US/NATO War on Russia

[Keith Millea]

Deleted

[Magda Hassan]

Deleted

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::grumpy::


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I'm sure the NED will make a donation to them.

[Peter Lemkin]

"We Are Not Beginning a New Cold War, We are Well into It": Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis

As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in the Ukrainian east after security forces killed three pro-Russian protesters, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in the city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials said the pro-Russian separatists had attempted to storm a military base. The killings came just after the unraveling of a Ukrainian operation to retake government buildings from pro-Russian separatists. Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the authorities in Kiev of plunging the country into an "abyss" and refused to rule out sending forces into Ukraine. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has announced a series of steps to reinforce its presence in eastern Europe. "We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land," Rasmussen said. We are joined by Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. "We are not at the beginning of a new Cold War, we are well into it," Cohen says, "which alerts us to the fact 'hot war' is imaginable now. It's unlikely, but it's conceivable and if it's conceivable, something has to be done about it."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in eastern Ukraine after security forces killed three pro-Russian separatists, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in the city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials said the pro-Russians had attempted to storm a military base. The fighting comes just after the collapse of a Ukrainian operation to retake government buildings in several eastern towns. On Wednesday, pro-Russian separatists took control of some of their armored vehicles, and crowds surrounded another column, forcing the troops to hand over the pins from their rifles and retreat. Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the authorities in Kiev of plunging the country into an "abyss."

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] People in eastern Ukraine have started to arm themselves. And instead of realizing that something bad is going on in the Ukrainian state and making any attempts to start a dialogue, the authorities have started to threaten with force even more and unleash tanks and aviation on civilian populations. This is another grave crime of the current Kiev authorities. I hope it will be possible to realize which hole and which abyss the current authorities are moving towards and dragging the whole country with them. And in this regard, I think the start of today's talks in Geneva is very important. I think it is very important today to think about how to get out of this situation, to offer people a realnot ostentatious, but realdialogue.

AMY GOODMAN: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking on Russian television earlier today. On Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced a series of steps to reinforce its forces in eastern Europe because of the Ukraine crisis.

SECRETARY GENERAL ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN: We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land. For example, air policing aircraft will fly more sorties over the Baltic region. Allied ships will deploy to the Baltic Sea, the eastern Mediterranean, and elsewhere as required.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about Ukraine, Stephen Cohen is with us, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University; his most recent book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, out now in paperback. He recently wrote a piece for The Nation headlined "Cold War Again: Who is Responsible?"
Are we seeing the beginning of a new Cold War, Professor Cohen? And what exactly is happening right now in Ukraine?
STEPHEN COHEN: Those are big questions. We are not at the beginning of the Cold War, a new one; we are well into itwhich alerts us to the fact, just watching what you showed up there, that hot war is imaginable now, for the first time in my lifetime, my adult lifetime, since the Cuban missile crisis, hot war with Russia. It's unlikely, but it's conceivable. And if it's conceivable, something has to be done about it.
You did two things on your introduction which were very important. Almost alone among American media, you actually allowed Putin to speak for himself. He's being filtered through the interpretation of the mass media here, allegedly, what he said, and it's not representative. The second thing is, let us look just what's happening at this moment, or at least yesterday. The political head of NATO just announced a major escalation of NATO forces in Europe. He did a Churchillian riff: "We will increase our power in the air, in the sea, on the land." Meanwhile, as negotiations today begin in Geneva, we're demanding that Russians de-escalate. And yet, we, NATO, are escalating as these negotiations begin.
So, if you were to say what is going on in Ukraine todayand, unfortunately, the focus is entirely on eastern Ukraine. We don't have any Western mediain eastern Ukraine. We don't have any Westernany Western media in western Ukraine, the other half of the country. We're not clear what's going on there. But clearly, things are getting worse and worse. Each side has a story that totally conflicts with the other side's story. There seems to be no middle ground. And if there's no middle ground in the public discourse, in the Russian media or the American media, it's not clear what middle ground they can find in these negotiations, though personally, I thinkand people will say, "Oh, Cohen's a Putin apologist"but it seemed to me that the proposals the Russians made a month ago for resolving the conflict are at least a good starting point. But it's not clear the United States is going to accept them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Stephen Cohen, it was just a few weeks ago when we had you on, as the crisis was beginning to unfold in Ukraine, and a lot of what you said then turned out to be true, which was that you feared that there would be a split in Ukraine itself between the east and west. And obviously Crimea was just developing then. But it seems that all of the emphasis in the coverage here is as if the crisis started with Russian aggression, not with the earlier period of what was NATO and Europe's involvement in Ukraine before the deposing of the elected president.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I think you've emphasized the absolute flaw in at least the Americanbecause I don't follow the European press that closelythe American media and political narrative. As a historian, I would say that this conflict began 300 years ago, but we can't do that. As a contemporary observer, it certainly began in November 2013 when the European Union issued an ultimatum, really, to the then-president, elected president, of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, that "Sign an agreement with us, but you can't have one with Russia, too." In my mind, that precipitated this crisis, because why give a country that has been profoundly divided for centuries, and certainly in recent decades, an ultimatuman elected president: "Choose, and divide your country further"? So when we say today Putin initiated this chaos, this danger of war, this confrontation, the answer is, no, that narrative is wrong from the beginning. It was triggered by the European Union's unwise ultimatum.
Now flash forward to just one month ago, about the time I was with you before. Remember that the European foreign ministersthree of them, I thinkwent to Kiev and negotiated with Yanukovych, who was still the president, an agreement. Now, the Russians were present at the negotiation, but they didn't sign it. But they signed off on it. They said, "OK." What did that agreement call for? Yanukovych would remain president until Decembernot May, when elections are now scheduled, but December of this year. Then there would be a presidential election. He could run in them, or not. Meanwhile, there would be a kind of government of national accord trying to pull the government together. And, importantly, Russia would chip in, in trying to save the Ukrainian economy. But there would also be parliamentary elections. That made a lot of sense. And it lasted six hours.
The next day, the street, which was now a moblet'sit was no longer peaceful protesters as it had been in November. It now becomes something else, controlled by very ultra-nationalist forces; overthrew Yanukovych, who fled to Russia; burned up the agreement. So who initiated the next stage of the crisis? It wasn't Russia. They wanted that agreement of February, a month ago, to hold. And they're still saying, "Why don't we go back to it?" You can't go back to it, though there is a report this morning that Yanukovych, who is in exile in Russia, may fly to eastern Ukraine today or tomorrow, which will be a whole new dimension.
But the point of it is, is that Putin didn't wantand this is reality, this is not pro-Putin or pro-Washington, this is just a factPutin did not want this crisis. He didn't initiate it. But with Putin, once you get something like that, you get Mr. Pushback. And that's what you're now seeing. And the reality is, as even the Americans admit, he holds all the good options. We have none. That's not good policymaking, is it?
AMY GOODMAN: Let's turn to President Obama. Thursday, he was interviewed by CBS News by Major Garrett.

MAJOR GARRETT: Is Vladimir Putin provoking a civil war there? And will you and Western leaders let him to get away with that?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think that what is absolutely clear is not only have Russians gone into Crimea and annexed it, in illegal fashion, violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but what they've also done is supported, at minimum, nonstate militias in southern and eastern Ukraine. And we've seen some of the activity that's been taking place there.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cohen?
STEPHEN COHEN: You left out one thing that he said which I consider to be unwise and possibly reckless. He went on to say that Russia wouldn't go to war with us because our conventional weapons are superior. That is an exceedingly provocative thing to say. And he seems to be unaware, President Obama, that Russian military doctrine says that when confronted by overwhelming conventional forces, we can use nuclear weapons. They mean tactical nuclear weapons. I don't think any informed president, his handlers, would have permitted him to make such a statement. In fact, depending on how far you want to take this conversation about the Obama administration, I don't recall in my lifetime, in confrontations with Russia, an administrationI speak now of the president and his secretary of statewho seem in their public statements to be so misinformed, even uninformed, both about Ukraine and Russia. For example, when Kerry testified last week to Congress that all the unrest in Ukraine was due to Putin's meddling and his provocations, he denied the underlying problem which has divided Ukraine. I mean, everybody knows that history, God, whoever's responsible for our destiny, created a Ukraine that may have had one state, but wasn't one country. It may be two, it may be three countries. But for John Kerry to say that all this conflict in Ukraine is due to Putin simply makes a resolution of the problem by denying the problem. Or let me ask you a question: What in the world was the director of the American CIA doing last Sunday
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I was going to ask you about that.
STEPHEN COHEN: in Kiev? It is mind-boggling that it was called a secret mission, when my grandson knows that the Ukrainian intelligence services are full of pro-Russian officers. And yet they send the head of the CIA, at this crucial, inflamed moment, therebyto Kiev, thereby reinforcing the Russian narrative that everything that's happening in Ukraine is an American provocation. What are they thinking?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, aside from having a very educated grandson, I just want to turn to NATO for a moment.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I told him that [inaudible]. But he got it. He got it.
AMY GOODMAN: NATO announced a series of steps to reinforce its forcesthis is NATO in eastern Europebecause of the Ukraine crisis. NATO's top military commander, Philip Breedlove, described the moves as defensive measures.

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE: All the actions that we have proposed and have been accepted today are clearly defensive in nature. And I think it's going to be very straightforward to see them as defensive in nature. They are designed to assure our allies. And so, I think that, in any case, it's always a chance that you run that something might be misinterpreted. But we specifically designed these measures to assure our allies only and to be clearly seen as defensive in nature.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Professor Cohen?
STEPHEN COHEN: I've never known what "purely defensive weapons" have meantI mean, presuming they are guns that shoot in only one direction. I mean, it's going to have no effect. I mean, they're talking about giving the Ukrainians maybe some small arms, some night vision stuff, some superior intelligence. They can't give them intelligence information, because the Ukrainian intelligence services, as we know from the tapes we've had, the leaked tapes, and from the CIA secret mission which was exposed to Ukraine, revealed.
The real debate going on in NATOthe real debate, because this is a distractionis what Rasmussen said in your earlier cliphe's the political head of NATOthat we're building up, as we talk, our forces in eastern Europe. Now, understand what's going on here. When we took in"we" meaning the United States and NATOall these countries in eastern Europe into NATO, we did notwe agreed with the Russians we would not put forward military installations there. We built some infrastructureair strips, there's some barracks, stuff like that. But we didn't station troops that could march toward Russia there. Now what NATO is saying, it is time to do that. Now, Russia already felt encircled by NATO member states on its borders. The Baltics are on its borders. If we move the forces, NATO forces, including American troops, totoward Russia's borders, where will we be then? I mean, it's obviously going to militarize the situation, and therefore raise the danger of war.
And I think it's important to emphasize, though I regret saying this, Russia will not back off. This is existential. Too much has happened. Putinand it's not just Putin. We seem to think Putin runs the whole of the universe. He has a political class. That political class has opinions. Public support is running overwhelmingly in favor of Russian policy. Putin will compromise at these negotiations, but he will not back off if confronted militarily. He will not.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the situation in Russia, especially the growingsome reports are that Putin's popularity has now surged to about 80 percent of the population, at a time when there was actually a dissident movement that was beginning to gather strength within Russia against the more authoritarian aspects of Russian society.
STEPHEN COHEN: Since this is Democracy Now!, let me assert my age and my credential. Beginning in the 1970s, I lived in Russia among the then-Soviet dissidents. They were brave people. They were pro-democracy. They struggled. They paid the price. With the coming of Gorbachev, who embraced many of their democratizing ideas, they were marginalized, or they moved into the establishment as official democratizers. This struggle has continued, even under Putin. But the result of this confrontation, East-West confrontationand I can't emphasize how fundamental and important it isis going to set back whatever prospects remained in Russia for further democratization or re-democratization, possibly a whole generation. It is simply going to take all the traction these people have gotten out from under them. And still worse, the most authoritarian forces in Russia and Russia's authoritarian traditions will now be reinvigorated politically in kind of a
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And it's all ultra-nationalist, as well, right?
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I wouldn't say it's ultra-nationalists, but it's certainly nationalist.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right.
STEPHEN COHEN: And, I mean, by the way, we're a nationalist country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right.
STEPHEN COHEN: We use a different word: We call it "patriotism." Do you remember an American president who ever ran and said, "I'm not an American patriot"? I say I'm an American patriot. We don't call ourselves "nationalists." Also, we don't have a state in the United States; we have a government. The Europeans have states. We have a government. But you take away the languagethis is not unusual, but therewhen it surges like this, as it does in run-ups to warand we're in the run-up at least to a possible warthis is what you get. That's why I think the policy, the American policy, has been unwise from the beginning.
AMY GOODMAN: The front page of The New York Times: "Russia Economy Worsens Even Before Sanctions Hit." And they're attributing it partly to Russia's action in Crimea.
STEPHEN COHEN: Yeah. Well, I mean, the asymmetry of all of this, right? We say Putin's got 40,000 troops on Ukraine's border. And there may or may not be; nobody's exactly clear how long they've been there and what they're doing, but obviously they're not helping the situation. But what we have are sanctions that we may put in place against Putin's cronies. This isthis is the threat. This is what the White House says: "We are going to sanction his oligarchical cronies." And presumably, on this theory, they will go to him and say, "Look, Volodya, you've got to stop this, because my bank accounts ..." This is utter nonsense. First of all, he'll just appoint new oligarchs. Secondly, there's a law in the Russian Duma, the Parliament, being debated that the state will compensate anybody whose assets are frozen in the West. Now, I don't know if they'll pass the law, but you could see that this doesn't bother the Kremlin leadership.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have one minute. The significance of the meeting in Geneva with Ukraine, Russia, United States, European Union, and what's going to happen in eastern Ukraine?
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I don't know what's going to happen, but things are getting worse and worse. People are being killed. So, obviously, that's bad, and we're moving closer toward a military confrontation. The Russians are asking at negotiations the following. They want NATO expansion ended to its all former Soviet republics. That means Ukraine and Georgia, period. I think we should give them that. This has been a reckless, endangering policy. It's time for it to end. They want a federal Ukrainian state. That's a debate. But Ukraine is several countries; you can only hold it together with a federal constitution. And they want, in the end, a stable Ukraine, and they will contribute financially to making that possible. I don't see any reason there, other than the White House saving political face, why that's not a good negotiating position to begin with.

[Magda Hassan]

Nato's action plan in Ukraine is right out of Dr Strangelove

From China to Ukraine, the US is pursuing its longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass

• • The Guardian, Friday 18 April 2014 01.41 AEST
    
  • Jump to comments (1178)
    

'What is certain is that Barack Obama's rapacious coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.' Photograph: Anatoliy Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images

I watched Dr Strangelove the other day. I have seen it perhaps a dozen times; it makes sense of senseless news. When Major TJ "King" Kong goes "toe to toe with the Rooskies" and flies his rogue B52 nuclear bomber to a target in Russia, it's left to General "Buck" Turgidson to reassure the president. Strike first, says the general, and "you got no more than 10-20 million killed, tops". President Merkin Muffley: "I will not go down in history as the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler." General Turgidson: "Perhaps it might be better, Mr President, if you were more concerned with the American people than with your image in the history books."
The genius of Stanley Kubrick's film is that it accurately represents the cold war's lunacy and dangers. Most of the characters are based on real people and real maniacs. There is no equivalent to Strangelove today because popular culture is directed almost entirely at our interior lives, as if identity is the moral zeitgeist and true satire is redundant, yet the dangers are the same. The nuclear clock has remained at five minutes to midnight; the same false flags are hoisted above the same targets by the same "invisible government", as Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations, described modern propaganda.
In 1964, the year Dr Strangelove was made, "the missile gap" was the false flag. To build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue an undeclared policy of domination, President John F Kennedy approved the CIA's propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This filled front pages as the "Russian threat". In fact, the Americans were so far ahead in production of the missiles, the Russians never approached them. The cold war was based largely on this lie.
Strategic nuclear missiles from the cold war. Photograph: Alamy Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato enlargement project. Reneging on the Reagan administration's promise to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand "one inch to the east", Nato has all but taken over eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato's military build-up is the most extensive since the second world war.
In February, the US mounted one of its proxy "colour" coups against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were fascists. For the first time since 1945, a pro-Nazi, openly antisemitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism on the border of Russia. Some 30 million Russians died in the invasion of their country by Hitler's Nazis, who were supported by the infamous Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the UPA) which was responsible for numerous Jewish and Polish massacres. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, of which the UPA was the military wing, inspires today's Svoboda party.
Since Washington's putsch in Kiev and Moscow's inevitable response in Russian Crimea to protect its Black Sea fleet the provocation and isolation of Russia have been inverted in the news to the "Russian threat". This is fossilised propaganda. The US air force general who runs Nato forces in Europe General Philip Breedlove, no less claimed more than two weeks ago to have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops "massing" on the border with Ukraine. So did Colin Powell claim to have pictures proving there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is certain is that Barack Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.
Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan well after Osama bin Laden had fled, then destroyed Iraq beneath a false flag, invented a "nuclear rogue" in Iran, dispatched Libya to a Hobbesian anarchy and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror by drone.
A Nato membership action plan straight from the war room of Dr Strangelove is General Breedlove's gift to the new dictatorship in Ukraine. "Rapid Trident" will put US troops on Ukraine's Russian border and "Sea Breeze" will put US warships within sight of Russian ports. At the same time, Nato war games in eastern Europe are designed to intimidate Russia. Imagine the response if this madness was reversed and happened on the US's borders. Cue General Turgidson.
And there is China. On 23 April, Obama will begin a tour of Asia to promote his "pivot" to China. The aim is to convince his "allies" in the region, principally Japan, to rearm and prepare for the possibility of war with China. By 2020, almost two-thirds of all US naval forces in the world will be transferred to the Asia-Pacific area. This is the greatest military concentration in that vast region since the second world war.
In an arc extending from Australia to Japan, China will face US missiles and nuclear-armed bombers. A strategic naval base is being built on the Korean island of Jeju, less than 400 miles from Shanghai and the industrial heartland of the only country whose economic power is likely to surpass that of the US. Obama's "pivot" is designed to undermine China's influence in its region. It is as if a world war has begun by other means.
This is not a Dr Strangelove fantasy. Obama's defence secretary, Charles "Chuck" Hagel, was in Beijing last week to deliver a warning that China, like Russia, could face isolation and war if it did not bow to US demands. He compared the annexation of Crimea to China's complex territorial dispute with Japan over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. "You cannot go around the world," said Hagel with a straight face, "and violate the sovereignty of nations by force, coercion or intimidation." As for America's massive movement of naval forces and nuclear weapons to Asia, that is "a sign of the humanitarian assistance the US military can provide".
Obama is seeking a bigger budget for nuclear weapons than the historical peak during the cold war, the era of Dr Strangelove. The US is pursuing its longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass, stretching from China to Europe: a "manifest destiny" made right by might.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...CMP=twt_gu

[Peter Lemkin]

Russia Hints at Ushering in a New Gold Backed Ruble

Posted on April 12, 2014 by The Silver Bug

The Central Bank of Russia has made a subtle, yet serious threat against the lynchpin of the American Economy, the US dollar.
According to Russian media, Russia's RIA Novosti Bank Rossiya has just released a new logo, which is a gold ruble. This action comes in response to JPMorgan entering the economic battlefield and blocking Russian wire transfers.
Putin has made it quite clear that any attacks on the Russian economy will be answered in with retaliations of their own. This latest threat has the potential to derail the American economy.

If Russia decides to use its vast gold reserves to back the Ruble, the ramifications for the global economy would be huge. Already the US Dollar, which has had the luxury of being the reserve currency of the World for far too long, was skating on thin ice.
I have often said that the first country to release a gold backed currency would have the most to gain and would likely steal the mantle of reserve currency of the world. For years alternative media have speculated that China would be the first to act. This still may be true, but now Russia appears ready to throw its hat in that arena.

Symbolism has serious meaning to President Putin and you can be rest assured that the West is taking this subtle, yet meaningful move very seriously. They know that Russia would have no qualms with using gold as a geopolitical weapon. A weapon that could cause serious problems for the world's currency markets.

[Lauren Johnson]

Why? for "exercises."

It seems the truce "deal" is well and truly dead...

• 600 U.S. TROOPS HEADING TO EUROPE FOR EXERCISES: PENTAGON
  
• U.S. AIRBORNE TROOPS GOING TO POLAND, LITHUANIA, LATVIA,ESTONIA
  
• U.S. MILITARY EXERCISES ARE IN RESPONSE TO UKRAINE CRISIS:KIRBY
  

So, now we have both Russia and NATO/U.S. doing 'exercises' in close proximity and the rhetorical temperature rising quickly. It is a scenario that so easily and quickly could get totally out of hand. Nothing good will come of all this, IMO, for the Ukraine nor for the rest of the World. Both sides seem to be using this for a confrontation long sought.....having finally found a convenient chessboard. It is a real dangerous mess.

[Peter Lemkin]

Poland's Role in Destabilizing Ukraine: Polish Military Trained Neo-Nazi Militants for EuroMaidan Protests

By Andrew Korybko
Global Research, April 17, 2014

Polish media outlet Nie has published a bombshell account about direct Polish involvement in Ukraine's destabilization. Its source alleges that the Polish Foreign Ministry had invited Ukrainian militants into the country and trained them outside of Warsaw in September 2013. Considering the destructive actions and fatalities they would later be responsible for during the EuroMaidan riots, such a connection would directly link Warsaw to the pandemonium. It would also implicate Poland in being the "Slavic Turkey" of NATO in Eastern Europe. The impact of Nie's reporting can also affect domestic Polish politics, as it would prove that the political elite misled members of Parliament, which could later have direct political repercussions for Tusk's ironically named "Law and Justice Party." This scandal serves to highlight that Poland is starting to emulate the methods of its invited neo-colonial headmaster, the US, thereby deepening the puppet-master relationship between Warsaw and Washington.

According to the report, 86 Euromaidan militants, some of whom appeared to be over 40 years old, came to Poland under the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The pretext for plausible deniability was that they were in the country to promote cooperation between the Warsaw University of Technology and the National Technical University in Kiev. In reality, however, these individuals were whisked away to Legionowo, a town on the outskirts of Warsaw. There, at the police training center, they spent four weeks engaged in a regiment of destabilization training.
Polish police academy "students" beating Ukrainian anti-riot police officer on Euromaidan in Kiev, January 2014.
The source goes on to state that pictures of the participants show them clothed in Nazi regalia and tattoos, with their Polish military instructors lacking any outward identification as such. At the facility, militants learned the following techniques: crowd management; target identification; tactics; leadership; behavioural management under stressful conditions; protection against police gasses; building barricades; and importantly, they engaged in shooting classes, which incidentally included sniper rifles. Quite clearly, the "students" who came to Warsaw were there for war, not academic work, and their training there resulted in the christening of Bandera's spiritual descendants.
These revelations underline how the EuroMaidan militants had prior Western-backed training, and that Poland was chosen as the location for their instruction. Through its direct involvement and support in training the radicals, Poland is quickly living up to its reputation as NATO's most important frontline state. When the Polish Sejm voted in early December, 2013 to show its "full solidarity with the citizens of Ukraine, who with great determination show the world their desire to ensure their country's full membership in the EU", little did they know that the violent vanguard which had just days before thrown Molotov cocktails and attacked police officers likely acquired their tactics less than an hour's drive from where they casted their vote. Most members of parliament likely did not have a clue that their government was training those violent elements and would be shocked to know that this was the case.
The ultimate irony is that Poland is training fighters who honor a man that glorified in ethnically cleansing Poles from Ukraine in the most horrendous ways imaginable during World War II. For all of its blaring patriotism and nationalist sentiment, the Polish government is actually working against its long-term interests by backing such radical anti-Polish elements right next door. This "Bandera Brinksmanship" reminds one of the US' foreign policy mentality of allying with and building dangerous radical forces that may later come back to harm them (i.e. Al Qaeda in the Soviet's Afghan conflict and the Libyan and Syrian-based international jihadis of today). Through its greedy and nationalistically minded cooperation with the US in seeking to de-facto resurrect the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland has abandoned its European principles and blindly set itself on becoming America's bulldog in Eastern Europe.
Andrew Korybko is the American Master's Degree student at the Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO).

[Magda Hassan]

Given Poland's previous troubles with Ukrainian fascists you'd think they would stay out of it all.

[Lauren Johnson]

a hypothesis. In short, the US intends to draw the Russian Federation into the eastern Ukraine by "encouraging" the attack.

Listening to Lavrov today I came to the conclusion that the regime in Kiev was indeed about to try to attack the eastern Ukraine. It's not only Lavrov, the Russian Internet is on "red alert" and chock-full of rumors and speculation about an imminent attack. This begs a number of questions:

1) Why would the junta in Kiev so overtly renege on the Geneva agreement?
2) Why would it attack when the chances of success are very small?
3) Why would they attack know that Russia would almost certainly intervene?
4) Why is the US clearly behind that strategy?

I have a hypothesis which I would like to submit to your attention.

First, the junta in Kiev is reneging on the Geneva agreement simply because it cannot abide by its terms. Remember, the junta is composed of a few politicians handpicked by the US and a few Ukrainian oligarchs. They do have money, but no power. How could they possibly impose anything in the well-armed and determined freaks of the Right Sector?

Second, the eastern Ukraine is lost no matter what. So the junta in Kiev have to pick on of the following options:

a) Let the eastern Ukraine leave by means of referendum and do nothing about it.
b) Let the eastern Ukraine leave but only after some violence.
c) Let the eastern Ukraine leave following a Russian military intervention.

Clearly, option 'a' is by far the worst. Option 'b' is so-so, but option 'c' is very nice. Think of it: this option will make it look like Russia invaded the Eastern Ukraine and that the people there had no say about it. It will also make the rest of the Ukraine rally around the flag. The economic disaster will be blamed on Russia and the Presidential election of May 25th can be canceled due to the Russian "threat". Not only that, but a war - no matter how silly - is the *perfect* pretext to introduce martial law which can be used to crack down on the Right Sector or anybody expressing views the junta does not like. That is an old trick - trigger a war and people will rally around the regime in power. Create a panic, and people will forget the real issues.

As for the USA - it also knows that the Eastern Ukraine is gone. With Crimea and Eastern Ukraine gone - the Ukraine has exactly *zero* value to the Empire, to why not simply use it as a way to create a new Cold War, something which would be much more sexy that the Global War on Terror or the really old War on Drugs. After all, if Russia is forced to intervene militarily NATO will have to send reinforcements to "protect" countries like Poland or Latvia just in case Putin decides to invade all of the EU.

Bottom line - the freaks in power in Kiev and the USA *know* that the eastern Ukraine is lost for them, and the purpose of the imminent attack is not to "win" against the Russian-speaking rebels or, even less so, to "win" against the Russian military, it is to trigger enough violence to force Russia to intervene. In other words, since the East is lost anyways, it is much better to lose it to the "invading Russian hordes" than to lose it to the local civilian population.

So the purpose of the next attack will not be to win, but to lose. That the Ukrainian military can still do.

Two things can happen to foil this plan:

1) The Ukrainian military might refuse to obey such clearly criminal orders (and becoming a target of the Russian military might help some officers make the correct "purely moral" choice).
2) The local resistance might be strong enough to draw out such an operation and have to come to a grinding halt.

Ideally, a combination of both.

From the Russian point of view things are rather simple: it is infinitely better for Russia to have the East break away without any Russian intervention. If the attacking force is crazy enough to use armor, artillery or airpower, the Russian could decide to strike from the air without actually sending in ground forces. They could also use electronic warfare capabilities to further create chaos inside the attacking force. Limited pinpoint attacks could also serve to demoralize the attacking force. What Russia has to avoid all costs to find itself forced to engage in offensive urban operations which are always dangerous and bloody. It is therefore absolutely essential the the locals take control of their own streets, villages and cities.

Lavrov today delivered a very direct warning: if things go out of hand in the eastern Ukraine Russia will intervene. Hopefully somebody in the West will finally realize that the Russians are never bluffing and that they really mean it. I am not very optimistic though - if Lavrov felt the need to make a full 30min interview in English in which he clearly compared the situation in the Ukraine today to the one in Ossetia in 08.08.08 it is probably because the Russians have intelligence indicating that an attack is imminent.

We shall know very soon.

The Saker

[Magda Hassan]

Vice President Joe Biden Promotes U.S. as Fracking Missionary Force On Ukraine Trip




During his two-day visit this week to Kiev, Ukraine, Vice President Joe Biden unfurled President Barack Obama's "U.S. Crisis Support Package for Ukraine."
A key part of the package involves promoting the deployment of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in Ukraine. Dean Neu, professor of accounting at York University in Toronto, describes this phenomenon in his book "Doing Missionary Work." And in this case, it involves the U.S. acting as a modern-day missionary to spread the gospel of fracking to further its own interests.
With the ongoing Russian occupation of Crimea serving as the backdrop for the trip, Biden made Vladimir Putin's Russia and its dominance of the global gas market one of the centerpieces of a key speech he gave while in Kiev.
"And as you attempt to pursue energy security, there's no reason why you cannot be energy secure. I mean there isn't. It will take time. It takes some difficult decisions, but it's collectively within your power and the power of Europe and the United States," Biden said.
"And we stand ready to assist you in reaching that. Imagine where you'd be today if you were able to tell Russia: Keep your gas. It would be a very different world you'd be facing today."
The U.S. oil and gas industry has long lobbied to "weaponize" its fracking prowess to fend off Russian global gas market dominance. It's done so primarily in two ways.
One way: by transforming the U.S. State Department into a global promoter of fracking via its Unconventional Gas Technical Engagement Program (formerly the Global Shale Gas Initiative), which is a key, albeit less talked about, part of President Obama's "Climate Action Plan."
The other way: by exporting U.S. fracked gas to the global market, namely EU countries currently heavily dependent on Russia's gas spigot.
In this sense, the crisis in Ukraine as Naomi Klein pointed out in a recent article has merely served as a "shock doctrine" excuse to push through plans that were already long in the making. In other words, it's "old wine in a new bottle."
Gas "Support Package" Details

Within the energy security section of the aid package, the White House promises in "the coming weeks, expert teams from several U.S. government agencies will travel to the region to help Ukraine meet immediate and longer term energy needs."
That section contains three main things the U.S. will do to ensure U.S. oil and gas companies continue to profit during this geopolitical stand-off.
1) Help with pipelines and securing access to gas at the midstream level of production.
"Today, a U.S. interagency expert team arrived in Kyiv to help Ukraine secure reverse flows of natural gas from its European neighbors," the White House fact sheet explains. "Reverse flows of natural gas will provide Ukraine with additional immediate sources of energy."
2) Technical assistance to help boost conventional gas production in Ukraine. That is, gas obtained not from fracking and horizontal drilling, but via traditional vertical drilling.
As the White House explains, "U.S. technical experts will join with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and others in May to help Ukraine develop a public-private investment initiative to increase conventional gas production from existing fields to boost domestic energy supply."
3) Shale gas missionary work.
"A technical team will also engage the government on measures that will help the Ukrainian government ensure swift and environmentally sustainable implementation of contracts signed in 2013 for shale gas development," says the White House.
ExxonMobil Teaching Russia Fracking

Ironically, as the U.S. government teams up with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to teach Ukraine fracking in order to wean the country off of Russian gas, U.S.-based "private empire" ExxonMobil is doing the same work in Russia to help the country tap into its shale oil and gas bounty.
Among its myriad partnerships with the Russian oil and gas industry, ExxonMobil has signed a joint venture in December 2013 with state-owned company Rosneft to help it tap the massive Bazhenov Shale basin.
"The JV will implement a pilot work program in order to assess and determine the technical possibility of developing the…Bazhenov formation…in Western Siberia," reads a Rosneft press release. "The plan is to perform the pilot work program within 2013-2015 timeframe."
Forbes has reported the Bazhenov is roughly 80 times the size of the Bakken Shale, already the biggest field by a long shot in the U.S. and one visible from outer space.
Climate Change Taboo

Traditionally, missionaries do charity work in service to humanity. But the enormous climate impact of fracking given the climate change math calls those doing the Lord's work in the shale gas sphere into question.
So in the case of the U.S. government and Ukraine, the concept of missionary work has been flipped on its head.
That is, the most profitable companies on the face of the planet both in the U.S. and in Russia are set to profit at the expense of everyone else, including the stability of earth's climate system.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock | Steven Frame





http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/04/23/vic...raine-trip