US/NATO War on Russia

[Lauren Johnson]

I am hoping that Gleb Bazov is wildly exaggerating based on his desire for a full scale advance from the separatists. Why? US/NATO is poised to give aid because "Ukraine is Europe."

Putin left the G20 summit without waiting for the end of the programme. Of course, the President of Russia has the right to sleep on his arrival in Moscow, all the more so as he had to work on Monday'.

It is possible that Putin cannot sleep on the plane which flies for eight hours to our Far East and another eight from there to Moscow'. It is hardly believable that the cabin of the leader of a superpower is not equipped with a bedroomsuch an option exists even on ordinary run-of-the-mill business jets. For people who spend much of their lives in the air (often for many hours), crossing several time zones, this is not just whimsy, but a necessity. And it is impossible to assume that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Head of the Presidential Protocol did not inform him of the summit's programme in advance.

Thus, Putin knew perfectly well when the summit would come to an end. In such cases the program used to be served until the very end. It is impossible to imagine that the hosts prepared, planned and coordinated the event whereas the guests simply departed when it suited them. All the more so, as dinners and cultural events also are used for negotiations.

That is to say, the Russian president pointedly left the Summit without caring about even a more or less polite explanation of his actions. One could, after all, have said that the President had an illness; but the desire to sleep after a sixteen hour flightsuch an explanation would have been insulting to the Australians, yet the insult was defiantly given.

What caused such a reaction from Vladimir Vladimirovich? Even if the Australian Prime Minister had not spent the whole week announcing his intention to aggressively question Putin about the Malaysian Boeing; even if the press-service of the Canadian Prime Minister had not leaked to the media his "fearsome" demand to withdraw from Ukraine; even if the Russian media, just in time for the Summit, had not miraculously "found" a photograph of a jet fighter shooting down the Boeing; even then, it would have been obvious that the main subject of negotiations between the Russian President and Western leaders had to be the Ukrainian crisis.

Actually, the only interest for Russia, in this respect, is the position of the USA. The rest of the West still only breathes and moves in the mode defined by Washington.

Considering the build-up of explosive social energy in a rapidly destabilised EU, the latter will not last long, although it remains for now. Since the USA are not giving Ukraine money and weapons, are not permitting them even to try to stabilise the situation in the country, by concentrating power in a single hand (firstly they did not allow Yatsenyuk to be elected president, then Poroshenko was denied a majority in the Rada and thus the ability to appoint his chosen candidate as Prime Minister), it has been clear for some months now that Kiev has been written off. That is to say, it would make sense to discuss with Washington the situation "after Ukraine", as well as the problem of mutually financing the economic recovery and the disarmament of Nazi gangs.

What is Russia able to offer? Putin always leaves the possibility of face-saving for his opponent. Consequently, the Russian proposals had to be in the line of Putin's theses of February-March. Ukraine should be preserved as a state formation, but reorganised on a federal (in practiceon a confederal) basis. The West and Russia should jointly guarantee its full and comprehensive neutrality. The rights of the Russian population should be protected by amending the Constitution, including the introduction of official bilingualism.

The problem of Crimea will be solved by reinstating a Ukrainian state which is already without it. Russia and the West would jointly bear the costs of restoring the Ukrainian economy, including through the cancellation of old bad debts, opening their markets to Ukrainian goods, reducing prices of critical imports, including energy, as well as granting financial assistancein the form of either direct or highly concessionary loans.

Clearly, this would be only a soft form of transferring Ukraine to the Russian sphere of influence, however, the USA and EU could save face, focussing on the fact that they managed to save' the Ukrainian state from a loss of sovereignty, as well as on confirmation' of Ukraine's neutral status.

Since Putin pointedly left the Summit early, we can say for sure: the USA rejected any compromise on Ukraine. Hence, in the coming days, a week at most, a full-scale war will begin on the entire territory of the vanishing state. This war will be conducted in two formats.

Not in vain has the Militia, through the months of truce, been continuously looking for (and finding) heavy armoured vehicles in the Donetsk steppes; been attracting and training thousands of volunteers, including those possessing the specific knowledge and skills to be able effectively to use modern technology. All eyewitnesses testify that the density of troops in the DPR/LPR reads off the scale' and that those troops are concentrated in a few groups with a strongly pronounced offensive formation. And these troops have been cherishedthey have not been sent to the front. They should strike a deadly blow to the Kiev authorities that would at once bring down the front. This is the first formatthe collapse of the front, followed by a gradual occupation of the territory (not just of Novorossiya, but the whole of Ukraine). But this will be a slow process, depending on the readiness of the Militia and of the regions.

The second format should bring the Central and Western regions into the desired degree of readiness (Novorossiya is already ready) That is a civil war within the Kiev authorities (Yatsenyuk against Poroshenko , Kolomoyskyi against all, the Nazis against the oligarchs, the Army against the National Guards, peasant "self-defence" against urban food expropriators of the "supply detachments", etc.). This is the most terrible conflict, capable of rapidly decimating the population of Ukraine by twenty-five to thirty percent, and making those remaining willing to do anything just to stop the horror.

Putin tried to prevent this very horror, offering the West, needless for Russia, preservation of Ukraine under conditions of federalisation and neutrality. This very horror is being provoked by the USA. Actually, it is not being provokedit has been provoked. The coup and civil war became inevitable in Ukraine two months before the parliamentary elections, when it became clear that Turchinov, Yatsenyuk and Avakov were going to the polls not alongside Poroshenko, but against him. The US has long been waiting for when the Kiev leaders and their Nazi-henchmen finally begin killing each other.

Studious Yatsenuk, obedient Avakov and Turchynov, now bereft of the last shreds of adequacy, are ready to start shooting. But their second-tier henchmen are still afraid. Most of the Army still stands for Poroshenko. To put it mildly, it is not friendly towards the Nazi volunteer battalions. The collapse of the front, which after the failure of the Australian negotiations became inevitable, eliminates this foothold. Moreover, Poroshenko, as the supreme commander, will lose his credibility in society and in the security agencies.

The US get what they wanta full-scale, bloody civil war in the Ukraine with the liquidation of the remnants of the economy and the state, and the collapse of communal and social services. The territory will be plunged into the Stone Age in a matter of days.

The USA is hoping that, having finally formed the Ukrainian people', it will forever separate Russia and Ukraine. In addition, they know that the restoration of normal living conditions for the survivors will have to be done by Russia and the EU, which should tie up the resources of Moscow and Brussels, creating a competitive advantage for Washington.

These calculations are just as erroneous as the February-March attempt to forge an anti-Russian, Nazi battering ram out of Ukraine. Most of the personnel who are to form a Ukrainian people' will perish and will soon finally be lost on the fronts of the civil war. Those leaders of public opinion', who have been shaping a discourse of Russophobia in Ukraine in last twenty years, who are particularly lucky, will be able to emigrate to the West and quietly live out the rest of their days in obscurity. The majority will die, not least because the USA does not have any need of witnesses to its own crimes. Even that part of the people who still begin their mornings spitting in the direction of Moscow and prostrating themselves towards the West, after a short but effective blood-bath organised by pro-Western politicians under pro-Western slogans, and, most importantly, once the West has dissociated itself from the fate of Ukraine (soon it will be obvious to even the most euphoric Maidan-arbeiters), will hate the West for its betrayal (corresponding articles and blogs written by the most discerning Euro-integrators have already begun appearing in the Ukrainian mass-media).

The remains of the population of Ukraine will meet the troops (either Novorossiyan or Russian) just as the Germans met the Red Army in 1945lining up in the queue to the field kitchens and absorbing the new ideology with their porridge. We should not forget that a totalitarian society was built in Ukraine, and that totalitarian propaganda has one featurepeople begin to love what they cursed yesterday as soon as the focus is changed.

Let me remind you that Ukraine was the most loyal republic of the USSR (even more loyal than RSFSR), and that in one stroke, after the declaration of independence, the vast majority of members of the CPSU (including Kuchma, Kravchuk and Yushchenko) suddenly became Ukrainian patriots and almost clandestine anti-communist fighters. The attitude of the people has changed just as quickly. Yesterday's conscious builders of communism became no less conscious carriers of ideas of UkrainisationRussians, Jews, and even Tajiks became more hardened Ukrainians than most thoroughbred Ukrainians.

Thus, the USA's refusal to compromise on Ukraine at the G20 Summit in Australia means a short, bloody nightmare for the population of that already former-state, followed by the accession of the territory to Russia.

The sense in retaining formal sovereignty has disappeared completely and utterly. In principle, there is no point even in sharing territory with the neighbouring EU countries (Poland, Romania and Hungary). Giving Banderite Galicia to Poland would now only serve as a subtle revenge. Yet it would be a pity to lose the territory, as the Banderites can be pushed out to Poland anyway.

Hopefully, for objective reasons, the Militia will move to the West slowly, so that whoever wants to will have time to run to the EU and join Europe in a person capacity.

In general, the shorter the liquidation period, the more lives can be saved, but that the bill for corpses, already above thirty thousand, will go to the hundreds of thousandsthis is almost inevitable. Just as inevitable as two to three million emigrants to Europe. This, in the best case; at worst, Ukraine may lose up to a quarter of its pre-war population (and not all of the lost will be emigrants).

Well, everything should be paid for. For stupidity, immaturity, cookies from Nuland, envelopes from the US Embassy, grants and trips, many years of lies, the inadequacy of the political elite and the inability of the people to put forward a different elitepayment will be with blood, and more blood. Because the USA has decided. Project Ukraine closed.

Chuck Hagel fired as SecDef. Connected? He was supposedly not on message with the White House.

[Magda Hassan]

Chuck Hagel fired as SecDef. Connected? He was supposedly not on message with the White House.

Or off message with the Pentagon? I always thought he was more aligned with Obama than not. Neither of them played to well with Israel. Seems he has much resistance with some faction in the Pentagon. Dempsey? Maybe a good move for him in the end as it all looks like war without end and lurching from one clusterfuck to the next.

[David Guyatt]

Robert Parry thinks Hagel's departure signals Obama's submission to the Neocons...

I shudder at the thought.

Possible Motives for Ousting Hagel

November 24, 2014

Exclusive: At the start of Barack Obama's second term, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was seen as the best hope for standing up to the neocons, inside and outside the administration. Though Hagel proved to be a weak champion, his sudden removal could portend more trouble ahead, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The abrupt resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel along with the failure to reach a final agreement on Iran's nuclear program on the same day does not augur well for the last quarter of Barack Obama's presidency, reflecting his continuing tendency to let the neocons have their way.
Not that Hagel had distinguished himself as a sterling leader of the Pentagon nor has all hope disappeared that a sensible resolution of the impasse with Iran might be achieved before the next "deadline" in June but Obama still does not appear to have escaped the spell of the neocons who continue to dominate American geopolitical thought despite the bloody disasters that they helped cause in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel shakes hands with President Barack Obama at the White House on Nov. 24, 2014, as the President announces that Hagel is resigning. (U.S..government photo)

Six years into his presidency, Obama still doesn't seem to understand that just because some people have impressive credentials doesn't mean they know what they're doing. Indeed, in a profoundly corrupted system like the one that now controls Official Washington rewards are handed out to people who serve the corrupt interests or at least don't get in the way.
In a time of corruption, the countervailing forces of wisdom and courage will never be found among the credentialed, but rather among the outcasts of the establishment, those who were forced to the margins because they objected to the venality, because they stood up against misguided "group think."
But Obama has been unwilling or possibly unable to come to grips with this reality. Despite his personal intelligence and rhetorical skills, Obama never has been willing to challenge people cloaked in credentials those who went to the best schools, worked at big-name firms, won prestigious awards or held fellowships at famous think tanks.
The tragedy of Obama is that I'm told that he understands the stupidity of the modern U.S. establishment and does sometimes consult with "realists" who offer practical advice for how he can resolve some of the most nettlesome problems facing the United States around the world. But he does so virtually in secret, with what politicians like to call "deniability."
Obama operates one foreign policy above the table pounding his fist along with the neocons against Syria, Iran and Russia and another foreign policy below the table, dealing with adversaries in ways necessary to confront global challenges, such as collaborating with Iran to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and with Russia to address challenges with Iran, Syria, Libya and elsewhere.
Yet, while keeping such pragmatic overtures under the table, Obama reaches out publicly to neocons who have been implicated in some of the worst disasters in the history of U.S. foreign policy but who have "credentials." For instance, earlier this year, Obama was stung by criticism from neocon ideologue Robert Kagan, who had published a long essay in The New Republic promoting the need for more U.S. interventionism around the world.
Obama could have dismissed Kagan's New Republic article as the pretentious pontifications of a blowhard whose career began as a propagandist for Ronald Reagan's Central American policies in the 1980s and included, in the 1990s, co-founding the Project for the New American Century, which called for invading Iraq, an illegal war that was launched in 2003, propelling America into the current catastrophes now swirling around the Middle East.
But Obama apparently couldn't get past all of Kagan's "credentials," including his current work at the prestigious Brookings Institution and his writing for the oh-so-impressive New Republic. So, Obama invited Kagan to lunch at the White House, a cozy get-together that one observer described as a "meeting of equals."
Yes, the twice-elected President of the United States and his "equal," one of the co-founders of the neocon Project for the New American Century. The New York Times reported that Obama even shaped his foreign policy speech at the West Point graduation in May to address criticism from Kagan's New Republic essay, "Superpowers Don't Get to Retire."
[B]Off to The Hague[/B]
[B]You might think that the only reason to invite one of the Iraq War architects to the White House would be as a "sting operation" to arrest him and trundle him off to The Hague for prosecution for war crimes. After all, the justices at the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunals deemed aggression starting an unprovoked war "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." And we have certainly seen that "accumulated evil" get unpacked.[/B]
[B]Yet, Obama courted Kagan as a respected "equal," according to one source familiar with the behavior of the two men at lunch. Although as a journalist I try not to react viscerally to what I hear, the phrase "a meeting of equals" brought the taste of vomit to the back of my throat.[/B]
[B]I couldn't help but recall the reported outburst by President Abraham Lincoln after his reelection as he struggled to secure the necessary votes for passing the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery: "I am the President of the United States, clothed with immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes" (as recounted years later by Congressman James Alley).[/B]
[B]However, after also winning the presidency a second time, President Obama couldn't seem to find his inner Lincoln.[/B]
[B]In trying to understand what makes Obama tick, I have often been struck by how he seems awed by credentials, perhaps because credentials were the key to his unlikely rise from an obscure and exotic background to edit the Harvard Law Review, to build an academic career, to gain a U.S. Senate seat, and to win the presidency of the United States. Along the way, he got "blessed" by many of the "right" people and never strayed too far from the safety of the "establishment."[/B]
[B]Even as a twice-elected president, Obama seems captive to this high regard for people with credentials, even when the system awarding those credentials daily demonstrates its extraordinary levels of corruption, cruelty and outright stupidity.[/B]
[B]Which brings us back to the apparently forced resignation of Chuck Hagel, who earned the enmity of Official Washington because he was an early Republican turning against the Iraq War and because he offered some mild criticism of the Israel Lobby.[/B]
[B]On the surface, Obama's abandonment of Hagel while retaining the bombastic neocon-approved Secretary of State John Kerry and other war hawks like U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland (Kagan's wife) suggests that Obama may be again bending his foreign policy in directions favored by the neocons and their sidekicks, the "liberal interventionists."[/B]
[B]That could presage further disasters if Obama adopts the neocon strategy of ratcheting up tensions with Iran over its nuclear program and bombing the Syrian military in a move to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad with both "regime change" goals high on the agenda of Israel's right-wing government.[/B]
[B]Yet, since Iran has been playing a key role in taking on the Islamic State militants in both Iraq and Syria and since Assad's army is the only force capable of holding back Islamic extremists inside Syria the neocon "regime change" plan is reckless in the extreme. A very possible result from such a U.S. intervention against Assad would be a military victory for Al-Qaeda's Nusra Front or the even more extreme Islamic State.[/B]
[B]There's also the neocon desire for a new Cold War with Russia over Ukraine. It's possible that Hagel, a Vietnam veteran who understands the ugliness of war and has no fondness for the neocons, is being sidelined because he isn't willing to throw more young American men and women into the blood and horror of more neocon-inspired adventures, not to mention wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayers' money.[/B]
[B]But Hagel's erratic performance as Defense Secretary often coming across as inarticulate and imprecise could represent a less consequential reason for the change at the Pentagon. Perhaps, Obama simply wants someone who is more skilled at the job.[/B]
[B][For more on the neocons and U.S. foreign policy, see Consortiumnews.com's "Delusional US Group Think' on Syria and Ukaine."][/B]

From The Consortium

[Magda Hassan]

Would seem to be the case.

[Lauren Johnson]

Obama has denied neo-Nazis are involved in Ukraine government. Well, here is a photo of a group of Azov fighters. The middle flag in Cyrillic is A3OB and in English Azov, with a closeup of their emblem. Flags included are the NATO flag and what appears to be a Latvian flag with a swastika added on.

[David Guyatt]

Quite how Obama can expect anyone to buy his denial I don't know, since it's so blooming obvious that neo nazi elements are engaged... :hock::

[Lauren Johnson]

Regarding the above photo proving there is no fascism in Ukraine, there has been plenty of pushback that the whole thing is a fake. Colonel Cassad says this:

Yesterday I uploaded http://cassad-eng.livejournal.com/109156.html a photo of "ATO heroes" from the punitive battalion "Azov" with a characteristic swastika, after which officer's daughters unleashed a temper tantrum in the comments that all of this is just Putin's propaganda, malignant photoshop, polish revenge, and other Ukrainscious bullshit. Well, allright, let's make the picture more complete. The photo is of course not Photoshop, but rather from the page of https://vk.com/oleg_penya (in Ukrainian) of "Azov" punitive troop named Oleg Penya, who up until recently was a coordinator of the "Right Sector" in Zhytomir. Later he was demoted into private for some screwups and sent to fight in "Azov".

Because it is clear that the character may delete the compromising photos or lock up the access to his page, screenshots were taken, which "prove beyond any doubt" that there is absolutely no fascism in Ukraine.

Lots more screen captures from Penya's website at the link.

[David Guyatt]

There is a quiet but growing division between the US and Europe about the continuing sanctions against Putin and Russia and doubts that either were responsible for the downing of MH17. The Neocon plan is beginning to shred in Europe, if not in the US. The Brits remain in the US camp, however. No surprises there, though.

This last week the German Foreign Minister has travelled to Russia to see Putin and to discuss ways of reversing sanctions and to reach a reconciliation.

Der Spiegel Tones Down Anti-Putin Hysteria

November 28, 2014

Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. news media continues to spew out a steady flow of anti-Russian propaganda over the Ukraine crisis, but the prominent German newsmagazine Der Spiegel has begun to temper its belligerent tone, finally reflecting the more nuanced reality, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Last summer, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel was swept up in the Western hysteria over Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine crisis, even running a bellicose cover demanding "Stop Putin Now" and blaming him for the 298 deaths in the July 17 crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine.
"Vladimir Putin has shown his true face. Once seen as a statesman, the Russian president has exposed himself as a pariah of the international community. The MH17 dead are also his; he is partially responsible for the shooting down of the flight," a Der Spiegel editorial declared on July 28. "Nobody in the West continues to harbor serious doubts that the plane was shot down with a Buk surface-to-air missile system one that was almost certainly provided to the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine by Russia."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. (Israeli government photo)

Actually, by then, a number of people in the West, including U.S. intelligence analysts, were doubting the blame-Putin narrative because they could find no evidence that the Russians had supplied the ethnic Russian rebels with a sophisticated anti-aircraft missile system that could bring down a commercial plane flying at 33,000 feet.
At the time, I was being told by a source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts that the emerging scenario pointed more toward an extremist group associated with the Ukrainian government although not under the control of Kiev's senior leadership. But the major media in the U.S. and Europe refused to rethink the early "conventional wisdom."
However, in October, Der Spiegel quietly reversed itself regarding Moscow supposedly supplying the Buk missiles, reporting that the German foreign intelligence agency, the BND, had concluded that Russia did not supply the battery suspected of bringing down the plane, saying the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian military missile captured by the rebels from a Ukrainian military base (although I was later told by a European official that the BND's conclusion was less definitive than Der Spiegel reported).
[B]Creating a Crisis[/B]
[B]In another reversal of sorts, this leading German-language newsmagazine has acknowledged that the European Union and German leaders were guilty of miscalculations that contributed to the Ukraine crisis, particularly by under-appreciating the enormous financial costs to Ukraine if it broke its historic ties to Russia in favor of a new association with the EU.[/B]
[B]In November 2013, Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych learned from experts at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine that the total cost to the country's economy from severing its business connections to Russia would be around $160 billion, 50 times the $3 billion figure that the EU had estimated, Der Spiegel reported. The figure stunned Yanukovych, who pleaded for financial help that the EU couldn't provide, the magazine said.[/B]
[B]Western loans would have to come from the International Monetary Fund, which was demanding painful "reforms" of Ukraine's economy, structural changes that would make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder, including raising the price of natural gas by 40 percent and devaluing Ukraine's currency, the hryvnia, by 25 percent.[/B]
[B]With Putin offering a more generous aid package of $15 billion, Yanukovych backed out of the EU agreement but told the EU's Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Nov. 28, 2013, that he was willing to continue negotiating.[/B]
[B]German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded with "a sentence dripping with disapproval and cool sarcasm aimed directly at the Ukrainian president. I feel like I'm at a wedding where the groom has suddenly issued new, last minute stipulations," according to Der Spiegel's chronology of the crisis.[/B]
[B]That was when the U.S. neocons stepped up their strategy of using the popular disappointment in western Ukraine over the failed EU agreement to topple Yanukovych, the constitutionally elected president.[/B]
[B]Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a prominent neocon holdover who advised Vice President Dick Cheney, passed out cookies to anti-Yanukovych demonstrators at the Maidan Square in Kiev and reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European aspirations."[/B]
[B]Meanwhile, neocon Sen. John McCain joined Ukrainian rightists onstage at the Maidan urging on the protests, and the U.S.-funded, neocon-led National Endowment for Democracy deployed scores of its Ukrainian political/media operatives in support of the disruptions. Even earlier, NED President Carl Gershman, a leading neocon, had identified Ukraine as "the biggest prize" and an important step toward toppling Putin in Russia. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Neocons' Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit."][/B]
[B]By early February, Nuland was telling U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt "fuck the EU" and discussing how to "glue this thing" as she handpicked who the new leaders of Ukraine would be; "Yats is the guy," she said about Arseniy Yatsenyuk.[/B]
[B]As violent disorders at the Maidan spun out of control, the State Department and U.S. news media blamed Yanukovych, setting the stage for his removal. On Feb. 22, a putsch, spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias from the Maidan protests, forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives.[/B]
[B][B]A Nasty Civil War[/B][/B]
[B][B]Nuland's "guy" Yatsenyuk became the new prime minister and pushed through both the IMF "reforms" and the EU association agreement. But the price was high, with Ukraine descending into a brutal civil war with ethnic Russians of eastern and southern Ukraine resisting the imposition of the new order in Kiev.[/B][/B]
[B][B]The voters of Crimea overwhelmingly passed a secession referendum and rejoined Russia with the help of Russian troops stationed in Crimea at the naval base at Sebastopol. Two areas of eastern Ukraine also voted to secede but were not accepted by Moscow, though it provided military and non-lethal assistance when the Kiev regime launched an "anti-terrorism operation" that incorporated some of the neo-Nazi storm troopers into "volunteer militias."[/B][/B]
[B][B]The Ukrainian civil war not only has claimed thousands of lives but revived the specter of a new Cold War. The U.S. State Department pressed the EU to join in economic sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea, a plan that Merkel and the EU adopted after the July 17 shoot-down of MH17, which was hastily blamed on Putin.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Tit-for-tat economic sanctions also pushed the EU toward its third recession since the 2008 financial crisis. They also have contributed to economic pain in Russia. But the worst victims are the Ukrainians who are facing a cold winter with scant supplies of fuel, little money and widespread joblessness.[/B][/B]
[B][B]"In one of the most important questions facing European foreign policy, Germany had failed," Der Spiegel admitted in its review of how the crisis evolved from the botched negotiations a year ago. The magazine cited a speech last December by the new Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, saying: "We should ask ourselves … whether we have overlooked the fact that it is too much for this country to have to choose between Europe and Russia."[/B][/B]
[B][B]Der Spiegel also quoted a key figure in the Ukraine talks, European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Füle, as conceding that the EU confronted Ukraine with an impossible choice. "We were actually telling Ukraine …: You know guys, sorry for your geographic location, but you cannot go east and you cannot go west,'" Füle said.[/B][/B]
[B][B]"More than anything, though, the Europeans underestimated Moscow and its determination to prevent a clear bond between Ukraine and the West," Der Spiegel wrote. "They either failed to take Russian concerns and Ukrainian warnings seriously or they ignored them altogether because they didn't fit into their own worldview."[/B][/B]
[B][B]This more tempered assessment by Der Spiegel though a marked improvement from the hysteria of last summer still falls far short of the highest standards of journalistic objectivity. But it suggests that perhaps a more rational attitude toward the Ukraine crisis is finally taking hold in Europe.[/B][/B]
[B][B][B]U.S. Media Hysteria[/B][/B][/B]
[B][B]That does not appear to be the case in the United States where major news outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, continue to be little more than propaganda megaphones for the hawks in the State Department and the ever-influential neoconservatives.[/B][/B]
[B][B]For instance, on Wednesday, the Post's neocon editors published a lead editorial aimed at both Putin and President Barack Obama with what you might call neocon trash-talking. In the Post's print edition, the sneering headline was "The invincible' Mr. Putin. With no new pressure from the West, the Kremlin acts as if it has nothing to fear." The online title was even more direct: "Prove to Mr. Putin that he is not invincible.'"[/B][/B]
[B][B]The editorial continued the year-long campaign to demonize Putin and agitate Obama into taking more aggressive action toward destabilizing Russia.[/B][/B]
[B][B]The Post, which has become the neocon flagship publication, was following the neocon strategy of destroying what had been constructive behind-the-scenes cooperation between Putin and Obama on issues such as reaching a political settlement in Syria and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran.[/B][/B]
[B][B]If that Putin-Obama relationship were not obliterated, it carried grave dangers for the overriding neocon strategy of "regime change" across the Middle East, to eliminate nations and movements regarded as threats to Israel.[/B][/B]
[B][B]But the biggest risk to the neocons from Putin and Obama working together would be the possibility that the two leaders could join forces to pressure Israel into a peace agreement with the Palestinians, rather than continue Israel's inexorable seizure of Palestinian land.[/B][/B]
[B][B]In demanding that Obama ratchet up the confrontation with Putin, the Post's editors wrote that the current anti-Russian sanctions are "not enough, apparently to deter Mr. Putin from sending more troops to Ukraine, tightening his hold on Abkhazia or declaring himself invincible."[/B][/B]
[B][B]By the way, what Putin actually said was: "When a Russian feels he is right, he is invincible." However, by twisting the rather innocuous observation, the Post's editors could present Putin as delusional while simultaneously baiting Obama into escalating the personal feud between the two leaders, all the better to poison future hopes of cooperation on conflict resolution.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Yet, while the major U.S. media has become one continuous conveyor belt of anti-Russian propaganda, Der Spiegel finally seems to have slowed down the assembly-line manufacturing of lies and exaggerations by offering its readers a bit of honesty about how this crisis began.[/B][/B]

[Paul Rigby]

With no public debate permitted on the catastrophic course being charted for the UK by the geopolitical genii at the FO and the Charlatans (MI6), we are left to our own devices to establish the cost for us of the monstrosity that is the CIA's operation in Ukraine, and attendant attempts to weaken the Russian economy. Here is classic, and utterly predictable, example of the latter, a direct consequence of the US-Saudi deal on oil prices:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets...unges.html

Taxpayer facing £20bn bill to decommission oil rigs as plunging crude prices threaten future of North Sea operations

Brent crude fell to below $72 a barrel, dropping 10 per cent in a week

Half of cost of closing down oil wells met by the state

By JON REES, FINANCIAL MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 21:35, 29 November 2014 | UPDATED: 09:48, 30 November 2014

Brent crude fell to below $72 (£46) a barrel, dropping 10 per cent in a week. It is down almost 40 per cent since it hit $115 in June.

Oil & Gas UK wants the £2billion a year tax hike on the industry imposed in 2011 a 12 percentage point increase levied by Chancellor George Osborne to be reversed.

Tholen said: We need to see massive changes in the tax rates. In 2013 we spent every pound we earned in investing, running and exploring for oil. This year we will be spending £3billion more than we are earning to do the same thing.

We cannot sustain this business for too much longer without things changing radically. At $70 a barrel, decommissioning oil fields moves centre stage for many companies.'

The North Sea attracted a record £14billion of investment last year, but Oil & Gas UK believes that will halve over the next four years.

The Chancellor is expected to outline the results of a Treasury review into the tax regime of the North Sea oil industry in Wednesday's Autumn Statement

[Paul Rigby]

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