasia Pivot: ‘Isolation’ from the West Spurs Eurasian Integration and Russian Globalization</b><br />
<b>• Maidan 2.0 Erupting in Ukraine?</b><br />
<b>• The Art of Propaganda: Why is Russia Called the Main Threat to World Peace?</b><br />
<b>• Syrian refugees find Arctic route towards western Europe</b><br />
<b>• The CIA and the Media: 50 Facts the World Needs to Know</b><br />
<b>• The Real Enemy Is Within</b><br />
<b>• NYT Claims U.S. Abides by Cluster Bomb Treaty: The Exact Opposite of Reality</b><br />
<b>• On This Labor Day, How We Can Honor the Men and Women Who Fought for Workers’ Rights </b></div>
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<strong>• Russia/Ukraine •</strong></h3>
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<strong>Why Are Leaders of Arab States Flocking to Moscow?</strong><br />
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This article originally appeared at RSPL. Translated from Russian by SouthFront<br />
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Moscow became the second Mecca for Arab leaders.<br />
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Since the end of August the Russian capital will be visited by the heads of the key countries in the Middle East, including President of Egypt Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi, Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates Mohammed Al Nahyan, King Abdullah II., the Emir of Qatar, the Emir of Kuwait, and then the King of Saudi Arabia are expected to visit Russia in mid-September.<br />
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The value of these events is unprecedented, as the entire Arab world will visit Moscow.<br />
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One of the central events, that opens the all-Arab Marathon, will be the visit of Field Marshal Al- Sisi, the main Russia’s partner in the Middle East. The visit begins on August 25. In addition to the military cooperation, the talks will focus on the settlement of the conflict in Syria and Egypt, and on Russia and Egypt’s role in overcoming it. Also, on August 26, President and Field Marshal Al- Sisi will discuss with Russian President Vladimir Putin the possibility of acceding to the BRICS, as well as the creation of a free trade zone with the EAEC.<br />
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“President Putin is an outstanding leader. Our dialogue is objective and logic. We have an understanding on various regional issues, in particular on the fight against terrorism. We agree on everything that relates to the bilateral cooperation between our countries. In this regard, we need to make every effort to achieve our goals and to implement our dreams. And, importantly, your president shares the aspirations of our people and strongly contributes to progress in this direction,”- Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi said in an interview.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/why-are-leaders-arab-states-flocking-moscow/ri9521" target="_new">Why Are Leaders of Arab States Flocking to Moscow?</a><br />
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<strong>Putin Achieves Political Draw in Sanctions War with Europe</strong><br />
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In November the European Union’s (EU) policy towards Ukraine helped spark the greatest international crisis in Europe since World War II. EU refusal to coordinate its eastward expansion with Moscow, especially to Ukraine, gave greater impetus to the already intensifying Western-Russian ‘great game’ for hegemony over that divided country and the remaining non-aligned states in Eastern Europe and to Russia’s south. The watershed in the winner-takes-all game for Eastern Europe was made inevitable by NATO expansion begun in 1997 and destined to come in Ukraine, with its geostrategic importance, significant population, market, natural resources, and long-standing ties with Moscow. The Ukrainian showdown was made even more inevitable, if you will, and imminent by the 2008 NATO summit’s declaration that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become NATO members, followed months later by the Georgian-Ossetiyan/Russian war and Russia’s rout of the NATO-trained Georgian army.<br />
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By supporting an illegal seizure of power spearheaded by neo-fascists groups within the larger Ukrainian pro-Western opposition and potentially revolutionary movement and in clear violation of a Russian-EU brokered transition pact to resolve the regime crisis, Washington and Brussels through down the gauntlet before the Kremlin. With this, Russian President Vladimir Putin had little choice but to salvage Russian interests and annex Crimea – home to its Black Sea Fleet and a population 80 percent ethnic Russian in favor of reunification with Russia – in answer to Washington’s Kiev demarche. For similar strategic and ethnopolitical reasons Putin also had little choice but to back the Donbass revolt against Kiev.<br />
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Effectively countered as in the 2008 Georgian debacle, the West could ill afford another geopolitical defeat at Russia’s hands or direct military conflict with Moscow. Therefore, the West changed tactics and initiated economic sanctions directly against Russia. Moscow responded with lesser sanctions against the West; the war evolved into a semi-frozen conflict after two Minsk ceasefire agreements, and there we stand.<br />
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The problem with any set of sanctions is that it prevents two, not one, from tangoing. Any trade relationship is a two-way- street. Stop one party from trading, and that party’s trade partners suffer no less. The comparative advantage lies in the potential that the target country of any sanctions regime suffers from each denied or cancelled contract, while the pain on the other side is divided up among many countries.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/02/putin-achieves-political-draw-in-sanctions-war-with-europe/" target="_new">Putin Achieves Political Draw in Sanctions War with Europe | Russian and Eurasian Politics Gordon M. Hahn</a><br />
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<strong>Putin’s Asia-Eurasia Pivot: ‘Isolation’ from the West Spurs Eurasian Integration and Russian Globalization</strong><br />
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Western hopes of sufficiently alienating Russia in order to break the Kremlin’s will on Ukraine and/or bring down Russian President Vladimir Putin have failed. Over the last year, Moscow has achieved a series of foreign policy successes on both multilateral and bilateral levels outside of the West. What has been called Russia’s ‘Asia pivot’ is much grander. Not even the phrase ‘Eurasian-Asian’ pivot captures its aggressive foreign policy efforts outside the West. In effect is a continuation of Russia’s decades-long ‘multi-vector’ foreign policy in even hotter pursuit of a multipolar world to counter American hubris and Western indifference to Russian national security and economic interests.<br />
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On the multilateral level, Russia has seen growing robustness, including hosting successful summits, of three of its most ambitious international projects – the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and BRICS summits – and joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in July. Bilaterally, Moscow has strengthened its strategic partnerships with Eurasia’s’ other leading power, China and India, and engineered several pivotal foreign policy coups in the Middle East and larger Muslim world, most notably with Saudi Arabia and the Iran nuclear deal.<br />
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The Eurasian Union<br />
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Late last year, Moscow won agreement from Armenia and Kyrgyzstan to join the EEU. Armenia abandoned an EU association agreement it had been working on for years with Brussels and officially acceded to the EEU in January, and Kyrgyzstan will do so by the end of the year. This will bring the membership to five states, adding Kyrgystan to Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Tajikistan is currently reviewing whether it will seek membership.<br />
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Moreover, the EEU is establishing free trade zones (FTZ) with countries outside the traditional post-Soviet Eurasian sphere. In October 2014 Syria requested talks on a FTZ, to which Moscow and the EEC responded positively. In April 2015 Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev offered Thailand a FTZ with the EEC. In May Vietnam became the first country to sign a FTZ agreement with the EEU. At the EEC summit on July 6th Russian presidential aide foreign policy Yuri Ushakov announced that India and the EEC had agreed to create a working group for exploring an India-EEC FTZ. A recent Kazakhstani report indicates that more than 30 countries – including Zimbabwe, Jordan, Mongolia and Albania – have applied to the Eurasian Economic Commission for a FTZ with the EEU (http://en.tengrinews.kz/politics_sub/Over-30-countries-interested-in-signing-free-trade-agreement-261289/).<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://gordonhahn.com/2015/07/31/putins-asia-eurasia-pivot-isolation-from-the-west-spurs-eurasian-integration-and-russian-globalization/" target="_new">Putin’s Asia-Eurasia Pivot: ‘Isolation’ from the West Spurs Eurasian Integration and Russian Globalization | Russian and Eurasian Politics Gordon M. Hahn</a><br />
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<strong>Maidan 2.0 Erupting in Ukraine?</strong><br />
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A previous article explained overwhelming anti-regime opposition. Ordinary people are fed up with economic conditions creating enormous hardships - ignored to enrich privileged interests and wage war on Donbass.<br />
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Sporadic protests erupted various times before - again Monday in front of parliament violently after police stopped thousands from storming the building, led by Right Sector Nazis, likeminded Svoboda party extremists and other ultranationalist elements.<br />
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Whether Monday’s violence signals the beginning of Maidan 2.0 remains to be seen. Elements involved include the most extremists segments of Ukrainian society - hooligan supporters of Nazi-era Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B). He collaborated in mass executions and ethnic cleansing.<br />
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If these elements gain power, fascist Ukraine on steroids will follow. The entire country could explode in violence - a reign of terror in Europe’s heartland, perhaps spilling cross-border, affecting neighboring countries Belarus, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Russia, potentially embroiling the entire continent in conflict.<br />
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Live fire and a grenade thrown at police exploded during Monday clashes. Reports indicated five or more security forces killed, 10 hospitalized in serious condition, and scores of people wounded.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2015/09/07/maidan-2-0-erupting-in-ukraine#more39491" target="_new">Maidan 2.0 Erupting in Ukraine?</a><br />
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<strong>The Art of Propaganda: Why is Russia Called the Main Threat to World Peace?</strong><br />
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In a recent article for independent Czech online news and opinion journal Svobodne Noviny, columnist Jaromir Petrik explained why he is fed up with the media's presentation of Russia as the world's greatest threat to peace, while the US, which has launched a series of aggressive wars across the globe over the last decade, seems to get a pass.<br />
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Petrik began his piece by recalling that "this year, in his State of the Union address, President Obama named only one country as America's enemy –Russia, mentioning ISIL as another enemy. In an earlier speech, Obama equated Russia to the Ebola virus. Why is this so? Is Russia really the aggressor, responsible for destroying the Arab world through its support for the regime of Syrian President Assad? Did Russia really attack Ukraine, as we are constantly told by media resources such as Reuters, CNN, BBC and by our own Czech Television?"<br />
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"The art of propaganda," the columnist continued, "lies in the skillful propagation of half-truths, but how could Putin have unleashed the war in Ukraine? Was it Putin who overthrew the democratically elected government of President Yanukovych, planting in its place a putschist government headed by Turchynov and Yatsenyuk? Was it Putin who ordered them to start their so-called 'anti-terrorist operation' to exterminate the populations of Donetsk and Lugansk, regions which had refused to recognize the coup, and their new rulers?"<br />
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The reality, Petrik argued, was quite the opposite, with "American 'diplomats' concentrated in Kiev threatening Yanukovych against using violence against the demonstrators," while "these same 'demonstrators'" would go on to "approve a war against the population of eastern Ukraine." All the while, "those same American 'diplomats' would accuse Russia of unleashing this war."<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150906/1026665008/russia-us-putin-propaganda.html" target="_new">The Art of Propaganda: Why is Russia Called the Main Threat to World Peace?</a><br />
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<strong>• Middle East •</strong></h3>
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<strong>Syrian refugees find Arctic route towards western Europe</strong><br />
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While thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and other countries reach Europe by boat from Turkey or Libya, where hundreds die, a new route is slowly gaining popularity. Refugees from Syria find their way up via Russia to the Arctic, where they cross the border into Norway.<br />
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Some 20 migrants per day cross the border between Russia and Norway at Storskog near Kirkenes.<br />
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At two hours from the Russian city of Murmansk, It is the only legal border crossing between the two countries.<br />
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The online newspaper thelocal.no reports that so far this year, 133 asylum seekers have entered Norway though Storskog.<br />
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“Since July and August more people are crossing,” Garan Stenseth, the chief police superintendent of the Storskog frontier post, told RFI in a phone interview.<br />
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“They seem to be healthy and happy to be in de Schengen area and in Norway, but it is difficult to compare since this is a new situation for us because and we don’t have any experience from previous years,” he says.<br />
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According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, measures in other parts of Europe may have a direct effect on the refugees’ decision to take the Arctic route.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.english.rfi.fr/europe/20150831-syrian-refugees-find-arctic-route-towards-western-europe" target="_new">Syrian refugees find Arctic route towards western Europe - NORWAY - RFI</a><br />
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<strong>• Empire Watch •</strong></h3>
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<strong>The CIA and the Media: 50 Facts the World Needs to Know</strong><br />
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Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears and reads on a regular basis. CIA publicists and journalists alike will assert they have few, if any, relationships, yet the seldom acknowledged history of their intimate collaboration indicates a far different story–indeed, one that media historians are reluctant to examine.<br />
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When seriously practiced, the journalistic profession involves gathering information concerning individuals, locales, events, and issues. In theory such information informs people about their world, thereby strengthening “democracy.” This is exactly the reason why news organizations and individual journalists are tapped as assets by intelligence agencies and, as the experiences of German journalist Udo Ulfkotte (entry 47 below) suggest, this practice is at least as widespread today as it was at the height of the Cold War.<br />
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Consider the coverups of election fraud in 2000 and 2004, the events of September 11, 2001, the invasions Afghanistan and Iraq, the destabilization of Syria, and the creation of “ISIS.” These are among the most significant events in recent world history, and yet they are also those much of the American public is wholly ignorant of. In an era where information and communication technologies are ubiquitous, prompting many to harbor the illusion of being well-informed, one must ask why this condition persists.<br />
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Further, why do prominent US journalists routinely fail to question other deep events that shape America’s tragic history over the past half century, such as the political assassinations of the 1960s, or the central role played by the CIA major role in international drug trafficking?<br />
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Popular and academic commentators have suggested various reasons for the almost universal failure of mainstream journalism in these areas, including newsroom sociology, advertising pressure, monopoly ownership, news organizations’ heavy reliance on “official” sources, and journalists’ simple quest for career advancement. There is also, no doubt, the influence of professional public relations maneuvers. Yet such a broad conspiracy of silence suggests another province of deception examined far too infrequently—specifically the CIA and similar intelligence agencies’ continued involvement in the news media to mold thought and opinion in ways scarcely imagined by the lay public.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts-the-world-needs-to-know/5471956" target="_new">The CIA and the Media: 50 Facts the World Needs to Know | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization</a><br />
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<strong>The Real Enemy Is Within</strong><br />
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If you are not dedicated to the destruction of empire and the dismantling of American militarism, then you cannot count yourself as a member of the left. It is not a side issue. It is the issue. It is why I refuse to give a pass in this presidential election campaign to Bernie Sanders, who refuses to confront the war industry or the crimes of empire, including U.S. support for the slow genocide carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. There will be no genuine democratic, social, economic or political reform until we destroy our permanent war machine.<br />
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Militarists and war profiteers are our greatest enemy. They use fear, bolstered by racism, as a tool in their efforts to abolish civil liberties, crush dissent and ultimately extinguish democracy. To produce weapons and finance military expansion, they ruin the domestic economy by diverting resources, scientific and technical expertise and a disproportionate share of government funds. They use the military to carry out futile, decades-long wars to enrich corporations such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. War is a business. And when the generals retire, guess where they go to work? Profits swell. War never stops. Whole sections of the earth live in terror. And our nation is disemboweled and left to live under what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” Libertarians seem to get this. It is time the left woke up.<br />
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“Bourgeois society faces a dilemma,” socialist Rosa Luxemburg writes, “either a transition to Socialism, or a return to barbarism ... we face the choice: either the victory of imperialism and the decline of all culture, as in ancient Rome—annihilation, devastation, degeneration, a yawning graveyard; or the victory of Socialism—the victory of the international working class consciously assaulting imperialism and its method: war. This is the dilemma of world history, either-or; the die will be cast by the class-conscious proletariat.”<br />
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The U.S. military and its array of civilian contractors operate as enforcers and hired killers across the globe for corporations, many of which pay no taxes. Young men and women, many unable to find work, are the cannon fodder. The U.S. military has served as the handmaiden of capitalism since it committed genocide against Native Americans, carried out on behalf of land speculators, mineral companies, timber merchants and the railroads. The military replicated this indiscriminate slaughter at the end of the 19th century in our imperial expansion in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean, in Central America and especially in the Philippines. Military muscle exists to permit global corporations to expand markets and plunder oil, minerals and other natural resources while keeping subjugated populations impoverished by corrupt and brutal puppet regimes. The masters of war are the scum of the earth.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_enemy_is_within_20150906" target="_new">Chris Hedges: The Real Enemy Is Within - Chris Hedges - Truthdig</a><br />
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<strong>NYT Claims U.S. Abides by Cluster Bomb Treaty: The Exact Opposite of Reality</strong><br />
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The New York Times today has a truly bizarre article regarding the U.S. and cluster bombs. The advocacy group Cluster Munition Coalition just issued its annual report finding that cluster bombs had been used in five countries this year: Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine and Sudan. This is what The Paper of Record, in its report by Rick Gladstone, said this morning about the international reaction to that report (emphasis added):<br />
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The use of these weapons was criticized by all 117 countries that have joined the treaty, which took effect five years ago. Their use was also criticized by a number of others, including the United States, that have not yet joined the treaty but have abided by its provisions.<br />
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As Americans, we should feel proud that our government, though refusing to sign the cluster ban treaty, has nonetheless “abided by its provisions” — if not for the fact that this claim is totally false. The U.S. has long been and remains one of the world’s most aggressive suppliers of cluster munitions, and has used those banned weapons itself in devastating ways.<br />
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In December 2009 — just weeks after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — President Obama ordered a cruise missile strike on al-Majala in southern Yemen. That strike “killed 35 women and children.” Among the munitions used in that strike were cluster bombs, including ones designed to scatter 166 “bomblets.”<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/09/03/nyt-claims-u-s-abides-cluster-bomb-ban-exact-opposite-reality/" target="_new">NYT Claims U.S. Abides by Cluster Bomb Treaty: The Exact Opposite of Reality</a><br />
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<strong>• Miscellaneous •</strong></h3>
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<strong>On This Labor Day, How We Can Honor the Men and Women Who Fought for Workers’ Rights</strong><br />
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Labor Day is a time for honoring the working people of this country. It is also a time to celebrate the accomplishments of the activists and organizers who fought for the 40-hour work week, occupational safety, minimum wage law, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and affordable housing. These working people, and their unions, resisted the oligarchs of their day, fought for a more responsive democracy, and built the middle class.<br />
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Today we can – and we must – follow their example. It’s time to rebuild the crumbling middle class of our country and make certain that every working person in the United States of America has a chance at a decent life.<br />
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Against overwhelming odds, the men and women of the labor movement changed society for the better. If you’ve ever enjoyed a paid vacation, a sick day, or a pension, they are the people to thank. And if you don’t have those benefits on your job today, they are the people who can help you get them.<br />
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The economic reality is that while our economy today is much stronger than when President George W. Bush left office 7 years ago, the middle class is continuing its 40-year decline. Almost all new income and wealth is going to the people on top, while millions of Americans work longer hours for lower wages. In fact, wages actually fell for 90 percent of Americans between 2009 and 2012, even as they rose for the top 10 percent. While we have seen in recent years a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires, 51 percent of African American youth are now unemployed or underemployed, and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth.<br />
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As a result of an explosion of technology, productivity has risen in this country, but working people are not sharing in the wealth. For three decades after the end of World War II, productivity and wages grew together. Business profits rose, and the workers who made those profits possible did well along with their bosses. That’s not happening today. Productivity has continued to soar, but workers have been cut out of the profits.<br />
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Complete story at - <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_we_can_honor_men_women_who_fought_for_workers_rights_labor_20150906" target="_new">On This Labor Day, How We Can Honor the Men and Women Who Fought for Workers’ Rights - Truthdig</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-84479047565201055012015-08-31T21:23:00.000+03:002015-04-06T21:26:04.103+03:00No Bread and Circuses for You – Status Update<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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You may have noticed that my posting schedule here at No Bread and Circuses for You has become a bit sporadic recently. And there's a good reason for that. I've been spending more time recently doing the same kind of work over at the website Russia Insider. If you have not yet visited Russia Insider, I'd like to recommend it to you and suggest that you stop over there for a visit. Here is their website address: <a href="http://russia-insider.com/en" target="_blank">Russia Insider</a></div>
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I've certainly enjoyed everything that I've done here at No Bread and Circuses for You. So why would I be spending less time doing this? One word... Impact. At this site, I've averaged about 20,000 views a month since I started a bit over a year ago. Russia Insider averages about 3 million views a month. My work over there has a much greater impact than my work over here.</div>
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At Russia Insider, I'm part of a team of eight that does nothing but scan the news. And that leaves me more time to do other things. And that's important, because I don't make any money doing this, while at the same time I spend less time doing work that actually pays the bills. And everybody has bills. You have them; and I have them.</div>
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So then, what is the future of this site? This site will continue, but with a less frequent posting schedule. Here's what you can expect to see in the future.</div>
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1. Any writing that I do, and I hope to do more, will appear here first.<br />
2. Stories that I find that fit the mission of Russia Insider will be submitted there. Stories that I uncover that does not fit their mission but yet is an important story that needs further exposure, will be posted here, as time permits.<br />
3. The live news feeds that I added to this site a couple of months ago will remain active and will continue to be updated on a frequent basis. There will always be new, updated stories there. These news feeds are found in the right column, under News Feeds & Site Info.</blockquote>
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If you happen to monitor RSS feeds, I recommend that you subscribe to my feed (that orange circle at the top right hand corner of the page) so you will be notified of any new postings.<br />
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So this is not goodbye; this is just an I'll be seeing you on a less frequent basis.<br />
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- Aaron Talka</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-89109731027677703522015-05-12T09:15:00.001+03:002015-05-12T09:15:20.331+03:00'If You See Something Say Something': How We've Become a Nation of Snitches | AlternetA 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />“If you see something say something,” goes the chorus.<br /><br />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.”<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/if-you-see-something-say-something-how-weve-become-nation-snitches' target='_new'>'If You See Something Say Something': How We've Become a Nation of Snitches | Alternet</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-80853482054231624172015-05-12T08:57:00.001+03:002015-05-12T08:57:35.020+03:00War Threat Rises As Economy Declines -- Paul Craig Roberts, - PaulCraigRoberts.orgWar Threat Rises As Economy Declines<br /><br />Paul Craig Roberts, Keynote Address to the Annual Conference of the Financial West Group, New Orleans, May 7, 2015<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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:<br /><br />“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.”<br /><br />In March of this year the Council on Foreign Relations extended this doctrine to China.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/05/11/war-threat-rises-economy-declines-paul-craig-roberts/' target='_new'>War Threat Rises As Economy Declines -- Paul Craig Roberts, - PaulCraigRoberts.org</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-42838086224304141852015-05-12T08:25:00.001+03:002015-05-12T08:25:22.902+03:00What the West Got Wrong: Eastern and Central Europe Turn Away From US » voice of SevastopolOnce 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.<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />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.<br /> <br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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."<br /><br />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."<br /> <br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://en.voicesevas.ru/news/analytics/5110-what-the-west-got-wrong-eastern-and-central-europe-turn-away-from-us.html' target='_new'>What the West Got Wrong: Eastern and Central Europe Turn Away From US » voice of Sevastopol</a><center><img style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;" src="http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-PpNRUsszkGA/VVGOvY9ODuI/AAAAAAAAASE/a6PIZqIf9_k/NewImage.png?imgmax=800" alt="NewImage" title="NewImage.png" border="0" width="598" height="324" /></center><br />Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-84487624363106710652015-05-08T10:45:00.001+03:002015-05-08T10:45:28.737+03:00Why military interventions fail - TransConflictBy Nathaniel K. Powell<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Grand narratives <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.transconflict.com/2015/05/why-military-interventions-fail-085/' target='_new'>Why military interventions fail - TransConflict</a><img style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;" src="http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hO7xP80Fh90/VUxpkjVyuBI/AAAAAAAAAR0/VqQz1ZSVtQ0/NewImage.png?imgmax=800" alt="NewImage" title="NewImage.png" border="0" width="600" height="264" />Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-73680698190121446912015-05-07T20:50:00.003+03:002015-05-07T20:50:51.296+03:00ROCK SOLID POLITICS: I'm Sorry RussiaThere 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.<br /><br />The Soviet Union suffered 25 million killed in World War Two. By comparison, the other allied countries suffered:<br /><br />United kingdom 450,900<br />United States 418,500<br />India 2,087,000<br />China 15,000,000<br />Poland 5,700,000<br />Yugoslavia 1,363,500<br />Dutch East Indies 3,500,000<br /><br />and there are many more.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://rocksolidpolitics.blogspot.gr/2015/05/im-sorry-russia.html?spref=tw' target='_new'>ROCK SOLID POLITICS: I'm Sorry Russia</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-60192901509029697842015-05-07T19:13:00.001+03:002015-05-07T19:13:32.521+03:00Activist Post: Donetsk Republic Nationalizes Banks, Draws Ire Of NATO and World Banking CartelIn 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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />The plans to nationalize banks within the borders of the DPR were announced as early as January, 2015.<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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. <br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.activistpost.com/2015/05/donetsk-republic-nationalizes-banks.html' target='_new'>Activist Post: Donetsk Republic Nationalizes Banks, Draws Ire Of NATO and World Banking Cartel</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-82253863570766824842015-05-07T10:50:00.001+03:002015-05-07T10:50:09.414+03:00Mass Exodus: Young People Fleeing From Ukraine to Evade Draft / Sputnik InternationalIn Kiev alone, 95% of working-age men are evading military service, using a variety of methods from bribery to fleeing to other countries.<br /><br />Evasion of conscription in Ukraine has skyrocketed, the German newspaper Handelsblatt reported.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Residents of Western Ukraine usually flee to Europe, while men from eastern provinces go to Russia, the article said.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150505/1021729552.html' target='_new'>Mass Exodus: Young People Fleeing From Ukraine to Evade Draft / Sputnik International</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-26068628556543317242015-05-07T08:34:00.001+03:002015-05-07T08:34:00.787+03:00Chaos – 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.globalresearch.ca/chaos-not-victory-is-the-empires-name-of-the-game/5447540' target='_new'>Chaos – not Victory – is the Empire’s “Name of the Game” | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-52306467698523104212015-05-07T08:31:00.001+03:002015-05-07T08:31:39.869+03:00The 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<br /> <br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />De Zayas told the Guardian that the panels that are proposed to be at the very center of these trade-pacts<br /><br /><blockquote>“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.”<br /></blockquote> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ttp-and-ttip-trade-agreements-a-dystopian-future-in-which-corporations-rather-than-elected-governments-call-the-shots/5447643' target='_new'>The TTP and TTIP Trade Agreements: “A Dystopian Future in which Corporations Rather Than Elected Governments Call the Shots” </a><img style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;" src="http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-o4oOyCFMTlI/VUr4tz4csBI/AAAAAAAAARU/lShOTvuW_50/NewImage.png?imgmax=800" alt="NewImage" title="NewImage.png" border="0" width="400" height="367" />Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-47296768145803665102015-05-06T09:33:00.001+03:002015-05-06T09:33:20.320+03:00The Growing China-Russia-Iran Strategic Alliance Has Got the Pentagon Trembling | Alternetby Pepe Escobar<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />A precious glimpse of what’s ahead was offered at the Moscow Conference on International Security (MICS) in mid-April.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.alternet.org/world/growing-china-russia-iran-strategic-alliance-has-got-pentagon-trembling' target='_new'>The Growing China-Russia-Iran Strategic Alliance Has Got the Pentagon Trembling | Alternet</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-50970593430949827262015-05-05T22:24:00.001+03:002015-05-05T22:24:26.795+03:00The Asshole Factory — Bad Words — MediumMy 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='https://medium.com/bad-words/the-asshole-factory-71ff808d887c' target='_new'>The Asshole Factory — Bad Words — Medium</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-64842389135561227142015-05-05T12:26:00.001+03:002015-05-05T12:26:53.215+03:00Land Destroyer: Garland Shooting: Gladio - Texas-Style<strong>Garland shooting involved troupe of practiced war propagandists and patsies long on the FBI's watch list.</strong> <br /><br />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.<br /><br />Their report, "Garland Shooting Suspect Elton Simpson's Father: ‘My Son Made a Bad Choice’," states:<br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.”<br />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. <br /><br /><strong>Garland Shooting Fits Pattern of Larger Staged Terror Campaign</strong> <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://landdestroyer.blogspot.se/2015/05/garland-shooting-gladio-texas-style.html' target='_new'>Land Destroyer: Garland Shooting: Gladio - Texas-Style</a><center><img style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;" src="http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zoQjc9mn9Ro/VUiM2SFq_9I/AAAAAAAAAQ0/lMjWl6UJNNA/NewImage.png?imgmax=800" alt="NewImage" title="NewImage.png" border="0" width="599" height="372" /></center><br /><br />Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-86861408625694152682015-05-05T11:01:00.001+03:002015-05-05T11:01:43.878+03:00Russia Did More for Crimea Within 1 Year Than Ukraine Since Soviet Fall / Sputnik InternationalRussia 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.<br /><br />MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to the advisor, Russia has taken significant steps to solve the Crimean Tatars' issue in the region.<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150503/1021655480.html' target='_new'>Russia Did More for Crimea Within 1 Year Than Ukraine Since Soviet Fall / Sputnik International</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-7473746966634145282015-05-05T10:26:00.001+03:002015-05-05T10:26:08.814+03:00Ukraine the Epicenter of Global Geopolitical Transformation – Stephen Cohen / Sputnik InternationalProminent 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.<br /><br />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."<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><strong>Fears of Ukrainian Military Conflict Reigniting</strong><br /><br />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."<br /> <br /><strong>Russia Does Not Seek to Rebuild the USSR, or a Traditional Sphere of Influence</strong><br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150502/1021650592.html#ixzz3Z7PdhPSt' target='_new'>Ukraine the Epicenter of Global Geopolitical Transformation – Stephen Cohen / Sputnik International</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-48620002022107368162015-05-05T08:33:00.001+03:002015-05-05T08:33:22.039+03:00Countries Around World Revoke Freedom of Assembly | Al Jazeera AmericaFaced with mounting unrest and unwilling to offer reforms, democratic governments are rolling back traditional rights<br /><br />May 4, 2015 2:00AM ET<br />by Willie Osterweil @WilbotOsterman<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/5/countries-across-world-are-revoking-freedom-of-assembly.html?utm_content=opinion&utm_campaign=ajam&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow' target='_new'>Countries Around World Revoke Freedom of Assembly | Al Jazeera America</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-55078361504167632172015-05-05T08:28:00.001+03:002015-05-05T08:28:22.345+03:00Restoration of Historical Truth: Russia Won World War II -- Secret History -- Sott.netIrene Martinez<br />Sott.net<br />Mon, 04 May 2015 22:06 UTC <br /><br /><blockquote>"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." <br /><br />¬ George Orwell</blockquote><br /><br />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. <br /><br />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." <br /><br />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". <br /><br />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." <br /><br />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." <br /><br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.sott.net/article/296032-Restoration-of-Historical-Truth-Russia-Won-World-War-II' target='_new'>Restoration of Historical Truth: Russia Won World War II -- Secret History -- Sott.net</a><center><img style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;" src="http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ljCdbNItCWw/VUhU8l19ErI/AAAAAAAAAQk/OHIssz5F5kA/NewImage.png?imgmax=800" alt="NewImage" title="NewImage.png" border="0" width="300" height="224" /><br /><br />Soviet soldiers hoist the red hammer and sickle flag over Berlin's Reichstag on May 2, 1945</center>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-67411530316445474192015-05-05T08:24:00.001+03:002015-05-05T08:24:34.686+03:00CFR Says China Must Be Defeated, & TPP Is Essential to That - Washington's BlogEric Zuesse<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.” <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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.” <br /><br />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.” <br /><br />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.<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/cfr-says-china-must-be-defeated-tpp-is-essential-to-that.html' target='_new'>CFR Says China Must Be Defeated, & TPP Is Essential to That Washington's Blog</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-81237698624453740022015-05-01T16:04:00.000+03:002015-04-14T13:28:28.281+03:00Even More News For You<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Not enough news for you yet? Just click one of the links below...<br />
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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.<br />
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<b>1. <a href="http://bread-circuses-today.blogspot.com/p/russia-news-feed.html">Russia News</a></b> – the latest news concerning events and developments regarding Russia.<br />
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<b>2. <a href="http://bread-circuses-today.blogspot.com/p/ukraine-news-feed.html">Ukraine News</a></b> – 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.<br />
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<b>3. <a href="http://bread-circuses-today.blogspot.com/p/novorossiya-news.html">Novorossiya News</a></b> – news regarding the events Donetsk, Luhansk, and Novorossiya.<br />
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<b>4. <a href="http://bread-circuses-today.blogspot.com/p/elsewhere-in-ukraine-news.html">Elsewhere in Ukraine News</a></b><a href="http://bread-circuses-today.blogspot.com/p/elsewhere-in-ukraine-news.html"> </a>– news regarding events elsewhere in Ukraine, with specific emphasis on cities and regions that may not remain in Ukraine for whole lot longer.<br />
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•• <a href="http://bread-circuses-today.blogspot.co.uk/p/even-more-news-for-you.html"><b>Even More News for You</b></a> - 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 <i>should</i> fix the problem.<br />
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- Aaron Talka </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451926123468997595.post-88009625116937761882015-05-01T09:40:00.001+03:002015-05-01T09:40:46.707+03:00More Evidence of Ukraine's Reign of Terror RINF Alternative News & Alternative Media | Breaking News Real IndependentA previous article discussed how Obama-installed fascist thugs eliminate anyone opposing their ruthlessness.<br /><br />They’re harassed, brutalized, imprisoned, disappeared or murdered in cold blood – including assassinating political opponents reported as “suicides.”<br /><br />Independent journalists, human rights workers and democracy advocates are vulnerable – anyone criticizing regime policy.<br /><br />CyberBerkut is a Ukrainian hacker collective. It hacked into Kharkov regional state administration deputy head Vyacheslav Abbakumov’s emails.<br /><br />It reported the following, saying:<br /><br />“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.”<br /><br />They discovered “correspondence between (Abbakumov) and an unknown leader of an extreme-nationalist group in the Kharkov region.”<br /><br />A critical Abbakumov email to one of the alleged state-sponsored assassins said:<br /><br />“You bastards, what are you doing? You consider this to be an intimidation measure?”<br /><br />“Do you know how much barking there will be on Moskal TV (a Ukrainian ethnic Russian slur) after this?”<br /><br />“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?”<br /><br />“You were given license to shut this trash up, but not permanently. You had told me about knocked out teeth, broken fingers.”<br /><br />“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.”<br /><br />“Now get back to Kharkov and return to base. The remaining orders are canceled for now.”<br /><br />The alleged assassin responded as follows:<br /><br />“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!”<br /> <br />Complete story at - <a href='http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/more-evidence-of-ukraines-reign-of-terror/' target='_new'>More Evidence of Ukraine's Reign of Terror RINF Alternative News & Alternative Media | Breaking News Real Independent</a>Aaron Talkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00145116034243716277noreply@blogger.com0