The Obama regime, wallowing in hubris and arrogance, has recklessly escalated the Ukrainian crisis into a crisis with Russia. Whether intentionally or stupidly, Washington’s propagandistic lies are driving the crisis to war. Unwilling to listen to any more of Washington’s senseless threats, Moscow no longer accepts telephone calls from Obama and US top officials. The crisis in Ukraine originated with Washington’s overthrow of the elected democratic government and its replacement with Washington’s hand-chosen stooges. The stooges proceeded to act in word and deed against the populations in the former Russian territories that Soviet Communist Party leaders had attached to Ukraine. The consequence of this foolish policy is agitation on the part of the Russian speaking populations to return to Russia. Crimea has already rejoined Russia, and eastern Ukraine and other parts of southern Ukraine are likely to follow.
Category: Head Stories
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed as “not serious” reports of Russian agents captured in Ukraine. He accused US politicians of distorting facts and wrongfully interpreting the Geneva agreement on de-escalation. Lavrov lashed out at western politicians while speaking at a young diplomats’ forum in Moscow. The minister accused his counterparts in the EU and the US of making unsubstantiated statements. “Kerry has many times mentioned that Ukrainian intelligence captured Russian agents,” Lavrov said. “So, show them to the people, have them on TV. Kerry says they don’t want to disclose the identities of those people who are engaged in the captures. This is not serious.”
US ‘pivots’, China reaps dividends Let’s start with a flashback to February 1992 – only two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. First draft of the US government’s Defense Planning Guidance. It was later toned down, but it still formed the basis for the exceptionalist dementia incarnated by the Project for the New American Century; and also reappeared in full glory in Dr Zbig “Let’s Rule Eurasia” Brzezinski’s 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard. It’s all there, raw, rough and ready: Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed by the Soviet Union. This … requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
Writing in 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski predicted that the Ukraine would become a serious candidate for EU and NATO membership sometime between 2005 and 2015. He further predicted that, beyond 2010, the Ukraine could link up with France, Germany and Poland to establish a ‘critical core’ for Europe’s future security and provide an ‘Eastern anchor’ for ‘Atlanticist Europe’. (See Brzezinski The Grand Chessboard and Foreign Affairs Sept-Oct 1997). Later that year he wrote that Ukraine had no realistic chance of pursuing a ‘multi-vector’ policy, of facing both East and West. It would either be reintegrated into the CIS, or it would become a de facto Central European State. The latter would enable the Ukraine to become an ‘integral part of the Euro-Atlantic community’ (See Brzezinski ‘Ukraine’s Critical Role in the Post-Soviet Space’ Politics and the Times 1997).
The CIA: Photoshopping a Crisis into a War A major Central Intelligence Agency conspiracy operation is currently playing out in Eastern Ukraine where, in an age of Photoshop and mail order credentials and military patches, photographs of the same bearded Russian “special forces” commando in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk in Ukraine this year and Georgia in 2008 are being successfully parlayed to the corporate media and by the Ukrainian ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) headquarters in Vienna. The conspiracy operation follows closely on the heels of CIA director John Brennan’s visit to Kiev where he provided intelligence advice to the unelected junta now governing the country… The idea that an active duty Russian Special Forces soldier would have a long beard is laughable. No one in the Western corporate media has mentioned that long beards for any actual special forces commando is a strict taboo because any long hair can be detrimental in close hand-to-hand combat. Long hair of any type is not permitted for special forces unless a disguise is required for special missions, such as the beards grown by U.S. special forces personnel who entered Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks to make common cause with various anti-Taliban guerrilla forces.
The United States is in the opening phase of a war on Russia. Policymakers in Washington have shifted their attention from the Middle East to Eurasia where they hope to achieve the most ambitious part of the imperial project; to establish forward-operating bases along Russia’s western flank, to stop further economic integration between Asia and Europe, and to begin the long-sought goal of dismembering the Russian Federation. These are the objectives of the current policy. The US intends to spread its military bases across Central Asia, seize vital resources and pipeline corridors, and encircle China in order to control its future growth. The dust-up in Ukraine indicates that the starting bell has already been rung and the operation is fully-underway.
The US State Department, via spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki, said that reports of CIA Director John Brennan telling regime changers in Kiev to “conduct tactical operations” – or an “anti-terrorist” offensive – in eastern Ukraine are “completely false”. This means Brennan did issue his marching orders. And by now the “anti-terrorist” campaign – with its nice little Dubya rhetorical touch – has degenerated into farce. Now couple that with NATO secretary general, Danish retriever Anders Fogh Rasmussen, yapping about the strengthening of military footprint along NATO’s eastern border: “We will have more planes in the air, mores ships on the water and more readiness on the land.”
News that General Wesley Clark, USA (Ret.) visited the Ukraine at the behest of the National Security Advisor there-and also a senior member of Ukraine’s parliament—should be a cause for alarm. A nonprofit foundation was involved in this exercise (more below). There is a sense of open, almost joyful viciousness in all this pro-war, anti-Russian sentiments on opinion pages and television broadcasts. It is certainly racist and demeaning in tone. Such is the first step in convincing the public that the “transgressor” is equivalent to a retrovirus. Interim Report #1: Immediate Improvements Needed in Rapidly Implementing Non-Lethal US Military Assistance for Defense of Ukraine is available at Cryptome (and the New York Times) for viewing. General Clark and a former strategy advisor to Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger named Dr. Phillip Karber, indicates that the two “participated in 35 meeting [sic] with senior officials, military commanders and various politicians; with Karber visiting front line formations on the Northern, Eastern and Southern Fronts.”
Ok, first the necessary caveats: 1) Kerry and Lavrov already had a deal on Syria, also made in Geneva, but then the USA reneged. 2) The EU also had a deal on the Ukraine with Yanukovich, who was overthrown literally the next day. 3) The USA, NATO and the EU have lied, cheated, mis-represented, twisted and simply betrayed pretty much every promise which they made to Russia ever since Russia freed itself from the yoke of Communism in 1991. 4) The USA probably has as much control over the Ukrainian crazies a la Right Sector as it does over al-Qaeda, tenuous at best. 5) Putin does have a lot of “street cred” in the eastern Ukraine, but it is far from being infinite. 6) The USA does have full control over the Ukrainian oligarchs, but they, in turn, are clearly in a struggle with the nationalist crazies who probably have more firepower and crowd muscle than these oligarchs.
There are many potentially worrying signs in the ‘de-escalation’ process in theory agreed by the US, Russia, EU and Ukraine this Thursday in Geneva. For starters; the regime changers in power in Kiev did not commit themselves, explicitly, to constitutional reform (the draft language is slippery, to say the least); they did not commit, explicitly, to leaving Ukraine out of NATO; and a minor but still significant point – this was not a joint press conference by the two key players, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry. Arguably, the US State Department is bound to interpret ‘de-escalation’ as a sort of ultimatum to every anti-fascist, pro-autonomy and pro-Russia group in eastern Ukraine, as in ‘disarm or else’. That’s the same logic behind the nefarious March 2011 UN approval of a no-fly zone over Libya.