On Hitler's Birthday, US to Begin Openly Training Neo-Nazi Integrated Forces in Ukraine - Washington's Blog

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Robert Barsocchini

The US has long be openly coordinating with, advocating for, and supporting neo-Nazi and neo-Nazi integrated forces in Ukraine.

Here is Victoria Nuland, a high-ranking and corrupt member of Obama’s executive, meeting with far-right figures Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko, and officially designated neo-Nazi Oleh Tyahnybok:



In 2012, the EU officially designated Svoboda, the militant group led and co-founded by Tyahnybok, as an anti-democratic, “racist”, “anti-Semitic” group, and the World Jewish Congress designated it a “neo-Nazi” group.

In a leaked phone call, Nuland was caught determining who should assume the post of prime minister after the Ukrainian coup d’etat was completed, or, in Nuland’s term “midwifed”. She picked Yatsenyuk, and, indeed, he took the position after the coup. Nuland suggested that he should meet with Tyahnybok “four times a week”.

For his part, also exhibiting a Nazi-influenced outlook, Yatsenyuk later wrote on a government website:

“They lost their lives because they defended men and women, children and the elderly who found themselves in a situation facing a threat to be killed by invaders and sponsored by them subhumans. First, we will commemorate the heroes by wiping out those who killed them and then by cleaning our land from the evil”

Complete story at - On Hitler's Birthday, US to Begin Openly Training Neo-Nazi Integrated Forces in Ukraine Washington's Blog

Backtracking From the Brink in Ukraine | Stratfor

By Jay Ogilvy

If ever there were a flashpoint — to invoke the title of George Friedman's new book — Ukraine is it. The fragile cease-fire now in place in eastern Ukraine is the pilot light to a new Cold War between the United States and Russia as their proxies poise to reload.

At this critical moment, American media have been fanning the flames of this flashpoint. While Russia has hardly been innocent of violating international law in its annexation of Crimea, it is worth taking stock of some history, near and distant, to temper the narratives that could escalate into a shooting war that should be entirely avoidable.

Ever since the lead-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the American media have been filled with Vladimir Putin bashing. For Americans, Putin is an easy target with his KGB background, bare-chested bravado and anti-gay policies. But this obsessive focus on Putin's personality obscures much more important geopolitical realities.

False Parallels

The dominant U.S. narrative for Ukraine is that Ukraine is simply one more Eastern European country trying to pry itself out from under seven decades of Soviet oppression. This narrative is profoundly misleading. Ukraine is not Poland and it is not Latvia or Romania. These countries are each largely united by a shared language and culture. They are also further fused through suffering from prior Russian incursions.

Ukraine is different from most of its neighbors in Eastern Europe. It is both deeply divided, culturally and politically, and its eastern half is strongly bound to Russia.

Just look at the maps of the presidential elections of 2004, 2010 and 2014.


Note the similarity between these electoral maps and the distribution of Russian speakers:

Complete story at - Backtracking From the Brink in Ukraine | Stratfor

ClubOrlov: License to Kill

The story is the same every time: some nation, due to a confluence of lucky circumstances, becomes powerful—much more powerful than the rest—and, for a time, is dominant. But the lucky circumstances, which often amount to no more than a few advantageous quirks of geology, be it Welsh coal or West Texas oil, in due course come to an end. In the meantime, the erstwhile superpower becomes corrupted by its own power.

As the endgame approaches, those still nominally in charge of the collapsing empire resort to all sorts of desperate measures—all except one: they will refuse to ever consider the fact that their imperial superpower is at an end, and that they should change their ways accordingly. George Orwell once offered an excellent explanation for this phenomenon: as the imperial end-game approaches, it becomes a matter of imperial self-preservation to breed a special-purpose ruling class—one that is incapable of understanding that the end-game is approaching. Because, you see, if they had an inkling of what's going on, they wouldn't take their jobs seriously enough to keep the game going for as long as possible.

The approaching imperial collapse can be seen in the ever worsening results the empire gets for its imperial efforts. After World War II, the US was able to do a respectable job helping to rebuild Germany, along with the rest of western Europe. Japan also did rather well under US tutelage, as did South Korea after the end of fighting on the Korean peninsula. With Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all of which were badly damaged by the US, the results were significantly worse: Vietnam was an outright defeat, Cambodia lived through a period of genocide, while amazingly resilient Laos—the most heavily bombed country on the planet—recovered on its own.

The first Gulf War went even more badly: fearful of undertaking a ground offensive in Iraq, the US stopped short of its regular practice of toppling the government and installing a puppet regime there, and left it in limbo for a decade. When the US did eventually invade, it succeeded—after killing countless civilians and destroying much of the infrastructure—in leaving behind a dismembered corpse of a country.

Complete story at - ClubOrlov: License to Kill

U.S. veterans reveal 1962 nuclear close call dodged in Okinawa | Kyodo News

At the final moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the U.S. nuclear missile men in Okinawa received a launch order which was later found to have been mistakenly issued, according to testimonies by former U.S. veterans given to Kyodo News.

In the fall of 1962, the Soviet Union introduced nuclear missiles into Cuba from where Moscow could target the mainland of the United States. U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his top advisers then seriously considered military options as a countermeasure, and the two superpowers were on the brink of nuclear exchanges.

The testimonies by the veterans, who gazed into the "abyss" of a nuclear war, shed new historical light on a nuclear close call which could have triggered the use of nuclear weapons, highlighting the potential risk of an accidental nuclear launch.

According to John Bordne, 73, former member of the 873rd Tactical Missile Squadron of the U.S. Air Force, several hours after his crew took over a midnight shift from 12 a.m. on Oct. 28 in 1962 at the Missile Launch Control Center at Yomitan Village in Okinawa, a coded order to launch missiles was conveyed in a radio communication message from the Missile Operations Center at the Kadena Air Base.

Another former U.S. veteran who served in Okinawa also recently confirmed on condition of anonymity what Bordne told Kyodo News in an interview last summer and in following e-mail exchanges. Bordne has mentioned the incident in an unpublished memoir based on his diary.

Complete story at - U.S. veterans reveal 1962 nuclear close call dodged in Okinawa | Kyodo News

How the American War Machine Is Sucking Up Vast Amounts of Cash to Screw Up the World | Alternet

President Obama and Senator John McCain, who have clashed on almost every conceivable issue, do agree on one thing: the Pentagon needs more money. Obama wants to raise the Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2016 by $35 billion more than the caps that exist under current law allow. McCain wants to see Obama his $35 billion and raise him $17 billion more. Last week, the House and Senate Budget Committees attempted to meet Obama’s demands by pressing to pour tens of billions of additional dollars into the uncapped supplemental war budget.

What will this new avalanche of cash be used for? A major ground war in Iraq? Bombing the Assad regime in Syria? A permanent troop presence in Afghanistan? More likely, the bulk of the funds will be wielded simply to take pressure off the Pentagon’s base budget so it can continue to pay for staggeringly expensive projects like the F-35 combat aircraft and a new generation of ballistic missile submarines. Whether the enthusiastic budgeteers in the end succeed in this particular maneuver to create a massive Pentagon slush fund, the effort represents a troubling development for anyone who thinks that Pentagon spending is already out of hand.

Mind you, such funds would be added not just to a Pentagon budget already running at half-a-trillion dollars annually, but to the actual national security budget, which is undoubtedly close to twice that. It includes items like work on nuclear weapons tucked away at the Department of Energy, that Pentagon supplementary war budget, the black budget of the Intelligence Community, and war-related expenditures in the budgets of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security.

Despite the jaw-dropping resources available to the national security state, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Martin Dempsey recently claimed that, without significant additional infusions of cash, the U.S. military won’t be able to “execute the strategy” with which it has been tasked. As it happens, Dempsey’s remark unintentionally points the way to a dramatically different approach to what’s still called “defense spending.” Instead of seeking yet more of it, perhaps it’s time for the Pentagon to abandon its costly and counterproductive military strategy of “covering the globe.”

A Cold War Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

Even to begin discussing this subject means asking the obvious question: Does the U.S. military have a strategy worthy of the name? As President Dwight D. Eisenhower put it in his farewell address in 1961, defense requires a “balance between cost and hoped for advantage” and “between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable.” Eisenhower conveniently omitted a third category: things that shouldn’t have been done in the first place -- on his watch, for instance, the CIA’s coups in Iran and Guatemala that overthrew democratic governments or, in our century, the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. But Eisenhower’s underlying point holds. Strategy involves making choices. Bottom line: current U.S. strategy fails this test abysmally.

Despite the obvious changes that have occurred globally since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military is still expected to be ready to go anywhere on Earth and fight any battle. The authors of the Pentagon’s key 2014Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), for instance, claimed that its supposedly “updated strategy” was focused on “twenty-first-century defense priorities.” Self-congratulatory rhetoric aside, however, the document outlined an all-encompassing global military blueprint whose goals would have been familiar to any Cold War strategist of the latter half of the previous century. With an utter inability to focus, the QDR claimed that the U.S. military needed to be prepared to act in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. In addition, plans are now well underway to beef up the Pentagon’s ability to project power into the melting Arctic as part of a global race for resources brewing there.

Complete story at - How the American War Machine Is Sucking Up Vast Amounts of Cash to Screw Up the World | Alternet

Strong Dollar, Weakened World - Bloomberg View

By Mark Whitehouse

Back when the U.S. Federal Reserve was doing whatever it could to keep credit flowing, companies and governments in emerging markets went on a borrowing spree in dollars. Now, with the Fed changing course and the U.S. currency rising, all that dollar-denominated debt is becoming one of the weakest links in the global financial system.

In the years after the 2008 financial crisis, lending dollars in emerging markets looked like a great deal all around. Borrowers benefited from interest rates lower than those they would pay in their local currencies, and global investors reaped better returns than they could elsewhere. The debtors seemed a safe enough bet: Their assets and revenues were ample enough in dollar terms, thanks in part to the relative weakness of the U.S. currency -- and, for energy-exporting countries, the high price of oil.

Consequently, capital flooded into emerging markets. By mid-2013, the dollar-denominated debt of non-bank borrowers in developing countries had reached an unprecedented level of more than $4 trillion, according to research by economists at the Bank for International Settlements. Judging from corporate and government bond-issuance data compiled by Bloomberg, the trend persisted through 2014.

Complete story at - Strong Dollar, Weakened World - Bloomberg View

Information war between Russia and the West intensifies -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

War is raging between the West and Russia, with a key battlefield being the "war for public opinion" and control over information, narratives and perspectives. The Ukrainian crisis has again reiterated the polar opposite narratives between Western and Russian media as the information war intensifies. Western news outlets have been incessantly attempting to portray Russia as the belligerent power over the past year, even though many of the facts contradict this perspective. In order to justify an illegal coup in Kiev - which is part of a grander strategy of destabilising, encircling and antagonising the Russian Federation - the presstitutes are hard at work manufacturing narratives and preparing "Americans for conflict with Russia", as Dr. Paul Craig Roberts wrote in his article: 'CNN is Beating the Drums of War'. Considering the majority of conflicts in recent years have been initiated by Western intervention or meddling - including the Ukrainian crisis of course - Russian propaganda relies far more on facts, as there is often no need to invert truth to support Moscow's position.

"War for Public Opinion"

"It's a war for public opinion because whatever the case may be on the ground Western leaders, specifically NATO-countries, they really need public opinion to be backing whatever moves they are making around the world," was how investigative journalist and founder of 21st Century Wire, Patrick Henningsen, described the Western media landscape in an interview with RT. In an attempt to win the "war for public opinion", the West has launched multiple initiatives recently in a bid to successfully influence and shape public perception on current affairs. The European Union (EU) has launched a 3-month project to prepare a "strategic communication" plan to counter what the EU believes to be Russian "disinformation campaigns", according to draft conclusions of an EU summit obtained by Reuters. The project will be led by Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, who will present her strategy to EU leaders in June.

A key area of this project will be an attempt to build popular media initiatives for Russian speaking audiences. One organisation that has been involved in initial discussions on this matter is the EU-funded European Endowment for Democracy (EED), which shares a remarkably similar name to the notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - the pre-eminent regime change organisation of Western intelligence agencies. A press release from an EED consultation on the "feasibility [of] Russian-language media" projects states: "Around 90 media experts and organisations examined ways of setting up new media initiatives for Russian-language audiences and strengthening cooperation between existing media actors in the Eastern Partnership countries and beyond." There is no doubt that these 'media initiatives' will be nothing more than Western intelligence operations aimed at subjugating the Russian state and reducing support for Moscow's stance on Ukraine and other issues.

Complete story at - Information war between Russia and the West intensifies -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

Trademark Jaw-Dropping US Hypocrisy on Display re Saudi Aggression - Washington's Blog

Washington has for months been screaming about Russian “aggression” against post-US-backed coup Ukraine. The screams are never accompanied by any clear evidence (perhaps highlighting why the screaming is so important), which the governments of Germany and other European countries recently announced is for good reason: the claims are merely more of Washington’s characteristic, self-serving distortions.

Condemnation of Russian “aggression” was already a case study in US-American hypocrisy, as the US is the country that has carried out, and is continuing, the worst case of aggression of the century, the invasion of Iraq, which, as part of its ongoing, wider war for hegemony over the Middle East, has slaughtered somewhere on the order of 1 to 2 or more million people in the last ten years, according to a new study by the Nobel-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility. (This is in addition to the approximately ten thousand of its “own” people the US has slaughtered domestically in the last ten or so years.)

Really?

Adding to this, the US is now openly coordinating another act of naked aggression committed by a tandem force of two US-collaborator countries competing for the title of world’s worst domestic dictatorship: Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Amazingly (though typically), the US and its media partners, such as NBC, are trying to spin the Saudi invasion as a Saudi “proxy” war… It isn’t. The Saudis are not using proxies. They themselves are doing it… openly, as terrorist states backed by the US are often wont to do. If it is a proxy war in any way, it is a US proxy war, since the Saudis are using US planes and being coordinated by the United States, making them, arguably, US proxies.

Complete story at - Trademark Jaw-Dropping US Hypocrisy on Display re Saudi Aggression Washington's Blog

The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | The Clinton Crime Family

They’re one of America’s notable crime families – Bill as president, Hillary as first lady, senator, secretary of state and now presidential aspirant.
Bill’s rap sheet includes:

• eight years as Wall Street’s man in Washington – facilitating casino capitalism more than ever before;
• NAFTA and the World Trade Organization – anti-democratic job and environmental-destroying coup d’etas;
• compromising vitally needed welfare aid;
• marketplace medicine managed competition Hillarycare – Obamacare’s precursor.
• responsibility with Bush I for ethnic Rwandan massacres;
• Iraq sanctions causing mass starvation, disease and 5,000 monthly Iraqi children deaths, according to former humanitarian relief coordinator Denis Halliday;
• Balkan wars and raping Yugoslavia;
• telecommunications deregulation facilitating unprecedented media consolidation;
• repeal of Glass-Steagall; and
• the Commodity Futures Modernization Act ending regulatory oversight over derivatives and leveraging;
• Hillary partnered in her husband’s crimes. She shamelessly self-promoted throughout her Washington years and since leaving government.
• She’s unabashedly hawkish. Earlier articles called her a war goddess. In 1999, she urged Bill to bomb Belgrade. “What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life,” she blustered.

Straightaway post 9/11, she urged waging war on terror. She supported Bush and Obama’s worst crimes. She endorses nuclear weapons use. She calls them peacekeeping deterrents.

As a 2008 presidential aspirant, she told AIPAC convention participants America “stands with Israel now and forever.”

Complete story at - The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | The Clinton Crime Family

Colonel Cassad (in English) - Destabilizing the old world order

Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond gave a speech in London in which he again spoke about the destabilizing role of Russia in the Ukrainian crisis.

"President Putin's actions — illegally annexing Crimea and now using Russian troops to destabilize eastern Ukraine – fundamentally undermine the security of sovereign nations of Eastern Europe," — said Hammond, speaking in the Royal United Services Institute in London.

According to Hammond, Putin is not going to follow the rules accepted in the international community, the goal of which is to keep peace between nations. Quite the opposite he is bent on "subverting it", due to which Russia is potentially the "single greatest threat to Britain's security."
Earlier in his BBC interview the head of the British Foreign Office said that there are no signs of changing the Moscow's policy towards the Ukrainian conflict.

He added that additional sanctions against Russia may be passed in the case of the worsening situation in Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities and the western countries accuse Russia of giving military aid to the separatists in the east of Ukraine and of sending military force to participate in the conflict.

Moscow consistently denies direct participation in the armed conflict in Donbass and accuses the west of not having the desire to settle the crisis peacefully.

Merkel convinced Obama.

On Monday evening it became known that the US president Barack Obama decided not to ship lethal weapons to Ukraine for now.

As the Associated Press agency was told by the ambassador of Germany in Washington Peter Wittig, Obama made this decision in February after the talks in the White House with Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to Wittig, the American president agreed with Merkel that more room needs to be given to diplomacy in the situation of the cease-fire that started.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/uk/2015/03/150310_hammond_speech_russia_threat_europe (in Russian) — link

The only thing in which it is possible to agree with Hammond is that the current Russian line is destroying the existing world order, willingly or unwillingly, which its current masters naturally don't like. Few can be deceived by hypocritical lamentations that the existing world order served the goal of keeping peace, because it is precisely the masters of the existing world order who lead in the number of aggressive wars and foreign-inspired coups, which violate the sovereignty of independent and formally independent countries. It is hard to say that Russia consciously sought actions that destroy this world order. For many years Russia tried to integrate into this system, but no matter how our westernizers tried, they were regularly shown the door. In the end, Russia was forced to throw monkey wrenches into the works of the wheels of the existing world order, first in Georgia, then in Syria, and now in Ukraine. Not in any single one of these crucial events Russia wasn't the initiator of the process. Rather, it stood in defense, in some cases successfully, in other cases not so much. But this is unacceptable for those who benefit the most from the fact that our world works in this specific way and not in some other way.

Russia is currently unable to offer some kind of global project or a paradigm of development to the world. The rejection of superpower status is fixed at the level of the basic ideological postulates. Russia cannot replace the USA, even if she strongly wanted it. So there is no speaking about Russia trying to bring the USA down from their high horse and take the place of the world hegemony. Only China may entertain such ideas, and only in the long term. Russia simply wants to lock certain spheres of influence behind her and to review the rules of the game where the USA act as not the first among equals bur rather like a sovereign among vassals (perhaps, disloyal vassals). That is why the conflict based on the foundation of such postulates destroys and will continue to destroy the existing world order, both due to the natural development of the cold war between the USA and the RF and also due to the long-term consequences of wars and political and economic crises generated by this conflict.

Complete story at - Colonel Cassad (in English) - Destabilizing the old world order

U.S.-v.-Russia: Even Stephen Cohen Is Starting to Speak the Truth - Washington's Blog

Eric Zuesse

An alarming development is that Stephen F. Cohen, the internationally prominent scholar of Russia, is acknowledging that (1:35 on the video) “for the first time in my long life (I began in this field in the 1960s), I think the possibility of war with Russia is real,” and he clearly and unequivocally places all of the blame for it on the U.S. leadership. He calls this “possibly a fateful turning-point in history.” He also says “it could be the beginning of the end of the so-called trans-Atlantic alliance.”

He goes on to say (2:20): “This problem began in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration adopted a winner-take-all policy toward post-Soviet Russia … Russia gives, we take. … This policy was adopted by the Clinton Administration but is pursued by every [meaning both] political party, every President, every American Congress, since President Clinton, to President Obama. This meant that the United States was entitled to a sphere or zone of influence as large as it wished, right up to Russia’s borders, and Russia was entitled to no sphere of influence, at all, not even in Georgia, … or in Ukraine (with which Russia had been intermarried for centuries).”

He also speaks clearly about the misrepresentations of Putin by the American Government, and he clearly states (5:25): “He’s more European than 99% of other Russians.”

Regarding Ukraine (5:45): “Since November of 2013, Putin has been not aggressive, but reactive, at every stage.”

Regarding, in America, the effective unanimity of allowed scholarly and media opinions to the contrary of the actual facts, (and this is the most startling thing of all, so you might want to go straight to it, at 7:05): “This is an unprecedented situation in American politics. … This is exceedingly dangerous, and this is a failure of American democracy. Why it happened, I am not sure.”

He condemns (7:30) “this extraordinarily irrational [non] factual demonization of Putin … and this too is hard to explain.”

Complete story at - U.S.-v.-Russia: Even Stephen Cohen Is Starting to Speak the Truth Washington's Blog

The Big Dick School of American Patriotism, and What We Make of It | naked capitalism

Let’s face it: we live in a state of pervasive national security anxiety. There are various possible responses to this low-grade fever that saps resolve, but first we have to face the basis for that anxiety — what I’ve come to think of as the Big Dick School of Patriotism, or (since anything having to do with our present version of national security, even a critique of it, has to have an acronym) the BDSP.

The BDSP is based on a bedrock belief in how America should work: that the only strength that really matters is military and that a great country is one with the capacity to beat the bejesus out of everyone else. Think of it as a military version of 50 Shades of Grey, with the same frisson of control and submission (for the American citizen) and the assumption that a good portion of the world is ripe to be bullied.

The BDSP is good citizenship conflated with JROTC, hosannas to sniper kills, the Pentagon’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War — what are we celebrating there anyway? — Rudolph Giuliani pining for a president who loves America in Reaganesque fashion, and the organizers of South Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day, who wouldn’t let the local chapter of Veterans For Peace march with their banners because, so the story goes, they didn’t want the word “peace” associated with veterans.

Of course, the Big Dick School of Patriotism isn’t new — revolutionary roots, manifest destiny, history as the great pounding of hooves across the plain, and all that. Nor is it uniquely American, even if there is something culturally specific about our form of national hubris on steroids. Still, there have been times in our history when civilians — some in power, some drawing strength from numbers — have pushed back against the military and its mystique, or at least have demanded an accounting of its deeds. And of course, until the Cold War bled into 9/11, there was no national security state on the present gargantuan scale to deal with.

As he was leaving office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned against the overweening power of what he called “the military-industrial complex.” As a senator, J. William Fulbright similarly warned of “the arrogance of [American] power” and used his Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship to challenge the Vietnam War — whereupon Fred Friendly, president of CBS News, got that network’s executives to agree to preempt “Captain Kangaroo” and cover those hearings live.

On the populist side, there was General Smedley Butler, who campaigned against the military in his retirement, the Bonus Marchers of Great Depression Washington, and of course the massive antiwar resistance and remarkable insubordination of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Similarly, some soldiers from the all-volunteer force of our era worked to undermine the U.S. occupation of Iraq in various (though far less pervasive) ways, including conducting “search and avoid missions” in which they would park, hang out, and falsely report that they were searching for weapons caches.

Complete story at - The Big Dick School of American Patriotism, and What We Make of It | naked capitalism

U.S. war moves in Ukraine: Watch what they do, not what they say | Workers World

As activists, students and workers gather in Washington, D.C., for the “Spring Rising” anti-war mobilization March 18-21, many are probably unaware that 300 U.S. troops arrived in Ukraine this month, with another 300 expected to join them shortly.

The U.S. soldiers are stationed at the Yavoriv Training Area in Lviv, near the Polish border in western Ukraine. Their mission, according to the Pentagon, is to train divisions of the Ukrainian National Guard.

But their presence also establishes a provocative U.S. military “footprint” in this key agricultural and industrial country on the Russian Federation’s western border.

The first open and public U.S. military presence on Ukrainian soil comes amid a civil war raging in former southeastern Ukraine, now the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, also called Novorossiya. It’s accompanied by unprecedented NATO war games and military buildup threatening Russia.

All this despite a ceasefire agreement, negotiated by Russia, Germany and France, which went into effect Feb. 15. As happened during previous ceasefires, the U.S.-backed government in Kiev routinely violates the terms and is using the “breathing spell” to rebuild its military forces to assault the embattled Donbass mining region.

“Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion minus … to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that’s taking place,” the U.S.’s 173rd Airborne Brigade commander, Michael Foster, told a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington on March 3. (Global Research, March 3)

Complete story at - U.S. war moves in Ukraine: Watch what they do, not what they say | Workers World

The 4th Media » US Intel Stands Pat on MH-17 Shoot-down

Exclusive: Almost eight months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine – creating a flashpoint in the standoff between nuclear-armed Russia and America – the U.S. intelligence community claims it has not updated its assessment since five days after the crash, reports Robert Parry.

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Despite the high stakes involved in the confrontation between nuclear-armed Russia and the United States over Ukraine, the U.S. intelligence community has not updated its assessment on a critical turning point of the crisis – the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 – since five days after the crash last July 17, according to the office of the Director of National Intelligence.

On Thursday, when I inquired about arranging a possible briefing on where that U.S. intelligence assessment stands, DNI spokesperson Kathleen Butler sent me the same report that was distributed by the DNI on July 22, 2014, which relied heavily on claims being made about the incident on social media.

So, I sent a follow-up e-mail to Butler saying: “are you telling me that U.S. intelligence has not refined its assessment of what happened to MH-17 since July 22, 2014?”
Her response: “Yes. The assessment is the same.”

I then wrote back: “I don’t mean to be difficult but that’s just not credible. U.S. intelligence has surely refined its assessment of this important event since July 22.”

When she didn’t respond, I sent her some more detailed questions describing leaks that I had received about what some U.S. intelligence analysts have since concluded, as well as what the German intelligence agency, the BND, reported to a parliamentary committee last October, according to Der Spiegel.

While there are differences in those analyses about who fired the missile, there appears to be agreement that the Russian government did not supply the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine with a sophisticated Buk anti-aircraft missile system that the original DNI report identified as the likely weapon used to destroy the commercial airliner killing all 298 people onboard.
Butler replied to my last e-mail late Friday, saying “As you can imagine, I can’t get into details, but can share that the assessment has IC [Intelligence Community] consensus” – apparently still referring to the July 22 report.

Complete story at - The 4th Media » US Intel Stands Pat on MH-17 Shoot-down

Russian Elites but Not Russian People, Ready to Capitulate to the West, Kagarlitsky Says | Johnson's Russia List

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, March 17, 2015)

The West does not understand Russia, but it does understand very well indeed Russia’s elites; and as a result, it has seriously miscalculated in its dealings with Moscow about Ukraine, according to Boris Kagarlitsky, who argues the elites are ready to capitulate in the face of sanctions but the Russian people never will be.

In fact, the Moscow analyst says, while increasing sanctions may increase the willingness of Russian elites to find compromises, they “not only will not frighten the population of Russia but on the contrary will push” all other Russians in the opposite direction and make them more anti-Western and anti-elite as well (stoletie.ru/vzglyad/elity_gotovy_kapitulirovat_627.htm).

Although the West and the elites assume the population will always be passive, in fact, that is not the case, and popular anger at anything that ordinary Russians view as a capitulation will be something the Kremlin will have to take into account. Indeed, Kagarlitsky says, this divide between elites and masses will form the core of Russian politics in the months ahead.

The Presidential Administration understands this, he says, but the government and even more the Russian liberal elites on whose views the West relies do not. And consequently, the West’s own actions instead of pushing Moscow in the direction it hopes for are in fact pushing the regime in very different ones.

And he argues that in this conflict, Moscow’s liberal intelligentsia will find itself in an ever weaker position because its support of the West on Ukraine means that it “has isolated itself from society and even from those of its strata which a year or two ago were ready to listen to its arguments.”

Complete story at - Russian Elites but Not Russian People, Ready to Capitulate to the West, Kagarlitsky Says | Johnson's Russia List

How The Ukrainian Diaspora In The US Is Funding The War Effort In East Ukraine

At the Holy Cross Ukrainian Catholic Church in the Queens borough of New York on a Sunday afternoon in late February, Ivan Rodichenko is delivering a presentation to a rapt audience before him. As images of war-torn eastern Ukraine appear on the projector screen behind him, it becomes clear he has not traveled all the way from Kiev to deliver a religious talk.

The real reason Rodichenko, a soldier with a volunteer battalion fighting in the East Ukraine conflict, came to the U.S. is contained in a white envelope that is passed from table to table. One by one, the group of about 40 people write their names down on a piece of paper and then slip money into the envelope.

Departing this church basement in New York, the money will be turned into basic equipment for the cash-strapped Ukrainian volunteer battalions that are helping the regular army fight pro-Russian separatists. Almost everyone in the room is an immigrant who still calls Ukraine home and harbors strong feelings of nationalism.

“Without this help from people like them, the war is already lost,” said Rodichenko, 33, who is midway through a tour of the eastern U.S. to raise money for the 25th Territorial Defense Battalion of Kiev, a military unit that was mobilized in the wake of the eastern Ukraine conflict.

Complete story at - How The Ukrainian Diaspora In The US Is Funding The War Effort In East Ukraine

The money collected will be spent on equipment for volunteer soldiers on the ground in Ukraine. 

 International Business Times/Christopher Harress

Can Millennials change the way US and Russia view each other? | Russia Direct

The world is not only on a geopolitical threshold, it also on a demographic threshold. Members of Generation Y (the so-called “Millennials”) are coming of age in the 21st century, replacing members of Generation X in leadership positions in the field of diplomacy and international relations.

Demographic and geopolitical changes are closely connected and cannot be analyzed in isolation from one another. A new generation will become, if not fully responsible for establishing a more just world order, at least an important participant in this process and responsible for safeguarding its continuity.

Importantly, geopolitical events at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century that accompanied the maturing of these Millennials have been influencing their views of the world. Understanding how Millennials see the world around them and what impact their perceptions would make on international relations, then, is of paramount importance for understanding the future of international relations.

The Ukranian crisis indictates that the world is on the threshold of a tectonic shift in international relations, as Millennials see it. In fact, it revealed many controversies in the established system of international relations. Because of the growing number of casualties in an increasing number of conflicts, talk of the need for a revival of diplomacy and a “New Yalta Conference,” literally or figuratively, where international balance would be reestablished, has become unavoidable.

Complete story at - Can Millennials change the way US and Russia view each other? | Russia Direct

The REAL Reasons We're At War With Russia Washington's Blog

The Empire Doesn’t Like to Be Questioned

We’re at war with Russia.

Specifically, we’ve launched:

A sanctions war
A currency war
A hot war in Ukraine
Indeed, it appears that U.S. leaders have targeted Putin for regime change.

Why?

Syria

Initially, the U.S. targeted Syria for regime change – for the second time – many decades ago.

Putin derailed the imminent American war against Syria by brokering a deal wherein Syria destroyed all of its chemical weapons. The U.S. was very unhappy with the deal … and tried to backtrack.

George Friedman – CEO and founder and CEO of Stratfor, the “private CIA” – said in December that the United States is behind the coup in Kiev … which he called the “most blatant coup in history”. Friedman said that the coup came in response to Russia’s peacemaking in Syria:

[Friedman:] Russia had begun to take certain steps that the United States considered unacceptable. Primarily in Syria. It was there that Russians demonstrated to the Americans that they are capable of influencing processes in the Middle East. And the US has enough problems in that part of the world already without the Russians.

Russians intervened in the process in the Middle East among other reasons because they had hoped to get leverage to influence US policy in other areas. But they miscalculated. The United States thought that it was Russia’s intent to harm them.

***

[Question:] So you think Ukraine is a form of revenge for Syria?

[Friedman:] No, not revenge. But Russian intervention in the process in Syria, while the United States was still addressing the problems in Iraq, and was in negotiations with Iran … In Washington, many people have the impression that Russian want to destabilize the already fragile US position in the Middle East – a region that is of key importance for America.

Complete story at - The REAL Reasons We're At War With Russia Washington's Blog

Guest Post: Revanchism & Russophobia - The Dark Undercurrents Of The War In Ukraine | Zero Hedge

Submitted by Vineyard of The Saker,

The situation in the Ukraine is more or less calm right now, and this might be the time to step back from the flow of daily reports and look at the deeper, underlying currents. The question I want to raise today is one I will readily admit not having an answer to. What I want to ask is this: could it be that one of the key factors motivating the West’s apparently illogical and self-defeating desire to constantly confront Russia is simply revanchism for WWII?

We are, of course, talking about perceptions here so it is hard to establish anything for sure, but I wonder if the Stalin’s victory against Hitler was really perceived as such by the western elites, or if it was perceived as a victory against somebody FDR could also have called “our son of a bitch“. After all, there is plenty of evidence that both the US and the UK were key backers of Hitler’s rise to power (read Starikov about that) and that most (continental) Europeans were rather sympathetic to Herr Hitler. Then, of course and as it often happens, Hitler turned against his masters or, at least, his supporters, and they had to fight against him. But there is strictly nothing new about that. This is also what happened with Saddam, Noriega, Gaddafi, al-Qaeda and so many other “bad guy” who began their careers as the AngloZionists’ “good guys”. Is it that unreasonable to ask whether the western elites were truly happy when the USSR beat Nazi Germany, or if they were rather horrified by what Stalin had done to what was at that time the single most powerful western military – Germany’s?

A few days ago I saw this picture on Colonel Cassad’s blog:

Stalin and his commanders

Looking at that photo I thought that for the western elites, to see these men must have been rather frightening, especially considering that they must have known that their entire war effort was, at most, 20% of what it took to defeat Nazi Germany and that those who had shouldered 80%+ were of an ideology diametrically opposed to capitalism.

Is there any evidence of that fear?

I think there is and I already mentioned them in the past:

Plan Totality (1945): earmarked 20 Soviet cities for obliteration in a first strike: Moscow, Gorki, Kuybyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Molotov, Tbilisi, Stalinsk, Grozny, Irkutsk, and Yaroslavl.

Operation Unthinkable (1945) assumed a surprise attack by up to 47 British and American divisions in the area of Dresden, in the middle of Soviet lines.This represented almost a half of roughly 100 divisions (ca. 2.5 million men) available to the British, American and Canadian headquarters at that time. (…) The majority of any offensive operation would have been undertaken by American and British forces, as well as Polish forces and up to 100,000 German Wehrmacht soldiers.

Operation Dropshot (1949): included mission profiles that would have used 300 nuclear bombs and 29,000 high-explosive bombs on 200 targets in 100 cities and towns to wipe out 85% of the Soviet Union’s industrial potential at a single stroke. Between 75 and 100 of the 300 nuclear weapons were targeted to destroy Soviet combat aircraft on the ground.

But the biggest proof is, I think, the fact that none of these plans was executed, even though at the time the Anglosphere was safely hidden behind its monopoly on nuclear weapons (and have Hiroshima and Nagasaki not been destroyed in part to “scare the Russians”?).

And is it not true that the Anglos did engage in secret negotiations with Hitler’s envoys on several occasions? (The notion of uniting forces against the “Soviet threat” was in fact contemplated by both Nazi and Anglo officials, but they did not find a way to make that happen.)

So could it be that Hitler was, really, their “son of a bitch”?

Complete story at - Guest Post: Revanchism & Russophobia - The Dark Undercurrents Of The War In Ukraine | Zero Hedge

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