Armenia vs Azerbaijan, East vs West: Nagorno-Karabakh crisis and the NATO-Israeli connection

Corey Schink & Mike Tutundjian
Sott.net

Victoria 'F**K the EU' Nuland's visit to Azerbaijan last year had analysts wondering whether something was afoot. While Nuland surely wouldn't visit a country in order to oversee destabilization along Russia's border (she's never done than that before, right?), a heated conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan would do just that. The sudden and violent eruption of this 'frozen conflict' at a time of vastly improving Iranian-Azeri-Russian economic and military cooperation provides both the means and motive for NATO/Israeli forces - an opportunity to destabilize Russia and Iran in one blow. 

Historical background

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at war two times over the Nagorno-Karabakh region - once in 1918 and the second time in 1988, in the last years of the Soviet Union. Azeris began massacring Armenians in Azerbaijan, causing a large number of people to flee. Then they attacked the ethnically Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan with a modernized military, attacking people trying to defend themselves with hunting rifles or whatever they could get hold of. The Azeris blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh and all transport and shipments into Armenia proper. Turkey joined the blockade, while Georgia was having its own civil war with Abkhazia, making border crossing there very difficult. So the only border Armenia had that wasn't blockaded (or impaired) was its Iranian one. That blockade is still in place today, although the Georgian border has generally calmed down.  

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No Moderate Syrian Rebels Exist (More blatant lies from US overlord)

Stephen Lendman
Global Research

All anti-Assad forces are US-trained, armed, funded, and directed terrorists, taught the fine art of killing, committing atrocities and using chemical weapons - including ISIS, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and various splinter groups.

The so-called Free Syrian Army and other alleged "moderates" exist only in US and go-along media propaganda reports, willful misinformation to deceive an uninformed public.

Wars depend on lies to gain popular support, or at least no significant opposition. ISIS et al represent proxy US foot soldiers, imported abroad from scores of countries.

Putin is effectively contesting Obama's dirty game. Washington has no effective counter-strategy, increasingly transparent propaganda and dubious military moves alone, along with continued Russia bashing and fear-mongering.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, two State Department officials repeated tired old Big Lies.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Anne Patterson and her European and Eurasian Affairs counterpart Victoria Nuland committed perjury - claiming Russian airstrikes hit 85 to 90% "moderate" rebels and civilians in areas with no ISIS presence.

"Russia's military intervention has dangerously exacerbated an already complex environment," Patterson blustered.

"(T)his has not been a Russian fight against terrorism so much as an effort to preserve the Assad regime," she duplicitously claimed.

Nuland remains infamous for orchestrating the coup against Ukraine's sitting government. Her testimony was a litany of Big Lies, saying Assad "continues to barrel bomb its own citizens with impunity, perhaps even emboldened by Moscow's help."

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Ten reasons why Victoria Nuland should be seen as Stalin of today

Vladimir Golstein
Russia Insider

10. Both use made up names. Stalin's family name was Jugashvilli, Nuland's ancestor's name was Nudelman. The ancestors of both Nuland and Stalin came from the Russian empire, which probably gave them both the idea that they have a special knowledge of how to handle Russia.

9. Nuland's right hand man happens to be her husband, Robert Kagan. Stalin's right hand man was a fellow communist, named Lazar Kagan(ovich). Kagan co-authored "Project for a New American Century" and he obviously wants to realized his vision for Ukraine by implementing what might be called, "amerikanizatsiia," that is, the process of bringing in the officials from US and other countries to run Ukraine along the American lines. In his turn, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR from 1925-1928 and was expected to usher in "New Soviet Century" through the politics of "ukrainizatsiya": creating a new ruling Soviet elite for Ukraine, the elite brought in primarily from other places.

8. Both are clear ideologues: Nuland of "neocon movement", Stalin of bolshevism. Both went to schooling with the masters and chief ideologues. Nuland worked closely with Rumsfeld and Cheney, starting as Vice President's senior aide, and eventually serving as his deputy national security adviser. In his essay for Financial Times, Geoff Dyer quotes an former colleague in the Obama administration State Department , who observed that "I have no doubt that when she sits down for a family dinner, she is the biggest neocon at the table." While Lenin's widower, Krupskaia, joked that had Lenin re-appeared when Stalin was already in charge, he would have had Lenin put to jail for deviating from the party course.

7. Both are willing to see through numerous deaths in Ukraine to get the territory under their influence. Stalin together with Kaganovich unleashed forced collectivization upon Ukraine, resulting in mass death of peasants, known as Holodomor. Nuland's and her fellow neocons' forced "americanization" resulted in the civil war between Donbass and Kiev, that so far has claimed thousands of lives, destroyed infrastructure, and produced hundreds of thousands of refugees.

6. They both tend to be aggressive and demanding and refuse to take no for an answer. Consequently, they prefer to squeeze their opponents till they break. Geoff Dyer's quotes Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest in Washington DC who observed: "It is clear that her whole approach is to push Russia so hard that it has no choice but to accommodate the US." Stalin's ability to squeeze his opponents is, of course, proverbial.

5. According to Stalin's critic, Abdurakhman Aftorkhanov, Stalin made two mistakes during the WWII. He showed Europe to Russians (soldiers who saw how prosperous it was and realized that they were duped). And he showed Russians to Europe - which got scared, and started NATO, and other programs. The fate of Russia and the rest of the world has changed as the result of these mistakes. Someday, Nuland's critics will charge her with accomplishing a similar feat. She has fully exposed to the Western world Ukraine's lawlessness, corruption, and neofascism. And she has amply demonstrated Western World to both Ukrainians and Russians, who will never trust it again: seeing its unscrupulous meddling into their affairs.

4. Both are too arrogant and impatient to waste their time of diplomacy, and prefer to cut to the chase. They dismiss the possible opposition or obstacles with the similar terms. "F..k EU," famously observed Nuland, in response to the questions about EU attitude toward the regime change in Ukraine. Stalin never hesitated to resort to the foul language, calling Lenin's wife, "syphilitic whore," or bragging that in the course of WWII he managed to outsmart Great Britain: "Stalin could always raise a laugh from his courtiers by saying, as he often did: 'We f***ed England!'"

3. Both prefer to rule by decree and appoint the people to the offices. While Nuland boldly proclaimed from the comfort of her office that Yatseniuk will be the future leader of Ukraine: "Yats is the man," Stalin, of course, went even further, not only assigning Kaganovich, Khrushchev, and others to run Ukraine, but threating Lenin's widow, Krupskaia, that if she continues to challenge him, he'll appoint another woman as Lenin's widow.

2. Similarly to Stalin, who for the sake of strategic purposes made the deal with Nazis (Ribbentrop), Nuland held various meetings with Ukraine's Right Sector and other ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist organizations; and seems to be very cozy with Svoboda leader, Oleh Tyahnybok.

1. And finally, both Stalin and Nuland tend to present themselves in stunning visual imagery as the good caring parents of the new nation, easily duping the gullible locals. Here is Stalin surrounded by admiring Soviet children who are forever grateful to him for their happy childhood, and here is Nuland, surrounded by happy Ukrainians, whom she feeds with pastry as they are ready to embark on the path toward the new statehood.

US's Nuland grilled over support for Kiev's Maidan activists

Call Exposes U.S. Scheming on Ukraine & Hypocrisy about Ukrainian Democracy

Comment: Just a reminder of what the US was up to...

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Meet the Americans Who Put Together the Coup in Kiev

RSN

If the US State Department's Victoria Nuland had not said "Fuck the EU," few outsiders at the time would have heard of Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, the man on the other end of her famously bugged telephone call. But now Washington's man in Kiev is gaining fame as the face of the CIA-style "destabilization campaign" that brought down Ukraine's monumentally corrupt but legitimately elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

"Geoffrey Pyatt is one of these State Department high officials who does what he’s told and fancies himself as a kind of a CIA operator," laughs Ray McGovern, who worked for 27 years as an intelligence analyst for the agency. "It used to be the CIA doing these things," he tells Democracy Now. "I know that for a fact." Now it's the State Department, with its coat-and-tie diplomats, twitter and facebook accounts, and a trick bag of goodies to build support for American policy.

A retired apparatchik, the now repentant McGovern was debating Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a self-described left-winger and the author of two recent essays in The New York Review of Books – "The Haze of Propaganda" and "Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine." Both men speak Russian, but they come from different planets.

On Planet McGovern – or my personal take on it – realpolitik rules. The State Department controls the prime funding sources for non-military intervention, including the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which Washington created to fund covert and clandestine action after Ramparts magazine and others exposed how the CIA channeled money through private foundations, including the Ford Foundation. State also controls the far-better-funded Agency for International Development (USAID), along with a growing network of front groups, cut-outs, and private contractors. State coordinates with like-minded governments and their parallel institutions, mostly in Canada and Western Europe. State's "democracy bureaucracy" oversees nominally private but largely government funded groups like Freedom House. And through Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, State had Geoff Pyatt coordinate the coup in Kiev.

The CIA, NSA, and Pentagon likely provided their specialized services, while some of the private contractors exhibited shadowy skill sets. But if McGovern knows the score, as he should, diplomats ran the campaign to destabilize Ukraine and did the hands-on dirty work.

Harder for some people to grasp, Ambassador Pyatt and his team did not create the foreign policy, which was – and is – only minimally about overthrowing Ukraine's duly elected government to "promote democracy." Ever since Bill Clinton sat in the Oval Office, Washington and its European allies have worked openly and covertly to extend NATO to the Russian border and Black Sea Fleet, provoking a badly wounded Russian bear. They have also worked to bring Ukraine and its Eastern European neighbors into the neoliberal economy of the West, isolating the Russians rather than trying to bring them into the fold. Except for sporadic resets, anti-Russian has become the new anti-Soviet, and "strategic containment" has been the wonky word for encircling Russia with our military and economic power.

Nor did neoconservatives create the policy, no matter how many progressive pundits blame them for it. 

NED provides cushy jobs for old social democrats born again as neocons. Pyatt's boss, Victoria Nuland, is the wife and fellow-traveler of historian Robert Kagan, one of the movement's leading lights. And neocons are currently beating the war drums against Russia, as much to scupper any agreements on Syria and Iran as to encourage more Pentagon contracts for their friends and financial backers. But, encircling Russia has never been just a neocon thing. The policy has bi-partisan and trans-Atlantic support, including the backing of America's old-school nationalists, Cold War liberals, Hillary hawks, and much of Obama's national security team.

No matter that the policy doesn’t pass the giggle test. Extending NATO and Western economic institutions into all of a very divided Ukraine had less chance of working than did hopes in 2008 of bringing Georgia into NATO, which could have given the gung-ho Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvilli the treaty right to drag us all into World War III. To me, that seemed like giving a ten-year-old the keys to the family Humvee.

Western provocations in Ukraine proved more immediately counterproductive. They gave Vladimir Putin the perfect opportunity for a pro-Russian putsch in Crimea, which he had certainly thought of before, but never as a priority. The provocations encouraged him to stand up as a true Russian nationalist, which will only make him more difficult to deal with. And they gave him cover to get away with that age-old tool of tyrants, a quickie plebiscite with an unnecessary return to Joseph Stalin's old dictum once popular in my homestate of Florida: "It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes."

Small "d" democrats should shun such pretense. Still, most journalists and pollsters on the scene report that – with the exception of the historic Tatar community – the majority of Crimeans want to join the Russian Federation, where they seem likely to stay.

Tensions will also grow as the US-picked interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk – our man "Yats" – joins with the IMF to impose a Greek, Spanish, or Italian style austerity. Hard-pressed Ukranians will undoubtedly fight back, especially in the predominantly Russian-speaking east. According to Der Spiegel, a whopping three quarters of the people there do not support the coup or government. What a tar patch! A domestic conflict that could split Ukraine in two will inevitably become even further embroiled in the geo-strategic struggle between Russia and the West.

On Planet Snyder, as in most Western media, these realistic considerations make absolutely no difference. Ideology rules, masked as idealism. Fine sounding abstractions fill the air. Ukrainians are making their own history. They are acting with great courage. They are seeking the rule of law and their rightful place in "European Civilization." They are defending "sovereignty" and "territorial integrity." 

Russians remain vicious. Big bad Vlad is the new Hitler. He is seeking his own Eurasian empire (as opposed to NATO's), which could soon include parts of Moldova, Belarus, and Kazakhstan that the West needs like a "lok in kop," a hole in the head. And those watching in the West must abandon what Snyder calls "our slightly self-obsessed notions of how we control or don't control everything."

"It was a classic popular revolution," proclaims the professor. An undeniably popular uprising against "an unmistakably reactionary regime."

Writing in The Nation, Professor Stephen Cohen shreds Snyder's argument. My concern is more pointed. Popular uprisings deserve our support or opposition depending on who comes to control them and to what ends. As McGovern puts it, "The question is: Who took them over? Who spurred them? Who provoked them for their own particular strategic interests?"

Detailed evidence provides the answers. For all the courage of the Ukrainian minority who took to the barricades, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and his team spurred the protests in Kiev and exercised extensive – though never complete – control over them. Tactically, Pyatt and his fellow diplomats showed unexpected skill. Strategically, they should have stayed home.

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Has Washington’s Arrogance, Hubris, and Evil Set the Stage for War?

Comment: Worth revisiting this essay from March 3rd if you want to a great summary of the reasons why there is a crisis in Ukraine / Crimea

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Paul Craig Roberts

In some quarters public awareness is catching up with Stephen Lendman, Michel Chossudovsky, Rick Rozoff, myself and a few others in realizing the grave danger in the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine.

The puppet politicians who Washington intended to put in charge of Ukraine have lost control to organized and armed neo-nazis, who are attacking Jews, Russians, and intimidating Ukrainian politicians. 

The government of Crimea, a Russian province that Khrushchev transferred to the Ukraine Soviet Republic in the 1950s, has disavowed the illegitimate government that illegally seized power in Kiev and requested Russian protection. 

The Ukrainian military forces in Crimea have gone over to Russia. The Russian government has announced that it will also protect the former Russian provinces in eastern Ukraine as well.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pointed out, it was folly for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to transfer historic provinces of Russia into Ukraine. 

At the time it seemed to the Soviet leadership like a good thing to do. 

Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and had been ruled by Russia since the 18th century. Adding Russian territory to Ukraine served to water down the nazi elements in western Ukraine that had fought for Hitler during World War 2. 

Perhaps another factor in the enlargement of Ukraine was the fact of Khrushchev’s Ukrainian heritage.

Regardless, it did not matter until the Soviet Union and then the former Russian empire itself fell apart. Under Washington’s pressure, Ukraine became a separate country retaining the Russian provinces, but Russia retained its Black Sea naval base in Crimea.

Washington tried, but failed, to take Ukraine in 2004 with the Washington-financed “Orange Revolution.” 

According to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, since this failure Washington has “invested” $5 billion in Ukraine in order to foment agitation for EU membership for Ukraine. 

EU membership would open Ukraine to looting by Western bankers and corporations, but Washington’s main goal is to establish US missile bases on Russia’s border with Ukraine and to deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base and military industries in eastern Ukraine. EU membership for Ukraine means NATO membership.

 

Washington wants missile bases in Ukraine in order to degrade Russia’s nuclear deterrent, thus reducing Russia’s ability to resist US hegemony.
Only three countries stand in the way of Washington’s hegemony over the world, Russia, China and Iran.

Iran is surrounded by US military bases and has US fleets off its coast.
The “Pivot to Asia” announced by the warmonger Obama regime is ringing China with air and naval bases. 

Washington is surrounding Russia with US missile and NATO bases. 

The corrupt Polish and Czech governments were paid to accept US missile and radar bases, which makes the Polish and Czech puppet states prime targets for nuclear annihilation. 

Washington has purchased the former Russian and Soviet province of Georgia, birthplace of Joseph Stalin, and is in the process of putting this puppet into NATO.

Washington’s Western European puppets are too greedy for Washington’s money to take cognizance of the fact that these highly provocative moves are a direct strategic threat to Russia. 

The attitude of European governments seems to be, “after me, the deluge.”

Russia has been slow to react to the many years of Washington’s provocations, hoping for some sign of good sense and good will to emerge in the West. 

Instead, Russia has experienced rising demonization from Washington and European capitals and foaming at the mouth vicious denunciations by the West’s media whores. 

The bulk of the American and European populations are being brainwashed to see the problem that Washington’s meddling has caused in Ukraine to be Russia’s fault. 

 

U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House

Yesterday, I heard on National Public Radio a presstitute from the New Republic describe Putin as the problem.

 

The ignorance, absence of integrity, and lack of independence of the US media greatly enhances the prospect for war. 

The picture being drawn for insouciant Americans is totally false.
An informed people would have burst out laughing when US Secretary of State John Kerry denounced Russia for “invading Ukraine” in “violation of international law.” 

 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Kiev, Ukraine in early March 2014

Kerry is the foreign minister of a country that has illegally invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and organized the overthrow of the government in Libya.

Then they tried to overthrow the government in Syria, attacks the civilian populations of Pakistan and Yemen with drones and missiles, constantly threatens Iran with attack, unleashed the US and Israeli trained Georgian army on the Russian population of South Ossetia, and now threatens Russia with sanctions for standing up for Russians and Russian strategic interests. 

The Russian government noted that Kerry has raised hypocrisy to a new level.

Kerry has no answer to the question: 

“Since when does the United States government genuinely subscribe and defend the concept of sovereignty and territorial integrity?”

Kerry, as is always the case, is lying through his teeth. 

Russia hasn’t invaded Ukraine.
Russia sent a few more troops to join those at its Black Sea base in view of the violent anti-Russian statements and actions emanating from Kiev. 

As the Ukrainian military in Crimea defected to Russia, the additional Russian troops were hardly necessary.

The stupid Kerry, wallowing in his arrogance, hubris, and evil, has issued direct threats to Russia. The Russian foreign minister has dismissed Kerry’s threats as “unacceptable.” The stage is set for war.

Note the absurdity of the situation. 

Kiev has been taken over by ultra-nationalist neo-nazis.

A band of ultra-nationalist thugs is the last thing the European Union wants or needs as a member state. 

The EU is centralizing power and suppressing the sovereignty of the member states. 

Note the alignment of the neoconservative Obama regime with anti-semitic neo-nazis.
The neoconservative clique that has dominated the US government since the Clinton regime is heavily Jewish, many of whom are dual Israeli/US citizens. 

The Jewish neoconservatives, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, have lost control of their coup to neo-Nazis who preach “death to the Jews.”

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on February 24 that Ukrainian Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman advised “Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and even the country.”
Edward Dolinsky, head of an umbrella organization of Ukrainian Jews, described the situation for Ukrainian Jews as “dire” and requested Israel’s help.

This is the situation that Washington created and defends, while accusing Russia of stifling Ukrainian democracy. An elected democracy is what Ukraine had before Washington overthrew it.

At this time there is no legitimate Ukrainian government.

Everyone needs to understand that Washington is lying about Ukraine just as Washington lied about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, just as Washington lied about Iranian nukes, just as Washington lied about Syrian president Assad using chemical weapons, just as Washington lied about Afghanistan, Libya, NSA spying, torture. 

What hasn’t Washington lied about?

Washington is comprised of three elements: 

Arrogance, Hubris, and Evil. 

There is nothing else there.

 

 

 

Unelected Ukrainian Government Creates 'Facts on the Ground' - No One Protests

Sott.net

I don't understand the Ukrainian 'revolution'.

Before the Ukrainian protests kicked off last October, a general election was scheduled for 2015.

As the protests grew and intensified, the elected Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovych, agreed to bring elections forward to this year and to implement a host of measures, including reverting to the 2004 constitution, which drastically reduced Presidential power.

On paper, these changes met the vast majority of protestors' demands, and promised a new government this year, via elections. Yet just as this agreement was being signed, the violence in Kiev flared and 100 people, including policemen, were shot dead...by someone.

The result was the appointment of a new president, a new prime minister and a new cabinet, with "ultra-nationalists" in many high-profile positions and in control of the army. None of these people were elected by the Ukrainian people, and the Prime Minister is the man named by US Asst. Sec. of State Victoria Nuland as the US choice for Prime Minister.

So while we are asked to believe that the goal of the protests in Ukraine was to bring an end to government corruption and unaccountability, bizarrely, they have resulted in a totally unelected and therefore unrepresentative Ukrainian government taking power. If I were Ukrainian, I'd be a little disappointed. I might even protest.

Admittedly, there are elections scheduled for May this year, and the current administration is only 'interim', yet the USA's choice of 'interim' Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, appears to be establishing some 'facts on the ground' that are unlikely to be up for debate come May. For example, today he signed a deal with the EU, and talks with the IMF and NATO, are in process. Again, if 'democracy' and the 'will of the people' were important to me, I'd be a little put out if I were Ukrainian.

So my question is; why, if the Ukrainian people are so determined to have 'real Democracy', are there no 'people power' protests in Ukraine over the fact that an unelected group of individuals, who were pushed into power by the US State Dept., are signing deals with the EU, the IMF and NATO in the name of the Ukrainian people?

The whole things sounds a lot like a coup. But maybe that's just me. 

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.

Steinberg Briefing on the Countdown to War

Comment: Well worth a listen. 

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LarouchePac

EIR's Jeffrey Steinberg gives a thorough briefing on Mr. LaRouche's short-term warning of the danger of a general thermonuclear war, a process which is unfolding now. This briefing was given before the Victoria Nuland revelations; the fact sheet on the Ukraine coup can be found here.

What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?

 

Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey R. Pyatt on the Maidan square.

Voltairenet.org

Yesterday’s leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine.

In this flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko off the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as “Yanukovych’s project”. Then Mrs. Nuland informed the US Ambassador that the Washington’s hand by the UN Secretary General, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman had already instructed Ban Ki-moon to send his special envoy to Kyiv this week “to glue the things”. Touching the European role in managing Ukraine’s political crisis, she was matchlessly elegant: “Fuck the EU”.

In a short while, after nervious attempts to blame Russians in fabricating (!) the tape (State Department: “this is a new low in Russian tradecraft”), Mrs. Nuland brought her apologies to the EU officials. Does it mean that the Washington’s repeatedly leaked genuine attitude towards the “strategic Transatlantic partnership” is much worthy of apology than the direct and clear interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign state and violation of the US-Russia-UK agreement (1994 Budapest memorandum) on security assurances for Ukraine? Meanwhile this document inter alia reads as follows:

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Back to the latest Mrs. Nuland’s diplomatic collapse made public, it is hardly an unwilling and regretful fault. Andrey Akulov from Strategic Culture Foundation has published a brilliant report (Bride at every wedding [1]) a couple of days ago depicting a blatant lack of professionalism and personal intergity of Mrs. Nuland. He described in details her involvement in misinforming the US President and nation on the circumstances of the assasination of the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012 and her support of the unlawful US funding of a number of the Russian “independent” NGOs seeking to bring a color revolution to Russia.

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Victoria Nuland Says F*CK The E.U. in Leaked Phone Call

Comment: Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State does us all a favour by summarising US Empire building and regime change. Don't want the pesky EU interfering with their coloured revolution after all. "Undiplomatic language" indeed...What a delightful shit-storm.

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