Land Destroyer: Russian Crimea: One Year Later

NATO calls Crimea "invaded" and "occupied." NATO has taught the world well what invasion and occupation really looks like, and Crimea isn't it.

March 22, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - In 2001, NATO invaded and began the occupation of the South-Central Asian country of Afghanistan. The invasion and occupation has left tens of thousands dead, many more displaced, and has resulted in continued chaos and violence up until and including present day. Throughout the conflict, revelations of abuses, mass murder, and other atrocities including systematic torture have been exposed, perpetrated by invading NATO forces and their Afghan collaborators.

The war has also resulted in the use of armed drone aircraft which regularly kill men, women, and children indiscriminately along the Afghan-Pakistani border - a campaign of mass murder ongoing for nearly as long as the conflict has raged.

In 2003, NATO-members joined the United States in the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. An estimated 1 million people would lose their lives, including thousands of Western troops. For nearly a decade the United State occupied Iraq, and during its attempts to prop up a suitable client regime, laid waste to the nation. American forces in their bid to exercise control over the Iraqi population would conduct sweeping assaults on entire cities. The city of Fallujah would be leveled nearly to the ground, twice.


Complete story at - Land Destroyer: Russian Crimea: One Year Later

The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | NATO’s Shadow of Nazi Operation Barbarossa

NATO’s Operation Atlantic Resolve paced ahead this week with the latest arrival of more US military forces in the Baltic region. Under the guise of defending eastern Europe from «Russian aggression», more than 100 Abrams tanks and Bradley armoured personnel carriers rolled into Latvia. Last month, a similar motorised display of military support was deployed in Estonia – in the town of Narva – with American flags flown by the US Army’s Second Calvary Regiment just 300 metres from the Russian border.

Narva protrudes sharply eastward – like a metaphorical blade – into Russian territory. It is only some 100 kilometres from St Petersburg – Russia’s second city after Moscow, and with a searing history of military assault by Nazi Germany during 1941-44. The siege of St Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, caused over one million Russians to perish, mainly from hunger, before the German Wehrmacht was eventually pushed back and defeated by the Soviet Red Army. More on that in a moment.

Back to the present: US General John O’Conner said of the latest deployment in Latvia that American troops would «deter Russian aggression», adding with Orwellian prose: «Freedom must be fought for, freedom must be defended».

The US-led Operation Atlantic Resolve has seen a surge in American military presence in the Baltic countries and other eastern European members of the NATO alliance over the past year. Technically, it is claimed that the US forces are «on tour duty» and therefore not transgressing past agreements with Russia to limit NATO permanent forces on Russia’s borders. But semantics aside, it is hard not to see that Washington has, in effect, significantly stepped up its military footprint in a geo-strategically sensitive region, in brazen contravention of erstwhile commitments made to Moscow. NATO warplane sorties have increased four-fold in the Baltic region over the past year, as have NATO warships in the Black Sea.

Complete story at - The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | NATO’s Shadow of Nazi Operation Barbarossa

Mr. Poroshenko's parallel reality - New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond

By Halyna Mokrushyna, New Cold War.org, March 9, 2015

I thought President Poroshenko could no longer surprise me. I was wrong. Following his desperate performance in Davos, Switzerland, in January, where he presented a chunk of metal from the Volnovakha bus (1) and his Munich security conference speech on February 7, in which the handful of Russian passports he held up in the air were supposed to prove that Russian troops were in Ukraine, he delivered the following masterpiece at the commemoration of the first anniversary of Euromaidan in Kiev: “Ukrainians, who were not born for war, peaceful Ukrainians, took up arms and stopped a well-trained army, one of the most powerful in the world and on the continent . . . ”

I am not a military expert; I know close to nothing about armies, weapons, and war. But I have been reading articles by NATO experts confirming at least one aspect of Poroshenko’s statement. Global Firepower places Russia second after the United States as the most powerful military force, in terms of “conventional war-making capabilities across land, sea and air.” One does not need West Point Academy training to understand that if Putin really wanted to have Ukraine, the Ukrainian army would be finished in a matter of days. I honestly cannot believe that Poroshenko is that stupid. However, in the same speech, he stated that “a newly created Ukrainian army with nationwide support from volunteers stopped the enemy at the far-Eastern frontiers.” What far-East frontiers? Is Poroshenko day-dreaming about the Russian Far-East? Ukraine has never had a “Far-East frontier.”

I also learned from Poroshenko’s speech that Putin had been planning to attack Ukraine for years. He has been preparing the Russian military for just that. At the same time, the Evil Genius was creating a “fifth” column in Ukraine. I guess Poroshenko learned all of this while he was busy opening his chocolate and confectionary business in Russia. This is entirely logical for a president of a country where almost every channel of communication talks about Russian aggression and where Russian television channels are banned as propaganda outlets. Well, how about the propaganda that flows without end from the Ukrainian media? They tell ridiculous lies about “a planned retreat” of Ukrainian troops from Debaltsevo, while, in fact, Ukrainian soldiers were escaping encirclement by the insurgent Donetsk and Luhansk armies after their officers “heroically” left the battlefield.

Complete story at - Mr. Poroshenko's parallel reality - New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond

Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine - PaulCraigRoberts.org

Top NATO commander General Philip Breedlove has raised hackles in Germany with his public statements about the Ukraine crisis.

US President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel’s efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin’s approach. And NATO’s top commander in Europe hasn’t been helping either.

It was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk cease-fire wasn’t holding perfectly, but it was holding.

On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine — with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” having been sent to the Donbass. “What is clear,” Breedlove said, “is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.”

German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove’s numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America’s NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove’s comments as “dangerous propaganda.” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove’s comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

Complete story at - Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine - PaulCraigRoberts.org

Europe, The Morally Bankrupt Union - The Automatic Earth

The European Union is busy accomplishing something truly extraordinary: it is fast becoming such a spectacular failure that people don’t even recognize it as one. People have no idea, they just think: this can’t possibly be true, and they continue with their day. They should think again. Because the Grand European Failure is bound to lead to real life consequences soon, and they’ll be devastating. The union that was supposed to put an end to all fighting across the continent, is about to be the fuse that sets off a range of battles.

To its east, the EU is involved in a braindead attempt at further expansion – it has only one idea when it comes to size: bigger is always better -, an attempt that is proving to be such a disaster that heads will roll in the Brussels corridors no matter what. Europe has joined the US and NATO very enthusiastically in creating not just a failed state, but a veritable imitation of Hiroshima, in Ukraine, right on its own borders. The consequences of this will haunt the EU (or if it doesn’t last, which is highly plausible, its former members) not just for weeks or months or years, but for many decades.

The carefully re-crafted relationship with Russia, which took 25 years to build, was destroyed again in hardly over a year, something for which Angela Merkel deserves so much blame it may well end up being her main political legacy. Vladimir Putin, and Russia as a nation, will not easily forget the humiliation the west has thrown at them, the accusations, the innuendo, the attempts to draw them into a war they never wanted and in which they see no advantage for any party involved.

That US warmongers would try and set this up, is something Moscow has long known and expected; that Merkel would stand side by side with the likes of John McCain and Victoria Nuland is seen as a deep if not ultimate betrayal between neighbors and friends. Russia will present Germany with the bill when it feels the time is right. Obviously, all other EU countries that have behaved in the insane ways they have over the past year will receive that same bill, or worse.

To be sure, this week we’ve seen the first protest voices from Germany regarding NATO’s vacuous attempts to draw Russia into the battlefields of Ukraine. But those voices are years too late. They can’t undo the damage already done. They may keep American weapons from reaching Kiev – and even that’s a big maybe -, but they can’t bring back either the lives of the victims, the Ukrainian economy or the trust lost between east and west.

To its south, the EU faces perhaps its most shameful -or should that be ‘shameless’? – problem, because it doesn’t do anything about it: the thousands of migrants who try to cross the Mediterranean to get to Europe but far too often perish in the process.

The Italians spend themselves poor, trying to save as many migrants as they can (170,000 last year!), and there are private citizens – Americans even – pouring in millions of dollars, but the EU itself has zero comprehensive policy as people keep dying on its doorstep all the time. The official line out of Brussels is that the EU polices only the European coastline, but the drownings mostly take place off the Lybian coast. At least Italy and others do sail there to alleviate the human misery.

Complete story at - Europe, The Morally Bankrupt Union - The Automatic Earth

australianvoice: Why Does the West Hate Putin? The Secret Reason

The Official Reasons

We all know the governments of the West, lead by the US and the UK, have turned against Russia. There are many reasons offered by our media: Russia tried to stop the Ukraine from joining the EU. Russia helped the "pro-Russian rebels" shoot down MH-17. Russia "invaded" the Crimea illegally. Thousands of Russian troops and tanks are fighting in the Ukraine. Some of us think these claims are war propaganda for the citizens of the West used to justify sanctions against Russia and increasing military tensions.

The Geo-political Reasons

Less widely discussed but much more important are the geo-political reasons which look at the areas of conflict between the economic interests of the US and those of Russia and China. At the moment the EU is heavily dependent on eenergy from Russia. The US would like to stop this. The conflict in the Ukraine is an important part of the process of economically separating the EU from Russia. But there is also a wider agenda. China and Russia lead the BRICS group of countries consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The BRICS countries want to develop a world wide economic system that does not depend the US dollar. They want to be independent of the International Modetary Fund (IMF) and the World bank. China has also suggested to Europe that they join together with Russia and themselves in what they call the New Silk Road, stretching across the whole of Eurasia, from Lisbon to Shanghai. Needless to say there is no immediate place for the US in this plan, so this gives another reason to cut the economic ties between Russia and the EU.

The Secret Reason - The War that Didn't Happen

While these factors are all important, there is another factor which is never discussed in the Western media. The trigger for the sudden hostility against Russia and Putin can be found in almost unreported events which took place late in August and early September 2013. What happen in that crucial period is that a planned NATO surprise attack on Syria was stopped by Russia. This was probably the first time since WWII that a military attack planned by the West was confronted by sufficient force to require its cancellation. The people in the West will not be told because their belligerent, tough-talking leaders "blinked". They backed down and decided to change their plans. The new plan: Undermine the Ukraine and seize Crimea for NATO. This obviously didn't work either, and the mess they created is still with us.

The Planned US/French Attack on Syria

Early in the morning of Saturday, August 31, 2013, an American official called the office of President Hollande telling him to expect a call from Obama later in the day. "Assuming that the evening phone call would announce the commencement of U.S. air strikes (against Syria), Hollande ordered his officers to quickly finalize their own attack plans. Rafale fighters were loaded with Scalp cruise missiles, their pilots told to launch the 250-mile-range munitions while over the Mediterranean."(1) In other words, at this point in time the French pilots and the US forces were only waiting for the final command from President Obama to begin their attack. However, later that same day, at 6:15 pm, Obama called the French President to tell him that the strike scheduled for 3:00 am, September 1, would not take place as planned. He would need to consult Congress.(2)

Three days later, at 06:16 GMT Tuesday, September 3, two missiles were launched "from the central part of the Mediterranean Sea" heading for the Syrian coast, but they did not reach Syria.(3) "Both missiles crashed into the sea."(4) There are several different accounts of what took place. According to Israel Shamir:

"It was claimed by a Lebanese newspaper quoting diplomatic sources that the missiles were launched from a NATO air base in Spain and they were shot down by the Russian ship-based sea-to-air defence system. Another explanation proposed by the Asia Times says the Russians employed their cheap and powerful GPS jammers to render the expensive Tomahawks helpless, by disorienting them and causing them to fail. Yet another version attributed the launch to the Israelis, whether they were trying to jump-start the shoot-out or just observed the clouds, as they claim."(5)

Complete story at - australianvoice: WHY DOES THE WEST HATE PUTIN? THE SECRET REASON

The Aviationist » U.S. aircraft carrier and part of its escort “sunk” by French submarine during drills off Florida

By David Cenciotti

If you thought aircraft carriers were invincible you were wrong.

On Mar. 4, the French Ministry of Defense released some interesting details, about the activity conducted by one of its nuclear-powered attack submarine (SNA) in the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.

According to French MoD website (that is no longer online, even if you can still find a cached version of the article titled “Le SNA Saphir en entraînement avec l’US Navy au large de la Floride”), the Saphir submarine has recently taken part in a major exercise with the U.S. Navy off Florida.

The aim of the exercise was joint training with U.S. Carrier Strike Group 12 made by the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, several Ticonderoga or Arleigh Burke-class frigates and a type of submarine Los Angeles, ahead of their operational deployment.

The scenario of the drills saw some imaginary states assaulting American economic and territorial interests; threats faced by a naval force led by USS Theodore Roosevelt.

During the first phase of the exercise, the Saphir was integrated into the friendly force to support anti-submarine warfare (ASW) by cooperating with U.S. P-3C Orion P-8A Poseidon MPA (Maritime Patrol Aircraft): its role was to share all the underwater contacts with the other ASW assets.

Complete story at - The Aviationist » U.S. aircraft carrier and part of its escort “sunk” by French submarine during drills off Florida

US Commander in Europe Panics, Goes on Bizarre Anti-Putin Rant / Sputnik International

Generals always prepare for the last war, but in the case of Lt. Gen. Hodges, the war may have never really happened. However, that's no reason to stop fighting.

It was all over. Endless columns of T-64 tanks were about to steamroll through the Fulda Gap all the way to the English Channel. Elite paratroopers, armed to the teeth, were marching into an unending row of Il-76 transport planes that took off every minute, from every airfield. Early warning radar stations were overwhelmed as a tsunami of ICBM launches consumed every point on their screens. Against all odds, we managed to wake our German allies and prepare them to make one last stand. As they marched forward to show… Wait. Oh no. Are those broomsticks?

That's the kind of Cold War mentality that could have motivated Lt. Gen. Frederick "Ben" Hodges to go off on a bizarre rant on Tuesday, when he blasted NATO countries for not racking defense spending. He particularly berated Germany:

"For the most powerful nation in Europe, which takes a leadership role in the EU, it is unacceptable to have helicopters that don’t fly, or aircraft you can’t use."

The Warsaw Pact ceased to exist a quarter of a century earlier, and even parts of the former Soviet Union joined NATO, but for Hodges, the end was a breath away. Russian President Vladimir Putin had found the weakest link, people who choose cooperation and dialogue over sanctions and military escalation.

"I am sure Putin wants to destroy our alliance, not by attacking it but by splintering it."

Complete story at - US Commander in Europe Panics, Goes on Bizarre Anti-Putin Rant / Sputnik International

Why the Rise of Fascism is Again the Issue » CounterPunch

by JOHN PILGER

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

“To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.

In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that “most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten”.

The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a “rebel” bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: “We came, we saw, he died.” His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning “genocide” against his own people. “We knew … that if we waited one more day,” said President Obama, “Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda”. Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato’s inferno, described by David Cameron as a “humanitarian intervention”.

Complete story at - Why the Rise of Fascism is Again the Issue » CounterPunch

5 Reasons Why Leftists Should Defend Russia | New Eastern Outlook

As tensions between the US and Russia have increased in the last year, so too has the polarization of public opinion. While the western corporate media has reverted to its formerly antagonistic, Cold War era attitude toward Russia – predictably radicalizing much of western public opinion, infusing the discourse with a decidedly Russophobic bias – it has increasingly been left to those on the political margins to deconstruct the false narrative, expose the Empire’s agenda, and defend the right of sovereign nations to act independent of western diktats.

And it is here, on the political margins, where many are willing to speak out against the US agenda in Ukraine and beyond, where the real fight for hearts and minds is taking place. The political mainstream will simply go along with the narratives presented to it by the Empire’s compliant media, thus ensuring its continued impotence and irrelevance to policy. However, a loud chorus of critics, dissidents, and anti-imperialist voices is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore.

And while on the far right libertarians and paleoconservatives are engaged in their own internal conflict over support for Russia and President Putin, so too is there an internal, quasi-ideological confrontation taking place on the left.

Many self-proclaimed “leftists” have merely transposed their anti-Soviet politics into an anti-Russian ideological posture, which sees in Russia both an embrace of capitalism and a desire for imperial revanchism. In this way, such groups (numerous on what passes for the “organized Left”) run interference for the political establishment, serving to dilute the potency of an anti-imperialist message through internecine conflict, demonization, and sectarianism. They proclaim that there is nothing about Russia worth defending for leftists. But is this true?

Here are a few reasons why those on the left who argue that Russia is “no better than the US” are either plainly ignorant, or they have ulterior motives:

1. Opposing US-NATO.
2. BRICS, SCO, and “Multi-Polarity.”
3. Opposition to Shock Therapy and Disaster Capitalism.
4. WWII, The Holocaust, and Defending Historical Memory.
5. Political Support for Victims of US Imperialism.

Complete story at - 5 Reasons Why Leftists Should Defend Russia | New Eastern Outlook

NATO: Atlantic Bridge is Falling Down… | New Eastern Outlook

Washington created something called NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 to weld Western Europe firmly to the future foreign policies of Washington, however destructive that might prove to the genuine interests of Germany, France, Italy and the other nations of Europe. In 1986 the twelve nations of the then-European Economic Community modified the 1957 Treaty of Rome and signed the Single European Act. That mandated the creation of a single EEC market by end of 1992, and set forth rules for European Political Cooperation, the forerunner of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Then on November 9, 1989, an event of historic dimension intervened to disrupt the EEC strategy for a single market. Gorbachev’s USSR surrendered the German Democratic Republic to the West. The Cold War was de facto over. Germany would be reunited. The West had apparently won. Most Europeans were jubilant. Many believed the decades of living on the brink of possible nuclear war were over. The emerging Europe seemed proud, confident of the future. NATO was an entity created by Washington, in the words of its first General Secretary, Lord Ismay, to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

European Defense Pillar or US NATO?

The Maastricht Treaty, a document with fatal flaws, was introduced at a meeting of the EEC in December 1991. A shocked Helmut Kohl was told by France’s Mitterrand and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher that Germany must agree to creation of a single currency to control the Bundesbank. That became today’s Euro and an independent supranational European Central Bank. It was blackmail as precondition for their accepting German unification. The Germans swallowed hard and signed.

What was little discussed at the time was that the Maastricht Treaty also included a section mandating establishment for the first time of a Common Foreign and Security Policy. The twelve nations signed the treaty and intense discussions were underway of establishing a European defense pillar independent of NATO. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the raison d’être for NATO was gone. The Warsaw Pact had dissolved. Washington had assured Gorbachev that NATO would never extend to the east.

Bush Destroys EU Defense Pillar

US President George H.W. Bush was a man who left a blood-soaked legacy, from his early years in Washington that likely included playing a key role as CIA agent in Dallas Texas in November 22, 1963 in the assassination of JFK. He went on to head the CIA in the 1970’s and to lure Saddam Hussein to occupy Kuwait in 1990 to provide the excuse for a bloody war Operation Desert Storm against Iraq.

As President, Bush also set in motion the events that would result in the destruction of Yugoslavia beginning the 1990’s, much as Washington is destroying Ukraine today. The central purpose behind that US-incited war that ravaged the Balkans for a decade, was to make clear to the EU nations that NATO, under US Pentagon control, would remain and, in fact, would go east. In effect, he used the Yugoslav war to destroy the emerging threat of an independent EU defense capacity, the EU defense pillar. As US Presidential adviser and Trilateral Commission former founder, Zbigniew Brzezinski openly described Washington’s view of Germany, she was a “vassal” of US imperial power, not a sovereign nation.

Complete story at - NATO: Atlantic Bridge is Falling Down… | New Eastern Outlook

Creating a Crisis—It’s NATO’s Way

Creating a Crisis—It’s NATO’s Way » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

by RON JACOBS

Talk about a contrived crisis. NATO, in its ongoing struggle to create enemies and thereby provide itself with a reason to exist, is now calling Russia its greatest threat. In other words, there really is no threat, unless NATO provokes Moscow and in doing so, creates one. In the current period—one that was preceded most recently by almost complete military domination of the world by the United States—Russia’s recent and relatively mild reactions to its growing encirclement by US client regimes and NATO military forces has been ratcheted up to what NATO is calling the greatest threat faced by NATO since that its heyday. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether the Soviet Union (SU) was ever the threat US citizens were told it was by their government, this recent statement by NATO is overblown and, more importantly, potentially quite dangerous.

During the final years of the Soviet Union, numerous discussions took place between officials of the SU under Mikhail Gorbachev and officials of the US and Germany. These discussions intensified after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. A part of these discussions focused on the continuing existence of NATO and its eastern European counterpart, the Warsaw Pact. Although NATO survived the dissolution of the so-called Soviet Bloc, the Warsaw Pact did not. An undertone of the ongoing discussions between Moscow and Washington was an understanding that NATO would not attempt to recruit nations that were previously in the Moscow-led alliance. According to the NATO newsletter NATO Review, this understanding was never written down and was therefore essentially meaningless. In fact, here is a quote detailing this perception from the journal’s spring 2015 edition:

Thus, the debate about the enlargement of NATO evolved solely in the context of German reunification. In these negotiations Bonn and Washington managed to allay Soviet reservations about a reunited Germany remaining in NATO. This was achieved by generous financial aid, and by the “2+4 Treaty” ruling out the stationing of foreign NATO forces on the territory of the former East Germany. However, it was also achieved through countless personal conversations in which Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders were assured that the West would not take advantage of the Soviet Union’s weakness and willingness to withdraw militarily from Central and Eastern Europe. It is these conversations that may have left some Soviet politicians with the impression that NATO enlargement, which started with the admission of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999, had been a breach of these Western commitments.”

In other words, Washington lied, again. Consequently, NATO began to invite/entice several nations from the defunct Warsaw Pact into its orbit, beginning with Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999. This resulted in NATO forces moving closer and closer to Russia’s eastern flank. Anyone who suggests that there is no strategic element to the incorporation of these and several other nations bordering (or much closer to) Russia is a liar. Anyone who believes this is a fool. The facts seem pretty clear. Washington and its western allies saw the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its alliance as an opportunity to further intimidate Moscow by moving its military forces closer to Russian borders while simultaneously incorporating the economies of the new NATO nations into the neoliberal fantasy then being constructed in the banks and legislatures of the United States, Britain, and Germany.

Complete story at - Creating a Crisis—It’s NATO’s Way » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

OK, so we all know what's going to happen next, right? Ukraine and the USA will (sneak around / break / defy / do what they want / walk all over) this agreement, and as the war continues, the USA, the EU, NATO, and Ukraine will all blame Russia because they're not controlling the separatists.   And that's even more true because Mr. Putin is one of the participants making the announcement.  Yep, stop me if you think you've heard this one before.

Ten Reasons Why We Should Celebrate the Inevitable Nuclear Holocaust - Russia Insider

A hundred years ago, the world “sleepwalked” into the First World War, the war that wiped out an entire generation of Europeans. Aren’t we repeating the same sleepwalking march again, this time with even deadlier consequences? The recent baiting and bullying of Russia and the Russian-speaking population of Eastern Ukraine; the proposals in Congress to supply lethal military aid to Ukraine coupled with the Defense Secretary nominee's enthusiasm for such help, all indicate a major dysfunction of rationality.

Russia has been sending signals that it is not backing off from this conflict, that the situation in Ukraine is too important to its national security. Recent signals of Russia’s resolve include its reformulation of its military doctrine that views NATO expansion into Russia’s neighborhood as the major threat; and the view of US policy in Ukraine as a proxy war against Russia.

While some scholars and journalists point to the possibility, if not inevitability, of the all out war, major news outlets prefer to underreport the depth of the conflict, treating it as something farcical rather than tragic. Maybe the press and politicians have the point? After all, how can a possible war with a nuclear-armed rival be serious? So let’s learn from our political leaders and stop worrying. We might as well die laughing:

10. In regular wars, common people die in the trenches while those who send them there spend their time giving speeches at luncheons and making TV appearances. By contrast, a nuclear war will put everyone in the same boat. We, the people, should all rejoice in the fact that we’ll finally witness the examples of personal courage and leadership provided by our brave politicians. To see a politician putting his money where his mouth is, is one of the greatest joys of citizenry. For many true patriots, it is a joy worth dying for.

Complete story at - Ten Reasons Why We Should Celebrate the Inevitable Nuclear Holocaust - Russia Insider

M of A - Ukraine: War In Kiev And Beyond?

Today (a few days ago now) the Ukrainian government finally admitted, three days after it happened, that it has lost its foothold at the Donetsk airport. Its position at the airport covered the artillery position the Ukrainian army has to the north-west of Donetsk. Those artillery units were shelling the federalist held city and the federalists attacked the airport to push them further away.

According to statistics provided to VICE News by the morgue, 157 casualties have been recorded in Donetsk since the beginning of January, with 119 of these occurring in the last two weeks.

It took quite a while but the federalist finally managed to capture the whole airport. Several counterattacks by the Ukrainian army were repelled and the counterattacking forces were destroyed.

Parts of the airport had been held for months by the "volunteer" right sector radicals that are now the "National Guard" of Ukraine. Their number three on the election list was captured by the federalists and their leader Dmytro Yarosh was wounded when he visited their airport position.

There is also some indecisive fighting further south near Mariupol and fighting in the north east near Lukhansk with the federalist making some slight advance. Still the general map has not changed much over the last months.

The Ukrainian army continues to mobilize and, with the help of some NATO members, is building up more forces. I doubt that whatever they come up with will have the motivation, training, equipment or leaders needed to be successful on the battlefield. Grandma's won't do. The soldiers on the other side have proven to be better in all aspects. Despite repeated claims form the Ukrainian government that 1,000, 2,000 or 9,000 Russian regular soldiers and hundreds of Russian tanks are fighting with the federalists none have been documented.

The Ukrainian army can not win a war against the federalist backed by Russia. The Ukrainian government is broke and will not get bailed out. Why is it still trying to wage war? My impression is that the U.S. is still pushing the Ukrainian government to continue its useless efforts to make any Europe-led ceasefire agreement with Russia null and void and to thereby keep the sanctions against Russia in place. Cold War 2.0 with proxy fighting in Ukraine is the U.S. plan to keep Russia from challenging its me-and-only-me-first global position.

Complete story at - M of A - Ukraine: War In Kiev And Beyond?

Russia Slams US/NATO Attempts To Draw It Into Military Conflict With Ukraine | Zero Hedge

NATO's Jens Stoltenberg unleashed the latest tirade against Russia this morning proclaiming - though offering no proof - that there are Russian forces and heavy equipment in Ukraine and a high number of Russian forces on the border which "doesn't contribute to a peaceful solution." Apparently pre-empting this outburst, Pravda reports Anatoly Tsyganok, director of the Military Forecasting Centre, exclaims, "Ukraine reiterates that Russia is in the war, but it's not true," adding that in fact "the USA and the NATO have artificial satellites continuously circulating above this territory and control the situation," concluding with a jab at The US & NATO that "Russia has never participated in the military conflict. And no attempt to involve Russia in the conflict will be crowned with success."

Putin offered a peace plan but it was rejected...As Reuters reports,

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko rejected a peace plan proposed to him last week by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday evening, according to Russian media.

Peskov said the plan, contained in a letter sent by Putin on Thursday evening, proposed a ceasefire by both government forces and separatist militiamen in southeastern Ukraine, as well as the withdrawal of heavy artillery by both sides.

"In recent days, Russia has consistently undertaken efforts as an intermediary in regulating the conflict," Peskov said in comments quoted by the ITAR TASS news agency.

"In particular, on Thursday night a written address was sent by the president of Russia to the president of Ukraine, in which a concrete plan was proposed to both sides in the conflict to withdraw heavy artillery."

A copy of the letter was published by the Russian television channel NTV. In it, Putin proposed "urgent measures for the cessation of mutual shelling, and also the rapid withdrawal by the sides in the conflict of means of destruction with a caliber higher than 100 mm".

Because...

Putin sought to burnish his peacemaking credentials last week by proposing a ceasefire to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko under which the sides would withdraw heavy artillery.

The proposal was seen by Kiev as an attempt to evade some parts of the Minsk agreement, cement rebel territorial gains and disguise the fact that Putin has no real peace plan.

"If Putin really wanted peace in east Ukraine, he would have only one 'peace plan', Boris Vishnevsky, an opposition member of the St Petersburg local assembly, wrote in a blog.

"A peace plan is very simple. If Putin does not propose one, it means he does not need peace."

Complete story at - Russia Slams US/NATO Attempts To Draw It Into Military Conflict With Ukraine | Zero Hedge

PETER HITCHENS: Forget 'evil' Putin - we are the bloodthirsty warmongers | Daily Mail Online

This is a time of year for memories, and the ones that keep bothering me are from my childhood, which seemed at the time to be wholly happy and untroubled.

Yet all the adults in my life still dwelt in the shadow of recent war. This was not the glamorous, exciting side of war, but the miserable, fearful and hungry aspect.

My mother, even in middle-class suburban prosperity, couldn’t throw away an eggshell without running her finger round it to get out the last of the white. No butcher dared twice to try to cheat her on the weights.

Haunted all her life by rationing, she would habitually break a chocolate bar into its smallest pieces. She had also been bombed from the air in Liverpool, and had developed a fatalism to cope with the nightly danger of being blown to pieces, shocking to me then and since.

I am now beset by these ingrained memories of shortage and danger because I seem surrounded by people who think that war might be fun. This seems to happen when wartime generations are pushed aside by their children, who need to learn the truth all over again.

It seemed fairly clear to me from her experiences that war had in fact been a miserable affair of fear, hunger, threadbare darned clothes, broken windows and insolent officials. And that was a victory, more or less, though my father (who fought in it) was never sure of that.

Now I seem surrounded by people who actively want a war with Russia, a war we all might lose. They seem to believe that we are living in a real life Lord Of The Rings, in which Moscow is Mordor and Vladimir Putin is Sauron. Some humorous artists in Moscow, who have noticed this, have actually tried to set up a giant Eye of Sauron on a Moscow tower.

We think we are the heroes, setting out with brave hearts to confront the Dark Lord, and free the saintly Ukrainians from his wicked grasp.

This is all the most utter garbage. Since 1989, Moscow, the supposed aggressor, has – without fighting or losing a war – peacefully ceded control over roughly 180 million people, and roughly 700,000 square miles of valuable territory.

The EU (and its military wing, Nato) have in the same period gained control over more than 120 million of those people, and almost 400,000 of those square miles.

Complete story at - PETER HITCHENS: Forget 'evil' Putin - we are the bloodthirsty warmongers  | Daily Mail Online

The new European 'arc of instability' — RT Op-Edge

The European Council on Foreign Relations and Berlin think-tank Friedrich Ebert Stiftung have just reached more or less the same conclusion.

If the dangerous stand-off between the EU and Russia over Ukraine is not solved, the EU could face, up to 2030, a military build-up in eastern Europe; a new arms race with NATO as a protagonist; and a semi-permanent “zone of instability” from the Baltic to the Balkans and the Black Sea.

What these two think-tanks don’t – and won’t – ever acknowledge is that a new European “arc of instability” – from the Baltic to the Black Sea, as myself and other independent analysts have stressed – is exactly what the Empire of Chaos and its weaponized arm – NATO – are working on to prevent closer Eurasia integration.

By the way, the Pentagon excels in fabricating “arcs of instability.” The previous one was – and remains – massive, stretching from the Maghreb to Xinjiang in western China across the Middle East and Central Asia.

Moscow has totally identified the plot; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, once again, has made it crystal clear, in detail.

And crucially, some influential sectors in Germany also did, as in members of the cultural elite destroying the notion of a new war in Europe: “Not in our name.”

The same applies to those that always preach more transatlantic cooperation, extol the US’s “defining” role in Germany, and effusively praise Germany as the most American country in Europe; that’s the case of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper – which stands for the core of the political and economic establishment in Germany.

It’s still in an embryonic stage, and has not yet made Chancellor Angela Merkel see the light; but a reverse reengineering of Atlanticist relations is already in progress in Germany.

Complete story at - The new European 'arc of instability' — RT Op-Edge

War By Media And The Triumph Of Propaganda

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Once again, the evil empire is coming to get us, led by another Stalin or, perversely, a new Hitler. Name your demon and let rip.

The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The biggest Western military build-up in the Caucasus and eastern Europe since world war two is blacked out. Washington's secret aid to Kiev and its neo-Nazi brigades responsible for war crimes against the population of eastern Ukraine is blacked out. Evidence that contradicts propaganda that Russia was responsible for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner is blacked out.

And again, supposedly liberal media are the censors. Citing no facts, no evidence, one journalist identified a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine as the man who shot down the airliner. This man, he wrote, was known as The Demon. He was a scary man who frightened the journalist. That was the evidence.

Many in the western media haves worked hard to present the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government.

What the Russian president has to say is of no consequence; he is a pantomime villain who can be abused with impunity. An American general who heads Nato and is straight out of Dr. Strangelove - one General Breedlove - routinely claims Russian invasions without a shred of visual evidence. His impersonation of Stanley Kubrick's General Jack D. Ripper is pitch perfect.

Forty thousand Ruskies were massing on the border, according to Breedlove. That was good enough for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Observer - the latter having previously distinguished itself with lies and fabrications that backed Blair's invasion of Iraq, as its former reporter, David Rose, revealed.


Complete story at - War By Media And The Triumph Of Propaganda

The NATO paper tiger | Ukraina.ru

Regnum commentator Alexander Zapolskis looks at how strong the North Atlantic alliance really is

The Chinese term "paper tiger" means something that seems strong but is actually weak. I was reminded of it when I read about the comparative analysis of NATO and Russian military capabilities done by the Polish network TVN24. On paper, NATO compared to Russia is like an elephant to a pug. Take, for example, military budgets: the alliance spends $950 bn a year, while Russia spends less than $90 bn.

Or the overall numerical strength of the armed forces: 3.5 mln NATO personnel to Russia’s 766,000. The North Atlantic alliance looks superior to Russia on all counts. But is this really the case? After all, on paper, as of February 2014, Ukraine’s army was the sixth largest in the world in manpower and equipment.

And yet it was routed by the Donetsk self-defense forces, commanded by musicians, blue collar workers and even a historical reenactment fan.

But if you take all the key indicators of NATO armies and list them in a chart, the picture will look somewhat different. At first glance, looks fine. There are 28 countries in the bloc with a total population of 888 mln people. They have 3.9 mln troops between them, over 6,000 warplanes, around 3,600 helicopters, 17,800 tanks, 62,600 armored fighting vehicles, 15,000 artillery pieces, 16,000 mortars, 2,600 multiple launch systems and 302 warships (all major classes, including submarines). The trick, however, is that it includes more than just NATO. There’s some deceptive accounting.

Complete story at - The NATO paper tiger | Ukraina.ru