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The Pot Continues to Boil in Ukraine as Obama Regime Stumbles Towards War
By
Donn Marten [/TD]
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The infamous
aluminum tubes that were a vital piece of the tapestry of lies making the case that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons was a critical component in selling the American people on the need for the
Shock and Awe attack on Iraq. The story was given added heft in that it was published in the exalted New York Times and was used by the Bush-Cheney regime despite the fact that the story was a lie but not revealed as such until well after it had served the purpose. It was a neocon plant in the nation's newspaper of record although that led to the attack and invasion of a country that did not even remotely threaten Americans.
The writers responsible for that whopper of an aluminum tube story were the now
disgraced Judith Miller - who was later embroiled in the intentional outing of CIA officer
Valerie Plame that ultimately resulted in the takedown of Dick Cheney's hatchet man Scooter Libby - as well as another reporter named Michael Gordon. Mr. Gordon however is back as an embedded stenographer for the warmongers and his
recent piece (where he shares the byline with two others) in the New York Times once again serves as a vital cog in the war propaganda machine.
The NYT story,
featuring pictures that
proved that Russian provocateurs were indeed instigating the anti-austerity rebellion in Eastern Ukraine, were a big hit. The problem is that the pictures were bogus and the story was
quietly retracted just days after it was published. It didn't pass the smell test from the onset, that is at least with professionals like Robert Parry of Consortium News who immediately
questioned Gordon's involvement and then did a well-deserved victory lap
over the retraction - once again the alternative media put the establishment to shame. But in the surreal world the piece was picked up as the latest critical piece of 'evidence' in the Obama regime's case to justify the bizarre and furious push towards a war with Russia.
Not that the retraction -
buried inside the paper - matters. The damage was done and the public that has been conditioned to get their McNews in bit-sized bits and pieces, being the headline readers that they are, won't notice that it was all more Kiev crap. Gordon and the White House made a big deal out of the legitimacy of the photos, as per the original piece "
Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia." I excerpt:
For two weeks, the mysteriously well-armed, professional gunmen known as "green men" have seized Ukrainian government sites in town after town, igniting a brush fire of separatist unrest across eastern Ukraine. Strenuous denials from the Kremlin have closely followed each accusation by Ukrainian officials that the world was witnessing a stealthy invasion by Russian forces.
Now, photographs and descriptions from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration on Sunday suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and intelligence forces -- equipped in the same fashion as Russian special operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February. Some of the men photographed in Ukraine have been identified in other photos clearly taken among Russian troops in other settings.
That the pics provided by the coup regime and "endorsed by the Obama administration" were exposed as based on lies (they weren't taken in Russia) is not in any way stopping the ongoing push towards confrontation with Russia and the detested Putin whose humiliation of Obama with saving NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden from a US torture gulag then preventing a war on Syria based on more lies has the man of hope and change hellbent on not being punked again. Preceding the Michael Gordon presstitution was of course that discredited hoax about masked men handing out leaflets in Donestk demanding that Jews register with the authorities. The word that this was a crock of sh*t (interestingly coming right after CIA director John Brennan
visited Kiev) either did not reach Obama administration officials or they are
in on the con because they are still using it. The anti-Semitism card is a very powerful tool; this is especially so in The Homeland where those with agendas that serve the right-wing regime of Benjamin Netanyahu play it early and often to discourage honest reportage on the Israel-Palestinian crisis. That is another story for another time though. The point is that the leaflets are still being used by those in the US power structure to further demonize Russia.
Joe Biden, possibly the dumbest motherf*cker to occupy the office of Vice President - at least since Dan Quayle - who just completed his virtuoso whirlwind tour of bullshit visiting the coup government in Kiev invoked the anti-Semite talisman once again. In a piece published by The Times of Israel entitled "Biden in Kiev: "'
No place' for anti-Semitism in Ukraine" I excerpt the following:
Addressing a reported uptick in anti-Jewish actions in Ukraine, including a flyer distributed in the eastern city of Donetsk calling on Jews to register with pro-Russian authorities, Biden said the US condemned any threat or attack on the Jewish community in Ukraine.
"Just as corruption can have no place in the new Ukraine, neither can anti-Semitism or bigotry," said Biden, standing alongside acting Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. "Let me say that again, neither can anti-Semitism or bigotry. No place. None. Zero. The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms all threats and attacks against Ukrainian Jewish communities as well as Roma and others, as you do, as well, I know, Mr. Prime Minister."
In his remarks, Yatsenyuk did not address anti-Semitism or attacks on Jewish institutions, making do with a broader reference to meeting "the highest standards of protecting human rights and the rights of citizens."
Biden also warned Russia on Tuesday that "it's time to stop talking and start acting" to reduce tension in its neighbor to the southwest, offering a show of support for the besieged nation as an international agreement aimed at stemming its ongoing crisis appeared in doubt.
That this asinine man can dare to stand right next to the US puppet "Yats" and get on his high horse over some black propaganda anti-Semitic leaflets ignoring the fact that "Yats" occupation was accomplished largely with the help of neo-Nazis and fascist extremists from Svoboda and Right Sector who are really Jew haters is jaw-dropping. That this massive scandal in the use of American taxpayer money to finance neo-Nazis even more so. Those US-backed anti-Semites in the Ukrainian government are never mentioned by any of the corrupt water carriers in the American media, particularly when it comes to turds like David Gregory and Michael Gordon and certainly not by Biden nor the buffoon that is Secretary of State John Kerry. It doesn't fit
the Putin-as-Hitler narrative.
While Biden may be the dumbest VP since Quayle he pales in comparison to Secretary of State John Kerry who in the aftermath of his latest foreign-policy disaster - the Israel-Palestine peace talks going up in flames - continues his trademark finger-wagging and bloviating about sanctions on Russia. The latest Kerry threat being that of an "
expensive mistake" and Obama, who is nothing more than a foot stool for corporations and Wall Street, is doing likewise in
pushing the EU t o support upping the financial punishment against Russia - at some point, if not already, this is an act of war and Putin is to be commended for his restraint. These rich f*ckers just don't get it; they like the rest of the American looter capitalist class think that everything can be reduced to money and that in declaring economic warfare against a nuclear power, especially Russia with its nationalist history, resentment about being screwed over the terms of the breakup of the USSR after the Cold War by double-dealing American political swine who then expanded NATO and began surrounding Russia with missiles and the fact that the US establishment started this mess in the first place. The hysterics over the 40,000 Russian troops on the border of Ukraine is nonsense because the forces are IN RUSSIA although thanks to the Obama administration and the imminent coming rampage of US-backed extremist death squads Russia has ordered the
commencement of military exercises. With Obama's dispatching of hundreds of
special forces troops to Poland this thing just continues to verge on spinning completely out of control.
The reigning US political class, poisoned by years of exposure to a toxic neocon ideology and presided over by easily offended nincompoops like Obama, Biden, and their man over at Foggy Bottom, are just lusting for a new Cold War. Kerry, being prone to chronic bouts of diarrhea of the mouth, said as much when he
waxed nostalgic the other day about the good old days in a moment when the veil slipped
during a speech at the State Department (
from RT because something this idiotic will likely be scrubbed from US accounts):
"During the Cold War, it actually -- it may not have seemed so at the time, obviously, to great leaders, but it was easier than it is today -- simpler is maybe a way to put it.
"We could make really bad decisions and still win because we were pretty much the sole dominant economic and military power around," Kerry said. "That's not true anymore."
Kerry said that during the era of mutually assured destruction "choices were less varied, less complicated, more stark, more clear." He said everything was clear cut and split into camps "communism, democracy; West, East; the Iron Curtain, the great line of divide. And many things were subsumed and quashed by that force of that bipolar world."
In today's world, US foreign policy is more complicated as "the vast array of challenges that we face today as the world is witnessing this explosion of sectarianism, religious extremism, radical ideologies, and frankly too many failed states and failing states -- a vast challenge to governance, sometimes even witnessed here in our nation's capital."
Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo is as usual on the attack and he skewered the nation's top diplomat (be proud America) in his Wednesday column entitled "
John Kerry: Clueless Buffoon", from which I excerpt:
Yes, those were the Good Old Days -- when children in the schoolroom cowered beneath their desks -- and we almost went to war with the nuclear-armed Soviet Union over missiles in Cuba which posed no more threat than missiles outside Moscow. Does "quaint" even begin to describe that vintage scene? It's all so Currier & Ives.
We were the Good Guys and the Russkies were the Bad Guys -- and never the morally equivalent twain shall meet! If only we could get back to those halcyon days, everything would be "simpler," says Kerry.
Having an implacable enemy of unrivaled evil supposedly bent on our destruction has its advantages -- yes, a US Secretary of State actually does seem to believe this. Having nuclear-armed enemies is a Good Thing -- because it makes the job of US officials so much easier. Should we support a South American dictator who murders his own people for looking at him cross-eyed -- but of course we should, because he hates the Russkies! Do we really need to build more nuclear weapons than it would take to incinerate the world one-hundred times over? The answer -- back then -- was an obvious yes, at least to our wise rulers (who never considered how dangerous our arsenal would become once it started to age). And how about getting involved in a war in Southeast Asia that would take tens of thousands of American lives -- and easily a million non-Americans -- a war this same John Kerry would refer to with unmitigated contempt as he threw his war medals right back at the Pentagon?
To think that this fool nearly became President of the United States until he was derailed in Ohio back in 2004 by Karl Rove's chicanery is scary in retrospect and ironically burnishes the Bush legacy. Kerry is another wonderful example of the rottenness of the American political elite that rewards dishonor and incompetence and where the scum always rises to the top.
Obama meanwhile continues to arrogantly instigate global powers with the latest being China. This week during his "Pacific pivot" trip abroad while in Japan he once again came dangerously close to drawing one of his stupid and troublesome "red lines" by taking Japan's side in a long-running and contentious dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands. Per a story in
The Guardian:
The US is duty-bound to come to Japan's aid in the event of a conflict with China over a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea, Barack Obama declared at the start of a tour of Asia aimed at reassuring Washington's allies in the face of threats to stability from North Korea and an increasingly assertive China.
Obama went further than some analysts had expected in reassuring the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, that Japan's dispute with China over the Senkakus -- known in China as the Diaoyu -- were covered by the allies' post-war security treaty.
But he reiterated Washington's refusal to take sides in the sovereignty dispute and called on China and Japan to resolve their differences through dialogue.
"Our commitment to Japan's security is absolute and article five [of the security treaty] covers all territories under Japan's administration, including the Senkaku islands," Obama said during a joint press conference with Abe.
While hedging somewhat in calling for a peaceful resolution of the conflict it is beginning to look as though the US is now rebuilding the WWII Axis with the inclusion of The Homeland and NATO in a 21st-century push for the same global domination of the infamous man with the mustache. History has shown how that turned out but in America there is neither the widespread knowledge of such nor the ability to learn from it.
As the old Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times."
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass