Category: United States of America

Latest Kerry Lavrov Deal MAKE SENSE

The Saker on

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.

On Nazis, Jews & Ukraine ‘De-escalation’

Pepe Escobar on

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.

The Geneva Agreement Changes Nothing

Lionel Reynolds on

On Wednesday night the crisis in the Ukraine became deadly, with 3 anti-coup rebels killed by National Guards in the Black Sea port city of Mariupol. The next day, in Geneva, the USA, Russia, EU and Ukraine reached an ‘agreement’ after just a few hours of negotiations. There follows a review of the key points in the text: “All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism.” How can the coup government keep a straight face and add its signature to this statement? This is a regime that placed a fascist in charge of National Security. After the coup Andriy Parubiy was appointed secretary (the operational head) of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. Between 1998-2004 he was the leader of the Patriots of Ukraine, the paramilitary wing of what would go on to become the Svoboda party.

Bankers Are Behind The Wars

The Washington's Blog on

All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars Former managing director of Goldman Sachs – and head of the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London (Nomi Prins) – notes: Throughout the century that I examined, which began with the Panic of 1907 … what I found by accessing the archives of each president is that through many events and periods, particular bankers were in constant communication [with the White House] — not just about financial and economic policy, and by extension trade policy, but also about aspects of World War I, or World War II, or the Cold War, in terms of the expansion that America was undergoing as a superpower in the world, politically, buoyed by the financial expansion of the banking community. *** In the beginning of World War I, Woodrow Wilson had adopted initially a policy of neutrality. But the Morgan Bank, which was the most powerful bank at the time, andwhich wound up funding over 75 percent of the financing for the allied forces during World War I … pushed Wilson out of neutrality sooner than he might have done, because of their desire to be involved on one side of the war.