Tag Archives: Ukraine

The MH17 Big Lie: The Russians Did It

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: Steve Lendman Blog

Downing MH17 was a classic false flag, the scheme likely cooked up in Washington, using its Kiev puppet regime to do its dirty work, then point fingers the wrong way.

The Russians DID NOT down MH17 – nor Donbass freedom fighters. No credible evidence suggests it. Only fools and liars believe it.

What could they possibly gain from downing a commercial airliner, unrelated to conflict on the ground, killing 298 passengers and crew members.

Washington and/or Kiev had motive and opportunity, gaining plenty by pointing fingers the wrong way, supported by the usual scoundrel media chorus, featuring Big Lies and innuendos.

The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) is a front for US imperial policy. Joint Investigation Team (JIT) countries include the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine – conspiratorially allied against Russia, Washington pulling the strings behind the scene.

DSB’s final report is out. It stopped short of naming perpetrators, suggested Russia and Donbass freedom fighters were responsible without saying so.

It claimed a (a no longer in use Soviet era) Russian-made Buk 9M38-series (surface-to-air) missile (used only by Ukraine, not Russia’s military) downed MH17 – refuting earlier reports based on high-resolution photos showing cockpit damage from likely 30 millimeter air-to-air cannon fire.

Eyewitnesses on the ground saw a Ukrainian warplane trailing MH17. Russian radar tracked a Ukrainian SU-25 jet fighter within three km of the fated aircraft.

An unsatisfactorily answered question is why Ukrainian air traffic control let MH17 overfly a war zone. Other commercial airliners avoided it for obvious reasons.

Did Kiev authorities deliberately put MH17 in harm’s way to down it and blame Russia and Donbass freedom fighters for their crime?

Did Washington and Ukrainian fascists jointly plan the incident? Further US and EU sanctions followed plus relentless, irresponsible Putin-bashing.

DSB’s September 9 preliminary report said MH17 “broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.”

Its final report claimed a missile was launched from an Eastern Ukraine 320 square km area without pinpointing the launch site.

Its chairman, Tjibbe Joustra, suggested it came from rebel-held territory without specifically saying so. He claimed “Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane against the left-hand side of the cockpit. This warhead fits the kind of missile that is installed in the BUK surface-to-air missile system.”

It was fired from “an area where the borders have fluctuated a lot, but it’s a territory where the pro-Russian rebels have laid down the law.”

A White House statement ludicrously called DSB’s report an “important milestone in the effort to hold accountable those responsible.”

A criminal investigation is underway. Dutch Prime Minister insultingly asked Russia for “complete cooperation.” The DSB ignored key Moscow supplied evidence.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed it, saying: “There are facts delivered by the Russian side that for unclear reasons are being apparently ignored.”

Moscow “repeatedly expressed its disappointment over the lack of proper level of cooperation and engagement of the Russian experts into the investigation.”

Russia’s Roasaviation deputy head Oleg Storchevoy accused the DSB of ignoring “comprehensive information” presented by Moscow, suggesting willful coverup – in a letter to the International Civil Aviation Association (ICAA).

Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey presented its own findings, based on exhaustive study and sophisticated simulations of what likely happened, disputing DSB’s conclusions, saying MH17 wasn’t downed from rebel-held territory.

CEO Yan Novikov said an older, out-of-date Buk missile (last produced in 1986), no longer used by Russia, still used by Ukraine, downed MH17. DSB members ignored Almaz-Antey’s findings.

The incident occurred on July 17, 2014. The instant knee-jerk reaction from Washington, other Western capitals, and go-along media scoundrels (still unchanged) was “Russia did it” – despite no evidence suggesting it then or now.

A sampling of headlines following release of the DSB’s final report include the following:

New York Times: “Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Most Likely Hit by Russian-Made Missile, Inquiry Says”

Washington Post: “The Latest: Ex-war crimes judge: Dutch report refutes Russia”

Wall Street Journal: “Dutch Investigators Say MH17 Was Downed by Russian-Made Missile”

Los Angeles Times: “Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: Report says Russian-made missile system downed jet”

Chicago Tribune: “Dutch Safety Board: Russian-made Buk missile downed MH17 in Ukraine”

BBC: “MH17 Ukraine disaster: Dutch Safety Board blames (Russian-made Buk) missile”

The disturbing innuendo from all these headlines implies Russian-made means Russian-launched.

It bears repeating what should be clear to everyone. Russia DID NOT down MH17 – nor Donbass freedom fighters. Kiev fascists, very likely complicit with Washington, were responsible, wanting Putin blamed for their crime.

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

America created and supports the Islamic State

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: Intrepid Report

Obama’s so-called war to degrade and destroy Islamic State is a complete fabrication. Defeating it is simple. Stop recruiting, arming, funding, training and directing its elements.

Stop using terrorists as US proxy foot soldiers. Wage peace, not war. Isolated on its own, it’ll wither over time and disappear, or be too impotent to rampage like now.

Washington bears full responsibility for human floods fleeing war ravaged areas for safe havens anywhere. Bashar al-Assad told RT International the crisis is “not about that Europe didn’t accept them or embrace them as refugees. It’s about not dealing with the cause. If you are worried about them, stop supporting terrorists.”

“If we ask any Syrian today about what they want, the first thing they would say: ‘We want security and safety for every person and every family.’ The international community should unite around what the Syrian people want.”

Ongoing conflict can only be resolved “through dialogue and the political process [as well as] unit[y] in the struggle against terrorism.”

With an approval rating of 89%, Vladimir Putin is likely the world’s most popular leader—for supporting nation-state sovereignty, multi-world polarity and opposing America’s ruthless imperial agenda, waging endless wars on humanity.

He’s vilified in the West for forthrightly supporting world peace and stability, as well as wanting all conflicts resolved diplomatically and proposing workable solutions if adopted.

At the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, he urged the international community to set aside geopolitical differences and unite against a common enemy.

“Extremists from many countries of the world, including, unfortunately, European countries, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) undertake ideological and military training in the ranks of Islamic State,” he explained. “[C]ertainly we are worried that they could possibly return” and make trouble.

“Russia, as you know, has proposed to form a wide coalition to fight extremists without any delay. It should unite everyone who is ready and is already contributing to tackling terrorism.”

“If Russia had not been supporting Syria, the situation in the country would have been worse than in Libya and the refugee flow would have been even bigger.”

Moscow didn’t ravage and destroy Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Donbass, and other countries—or occupy any. It doesn’t use terrorist mercenaries as proxy foot soldiers—or wage endless wars on humanity.

It’s not responsible for exponentially growing human floods of desperate people fleeing war-torn areas for safe havens anywhere out of harm’s way.

It accepted over a million Ukrainian refugees fleeing Obama’s war on Donbass, treating them humanely, regularly supplying Donetsk and Lugansk with badly needed humanitarian aid—doing the same thing for Syrians.

Russia is Europe’s leading peace and stability proponent. Wherever America shows up, genocide, mass destruction and human misery follow.

Peace is anathema. So are democratic freedoms. America’s agenda intends a ruler/serf world unfit to live in—greed and rapaciousness triumphing over equity and justice for all.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” Visit his blog at sjlendman.blogspot.com . Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

 

The Mess that Nuland Made

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By Robert Parry

Source: Consortium News

As the Ukrainian army squares off against ultra-right and neo-Nazi militias in the west and violence against ethnic Russians continues in the east, the obvious folly of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy has come into focus even for many who tried to ignore the facts, or what you might call “the mess that Victoria Nuland made.”

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs “Toria” Nuland was the “mastermind” behind the Feb. 22, 2014 “regime change” in Ukraine, plotting the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych while convincing the ever-gullible U.S. mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for “democracy.”

To sell this latest neocon-driven “regime change” to the American people, the ugliness of the coup-makers had to be systematically airbrushed, particularly the key role of neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists from the Right Sektor. For the U.S.-organized propaganda campaign to work, the coup-makers had to wear white hats, not brown shirts.

So, for nearly a year and a half, the West’s mainstream media, especially The New York Times and The Washington Post, twisted their reporting into all kinds of contortions to avoid telling their readers that the new regime in Kiev was permeated by and dependent on neo-Nazi fighters and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who wanted a pure-blood Ukraine, without ethnic Russians.

Any mention of that sordid reality was deemed “Russian propaganda” and anyone who spoke this inconvenient truth was a “stooge of Moscow.” It wasn’t until July 7 that the Times admitted the importance of the neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists in waging war against ethnic Russian rebels in the east. The Times also reported that these far-right forces had been joined by Islamic militants. Some of those jihadists have been called “brothers” of the hyper-brutal Islamic State.

Though the Times sought to spin this remarkable military alliance – neo-Nazi militias and Islamic jihadists – as a positive, the reality had to be jarring for readers who had bought into the Western propaganda about noble “pro-democracy” forces resisting evil “Russian aggression.”

Perhaps the Times sensed that it could no longer keep the lid on the troubling truth in Ukraine. For weeks, the Right Sektor militias and the neo-Nazi Azov battalion have been warning the civilian government in Kiev that they might turn on it and create a new order more to their liking.

Clashes in the West

Then, on Saturday, violent clashes broke out in the western Ukrainian town of Mukachevo, allegedly over the control of cigarette-smuggling routes. Right Sektor paramilitaries sprayed police officers with bullets from a belt-fed machinegun, and police – backed by Ukrainian government troops – returned fire. Several deaths and multiple injuries were reported.

Tensions escalated on Monday with President Petro Poroshenko ordering national security forces to disarm “armed cells” of political movements. Meanwhile, the Right Sektor dispatched reinforcements to the area while other militiamen converged on the capital of Kiev.

While President Poroshenko and Right Sektor leader Dmitry Yarosh may succeed in tamping down this latest flare-up of hostilities, they may be only postponing the inevitable: a conflict between the U.S.-backed authorities in Kiev and the neo-Nazis and other right-wing fighters who spearheaded last year’s coup and have been at the front lines of the fighting against ethnic Russian rebels in the east.

The Ukrainian right-wing extremists feel they have carried the heaviest burden in the war against the ethnic Russians and resent the politicians living in the relative safety and comfort of Kiev. In March, Poroshenko also fired thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky as governor of the southeastern province of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Kolomoisky had been the primary benefactor of the Right Sektor militias.

So, as has become apparent across Europe and even in Washington, the Ukraine crisis is spinning out of control, making the State Department’s preferred narrative of the conflict – that it’s all Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fault – harder and harder to sell.

How Ukraine is supposed to pull itself out of what looks like a death spiral – a possible two-front war in the east and the west along with a crashing economy – is hard to comprehend. The European Union, confronting budgetary crises over Greece and other EU members, has little money or patience for Ukraine, its neo-Nazis and its socio-political chaos.

America’s neocons at The Washington Post and elsewhere still rant about the need for the Obama administration to sink more billions upon billions of dollars into post-coup Ukraine because it “shares our values.” But that argument, too, is collapsing as Americans see the heart of a racist nationalism beating inside Ukraine’s new order.

Another Neocon ‘Regime Change’

Much of what has happened, of course, was predictable and indeed was predicted, but neocon Nuland couldn’t resist the temptation to pull off a “regime change” that she could call her own.

Her husband (and arch-neocon) Robert Kagan had co-founded the Project for the New American Century in 1998 around a demand for “regime change” in Iraq, a project that was accomplished in 2003 with President George W. Bush’s invasion.

As with Nuland in Ukraine, Kagan and his fellow neocons thought they could engineer an easy invasion of Iraq, oust Saddam Hussein and install some hand-picked client – in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi was to be “the guy.” But they failed to take into account the harsh realities of Iraq, such as the fissures between Sunnis and Shiites, exposed by the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.

In Ukraine, Nuland and her neocon and liberal-interventionist friends saw the chance to poke Putin in the eye by encouraging violent protests to overthrow Russia-friendly President Yanukovych and put in place a new regime hostile to Moscow.

Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy, explained the plan in a Post op-ed on Sept. 26, 2013. Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and an important interim step toward toppling Putin, who “may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

For her part, Nuland passed out cookies to anti-Yanukovych demonstrators at the Maidan square, reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the U.S. had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations,” declared “fuck the EU” for its less aggressive approach, and discussed with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt who the new leaders of Ukraine should be. “Yats is the guy,” she said, referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Nuland saw her big chance on Feb. 20, 2014, when a mysterious sniper – apparently firing from a building controlled by the Right Sektor – shot and killed both police and protesters, escalating the crisis. On Feb. 21, in a desperate bid to avert more violence, Yanukovych agreed to a European-guaranteed plan in which he accepted reduced powers and called for early elections so he could be voted out of office.

But that wasn’t enough for the anti-Yanukovych forces who – led by Right Sektor and neo-Nazi militias – overran government buildings on Feb. 22, forcing Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their lives. With armed thugs patrolling the corridors of power, the final path to “regime change” was clear.

Instead of trying to salvage the Feb. 21 agreement, Nuland and European officials arranged for an unconstitutional procedure to strip Yanukovych of the presidency and declared the new regime “legitimate.” Nuland’s “guy” – Yatsenyuk – became prime minister.

While Nuland and her neocon cohorts celebrated, their “regime change” prompted an obvious reaction from Putin, who recognized the strategic threat that this hostile new regime posed to the historic Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea. On Feb. 23, he began to take steps to protect those Russian interests.

Ethnic Hatreds

What the coup also did was revive long pent-up antagonisms between the ethnic Ukrainians in the west, including elements that had supported Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union during World War Two, and ethnic Russians in the south and east who feared the anti-Russian sentiments emanating from Kiev.

First, in Crimea and then in the so-called Donbas region, these ethnic Russians, who had been Yanukovych’s political base, resisted what they viewed as the illegitimate overthrow of their elected president. Both areas held referenda seeking separation from Ukraine, a move that Russia accepted in Crimea but resisted with the Donbas.

However, when the Kiev regime announced an “anti-terrorism operation” against the Donbas and dispatched neo-Nazi and other extremist militias to be the tip of the spear, Moscow began quietly assisting the embattled ethnic Russian rebels, a move that Nuland, the Obama administration and the mainstream news media called “Russian aggression.”

Amid the Western hysteria over Russia’s supposedly “imperial designs” and the thorough demonizing of Putin, President Barack Obama essentially authorized a new Cold War against Russia, reflected now in new U.S. strategic planning that could cost the U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars and risk a possible nuclear confrontation.

Yet, despite the extraordinary costs and dangers, Nuland failed to appreciate the practical on-the-ground realities, much as her husband and other neocons did in Iraq. While Nuland got her hand-picked client Yatsenyuk installed and he did oversee a U.S.-demanded “neo-liberal” economic plan – slashing pensions, heating assistance and other social programs – the chaos that her “regime change” unleashed transformed Ukraine into a financial black hole.

With few prospects for a clear-cut victory over the ethnic Russian resistance in the east – and with the neo-Nazi/Islamist militias increasingly restless over the stalemate – the chances to restore any meaningful sense of order in the country appear remote. Unemployment is soaring and the government is essentially bankrupt.

The last best hope for some stability may have been the Minsk-2 agreement in February 2015, calling for a federalized system to give the Donbas more autonomy, but Nuland’s Prime Minister Yatsenyuk sabotaged the deal in March by inserting a poison pill that essentially demanded that the ethnic Russian rebels first surrender.

Now, the Ukraine chaos threatens to spiral even further out of control with the neo-Nazis and other right-wing militias – supplied with a bounty weapons to kill ethnic Russians in the east – turning on the political leadership in Kiev.

In other words, the neocons have struck again, dreaming up a “regime change” scheme that ignored practical realities, such as ethnic and religious fissures. Then, as the blood flowed and the suffering worsened, the neocons just sought out someone else to blame.

Thus, it seems unlikely that Nuland, regarded by some in Washington as the new “star” in U.S. foreign policy, will be fired for her dangerous incompetence, just as most neocons who authored the Iraq disaster remain “respected” experts employed by major think tanks, given prized space on op-ed pages, and consulted at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

 

[For more on these topics, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s True Foreign Policy Weakness” and “A Family Business of Perpetual War.”]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

 

Way to Go Vladimir

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Putin Gobsmacks Uncle Sam … Again

By Mike Whitney

Source: Information Clearing House

Here’s the scoop: Two days before the swaggering Sec-Def touched down in Germany, Gazprom announced that it was putting the finishing touches on a massive deal that would double the amount of Russian gas flowing to Germany via a second Nord Stream pipeline. The shocking announcement made it look like the clueless Carter had no idea what was going on and that his efforts to isolate Russia were a complete flop. And, make no mistake; the deal is huge, big enough to change the geopolitical calculus of the entire region. Robert Morley explains what’s going on in a recent article at The Trumpet:

“Once this pipeline is finished, almost all of Eastern Europe can be completely cut out of the gas picture. There will be no need for any gas to transit through Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Belarus, Hungary or Slovakia.” (Gazprom’s Dangerous New Nord Stream Gas Pipeline to Germany, The Trumpet)

Yep, Ukraine is out and Germany’s in, which means that Washington’s plan to extend US hegemony by driving a wedge between Russia and Europe is down the plughole.

Judo expert Putin has done it again; he waited until the eleventh hour to pull the rug out from under the blustery Carter, and now he’s sitting back enjoying the show. Is it any wonder why Carter’s been running around Europe with his hair on fire? Here’s more from the same article:

“Think of the huge leverage this will give Russia…..Germany may not have much in the way of natural resources of its own, but with Russia’s help, it is becoming an energy hub of Europe! Increasing quantities of Russian gas are flowing through Germany before being distributed to countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Britain. In this way Germany leverages the power of Russia. Western Europe also is becoming dependent on Germany for gas supplies too…

Don’t let the current conflict in Ukraine cloud what is happening. Germany and Russia have a history of secret cooperation—even when headline conflict appears to indicate otherwise. That Germany and Russia would push through such a deal when the West is supposedly sanctioning Russia for its actions in Ukraine speaks volumes.” (“Gazprom’s Dangerous New Nord Stream Gas Pipeline to Germany”, The Trumpet)

Talk about sour grapes! The author would like you believe that US motives in Europe are pure as the driven snow, but are they? Is Washington really afraid of Russian aggression or are they trying desperately to keep the unipolar model intact by separating Germany and Russia? Isn’t that what the sanctions are all about? STRATFOR CEO George Friedman summed up it up perfectly in a recent speech he gave at The Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs. He said:

“The primordial interest of the United States, over which for centuries we have fought wars–the First, the Second and Cold Wars–has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united there, they’re the only force that could threaten us. And to make sure that that doesn’t happen.”

Bingo. This is Washington’s strategy in a nutshell, preventing German industry from linking up with Russia’s vast natural resources. That’s the lethal combo that will lead to an integrated Eurasian free trade zone that will dwarf US GDP and put an end to the empire. So don’t believe the baloney about “Russian aggression”. What Washington really cares about is an economic rival that could leave it in the dust. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen when Germany becomes Moscow’s biggest gas station.

Naturally, the Gazprom news left Carter in a bit of a crabby mood, which may explain why he’s been dragging himself from one Capital to the next issuing terse warnings to Putin while promising NATO more weapons, more troops, more joint-maneuvers, and more missiles. And for what? To stop the Cossacks from sweeping across the Steppe and into Baltics? Be serious. Putin’s not going to invade Europe. He wants their business, that’s all. Like we’ve been saying from the beginning; Putin just wants to makes some dough. He wants to pull his economy out of recession, and, yes, beef up Gazprom’s profits. Is there a problem with that?

Nope. In fact, that’s the way the US used to do things, y’know, before they decided it was easier to just blow up stuff and steal whatever they could.

But all this whining about Putin is ridiculous, don’t you think? So he sells gas to Europe. So what? Get over it. No one likes a whiner.

The US did everything in its power to sabotage South Stream, and they succeeded too. Score one for Team USA. But did they really think it would end there? Did they really think that that Putin would just fold his tent and go home for a good cry? Did they really think he was going to walk away from his biggest trading partner and move on to China?

Of course not. Any fool could have seen this coming, so why was the Pentagon caught flatfooted? Don’t they have anyone on the payroll who can figure out stuff like this or are they too busy with their damn wargames? And why is Carter talking about tanks and missiles systems when US trade reps should be looking for ways to cut a deal? Isn’t that the way capitalism is supposed to work or has the US degenerated to the point where it has to incinerate anyone it can’t compete with? It’s pathetic! Here’s a clip from Carter in Europe:

“One of [Putin’s] stated views is a longing for the past and that’s where we have a different perspective on the world and even on Russia’s future, Carter said. “We’d like to see us all moving forward, Europe moving forward, and that does not seem to be his stated perspective.”

C’mon, Carter. Can’t you just man-up and admit the US can’t compete anymore so you’ve decided to start a war instead. Is that so hard to say?

Of course Carter has made every effort to sweep the Gazprom story under the rug and pretend that nothing has happened, but anyone who follows these things can figure it out. The fact is, he got his clock-cleaned by Putin, and not just once either. There was another bombshell on Wednesday that just added a little icing to the cake. Check this out from Oil Price.com:

“Russia’s state-run gas company Gazprom says it has taken a step toward building the Turkish Stream pipeline by securing permission from Ankara to begin surveying waters of the Black Sea for the offshore leg of the project…..Alexander Novak, Russia’s energy minister, says he expects Ankara and Moscow will sign an agreement to build Turkish Stream by the end of June.” (Controversial Gazprom Pipeline Clears Hurdle, Oil Price)

That’s what you call the double whammy! Now Putin’s going to be pumping gas into Europe from both directions leaving Uncle Sam out in the cold. Can you feel those Russian pincers starting to tighten around Europe? Now you can understand why Carter’s been running around Europe with his knickers in a twist; it’s because his glorious divide and conquer strategy just exploded in his face. His only option now is to scrap Plan A altogether and go back to drawing board. What a freaking disaster.

There’s another story that broke during Carter’s euro-junket that’s also worth mentioning. This is from Bloomberg:

“Ukraine will miss a bond coupon payment in July, setting off a default on about $19 billion of debt, as a standoff with creditors shows no sign of abating, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc…

Ukraine is giving creditors a few weeks to accept a proposal that includes a 40 percent writedown to principal before it imposes a debt moratorium, a person familiar with the talks said on June 19.

“Ukraine will not make the July 24 coupon payment and, as a result, will enter into default at that point,” Matheny said of his base-case scenario in the report. “We do not expect the ad hoc committee to accept Ukraine’s latest restructuring proposal.” (Goldman Sees Ukraine Default in July as Debt Standoff Holds, Bloomberg)

Ukraine is busted, are you kidding me? The country that was so critical to US plans for luring Putin into a Vietnam-type quagmire, is headed for bankruptcy? So all that work was for nothing–toppling the government, arming the Nazis, fomenting a civil war, incinerating buildings full of civilians in Odessa, shooting down commercial airliners, and plunging the state into Somalia-like chaotic abyss? It was all just a big miscalculation, a boo-boo; is that it?

Can you see why the United States can’t be trusted as “the guarantor of global security”? Washington destroys everything it touches with its wrecking ball foreign policy; Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria. Now it’s destroyed Ukraine. Who’ll be next?

Putin has done us all a favor by throwing a wrench in Washington’s plans and helping to bring the era of imperial overreach to a swift and merciful end. We all owe him a debt of gratitude.

Way to go, Vladimir.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Freedom Rider: U.S. Pushes Russia Towards War

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By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

“The United States has intervened in too many countries without paying a high enough price.”

This columnist recently said that “Russia Wins” in its handling of America’s attempt to eviscerate its influence and its economy. At the time those words were written Secretary of State John Kerry met with Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia. The meeting appeared to be an admission that the imperial power grab was not working out as Washington hoped. Among other things, Kerry was concerned that the Ukrainian tail was starting to wag the American dog.

In a public statement he warned Ukrainian president Poroshenko, who threatened to retake Crimea and the Donbass. “We would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk [accords] in serious jeopardy. And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be.” Barack Obama promptly tossed Kerry under the bus upon his return home.

Kerry’s subordinate Victoria Nuland and the United Nations ambassador Samantha Power repeated the very words that Kerry warned against and contradicted everything he said. Power went to Kiev to sing the praises of the Ukrainians in person. She didn’t have to mention Kerry by name, her presence alone said that he and any talk of diplomacy were on the outs. Of course the meeting between Kerry and Putin had to have been approved by president Obama, but just one month later it appears to have been a figment of the world’s imagination.

“Russia has every right to arm its own territory.”

In the battle to stay on top of the world and remain in control of it, Washington inevitably lurches back and forth in its policy decision making. Now they and their scribes in corporate media have settled back into comfortable territory, simultaneously vilifying the Russian government and endlessly repeating anti-Russian propaganda.

A recent New York Times editorial with the grandiose title, “The Fantasy Mr. Putin is Selling,” claimed that president Putin has a “willingness to brandish nuclear weapons.” There was no mention of America’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002. Not content to tell one lie the Times then criticized Putin for “aggressive behavior, including pouring troops and weapons into Kaliningrad, a Russian city located between NATO members Lithuania and Poland.” Of course, Russia has every right to arm its own territory. The Times also neglected to mention that the American military are positioning weapons and holding training exercises in Ukraine, Poland, Romania and the Baltic states that border Russia. It seems that those provocations are not deemed worthy of mention.

The New York Times and its counterparts always play this role. They cozy up to president Obama as they have with all his predecessors and support any and all of their mischief. Far from being a voice of information for the public, they do the bidding of the powerful and are accessories to their crimes.

“Antagonizing Russia is riskier than paying jihadists to take over Libya.”

The Obama administration is in the process of killing the Minsk accords which were shepherded by France and Germany. This is the only process which can defang the beast, and that is why it is being sabotaged. The United States has intervened in too many countries without paying a high enough price. It is like a serial criminal who remains at large and thus thinks of himself as invincible. This county is responsible for carnage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria and that is the list of victims only since 2001.

One has to ask where and when the straw will break the camel’s back. American military power has allowed it to run rough shod over humanity, but antagonizing Russia is riskier than paying jihadists to take over Libya.

Not only does the United States have the most and the biggest guns but it has the corporate media at its disposal, parroting every word as if they were gospel truth. Americans who think of themselves as well informed will be in for a shock if Moldova turns out to be the flash point for open warfare that was instigated by their government.

”Russia will never be beholden to America.”

Everyone knows that an assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 pushed the world into war. In 2015 the signs are ominous that something terrible may happen because of an incident in Transnistria or Donetsk or some other locale Americans know nothing about.

The process of marginalizing Russia began as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed. While the Warsaw Pact disbanded, NATO grew at Russia’s expense. But Russia will never be beholden to America. There is no puppet they can place in the Kremlin. These fantasies have put the world on the brink.

Obama and his friends in NATO may not want to start a war but they may get one all the same. Of course the president is concerned about his legacy. He ought to be. If he continues as he has done since 2009, his legacy may be that he was head inmate in the asylum when the last war began.

 

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Never Mind FIFA, How about a Crackdown on the Banksters?

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By Finian Cunningham

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

FIFA boss Sepp Blatter’s sudden resignation this week only days after being re-elected shows that the US campaign to bust the football federation over alleged financial corruption is probably going to intensify during the weeks and months ahead.

Blatter had been re-elected for the fifth time last Friday as the federation’s president. He had earlier brushed off calls for his resignation from the American and British governments, amid a storm of media allegations over corruption at the World Cup organising body. Now only four days after being re-elected, the FIFA chief executive is quitting, saying somewhat cryptically that he does not have a sufficient mandate in the world of football to continue at the helm of the organisation.

The dramatic bust in a Zurich hotel last week of FIFA executives is «just the beginning», top US law enforcement officials have warned. British authorities have also jumped on the bandwagon with their own announced probe into financial irregularities at the World Cup organiser.

With seven FIFA officials arrested so far and seven more indicted, and the US authorities vowing to pursue others in the footballing federation over alleged financial corruption, it can be anticipated that this scandal will run and run into interminable extra-time.

An ulterior political agenda behind the apparent American-led crackdown on the international footballing federation could very well be the desire by US and British governments to scupper the 2018 World Cup venue in Russia. Both the Americans and the British lost out when Russia won the bid back in 2010 to host the forthcoming quadrennial tournament, following last year’s event in Brazil. A re-run of the selection process would give the US and Britain a second chance to pitch their bids, and with a generated cloud hanging over Russia due to the FIFA scandal, they both stand a better chance of winning if it comes to a re-selection.

The sporting event is highly coveted, being the most popularly watched on the planet – even exceeding the Olympics. Billions of dollars are at stake for corporations, from construction, hospitality, sportswear and media. There is also the immense national prestige that comes with hosting the global spectacle.

A second, more important, political objective for Washington and its British ally is to augment their ongoing campaign to isolate Moscow over the Ukraine crisis. The West accuses Vladimir Putin’s government of annexing Crimea last year and they have mounted a barrage of economic sanctions on Russia seemingly in retribution. Washington and London have been most gung-ho among Western countries in pushing the anti-Russian agenda over Ukraine.

President Putin has shown no sign of weakening under this relentless Western pressure. Moscow denies any impropriety over Ukraine. Indeed, it accuses the West of fomenting an illegal coup in that country and of trying to use the resulting conflict as a way to destabilise Russia. Moscow has retaliated to Western sanctions by imposing its own bans on European trade exports and, in recent days, imposing travel restrictions on 89 European Union parliamentarians.

So, very plausibly, the Americans and their trusty British ally are using the issue of alleged corruption in World Cup organising body, FIFA, as a stalking horse to further get at Russia over the geopolitical tensions in Ukraine.

US law enforcement officials at the highest level – including attorney-general Loretta Lynch and FBI chief James Comey – say their investigation into FIFA will continue until all suspicions of corruption in the organisation are uncovered. This high-level US involvement in targeting FIFA strongly suggests a political direction being given by the Obama administration.

The concerted nature of the American corruption onslaught against FIFA also points to a top-level decision to go after the Swiss-based federation. The British government, from prime minister David Cameron to his foreign secretary Philip Hammond, quickly stepped into the FIFA scandal following the American lead, making highly unusual public calls for the federation’s president Sepp Blatter to resign.

Both the timing of the US-launched corruption probe – in the week of FIFA’s annual conference and leadership election – plus the way that senior American and British officials, not to mention the publicity of Western news media, have weighed-in to rebuke FIFA suggests that it is all part of a coordinated political campaign authored at the highest level of government. That, in turn, suggests that there is an ulterior political agenda behind the supposed criminal crackdown on FIFA, and that the ulterior agenda is the Western objective to undermine Russia.

Another measure for assessing the credibility of the US-led corruption campaign against FIFA is to put the alleged wrongdoing in perspective with other known spheres of financial corruption. Few people believe that FIFA is free from sleaze and dodgy kickbacks. With so much corporate advertising at stake and broadcasting rights for global media audiences, it would be naive to assume that large wads of money have not crossed palms with a wink and a nod.

The US authorities are throwing a book of charges at the organisation, ranging from bribery to commercial fixing, racketeering to tax evasion. It is claimed by the Americans that the corruption at FIFA amounts to $150 million.

That sounds like a lot of sleazy money, but this figure pales in significance to the amount of corruption and criminality attributable to Wall Street banks and other Western financial institutions. For example, British bank HSBC alone has been caught running tax evasion, money-laundering for drug cartels and other illicit schemes that is estimated at $180 billion – or more than a thousand-fold the scale of criminality alleged at FIFA.

Wall Street banks, including JP Morgan, are accused of massive, systematic rigging of gold price markets all in a shady bid to shield the US dollar value. That criminality, affecting the price of basic commodities and livelihoods for billions of people worldwide, is estimated to be in the order of trillions of dollars – or a thousand, thousand-fold the FIFA debacle.

Moreover, these same banks, along with a slew of other global names – Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Credit Agricole among many others – were all directly responsible for the explosion in toxic financial derivatives that made their executives multimillionaires but which led to the global financial and economic meltdown in 2008.

That meltdown – which persists seven years on from its inception – has resulted in millions of lives ruined from unemployment and the collapse of pensions and savings funds. Added to that are the myriad social hardships and crippled lives from the ensuing austerity imposed on the general Western public to pay for the financial catastrophe – a catastrophe that was deliberately and recklessly engineered by the major banks, hedge funds and other capitalist investment agencies.

As Michel Chossudovsky writes in his co-authored book, The Global Economic Crisis: «The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalised fraud and financial manipulation. The ‘bank bailouts’ were implemented on the instruction of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an unsurmountable public debt».

It is probable that generations of children to come will be forced to pay for the trillions of dollars of debt that was created by American and European banks, which have now been offloaded on to the public by governments in so-called «bail-outs». Make no mistake, thousands of people have already died from the austerity that Western governments have imposed on their public in order to pay for the corporate fraud, tax evasion, fixing and embezzlement that has taken place in front of our eyes on a massive scale in the order of trillions of dollars.

Yet in the face of this gargantuan, genocidal criminality not one board member or executive from the major banks involved in precipitating the global crash has been charged, let alone prosecuted or imprisoned. In fact, the Wall Street banking elite and their counterparts in the City of London are among the main political donors that helped to re-elect Barack Obama and David Cameron.

The belated focus of American and British authorities on the alleged wrongdoings at FIFA can thus be readily seen as both ludicrous and laughable when we compare that with the absolute dearth of interest by these same authorities in applying law enforcement where it ought to be applied – on the Wall Street and City of London banksters.

Obviously, then, the self-righteous campaign to «root out fraud at FIFA is just so much pious nonsense. The astounding hypocrisy of US and British authorities leaves one with the unmistakable conclusion that the whole media-driven campaign against FIFA is nothing but a self-serving and cynical political agenda. And top of that agenda is to score geopolitical points against Russia.

Until Washington and London governments go after priority financial crime in their midst, then anything they say about FIFA can be taken as very wide off the mark.

Ukraine a Vector for GMO Poison’s Spread Through EU

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By Ulson Gunnar

Source: Land Destroyer Report

When the Washington Post chooses to pen an insulting, condescending editorial targeting entire nations speaking up against Western impropriety, one can just as well assume the precise opposite of whatever narrative the Post is trying to push forward is true.

Regarding American biotech companies and their attempts to infest the planet with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and in particular their attempts to corrupt the whole of Europe with their unwanted poison through a backdoor (Ukraine), has prompted Russia to speak up for their Eastern European neighbor. Up until the armed coup in 2013-2014, also known as the “Euromaidan,” Ukraine had adamantly rejected GMOs.

With an obedient client regime now installed in Kiev, a series of political, economic and military decisions have been made that have more or less extinguished Ukraine as a sovereign nation state. Along with its extinguished sovereignty comes a complete lack of desire for self-preservation, and so, sowing one’s fields with genetically tainted, unsafe, literal poison goes from being adamantly avoided, to being openly embraced.

This brings us back to the Washington Post and a recent editorial it has published. Titled, “Russia says Western investment in Ukraine’s farms is a plot to take over the world,” it first attempts to make Russia’s accusations that Monsanto is now moving in on Ukraine with plans to institute GMOs nationwide sound unfounded. That is until the Post itself admits that is precisely what Monsanto is doing. The pieces claims:

Ukraine has long tried to sell itself to Europe as the once-and-future breadbasket of the continent, promising that Western investment is the key to making its under-exploited black earth bloom. 

But official Russia would like you to know that all this agricultural development talk is really just a secret plot to help companies like Monsanto take over the world.

Then the Post openly admits:

Genetically-modified cultivation was long banned in Ukraine – as was the sale of farmland.

Then admits:

But the association agreement signed between the European Union and Ukraine last year may have created new space for the potential introduction of genetically-modified crops in Ukraine. 

Finally, the Post mentions Monsanto:

Monsanto – perhaps the most recognizable corporate name in genetically modified products – did express interest in investing in Ukraine last year. (It’s worth noting that the company operates in Russia as well, though not with GMOs, just as it has operated in Ukraine.)

Since Monsanto already operates in Ukraine, what else would it be investing in additionally that it hasn’t had the opportunity to before besides GMOs? Ukraine would serve as the perfect victim to host Monsanto and other biotech corporations’ GMO-infected products in the heart of Europe.

With the EU itself relaxing some of its regulations regarding GMOs, likely without the consent of a population increasingly conscious of the risks and actively seeking organic alternatives, biotech conglomerates hope to make GMO products spread from what will be the completely unregulated fields of Ukraine, into Europe and to become as ubiquitous and unavoidable as they are in America.

Elsewhere around the world, big-agriculture has attempted to use other backdoors to bring their products into regions they are wholly rejected, including Asia where “Golden Rice” has been proposed as the answer to fighting “vitamin A deficiency,” even  when simply planting some carrots would accomplish this goal more easily, cheaper and without the threat of tainting Asia’s rice crops with a strain consumers would reject out of hand.

In other instances, conquering Western interests, like in Afghanistan, have used “aid” as a backdoor to bring big-agriculture and GMOs into the region.

So by the Post’s own admission and by simply looking at what Monsanto and its counterparts have done all over the world already, they themselves couldn’t agree more with the Russian Federation regarding Monsanto’s obvious intentions in Ukraine and for the rest of Europe.

The Post, like many papers across America and Europe, has long-served the interests of the monied elite, with biotech and big-agriculture counted prominently among them. The Post and others will spin and obfuscate Monsanto’s intentions until it is too late to overturn the genetic corruption their crops will inflict on the once well-protected, sovereign fields of Ukraine.

Like many other things in Ukraine, the so-called “Euromaiden” that was allegedly spurred for freedom and self-determination has clearly stripped Ukraine of both its freedom and its ability to determine what is best for itself. From a military set upon its own people, to an economy looted by foreign interests, to a government directed literally by foreigners who chair it, to now fields to be sown with genetically altered poison, the ruination of Ukraine is nearly complete and a lasting testament to what the West truly means when it says “democratization.”

No One Will Buy GMO-Tainted Crops 

Included in Russia’s comments regarding the impending despoilment of Ukraine’s agricultural industry by Monsanto and others, the Post would report:

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev told a meeting of his counterparts in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on Tuesday that the West plans to grown “genetically modified crops” in Ukraine. And it’s a fool’s errand too, he suggested, because, “to put it mildly, Europe will not approve of such products.”

The Post, in its role as associate lobbyist for big-agriculture, attempts to downplay this fact. However, reported elsewhere, even within the Western media itself, are reports that the agricultural powerhouse that is the United States is now importing organic corn because consumers refuse to eat tainted GMO products grown within the States.

Bloomberg in its report “U.S. Forced to Import Corn as Shoppers Demand Organic Food” would claim:

A growing demand for organics, and the near-total reliance by U.S. farmers on genetically modified corn and soybeans, is driving a surge in imports from other nations where crops largely are free of bioengineering. 

Imports such as corn from Romania and soybeans from India are booming, according to an analysis of U.S. trade data released Wednesday by the Organic Trade Association and Pennsylvania State University.

The humiliation of a nation historically self-reliant agriculturally having to import something as basic as corn because everything grown domestically is poisoned is a lesson any Ukrainian seeking to preserve what is left of not only their dignity, but their sense of self-preservation should take note of. Even as the “miracle” of GMO evaporates amid an increasingly astute market in the United States, US corporations are buying off Ukraine’s infinitely servile regime to place Ukraine’s neck into the same noose.

However, in a way the Post is right. Russia is crazy to think Monsanto is taking over the world. The corporation, despite untold of billions pumped into lobbying, propaganda, bribes and other forms of mass persuasion, is failing miserably to convince people to ingest their poison, even in the nation their headquarters is located in. However, Russia shedding light on what Monsanto is trying to do in Ukraine, against the obvious best interests of Ukraine itself, is yet another illustration of how the “Euromaiden” putsch had nothing to do with freedom, and everything to do with Washington and Wall Street hijacking yet another nation and its resources out from under its own people under the guise of “democracy.”

 

The Cowardly and Despicable American Presstitutes

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By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy

There is a brouhaha underway about an American journalist who told a story about being in a helicopter in a war zone. The helicopter was hit and had to land. Which war zone and when I don’t know. The US has created so many war zones that it is difficult to keep up with them all, and as you will see, I am not interested in the story for its own sake.

It turns out that the journalist has remembered incorrectly. He was in a helicopter in a war zone, but it wasn’t hit and didn’t have to land. The journalist has been accused of lying in order to make himself seem to be “a more seasoned war correspondent than he is.”

The journalist’s presstitute colleagues are all over him with accusations. He has even had to apologize to the troops. Which troops and why is unclear. The American requirement that everyone apologize for every word reminds me of the old Soviet practice, real or alleged by anti-communists, that required Soviet citizens to self-criticize.

National Public Radio (2-5-15) thought this story of the American journalist was so important that the program played a recording of the journalist telling his story. It sounded like a good story to me. The audience enjoyed it and was laughing. The journalist telling the story did not claim any heroism on his part or any failure on the part of the helicopter crew. It is normal for helicopters to take hits in war zones.

Having established that the journalist had actually stated that the helicopter was hit when in fact it wasn’t, NPR brought on the program a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, an expert on “false memory.” The psychologist explained various reasons a person might have false memories, making the point that it is far from uncommon and that the journalist is most likely just another example. But the NPR presstitute still wanted to know if the journalist had intentionally lied in order to make himself look good. It was never explained why it made a journalist look good to be in a helicopter forced to land. But few presstitutes get to this depth of questioning.

Now to get to the real point. I was listening to this while driving as it was less depressing to listen to NPR’s propaganda than to listen to the Christian-Zionist preachers. In the previous hour NPR had presented listeners with three reports about civilian deaths in the break-away provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine. The first time I heard the report, the NPR presstitute recounted how explosives had hit a hospital killing 5 people in the break-away Donetsk Republic. The presstitute did not report that this was done by Ukrainian forces, instead suggesting that it could have been done by the “Russian-supported rebels.” He didn’t offer any explanation why the rebels would attack their own hospital. The impression left for that small percentage of informed Americans capable of thought is that presstitutes are not allowed to say that the Washington-backed Ukrainians attacked a hospital.

In all three reports, Secretary of State John Kerry was broadcast saying that the US wanted a diplomatic, peaceful solution, but that the Russians were blocking a peaceful solution by sending tank columns and troops into Ukraine. On my return trip, I heard over NPR Kerry twice more repeating the unsupported claim that Russian tanks and troops are pouring into Ukraine. Obviously, NPR was serving as a propaganda voice that Russia was invading Ukraine.

Think about this for a minute. We have been hearing from high US government officials, including the president himself, for months and months about Russian tank columns and troops entering Ukraine. The Russian government denies this steadfastly, but, of course, we cannot trust the now-demonized Russians. We are not allowed to believe them, because they are positioned as the Enemy, and good patriotic Americans never believe the Enemy.

But how can we help but believe the Russians? If all these Russian tank columns and troops that have allegedly been pouring into Ukraine were real, Washington’s puppet government in Kiev would have fallen sometime last year, and the conflict would be over. Anyone with a brain knows this.

So, we arrive at my point. A journalist told a harmless story and has been roasted alive and forced to apologize to the troops for lying. In the middle of this brouhaha, the US Secretary of State, the President of the United States, innumerable senators, executive branch officials, and presstitutes have repeatedly reported month after month Russian tank columns and troops entering Ukraine. Yet, despite all these Russian forces, the civilians in the break-away provinces of eastern and southern Ukraine are still being slaughtered by Washington’s puppet state in Kiev.

If Russian tanks and troops are this ineffective, why are NATO commanders and neoconservative warmongers warning of the dire danger that Russia poses to the Baltics, Poland, and Eastern Europe?

It doesn’t make any sense, does it?

So the question is: Why are the presstitutes all over some hapless journalist rather than holding accountable the Great Liars, John Kerry and Barak Obama?

The answer is: It is costless to the presstitutes to try to destroy, for totally insignificant reasons–perhaps just for the pleasure of it, like “American Sniper” killing people for fun–one of their own, but they would be fired if they hold Kerry and Obama accountable, and they know it. But they have to get someone, so they eat their own.

A democracy without an honest media cannot exist. In America democracy is a facade behind which operates every evil inclination of mankind. During the past 14 years the American people have supported governments that have invaded, bombed, or droned seven countries, killing, maiming, and displacing millions of people for no reason other than profit and hegemonic power. There is scant sign that this has caused very many Americans sleepless nights or a bad conscience.

When Washington is not bombing and killing, it is plotting to overthrow reformist governments, such as the Honduran government Obama overthrew, and the Venezuelan, Bolivian, Ecuadoran, and Argentine governments that the Obama regime is current trying to overthrow. And, also, of course the democratically elected government in Ukraine that has been supplanted by Washington’s coup.

The new Greek government is in the crosshairs, and so is Putin himself.

Washington and its fawning presstitutes branded the elected Ukrainian government that was a victim of Washington’s coup, “a corrupt dictatorship.” The replacement government consists of a combination of Washington puppets and neo-nazis with their own military forces sporting Nazi insignias. The American presstitutes have been careful not to notice the Nazi insignias.

Ask yourself why a journalist’s false memory episode of an insignificant event is so important to the American presstitutes, while John Kerry’s and Barak Obama’s extraordinary, blatant, blockbuster, and dangerous lies are ignored.

In the event you have forgotten the efficiency of the Russian military, remember the fate of the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian Army that Washington sicced on South Ossetia. The Georgian invasion of South Ossetia resulted in the deaths of Russian peace-keeping soldiers and Russian citizens. The Russian military intervened, and the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian Army collapsed in five hours. All of Georgia was back in Russian hands, but the Russians withdrew and left the former province of Russia independent, despite the lies from Washington that Putin intends to restore the Soviet Empire.

The only correct conclusion that any American can make is that every statement of the US government and its presstitute media is a blatant lie designed to serve a secret agenda that the American people would not support if they knew of its existence.

Whenever Washington and its whore media speak, they lie.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.