Is Peace with Russia Possible?

Armstrong Economics

ANSWER: Europe and NATO are the aggressors – not Putin. Zelensky is meeting with Trump today. Trump has to realize who his real opponents are. Peace with Russia is easy if you do what is right. Putin warned Zelensky that the Minsk Agreement was the key. Zelensky has been taking his orders from NATO, NEOCONS, and never from his own people. I had two employees there, and I can say many people questioned if he was even legitimately elected. We have witnessed what the EU and NATO did in Romania. Do you really think they were hands-off in Ukraine? There would have BEEN NO WAR if the EU, NATO, and Neocons had not lied and honored the Minisk Agreement.

 You cannot defeat Putin and think that is somehow the answer. When Khrushchev had to back down after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a coup occurred, and Brezhnev took power, deepening the Cold War.

Then there was a proposal that Russia join NATO when the USSR collapsed. Just as our Neocons in the CIA killed JFK to keep war on the table and rejected his peace initiatives, the Russian Neocons staged coup #2 and overthrew Gorbachev. That is when Yeltsin stood on the tank and pleaded with the military not to fire on their own people. The military stood down, and the coup collapsed. Anyone who thinks they can beat Putin and force him out of Ukraine is not just a fool; they are a dangerous asshole. You will get coup #3, and this time you will get the Russian Neocons in full power. Just imagine if John McCain had become president with Lindsey Grachm as his VP. You would probably be dead by now. 

Read more 

Celebrate Loud, Long And Unapologetically When Psychopath McCain Finally Dies

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
via Sott.net

Arizona Senator and murderous psychopath John McCain is rumored to be at death's door, and already the world is being admonished by high-profile empire loyalists not to voice any criticism of his blood-saturated, obnoxiously long career.

"Anti-McCain twitter seems to have reached new heights (or depths) of repulsiveness," tweeted Iraq-raping PNAC founder Bill Kristol to thunderous applause from #Resistance Twitter. "In the hope that a few of the haters see this, let me say: I'm proud to have voted for John McCain for president three times (2000 & 2008 primaries & 2008 general), and for Donald Trump...never."

"John McCain reminds us that American greatness is made by those who understand that character is the sum of one's hardest choices; that reality is not a TV show; that fame is mist but honor granite; that heroes don't need fixers on retainer," the Washington Post's David Von Drehle preemptively eulogized in a nauseating article titled "John McCain isn't the ideal messenger. He's the ideal message."

"STFU, Trumpites," scolded the somewhat less subtle Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast. "John McCain is 50 times the person you'll ever be."  

Other commentators have had other ideas.

"These repressive decrees prohibiting criticisms of John McCain as he dies are like those who insist gun control not be spoken of after mass shootings," tweeted journalist Glenn Greenwald. "Discussions of his life are inherently political. If you're going heap praise on & sanctify him, you can't also silence critics."

"Insisting on the right to convert every US political leader into a heroic & noble saint upon death, while condemning critics as gauche & classless, is propaganda," Greenwald added. "It's easy to dismiss all the deaths McCain has caused because they're distant and invisible, but they still matter."

Read more

CIA’s Brennan & Sen. John McCain Lied About Putin & Russia Helping Trump Win White House

True Pundit

U.S. intelligence agencies’ far-reaching conclusion that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election to specifically help Donald Trump was flawed by “tradecraft failings,” says a House report.

The conclusion was written by the CIA then under the direction of Obama loyalist John O. Brennan.

And Sen. John McCain helped spread those lies too.

The report said the CIA’s Putin–Trump analysis violated standards for analyzing intelligence products and noted that one guideline is to “be independent of political considerations.”

It said the CIA’s draft section on Mr. Putin’s intentions lacked vigorous internal debate because it was restricted to an “unusually constrained review” by other agencies.

The findings are contained in the Republican majority report of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigation into 2016 Russian election meddling.

It buttressed the argument from Hillary Clinton, who from the moment she lost to Mr. Trump cited Russia as the reason. Obama loyalists, such as Mr. Brennan and former National Director of Intelligence James R. Clapper, have suggested that Mr. Trump is a Putin agent.

Read more

The Rothschild and Saud Families Fund Both John McCain and Hillary Clinton

Eric Zuesse

 

On 21 October 2016, I headlined “An Email From Lynn Forester de Rothschild to Hillary Clinton, Against Elizabeth Warren” and reported extensive back-door funding of Hillary Clinton by the Rothschild family.

On 15 December 2016, I headlined “U.S. Gov’t. Is Secretly Allied with America’s Enemies“ and noted that:

Prior to Hillary’s becoming the U.S. Secretary of State, the Clinton Foundation had collected a total of $10 million to $25 million from the Saud family and their vassals (the Sauds’ subordinate aristocrats, such as the bin Ladens — but all from official government accounts). As the U.S. Secretary of State, she and her State Department celebrated in 2011 the Saud family’s purchase of $29.4 billion worth of U.S. Boeing F15-SA bombers (which now were destroying Saudi Arabia’s neighboring country of Yemen, with American bombs); and, as Lee Fang of The Intercept noted about that, “As weapons transfers were being approved, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Boeing made donations to the Clinton Foundation. The Washington Post revealed that a Boeing lobbyist helped with fundraising in the early stages of Hillary Clinton’s current presidential campaign.”

Then, on March 10th, Jack Burns of The Free Thought Project (a left-libertarian organization, which receives no funding from the Kochs or other billionaires) bannered “EXPOSED: Senator John McCain And His Ties To Saudis, Rothschilds” and he documented similar backdoor funding of John McCain.

John McCain’s father, Admiral John McCain II, headed the official “court of inquiry” into Israel’s 8 June 1967 military assault against the U.S.S. Liberty and he ruled that Israel had merely erred in having slaughtered its 34 U.S. sailors. (It was an entirely unprovoked attack.) However, that ‘finding’ was a cover-up. Ample evidence (such as presented here and here and here) proves that it was intentional and authorized at the top of Israel’s government and why they did it. So, after reviewing that and other evidence, I headlined on 30 September 2016, “Why Does U.S. Gov’t. Donate $38B to an Enemy Nation?” (referring to Obama’s commitment for U.S. taxpayers to donate $38 billion to Israel over the next ten years).

As I explained on 25 December 2015, under the headline “The Saudi Wahhabi Origins of Jihadism”, the Sauds are allied not only with the other fundamentalist-Sunni royal Arab families who own respectively Qatar (Thani), Kuwait (Sabah), and UAE (six royal families in that country), but also with Jewish billionaires, many of whom are American and are major funders of both political parties, just as Christian billionaires are. Israeli politics is largely dominated by Jewish American billionaires, and so the Western Alliance is an alliance of billionaires, who are Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Sunnis, but they are all united together in supporting neoconservatism — the ultimate goal of conquering Russia — and this means wars to overthrow Russia-friendly leaders, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad. But the billionaires also control the armaments-firms, which need lots of wars — it’s just good business for them to invade and otherwise (such as in coups) overthrow governments that refuse to particpate.

Read more

Senate Candidate Exposes McCain, Obama, and Clinton: “Partners in Creating and Arming ISIS”

State of the Nation

SOTN Editor’s Note:

 
An Arizona Senate candidate has emerged who is calling a spade a spade.  The following video portrays the most shocking allegations in the history of American politics.

VIDEO:  Senator John McCain is “Directly Responsible” for arming and supporting ISIS — Dr. Kelli Ward

Dr. Kelli Ward has taken the gloves off where it concerns the public service of Senator John McCain.  She has rightly stated the McCain, along with President Obama and Secretary Clinton, were actual “Partners in Creating and Arming and Funding ISIS”.

It really does not get more serious than this accusation unless someone alleges that rogue elements within the U.S. Federal Government were directly responsible for the planning, coordination, execution and cover-up of the false flag terror attacks on September 11, 2001 … … …

which it was.

Read more

 

Ukraine: The Propaganda War

David William Pear
OpedNews

Last week Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times called Putin a "thug" and "Hitler" (HERE ). This week Timothy Garton Ash writing in the Guardian comment section says Putin is Slobodan Milosevic (HERE ).

Both Friedman and Ash say that Putin is threatening Europe and he must be stopped. Both say the only way to stop Putin is to tighten the screws of economic sanctions on Russia, send more lethal military equipment to Ukraine and put NATO boots on the ground. They both call on Obama to do so. 

Putin is neither Hitler nor Milosevic. Whenever people write such hyperbole they should immediately be suspected of being propagandists, especially when they heap praise on John "Bomb-Bomb" McCain as Ash does.

Neither Friedman nor Ash can point to any evidence that Putin has been the aggressor in Ukraine, committed genocide as did Hitler and Milosevic, or tried to cause ethnic cleansing. Kiev backed by Obama has been committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in South-East Ukraine.

Russian tanks are not on the move and threatening Europe. Friedman and Ash are making it up. The Baltic States and Poland are safe no matter how much Obama and the main stream media wring their hands and say they are frightened of Russian aggression in Europe. It is almost laughable if they were not so deadly serious and determined about their ulterior motives for making these stories up.

Only those with exaggerated imaginations or people who want to make things up say that Russia has shown evil intentions on its neighbors. People like Friedman and Ashton keep sticking their finger in Putin's eye hoping that he will lash out irrationally. So far they have been very disappointed.

Throughout the crisis that Washington manufactured in Ukraine, Russia has reacted in a measured and moderate response. When Russia's national security was threatened with the loss of its naval base in Crimea, Russia waited for a democratic referendum to approve annexation. When Novorossiya voted to break away from Ukraine, Russia called for diplomacy and greater autonomy for Novorossiya rather than annexation. 

When the government in Kiev surrounded, isolated and attacked the civilian population of Donbas, Russia sent in humanitarian aid. And Russia continues to send in humanitarian aid although it is ignored by the main stream media.  

Read more

Paris: March of the hypocrites

Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
Mon, 12 Jan 2015

It was only natural that "world leaders" would place themselves at the head of the Paris "unity" demonstration held to express outrage at the vicious Charlie Hebdo murders. Daniel Wickham, a student at the London School of Economics, compiled a list of the enemies of free speech who elbowed their way to the head of the march. Most hypocritical of all are the French themselves, who have laws against "hate speech" which are only selectively enforced and which have been used against the editors of Charlie Hebdo in the past. This cognitive dissonance was eloquently expressed by one Frenchman who carried a sign saying: "I'm marching but I'm conscious of the confusion and hypocrisy of the situation."

That politicians would steal the spotlight and turn the sincere outrage of millions into an opportunity for self-advertisement is hardly surprising. Sincerity has its uses, however, and these will become apparent in the days and weeks to come. Those marchers will soon be cheering their soldiers as they go marching off to war, with "Je suis Charlie" inscribed on their banners.

The target? Syria, where "links" have been found between the Paris attacks and the self-proclaimed "Caliphate"of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The New York Times reports:

Amedy Coulibaly, one of the three gunman responsible for the terrorist attacks in France last week, produced a video that appeared online on Sunday, two days after his death, showing him sitting below the flag of the Islamic State militant group and pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the organization's leader.

If you read the transcript of the video it reads almost like a script prepared by our biggest warmongers. It takes the form of an interview, with the invisible interviewer represented by words on a screen and Coulibaly answering:

Which group are you linked to and do you have an Emir?

Coulibaly: 'I am pledging my allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. I have made a declaration of allegiance to the Caliph and the declaration of a Caliphate.'

The Islamic State has been trying to provoke a major military response from the Western powers for months now, executing American journalists and aid workers and posting videos of the executions on the Internet, but so far the US has reacted with caution. So they resorted to attacking the West on its own soil, and now the chorus of voices calling for an all-out invasion of Syria will become deafening, drowning out all reason. And Coulibaly dots all the i's and crosses the t's:

Are you linked to the brothers who attacked Charlie Hebdo?

Coulibaly: 'We are a team, in league together. I am with the team who did Charlie Hebdo. I went out a little against the police too. So that's that. We did some things together, some things separately to have most impact. [Sound of TV news in the background in which newsreader can be clearly heard talking about the attacks].

'We have managed to be synchronized together, to come out at the same time, because we are close in the same business.'

It's all so pat, an engraved invitation: Come and get us!

From his permanent pulpit on the Sunday morning TV talk-fest, Senator John McCain declared his intention to oblige them. Railing against the failure of the United States to defeat ISIS, McCain is asked by journalist Gloria Borger what exactly he has in mind, and his response is a preview of things to come:

ISIS right now is winning. And we need to go after them, and we need to have more boots on the ground. We need to understand that Syria and Iraq are the same. We need to arm the Free Syrian Army. We need a no-fly zone, which many of us have been calling for, for years, and a coherent strategy that can be presented to the Congress, because they're going to be wanting an authorization for the use of military force.

There's something more than a little counterintuitive about McCain's call for a no-fly zone: after all, ISIS doesn't have an air force, while the most effective counterweight to them - the Syrian government - does indeed. If McCain's concern is ISIS, then why go after Bashar al-Assad? And as for arming the Syrian Free Army: those arms are more than likely to show up in the hands of ISIS. As Debka File reports:

The Syrian rebel militia Al Yarmouk Shuhada Brigades, backed and trained for two years by US officers, mostly CIA experts, in Jordan, and supported by the Israeli army, has abruptly dumped these sponsors and joined up with the Islamic State in Iraq.

If McCain has his way, the next terrorist attackers who show up in the streets of a Western city are more than likely to have been trained by our very own CIA. A purer form of "blowback" could hardly be imagined.

In a more general sense, the principle of "blowback" operates in the terrorists' favor as the US and its allies get more deeply involved in Syria and Iraq: if the Western powers follow McCain's advice, jihadists will stream from Europe to the region in even greater numbers and the legitimacy of the "Caliphate" in the eyes of Muslims everywhere is increased. McCain and his fellow interventionists have a symbiotic relationship with the terrorists: both are legitimized on the home front by the actions of the other.

ISIS was itself birthed in the chaos that accompanied our invasion and conquest of Iraq, and McCain and the War Party are intent on duplicating that Orc factory in the territory of Syria.

So how does this policy of creating and succoring the very threats they rail against benefit the leaders of the West?

Without the threat of terrorism, our foreign policy of perpetual war would have zero public support. Without the excuse of having to monitor the ever-escalating activities of the Coulibalys of this world, the very idea that the government has the "right" to scoop up our communications and store them in a giant facility out in the Utah desert would be dismissed as a dystopian fantasy.

But then again, that's the world we live in, in the year 2015: a dystopia so absurd that no writer, prior to September 11, 2001, would have dared put it into print, either as fiction or speculative nonfiction.

And so the hypocrites march on, right over a cliff and into an abyss of their own making.

John McCain, Conductor of the "Arab Spring" and the Caliph

Thierry Meyssan
Voltairenet.org

Everyone has noticed the contradiction of those who recently characterized the Islamic Emirate as "freedom fighters" in Syria and who are indignant today faced with its abuses in Iraq. But if that speech is incoherent in itself, it makes perfect sense in the strategic plan: the same individuals were to be presented as allies yesterday and must be as enemies today, even if they are still on orders from Washington. Thierry Meyssan reveals below US policy through the particular case of Senator John McCain, conductor of the "Arab Spring" and longtime partner of Caliph Ibrahim.

Are Barack Obama and John McCain political opponents as they claim, or are they working together on the imperialist strategy of their country? 

John McCain is known as the leader of the Republicans and unhappy 2008 US presidential candidate. This is, we will see, only the real part of his biography, which serves as a cover to conduct covert actions on behalf of his government.

When I was in Libya during the "Western"attack, I was able to view a report of the foreign intelligence services. It stated that, on February 4, 2011 in Cairo, NATO organized a meeting to launch the "Arab Spring" in Libya and Syria. According to this document, the meeting was chaired by John McCain. The report detailed the list of Libyan participants, whose delegation was led by the No. 2 man of the government of the day, Mahmoud Jibril, who abruptly switched sides at the entrance of the meeting to become the opposition leader in exile. I remember that, among the French delegates present, the report quoted Bernard-Henry Lévy, although officially he had never exercised functions within the French government. Many other personalities attended the symposium, including a large delegation of Syrians living abroad.

Emerging from the meeting, the mysterious Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook account called for demonstrations outside the People’s Council (National Assembly) in Damascus on February 11. Although this Facebook account at the time claimed to have more than 40,000 followers, only a dozen people responded to its call before the flashes of photographers and hundreds of police. The demonstration dispersed peacefully and clashes only began more than a month later in Deraa. [1]

Read more

Energy War: Bulgaria halts Russia's South Stream gas pipeline project

RT

Bulgaria’s prime minister, Plamen Oresharski, has ordered a halt to work on Russia’s South Stream pipeline, on the recommendation of the EU. The decision was announced after his talks with US senators.

"At this time there is a request from the European Commission, after which we've suspended the current works, I ordered it," Oresharski told journalists after meeting with John McCain, Chris Murphy and Ron Johnson during their visit to Bulgaria on Sunday. "Further proceedings will be decided after additional consultations with Brussels."

McCain, commenting on the situation, said that "Bulgaria should solve the South Stream problems in collaboration with European colleagues," adding that in the current situation they would want "less Russian involvement" in the project.

"America has decided that it wants to put itself in a position where it excludes anybody it doesn't like from countries where it thinks it might have an interest, and there is no economic rationality in this at all. Europeans are very pragmatic, they are looking for cheap energy resources - clean energy resources, and Russia can supply that. But the thing with the South Stream is that it doesn't fit with the politics of the situation," Ben Aris, editor of Business New Europe told RT.

Read more
 

Target: Ukraine – How Foreign Intervention is Tearing the Country Apart

Global Research
James Corbett, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, F. William Engdahl, and Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

As the Ukrainian crisis continues to unfold, the foreign funding and backing for the current destabilization becomes more apparent. 

Now geopolitical analysts across the board analyze the roots of the situation, and whether this conflict is sowing the seeds of the next major war. 

This is the GRTV Backgrounder on GlobalResearchTV.

In late 2004, protests erupted after Viktor Yanukovych won the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential election, with protestors claiming that the vote had been rigged. The protests forced a revote, in which Yanukovych’s rival, Viktor Yuschenko, was elected president. This movement, dubbed the Orange Revolution for the orange ribbons and clothing sported by its members, was one of a series of so-called colour revolutions which swept the former Soviet Republics in the last decade.

The two events are not unrelated. As The Guardian noted at the time of the protests:

“[...]the campaign [Orange Revolution] is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.[...]The Democratic parrty’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’s open society institute.”

So it is not without reason that seasoned political observers looked for outside connections to the recent protests in Ukraine that has, in an almost exact repeat of the 2004 protests, sought to overthrow the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in order to install Viktor Yuschenko’s political allies. Those connections have not been difficult to find.

Audio of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland apparently dictating who the US wanted “in” and “out” of the supposedly grassroots-supported interim government only came as a surprise to those who did not believe Washington or its allies in the Washington Consensus were actively involved with the ongoing protests in the country. As did the revelation of her admission last December that the US had already pumped $5 billion into the funding of the Ukrainian opposition.

As did the appearance of confirmed terrorist supporter John McCain at a rally with the leader of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Svoboda party leader. As did the appointment of a central banker as the interim Prime Minister and his immediate announcement that the country was in talks with the US, EU, and IMF for emergency loans. As did the appearance of a slick new viral propaganda video in English promoting the supposedly grassroots uprising which was immediately exposed as finding its “inspiration” in Council on Foreign Relations member Larry Diamond, who has worked closely with the same N.E.D. and USAID that were linked to the 2004 Orange Revolution.

In the latest startling revelation, Pando.com has published documents implicating the Omidyar Network in the funding of the current Ukrainian protest movement. The Omidyar Network is the NGO of billionaire Ebay co-founder Pierre Omidyar, who recently set up “First Look” as an outlet for (among others) Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to selectively publish some of the Snowden document archive, 99% of which continues to be withheld from the public.

As geopolitical analysts from across the board explain, the Ukrainian coup has been deliberately provoked by outside agents to promote a combination of US, EU, NATO and IMF interests.

Perhaps more worrying than the interference itself are its potential implications. As Russia’s every move is now being scrutinized for a possible military response to the ongoing crisis, the specter of a larger military operation now hangs over Eastern Europe. Part of the decade-long encirclement of Russia by NATO and deliberate provocations on Russia’s doorstep, this process of brinksmanship now threatens to plunge the region into a war the consequences of which cannot be foreseen, let alone contained.

As supposedly “progressive” outlets once again scramble to throw their support behind the billionaire oligarchs and NGOs that have helped to destabilize the country, and as neocons unite with neoliberals in their agenda to carve up Ukraine for western interests, it remains to be seen what genuine alternative outlets will stand up against this blatant interference and stand up for the principle that it is up to the Ukrainian people, and no one else, to decide what happens in their country.