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Thread: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Breaking news: FALSE FLAG IN MOSCOW!

    Boris Nemtsov has been shot dead in Moscow. He was one of the most charismatic leaders of the "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system" opposition in Russia (please understand that in the Russian context "liberal" and "democratic" means pro-US or even CIA-run, while "non-system" means too small to even get a single deputy in the Duma). He was shot just a few days before the announced demonstration of the very same "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system" opposition scheduled for March 1st.

    Nemtsov with Yushchenko
    As I have already explained many times on this blog, the "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system" opposition in Russia has a popular support somewhere in the range of 5% (max). In other words, it is politically *dead* (for a detailed explanation, please read "From Napoleon to Adolf Hitler to Conchita Wurst"). In the hopes of getting a higher number of people to the streets the "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system"opposition allied itself with the ultra-nationalists (usually useful idiots for the CIA) and the homosexual activists (also useful idiots for the CIA). Apparently, this was not enough.

    And now, in *perfect* timing, Nemtsov is murdered.

    We all know the reaction of the AngloZionists and their propaganda machine. It will be exactly the same as for MH-17: Putin the Murderer!!! Democracy Shot!! Freedom Killed!! etc. etc. etc. etc.

    There is no doubt in my mind at all that either this is a fantastically unlikely but always possible case of really bad luck for Putin and Nemtsov was shot by some nutcase or mugged, or this was a absolutely prototypical western false flag: you take a spent politician who has no credibility left with anyone with an IQ over 70, and you turn him into an instant "martyr for freedom, democracy, human right and civilization".

    By the way if, as I believe, this is a false flag, I expect it to be a stunning success in the West and a total flop in Russia: by now, Russians already can smell that kind of setup a mile away and after MH-17 everybody was expecting a false flag. So, if anything, it will only increase the hostility of Russians towards the West and rally them around Putin. In the Empire, however, this will be huge, better than Politkovskaya or Litvinenko combined. A "Nemtsov" prize will be created, a Nemtov statue will be place somewhere (in Warsaw?), the US Congress will pass a "Nemtsov law" and the usual combo package of "democratic hagiography" will be whipped-up.

    What worries me most is that the Russian security services did not see this one coming and let it happen. This is a major failure for the FSB which will now have a lot at stake to find out who did it. I expect them to find a fall-guy, a patsy, who will have no provable contacts with any western services and who, ideally, might even have some contacts with the Russian services (like Andrei Lugovoi).

    As for the "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system" - it will probably re-brand the upcoming protests as a "tribute to Nemtsov" thereby getting more people into the streets.

    There are folks in Langley tonight who got a promotion.

    The Saker
    Link: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.no/

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Nemtsov murder: Putin warned about exactly this type of “false flag” two years ago

    Already in February 2012 (two years ago!) Putin was warning Russians about exactly the kind of false flag which we just saw happening with the murder of Nemtsov. See for yourself:


    Quote Note: the Russian word “provocatsiia” is often translated as “provocation” which is not incorrect as long as you are aware that in Russian “provocation” can mean “false flag”, as it does in this context. Putin is clearly warning about a false flag “sacrifice”.

    This video was emergency-translated by one of our “brother in arms”, Tatzhit, to whom I am most grateful for this ultra-rapid translation.

    As for the “liberal” or “democratic” “non-system” opposition it has already announced that it will convert the planned protest into a memorial rally.

    We will keep you posted.

    The Saker

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Last edited by Morbid; 28th February 2015 at 17:02.

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Interview: Chinese diplomat calls powers' game root cause of Ukraine crisis

    English.news.cn 2015-02-27 02:10:23

    by Sun Yi

    BRUSSELS, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- A senior Chinese diplomat has said that the nature and root cause of Ukraine crisis was the game between Russia and western powers, including the United States and the European Union.

    "There were internal and external reasons for the Ukraine crisis. Originally, the issue stemmed from Ukraine's internal problems, but it now was not a simple internal matter. Without external intervention from different powers, the Ukrainian problem would not develop into the serious crisis as it be," Chinese Ambassador to Belgium Qu Xing told Xinhua in a recent interview.

    POWERS' GAME ROOT TO UKRAINE CRISIS

    Qu said that from the perspective of Ukraine's internal affairs, the eastern and western regions in Ukraine differed in culture, ethnic groups, understanding of history, and social and economic development, so the relationship between the two parts had long been affected by external forces.

    Moreover, in recent years, as Ukraine underwent repeated changes of regime, politicians focused more on partisan struggle rather than improving people's livelihood. Thereby weak economy and severe corruption further intensified internal contradictions.

    Qu noted that Russia would felt anxious that the West may squeeze its geographical space by extending influence in eastern European countries including Ukraine.

    In addition, Qu said that the involvement of the United States in Ukraine crisis would become a distraction in its foreign policy, including its "re-balancing strategy".

    "The United States is unwilling to see its presence in any part of the world being weakened, but the fact is its resources are limited, and it will be to some extent a hard work to sustain its influence in external affairs, " Qu said.

    TO RETHINK CONCEPTS IN GLOBAL AFFAIRS

    "The major powers need to seek a win-win situation rather than zero-sum security," Qu said, pointing out that countries needed to rethink the concepts in international affairs and learn a lesson from the Ukraine crisis.

    He said for the West's own part, although its military strength had been comparatively powerful, it still felt no absolute security with taking continuous steps to cement security, including moves to enhance the global distribution of ballistic missile defense systems.

    An example of west powers' high sensitivity about their own security could be that the United States had a national security review system for foreign investors' mergers and acquisition activities in the United States. But its definition of "national security" was not clear enough and the process of the review should be more transparent to the public, Qu said.

    If a country is highly sensitive to its own security, while ignoring other countries' basic security needs and concerns, it will cause lots of problems, and the phenomenon would be a serious issue in nowadays international society. If this problem cannot be solved, the Ukraine issue and some other similar global problems would not be solved, he said.

    If the western powers do not have the same acknowledgment of Russia's security concerns and security needs, Russia will feel that it has not been equally treated by the West, and its security interests and development interests have not been respected by the West, he said.

    "The West should abandon the zero-sum mentality, and take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration," said Qu.


    Against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis, the international community must re-think over the concepts of international relations. Major powers must get along with each other following the principle of equality, cooperation, and mutual benefits and trust, so as to realize win-win situation in the global scenario, he said.

    EU MORE PRAGMATIC THAN US OVER UKRAINE ISSUE

    As to the U.S. and Europe's stance on the issue of Ukraine, Qu said the United States and Europe essentially had the same strategy, but their tactics were different, as their geopolitical interests were different, said Qu.

    As Ukraine and Europe share geopolitical proximity, Ukraine's chaos will definitely cause instability in Europe. Also, the EU had energy dependence on Russia. Therefore, the EU held more pragmatic attitudes than the United States over the Ukraine issue, he said.

    The fact that the United States did not participate in the latest round of negotiations in Minsk precisely reflected the Western parties' concerns and tactics. On the one hand, the absence of the United States raised the negotiation leverage for European partners to force other parties to make more concession. On the other hand, this left the West further action maneuver.

    "Even though a latest ceasefire agreement had been achieved, it is still possible for the Western parties to change the original decisions in the future for the excuse that the United States was not involved in the negotiations," he said.

    Qu said China hopes the Ukraine crisis could be solved in the political way. On the one hand, China and Ukraine are traditional friendly countries. China has always pursued the principles of non-interference, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. And on the other hand, China acknowledges that the issue involved complicated historical elements.
    Link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134021440.htm

    I think this can be taken as a signal from China.

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Sorcha report on current situation...

    "Not just to this SCRF warning is the world trembling today either as Lord Jacob Rothschild, of the historically prominent, and global, Rothschild banking family, yesterday issued a similar warning by stating that the world is now mired in the most dangerous geopolitical situation since World War II.

    SCRF Secretary-Director Nikolai Patrushev notes in this report that the Obama regime is now funding Russian political groups under the guise of promoting civil society, just as in the “colour revolutions” in the former Soviet Union and the Arab world that have plunged our present world into chaos, while at the same time they are using the sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine as a “pretext” to inflict economic pain and stoke discontent among the populace.

    Secretary-Director Patrushev further states, “It's clear that the White House has been counting on a sharp deterioration in Russians' standard of living and mass protests, but Russia can withstand the pressure, though, thanks to its resilience and decades of experience in combating color revolutions.”

    Russian deputy defense minister Anatoly Antonov also notes in this report that NATO's activities are now many times greater than Russia's and states: “We've noticed that NATO member states are using the situation in southeastern Ukraine as a pretext to discard all diplomatic conventions, tricks and slogans and push forward, closer to the Russian border.”

    To how strong the Obama regime is pushing the Federation towards war, this report says, is evidenced by this past week’s deployment to Ukraine by the Obama regime of US military troops and their sending into the Black Sea a fleet of NATO warships.

    In response to these Obama regime war moves, this report notes, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich gravely warned the Americans and NATO that their actions now threaten Russia’s security.

    Even more astounding, this report continues, the Obama regime stated yesterday its “eventual intention” to send their ground troops into Syria and actually warned that an offensive by forces of the Syrian president against ISIS rebels and their supporters (called nonsensically by the Americans as “moderate rebels”) would open the door for an American strike on Syrian government troops.

    In response to the Obama regimes warning to Syria that it US forces would begin attacks, this report says, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lukashevich stated: “Against this background, statements from Washington that a possible offensive of Assad forces against the moderate Syrian opposition would open the door for a US attack against government forces are a matter of concern.”

    This report, as context, notes that the Obama regime is “enraged” at President Putin’s upcoming visit to Iran where the “final plans” for the Iraq-Iranian-Syrian military defeat of ISIS are scheduled to be discussed.

    Equally enraging the Obama regime, this report continues, was this past weeks joint Iraq-Iran military assault and encirclement on the ISIS held city of Tikrit that “took the US by surprise”, and who by the defeat of these terrorists would leave the Americans without an enemy to continue to frighten their own people with.

    In response to these Obama regime aggressions, SCRF experts in this report say, President Putin has ordered an immediate deployment exercise of rocket and artillery troops and has authorized Russia's newest Su-30 multirole fighter jets, together with Su-24 attack bombers, to conduct simulated strikes against NATO’s fleet in the Black Sea.

    As to how the Obama regime plans to destroy Russia, this report gravely says, they were recently revealed when secret documents were leaked detailing how the CIA-linked American company FTI Consulting, and their US intelligence operative Frank Holder, are preparing to destroy the Venezuelan government…plans so shocking they actually tell the US opposition: “violence should also be encouraged and whenever possible lead to deaths and injuries.”

    These “sadistic practices” by the US against any nation that challenges them, this report says, have been long known since the 1980’s when a CIA “psychological operations” manual prepared by a CIA contractor for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noted the value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a “martyr” for the cause, and which the Obama regime “used to perfection” in Ukraine.

    And for the “true cause” of the Obama regime attacking Russia, this report concludes, is the impending economic collapse of both the US and EU as China is now promoting its currency as the new global standard, which when this happens will cease allowing the West to print their way out of the economic quagmire they’ve created for themselves.

    With the American people having been lulled to sleep by their mainstream media (which is their government’s main weapon against its own people) as to how dire the global situation has become, it is no wonder that none of them know of the catastrophic fall in the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), and which exactly mirrors the market crash of 2008. After all, the BDI always shows the grim future that is to come, stock markets only reflect human greed and madness. " link

    We are living in exciting times, Iran and Russia are protecting Kurdistan by crushing isis...

    when Rothschild is saying I'm under attack, and I will start WW III over this...

    it's time to direct energies to those who want to end it.

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Posted by Rocky_Shorz (here)

    We are living in exciting times, Iran and Russia are protecting Kurdistan by crushing isis...

    when Rothschild is saying I'm under attack, and I will start WW III over this...

    it's time to direct energies to those who want to end it.

    By almost any measure of so many events ... it would seem to be we are approaching ... "crunch time" ...

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Posted by Sophocles (here)
    Quote Breaking news: FALSE FLAG IN MOSCOW!

    Boris Nemtsov has been shot dead in Moscow. He was one of the most charismatic leaders of the "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system" opposition in Russia (please understand that in the Russian context "liberal" and "democratic" means pro-US or even CIA-run, while "non-system" means too small to even get a single deputy in the Duma). He was shot just a few days before the announced demonstration of the very same "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system" opposition scheduled for March 1st.

    Nemtsov with Yushchenko
    As I have already explained many times on this blog, the "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system" opposition in Russia has a popular support somewhere in the range of 5% (max). In other words, it is politically *dead* (for a detailed explanation, please read "From Napoleon to Adolf Hitler to Conchita Wurst"). In the hopes of getting a higher number of people to the streets the "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system"opposition allied itself with the ultra-nationalists (usually useful idiots for the CIA) and the homosexual activists (also useful idiots for the CIA). Apparently, this was not enough.

    And now, in *perfect* timing, Nemtsov is murdered.

    We all know the reaction of the AngloZionists and their propaganda machine. It will be exactly the same as for MH-17: Putin the Murderer!!! Democracy Shot!! Freedom Killed!! etc. etc. etc. etc.

    There is no doubt in my mind at all that either this is a fantastically unlikely but always possible case of really bad luck for Putin and Nemtsov was shot by some nutcase or mugged, or this was a absolutely prototypical western false flag: you take a spent politician who has no credibility left with anyone with an IQ over 70, and you turn him into an instant "martyr for freedom, democracy, human right and civilization".

    By the way if, as I believe, this is a false flag, I expect it to be a stunning success in the West and a total flop in Russia: by now, Russians already can smell that kind of setup a mile away and after MH-17 everybody was expecting a false flag. So, if anything, it will only increase the hostility of Russians towards the West and rally them around Putin. In the Empire, however, this will be huge, better than Politkovskaya or Litvinenko combined. A "Nemtsov" prize will be created, a Nemtov statue will be place somewhere (in Warsaw?), the US Congress will pass a "Nemtsov law" and the usual combo package of "democratic hagiography" will be whipped-up.

    What worries me most is that the Russian security services did not see this one coming and let it happen. This is a major failure for the FSB which will now have a lot at stake to find out who did it. I expect them to find a fall-guy, a patsy, who will have no provable contacts with any western services and who, ideally, might even have some contacts with the Russian services (like Andrei Lugovoi).

    As for the "liberal" or "democratic" "non-system" - it will probably re-brand the upcoming protests as a "tribute to Nemtsov" thereby getting more people into the streets.

    There are folks in Langley tonight who got a promotion.

    The Saker
    Link: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.no/
    Thanks, I am pretty sure this has not been published in the USA. Nobody hears of the other side ever in the USA or if they do, it is filtered through a set of patriotic beliefs that makes it useless. America, the defender of the world, becoming the attacker, no American would believe this, they do not want to see it, because it is sooooo far away from the way they have been raised. When they attack, they think they defend someone or something (I am talking here of the regular folk looking at TV).

    They have to Wake up.

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Norway to restructure military in response to Russian 'aggression'

    Norway’s defence minister has said her country’s armed forces will be restructured so they can respond faster to what she called increased Russian aggression.

    Soreide said Norway was stepping up military cooperation with the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – as a means of reassuring them that they were fully covered by Nato’s collective security umbrella. Furthermore, Norway was “absolutely” ready to expand training of Ukrainian soldiers, she said, predicting that more Nato states would follow the British example of dispatching trainers and non-lethal equipment to support Ukraine.
    Link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ian-aggression

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    Quote “Johanna Granville’s Presentation ‘Maidan and Beyond: The Media Blackout in Ukraine’”

    March 07, 2015

    by James L. Coffin, Ph.D.

    The lack of any real debate in the Western media on Ukraine has irked me ever since the protests on Kiev’s Independence Square or Maidan Nezalezhnosti broke out in November 2013. The anti-Russian bias is so prevalent that perhaps average readers no longer detect it. In this post I would like to report on a very interesting presentation I heard and the disturbingly biased coverage of it in a Bulgarian student newspaper, which points to an alarming lack of critical thinking skills in today’s young adult population.

    Given the deafening drumbeat of condemnation of Russia, and specifically Putin, I found Johanna Granville’s multimedia presentations on November 10 (“Ukraine: Another Yugoslavia?”) and especially November 19 (“Beyond Maidan: The Media Blackout in Ukraine”) at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) both refreshing and informative. While much of the information is already familiar to members of the Vineyard of the Saker community, the presentation invites analysis of the negative trend of repeated false flags in 2014 ever since the “Euromaidan revolution,” which so many uninformed citizens gullibly championed.

    Granville is the author of numerous scholarly articles, a book (The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956), and is the winner of two Fulbright lectureships in Russia and Hungary (see her website here: http://www.johannagranville.com/). She was conducting research in Ukraine for her second book when the Maidan revolts began. After delighting the audience on November 19 with a three-minute introduction in Bulgarian, paying tribute to AUBG founding father John Dimitri Panitza, Dr. Granville noted the decline in press freedom around the world today. According to the Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index for 2014, the United States ranks 46th, Ukraine 127th, and the Russian Federation 148th. (She cautioned that the Reporters Without Borders organization is itself supported by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy). All too often “freedom of information is sacrificed in the name of national security,” she stated. “If you get nothing else out of my presentation, remember this: we must not swallow uncritically anything we read in any one country’s newspapers,” she said. “To get the truth these days, a thinking person must dig for real facts and evidence.” Dr. Granville, who was AUBG’s first Panitza Memorial Professor of Communist Studies, selected three events in 2014 by which to illustrate the Ukrainian media’s biased coverage: the snipers’ killings at Kiev’s Maidan (February 20), the Odessa massacre (May 2), and the shootdown of the Malaysian airline (July 17).

    Hired to teach “East European History in the Twentieth Century,” which covered the period of Soviet communist domination over the “satellite” countries, Granville cannot be described as a Russophile. She is simply a diligent, impartial researcher. She prefaced her remarks by stating that her essay was exploratory and intended to encourage debate. Her sources included independently funded blogs by investigative journalists and analysts not subject to government or corporate censorship (like Vineyard of the Saker). When citing from the Russian press, she corroborated her findings with other independent sources.

    Snipers’ Massacre on Maidan

    We have heard it repeatedly: that former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych ordered Berkut anti-riot police to open fire on unarmed protesters, and that “Russian agents” participated in the killings. In his speech to the U.S. Congress on September 18, 2014, current Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko repeated this line, adding that the overthrow of the Yanukovych government resulted from mass peaceful protests against police violence. Granville presented some arguments that make me question this standard version.

    First, take the Kiev regime’s cover-up and use of scapegoats. All recordings of live TV and internet broadcasts of the snipers’ massacre have been erased from Ukrainian websites. The results of ballistic, weapons, and medical examinations were declared classified. Even trees on Maidan with bullet holes were cut down. In her Power Point presentation, Granville showed photos of Dmytro Sadovnyk, the Berkut commander whom the Ukrainian Prosecutor General accused of killing 39 protesters at Maidan on February 20. There’s just one problem: Sadovnyk can’t shoot a gun very well. His right hand was blown off by a grenade six years earlier.

    “Evidence suggests that the snipers were in fact from the Maidan opposition and/or from a third party of professional snipers, and that they shot at both unarmed protesters and policemen,” Granville attested. She drew upon published interviews, time-stamped live videos, and the meticulous research of Dr. Ivan Katchanovski of the University of Ottawa, who examined 30 gigabytes of intercepted radio exchanges of the Alfa and Omega units of the Ukrainian Security Service, the Berkut riot police, and anti-government protesters during the entire Maidan uprising.

    One interview she cited was that of the former chief of Ukraine’s Security Service Aleksandr Yakimenko, published on March 13, 2014. According to Yakimenko, shooters were spotted in at least twelve buildings around the square that were forcibly occupied by the Maidan opposition, but Maidan “Commandant” Andriy Parubiy refused to allow Yakimenko’s armed men from entering the square. (Parubiy later became Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine until early August 2014. He is co-founder – with Oleh Tyahnybok – of the ultra right-wing Svoboda Party.)

    Granville also cited the April 2, 2014 interview by Yanukovych, in which he denied ever ordering the Berkut police to shoot unarmed Ukrainian citizens. Furthermore, at a May 13 press conference, according to Granville, Ukrainian parliamentary investigation head Gennady Moskal stated that the bullets that killed both unarmed protesters and Berkut police in Kiev on February 20 did not match any of the firearms issued to Berkut’s special unit. This is interesting, when coupled with the testimony of Dr. Olha Bohomolets, who averred that the same type of bullets were extracted from the wounds in both protesters and police. Dr. Bohomolets performed emergency operations at the triage center during the Maidan shootings. Her testimony was alluded to in the famous leaked phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on February 25. Gennady Moskal predicted decades of debate on this mystery of the snipers, since several key documents were destroyed.

    Granville pointed out other evidence typically ignored by the Ukrainian media. This included videos showing members of the paramilitary group Right Sector leaving the Hotel Dnipro with large cases, which they called “musical instruments.” It also included radio intercepts of Maidan opposition fighters, positioning themselves on top floors in occupied buildings around the square. She played excerpts from these recordings, whereby the audience could hear Maidan protesters calling for access to open windows and referring to the Berkut in the third person. Their cameramen and shooters were apparently working together. Their words were audible in Russian at 0.22 in this video: “You must show how the people are being shot and how they fall to the ground.” Some of the photos of armed Berkut police may be misleading, Granville argues. In some cases, according to live videos, they are shooting at the dirt in front of unarmed protesters in order to get them to retreat. The videos show dirt sprays, not bodies falling to the ground. See here at 13:09–14:13.

    As many as ten unarmed Berkut policemen were fatally shot earlier on February 18, which prompted the government’s decision to bring in armed security forces. That allowed later killings realistically to be blamed solely on the Berkut police. Granville posed the question: Would Berkut police have shot at their own fellow officers? At least thirteen Berkut police died and 189 were wounded by gun shots. Curiously, no one has been arrested for shooting the policemen. Ironically, Maidan opposition leaders sought to appoint Andriy Parubiy to head the investigation of snipers’ attacks, the same man who apparently prevented Yakimenko’s men from entering the square to eliminate the snipers from the surrounding buildings.

    Odessa Massacre

    Three months after Maidan, on May 2, another tragic loss of life occurred, this time in Odessa, a key port city all the more valued after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March. “Citizens in Odessa call it the ‘Odessa Massacre’ or the ‘Odessa Genocide,’ but the Ukrainian media typically refers to it as the ‘Odessa arson case,’” Granville said. The official version of this event in the Ukrainian media goes something like this. On May 2 several thousand young Ukrainians gathered to watch a soccer game, Chornomorets Odessa vs. Metalist Kharkiv. A traditional march for a “United Ukraine” was planned, with the opposing teams marching together. Before the march, “some 400 pro-Russian protesters” were “armed with guns, bats and sticks and wore bulletproof vests and helmets”, while most of the “Ukrainian patriots” were unarmed. These “armed pro-Russian separatists” shot into the crowd of ultranationalist football fans, killing at least one. The crowd of young, pro-Kiev football fans and Right Sector members then rushed over to Kulikovo Field. There they set fire to the tents in front of the Trade Unions building, where allegedly “radical” “heavily armed” pro-Russian “separatists” were camping out. Warned that these pro-Kiev radicals were coming to attack them, these protesters barricaded themselves in the large Trade Unions Building. “Russian citizens” disguised themselves as separatists and provoked the crowd. Official reports state that about forty-six died of asphyxiation. In differing later accounts, six died of falls from windows and as many as thirty-two from chloroform gas. The building, they state, was set on fire by the pro-Russian rebels themselves. In an unfortunate case of “accidental self-immolation,” these rebels hurled a Molotov cocktail at a closed window, which then ricocheted back into the room and ignited.

    Other versions state that it is not known how the building caught on fire. “The Ukrainian Interior Ministry stated that 172 people were arrested after the tragedy, and that the majority of detainees were identified as Russian nationals and residents of Transnistria,” Granville said. “Never before has such a gruesome event been so amply videotaped.”

    Testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses, plus unedited videos by local Odessa citizens paint an entirely different picture of this event. The individuals trapped in the burning building were in fact all local Odessa citizens, Granville noted. Videos actually show Right Sector radicals removing passports and wallets from corpses after the fire. (See here at 46:06). This enabled authorities to claim later that the deceased were Russian citizens. Survivors state that perhaps as many as one hundred and sixteen people were trapped in the building’s basement, and that they died not exclusively from asphyxiation, falls, or burns, but also from gunshots and dismemberment by axes. One woman had been raped, and another pregnant woman strangled. The victims were unarmed (see here at 46:17), and included women, children, elderly men, and World War Two veterans. Several videos clearly depict Right Sector girls preparing Molotov cocktails and pro-Kiev radicals hurling the cocktails from without the building.

    They show young men on the roof, throwing the first cocktails at the tents well before the football fans had even arrived at Kulikovo field. Still other videos show the radicals entering the building even before the pro-Russian protesters took refuge there, which would explain Molotov cocktails igniting from within the building. Even more mysterious is the footage of allegedly pro-Russian radicals and Odessa policemen wearing red armbands. (See here at 3:07). Granville showed photos of the Odessa deputy police chief, colonel Dmitry Fucheji, conferring with one red armbanded protester. The first Molotov cocktail hurlers atop the Trade Unions building were also wearing the red armbands, as was a young radical filmed shooting into the crowd of football fans in the center of town before the fire was set at Kulikovo field. (See here at 2:51 and here at 1:41:18-1:42:08).

    Live videos place Andriy Parubiy in Odessa on April 30 and May 1, two days before the massacre. (Recall that Parubiy is reportedly the man who barred Yakimenko’s armed men from entering Maidan to eliminate the snipers and who was later appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council). He is seen distributing bullet-proof vests to the pro-Kiev militants, including the 33-year-old Maidan Self-Defense activist and later captain of the Interior Ministry’s “Storm Battalion”, Mykola Volkov. Granville showed video stills of the porcine Volkov shooting into the Trade Unions Building and mentioned that Ukrainian police since 2012 have sought to arrest Volkov for fraud. (See here at 1:15-1:28.)

    As with the snipers’ massacre, Granville identified in the Odessa case classic signs of a cover-up. First, authorities were quick to blame Russia before any investigation was conducted. Prime Minister Yatseniuk visited Odessa the following day, May 3, and told reporters, “We are at war with Russia,” and that this was “a well-planned Russian terrorist plot.” Second, although a parliamentary investigatory commission was appointed, key public figures refused to testify, including Parubyi, chief of Ukraine’s Security Council Valentin Nalivaichenko, and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Third, the commission’s report cut out, among other things, the roles of the Odessa region’s governor Vladimir Nemirovsky and Andrei Yusov, head of the Odessa branch of the heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko’s “Udar” party. Witnesses had testified that Nemirovsky had bussed in about 500 Right Sector members from Lviv in western Ukraine, and that Yusov instigated the pro-Kiev nationalists to burn the tents in front of the Trade Union building. The published version of the commission’s report was so doctored that parliament member Svetlana Fabrikant, the secretary of the commission, later withdrew her signature. Granville points out that if the Odessa Massacre – which resulted in the deaths of at least 48 pro-Russian protesters – really was a “Russian terrorist plot,” presumably the Ukrainian officials would want to cooperate in the investigation. She concluded that, “rather than being a ‘well-planned Russian terrorist plot,’ the Odessa Massacre was probably a deliberate provocation: pro-Kiev militants posing as pro-Russians and deliberately shooting at their own, to incite the mob and turn them on the real pro-Russian demonstrators at Kulikovo Field.”

    MH17 Takedown

    Two months after the Odessa Massacre, on July 17, the Malaysian airline (MH17) was shot down in the east Ukrainian region of Donetsk. In contrast to the snipers’ killings at Maidan and the Odessa fire, this was truly an international crisis, involving the death of 298 people, most of them Dutch, Belgian, or Australian nationals. Granville drew upon the Corbett Report, and the well-researched articles and interviews on this website and others. Within twenty-four hours of the crash, Granville told us, the Kiev government stated that it had “conclusive evidence” that Russia had supplied pro-Russian rebels with a Buk surface-to-air missile, and that these rebels – who controlled the region of Donetsk – had shot down the Malaysian airline, either accidentally or intentionally. Granville played a video excerpt from U.S. President Barack Obama’s address on July 18, in which he implicated Russia, stating that it was not the first time that pro-Russian rebels had shot down lower-flying Ukrainian military aircraft. “We know that these rebels have received arms, training, and anti-aircraft weapons from Russia,” Obama said. He then called for a credible “international investigation”.

    Granville outlined the alleged evidence of Russian involvement commonly cited in Ukrainian newspapers, which includes: 1) a YouTube video of communications allegedly between a Russian military commander and pro-Russian rebel, discussing the Buk; 2) a YouTube video of the Buk (uncovered by a tarp) being driven supposedly across the Russian border at Krasnodon, missing a couple of missiles; 3) a comment on the VKontakte page of Russian national Igor Strelkov (real name Igor Girkin) posted thirty-five minutes after the MH17 crash, in which he supposedly wrote “We have warned them not to fly in our sky.”

    As Granville explained, there is no way to confirm the identities of the two masked men labeled “Major” and “Grek” depicted in static photos on the video. In the third part of the video an unnamed rebel says he can see “Malaysia Airlines” written on the plane, which is hard to believe, since the wreckage was spread over several kilometers in pieces. The other Buk video has been traced to the city of Luhansk, fifty kilometers from Krasnodon, an area that was indeed under the control of the Ukrainian army, not that of the rebels, on July 18, when the video was made. Finally, Strelkov’s supposed VKontakte account cannot be directly traced to him. Even if it was, Strelkov possibly thought at first that his men had indeed shot a plane down, but that it was a small military aircraft. Granville warned that none of these social media sources can be verified and are unreliable. They have all been thoroughly debunked by contributors in the Saker community.

    When one considers Russia’s nuclear status, and the MH17 takedown as a potential casus belli (like the Lusitania or Gulf of Tonkin incident), making unjustified accusations is extremely reckless. The Russians denied supplying Buk missile launchers to the separatists. The Ukrainian military, incidentally, possesses several of them. On July 18 the Russian government formally asked Ukrainian authorities ten questions. Granville provided the list. They included questions such as: On what evidence are accusations about Russia’s involvement based on? Why were Buk missile launchers deployed by the Ukrainian army in this conflict zone, since the self-defense forces don’t have any planes? Why did Kiev’s air traffic controllers tell the MH17 to fly fourteen kilometers off the normal route, directly over the war zone? Why did Ukraine’s Security Service start working with Kiev air traffic control recordings without waiting for international investigators? Will the Ukrainians provide data regarding the movements of Ukrainian warplanes on July 17? How does Kiev explain the comments by a Spanish air traffic controller regarding two Ukrainian military planes flying alongside the MH17?

    Granville mentioned that the Russians startled everyone further by holding a press conference on July 21, 2014 in which military officials presented their own satellite and radar data. They stated that “there was a Ukrainian Air Force jet, probably Su-25, climbing and approaching” the MH17 just minutes before the airline disappeared. The Su-25 carries R60 air-to-air missiles as ammunition. Granville gave a timeline of events. On July 21 the black boxes were handed over to the Malaysians, who then sent them to London for an independent investigation. On August 8, the official investigation of the crash was finished. An agreement was signed between Ukraine, Netherlands, Belgium, and Australia to keep the findings of the long-awaited investigation classified. (For some reason, Malaysia – the country that lost an expensive airplane – had no say in this decision and, in fact, was originally excluded from the Joint Investigation Team until November 2014). The Kiev-based Prosecutor Yuri Boychenko stated that the results will be published only if all four countries give their consent, and any one of the countries can veto without explanation. This is quite astonishing, given President Obama’s strident calls for an “independent” international investigation and the endless tragic images the media has fed the world community. On August 19, Russia addressed the UN Security Council, asking for Kiev’s air traffic control records. Granville informed us that, according to Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, “The investigator-in-charge shall have unhampered access to the wreckage and all relevant material, including flight recorders and ATS records, and shall have unrestricted control over it to ensure that a detailed examination can be made without delay”. See here on page 39. On the day of the crash, the BBC reported: “Ukraine’s SBU security service has confiscated recordings of conversations between Ukrainian air traffic control officers and the crew of the doomed airliner, a source in Kiev has told Interfax news agency.”

    Granville reminded us that all U.S. surveillance satellite imagery is also missing. This is all the more glaring, since the shootdown of the MH17 coincided with the ten-day NATO military exercise in the Black Sea code-named “BREEZE 2014.” NATO ships and aircraft had the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under total radar and electronic surveillance. U.S. officials have repeated publicly that their judgment is based on sensors tracing the Buk missile’s trajectory, voice print analysis of separatists’ conversations, and patterns of shrapnel in the debris. However, we should remember that none of this hard data has actually been presented to the public. If the Russians or the rebels of eastern Ukraine really are responsible, then why won’t the Kiev and Washington governments simply publicize their records?

    Can we verify the Russians’ data about a Ukrainian air force jet approaching the MH17? Yes, according to Granville. She cited the BBC report by Olga Ivshina published on July 23, 2014. Ivshina interviewed Ukrainian villagers who saw one or two military planes flying next to MH17 before it blew up. The BBC later tried to scrub the internet of this report, claiming that it did not conform to the newspaper’s “editorial values,” but it has been preserved here. By contrast, no reliable eyewitnesses have claimed to see a Buk launch or plume. To drive her point home, Granville played a video showing the loud takeoff of a Buk missile and the white fluffy plume that typically remains in the sky. “Do you think you would have remembered this if you saw it in the sky after hearing loud explosions?” she asked. “The sound of a Buk missile launch can be heard within a radius of ten kilometers. It vibrates the earth all around for two kilometers. On that day there was very little wind. A plume like this would have remained in the sky for at least ten minutes,” Granville said. She also played the video of a villager who captured the crash as it happened. No Buk plume is visible. (The report by British social media blogger Eliot Higgins, claiming that residents saw the BUK smoke trail has been discredited by the Saker and others. Higgins of the blog “Bellingcat” is the same blogger who claimed the Syrian government was behind the sarin gas attack in Ghouta on August 21, 2013).

    Granville also played a recording of OSCE monitor Michael Bociurkiw’s interview with Susan Ormiston of CBC News on July 28, 2014. Bociurkiw arrived at the crash scene when the wreckage was still smouldering. He noted three pieces of fuselage that were “pockmarked” by “heavy machine gun-like fire,” and told Ormiston there was no evidence that a missile brought down the plane. The hypothesis of Peter Haisenko, a German national and retired Lufthansa pilot, also interested the audience. Haisenko observed small holes in the wreckage consistent with a 30 millimeter caliber projectile (which is the size of the cannon in an SU-25 military plane). A fragmentation blast from a Buk missile, on the other hand, is not capable of producing neatly aligned round holes. Haisenko also detected larger holes, some of which were inbound, others which were outbound. “This is what you would have if the plane were shot at from more than one direction, for example, from below and from alongside the plane,” Granville said. A Buk missile attacks only in one direction. Haisenko’s findings also fit with the Saker’s here and Colonel Cassad’s here, namely that both R-60 missiles and the SU-25’s cannons were used. Cassad found no cross-shaped traces that the Buk’s projectiles typically leave, and also conjectured that the explosion of firepower was no more than five meters from the MH17, further ruling out a BUK attack.

    Still more chilling, Haisenko surmised that the most heavily pockmarked piece fit directly over the cockpit, suggesting that the pilot’s stomach was probably targeted directly. If true, Granville said, this would explain why there (apparently) was no “May Day” distress signal on the voice recorder, according to air traffic controllers from Dnepropetrovsk.

    Granville ended with the curious case of Jose Carlos Barrios Sanchez, the Spanish national the Russians had asked the Kiev regime about. Apparently he was employed as an air traffic controller in Kiev’s Boryspil airport and tweeted minutes before the plane disappeared: “Plane shot down, no accident… [Military] has taken over air traffic control. Before they remove my phone or break my head, shot down by Kiev.” Sanchez wrote that the MH17 was “escorted by two Ukrainian fighter planes” just minutes before disappearing from the radar. This Twitter account (spain@buca) was deleted soon after the tweets, but the account has remained in internet archives. It was opened in August 2010 and contains several photos of the Boryspil airport. “Even if you discount this as a hoax,” Granville told the audience, “consider the timing of the tweets: 3:15 pm Kiev time, the same time air traffic control lost contact with MH17. It shows that at least someone had inside information.” Presumably the Kiev authorities would not implicate themselves. If it were somehow the Russians, to throw the blame on Kiev, one would think Ukrainian reporters would investigate the story in depth. Instead, the Ukrainian and Western press ignore the issue.

    Thus, as with the Maidan and Odessa killings, Granville states, to date we lack incontrovertible proof that the Russians were directly or indirectly responsible for the MH17 crash. The official report of the Joint Investigation Team is due around October 2015. In all three cases, we see signs of an official cover-up, stonewalling, and destruction of evidence. The lack of a Russian motive and opportunity in each case should also give us pause. Surely Moscow would not benefit by employing snipers to infuriate a crowd already angry at Yanukovych – a pro-Russian leader – prompting him to leave Kiev, and hence enabling Maidan opposition leaders to seize power. Likewise, it is hard to see how Moscow could benefit by the deaths of a hundred or more pro-Russian peaceful demonstrators in Odessa or how Russians could even infiltrate the local Odessa police force. Certainly neither the Putin government nor the rebels in Donetsk could benefit by shooting down a large civilian airline. Critics point out that it was an accident. If that is the case, one wonders why Russia was punished with a second round of sanctions. Granville points out that on July 29, a week after the takedown, the Obama Administration was able to persuade Germany to move ahead with this second round of sanctions against Russia. Within hours of the shootdown, Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza, its air assault having begun on July 7. The crash also enabled the Kiev government to paint the pro-Russian rebels and Russia as responsible for what is essentially a civil war, not a “foreign invasion”.

    A vigorous question-and-answer period followed this presentation at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG). Granville shared her personal survey results and videotaped excerpts from interviews with citizens in Kiev and western Ukrainian cities, and also explained the results of the recent elections in Ukraine. After the applause died down, I overheard numerous positive comments from colleagues and students sitting around me. From the Provost Steven Fenter Sullivan, Associate Professor of Economics, came: “Granville’s talk was a success – well-structured, and certainly topical.” Pierangelo I. Castagneto, chair of the History and Civilizations department, said “It was concise and challenged the version in the Western media.” Tamara Peneva Todorova, Associate Professor of Economics, concurred, saying “Even people who may have disagreed with Johanna Granville were convinced that she had done a tremendous amount of research. She had interviewed local Ukrainian citizens in the Russian, Ukrainian, and Hungarian languages.” Dinka H. Spirovska, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication, stated, “I thoroughly enjoyed Granville’s presentation. She condensed complex material in forty minutes and raised important questions.”

    Compliments came from students as well. From Vladimir S. Todev, I heard: “Honestly, Professor Granville’s talk was the most interesting one I have heard at AUBG. Until now I was pro-Ukrainian, but now I’m not so sure. It showed a lot of respect for us Bulgarians that Granville began her lecture in Bulgarian, which was quite good for a non-native speaker. I also appreciated the photos from her travels in Ukraine. The event drew a large crowd and several student reporters attended.” Journalism major Tereza L. Denkova, a junior, said “The photo exhibition first caught my eye as I entered the room. Next was the soft cello music which I later realized was by Professor Granville, an accomplished cellist. I was amazed by her interviews in several languages and her efforts to dig so deeply for information.” From Irina Sotirova I heard, “I was surprised to learn that the same bullets killed both protesters and policemen, that there were no witnesses who heard the Buk launch, and that the results of the international investigation are still classified. I liked the way Granville presented both sides. A lot of people asked questions afterwards, and she had thoughtful answers.” Tsvetiana S. Zaharieva, another junior, agreed: “It was a very interesting talk that made me think deeply about the trustworthiness of the media. I wonder how many similar ‘blackouts’ have distorted the recording of history. Professor Granville prepared a solid Power Point presentation with many audio and video clips.”

    Student Media Bias at AUBG

    Having heard such favorable remarks, I was rather bewildered to read the two reports in the student-run online newspaper, the AUBG Daily, that were published on December 10, nearly a month after the November 19 event. Oddly, the 19-year-old reporter from Vitebsk, Belarus ignored the most plausible points, for example, those concerning the testimonies of Michael Bociurkiw and Peter Haisenko about bullet-like holes in MH17’s fuselage and NATO’s military exercise in the Black Sea. At other times she listed without any context other credible pieces of evidence. An especially glaring oversight is her failure to mention Granville’s boots-on-the-ground experience in Ukraine, her extensive preparation, and the uniformly positive response from the audience. This includes the enthusiastic remarks I myself made during a videotaped interview with the reporter’s classmate shortly after Granville’s presentation.

    Apparently the reporter was so hard-pressed to find any dissatisfied members of the audience that, in her other article, she had to solicit comments on the public lecture from someone who did not even attend it–a former AUBG professor who was not even in Bulgaria on November 19! In another case, she interviewed a skeptical visiting professor who cites the “preponderance of evidence” that allegedly proves Granville wrong about the MH17 crash, but then does not provide any such evidence – as if by dint of stating that the speaker is wrong makes her wrong, despite all the supporting material she provided. I noticed that many Ukrainians attended, including some from Crimea who supported the Russian annexation. Strangely, the reporter chose to interview just one, a nationalist Ukrainian from Kharkiv, who alluded to “facts that directly contradict” Granville’s view, but then did not provide any. This fits a familiar pattern in the Ukrainian and Western media coverage of the MH17 crash; by blaming Putin’s Russia, we make Russia solely responsible for the war in Ukraine. No hard evidence need be given. If a spokesman from a NATO member country states that he “knows” something or says confidently “we have evidence” (but shows none), he is automatically believed, whereas genuine data – if it originates from a Russian source – is automatically discounted. One has only to watch how State Department spokesperson Marie Harf feebly ducks the penetrating questions of Associated Press correspondent Matt Lee to see such a pattern.

    This fact-free, ad hominem approach starkly contrasts with Granville’s crisp, evidence-based analysis. The student-run periodical has consistently reported on the Ukrainian conflict entirely from a pro-Kiev perspective, either without citing any news sources at all or citing exclusively CNN, a news channel whose staged events, bias, and falsehoods on conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, and a host of other places is well-documented. To be sure, we all learn ultimately by doing, and the idea is to give students the experience and responsibility. However, as I later found out, writers for this student gazette (including first-semester freshmen) are not currently being trained on how to evaluate sources, examine both sides of an issue, and abide by the rules of responsible journalism. The Bulgarian student newspaper’s bias is all the more ironic, since Granville’s key message, stressed throughout the November 19 presentation, was that a democratic society depends on a free, unbiased press. She emphasized from the start the need to examine sources and to check facts.

    In an era when politicians practically own media empires, young people today might get the idea that the media is simply an instrument of one side or another. The boundary between media and PR has become very blurred. Educators today need to remind students (West and East) that there exists a “higher calling” for investigative journalism. Truth is not relative. Without rigorous training in critical thinking skills and guarding against bias, journalists and their newspapers can easily become instruments of war.

    “In all three cases, we are talking about war crimes,” Granville stated passionately in her conclusion, while Apple’s 1984 TV ad about Big Brother played silently behind her. “Innocent people have died in the sniper attacks on Maidan, the massacre in Odessa, and the shootdown of the Malaysian airliner. What we need to do as individuals is to keep asking the hard questions and demanding real evidence, rather than passively accept what we read in the mainstream media. We need to hold government officials accountable.”

    I couldn’t agree more. As the Saker wrote recently, the Western media is “mounting a truly heroic effort into not mentioning the MH17 topic, as if it had never happened.” If more people and organizations around the world – not just Russian ones – demand the truth, the truth about the MH17 catastrophe might not disappear so easily into the memory hole as just one more “conspiracy theory.”

    Dr. James Coffin was a Balkan Scholar at the American University in Bulgaria in 2013-2014, as well as Director Emeritus of the Center for International Programs at Ball State University in Indiana. An anthropologist, he examines how developing societies cope with pressures from developed societies and has developed programs to train anthropologists in fieldwork overseas.
    Link: http://thesaker.is/johanna-granville...ut-in-ukraine/

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    United States Honored, Retired Member. Ron passed in October 2022.
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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Posted by Calz (here)
    Quote Posted by Rocky_Shorz (here)

    We are living in exciting times, Iran and Russia are protecting Kurdistan by crushing isis...

    when Rothschild is saying I'm under attack, and I will start WW III over this...

    it's time to direct energies to those who want to end it.

    By almost any measure of so many events ... it would seem to be we are approaching ... "crunch time" ...
    When the west demonizes others, one reason is to start another war by gathering public support with one or more false flag events.

    Another reason to start a war is to divert attention away from banksters and corrupt governments who destroy economies, and assign blame for economic failure on the opposition.

    Another benefit to an invader is to steal another countries gold. Libya comes to mind.

    With recognition of economic failure so close, this does appear to be "crunch time" or the "end game".

    I do hope those who are "friends in high places" at least neuter the nuclear weapons.
    Last edited by Ron Mauer Sr; 9th March 2015 at 10:41.

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Posted by Calz (here)
    Quote Posted by Rocky_Shorz (here)

    We are living in exciting times, Iran and Russia are protecting Kurdistan by crushing isis...

    when Rothschild is saying I'm under attack, and I will start WW III over this...

    it's time to direct energies to those who want to end it.

    By almost any measure of so many events ... it would seem to be we are approaching ... "crunch time" ...
    Thousands of Israelis rally against Netanyahu



    "Tens of thousands of Israelis have rallied in Tel Aviv against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for 'change' 10 days ahead of the country's general election.

    The protest was organized by the Million Hands grassroots organization that campaigns for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and the creation of a Palestinian state..." link

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    12 transparent minutes:



    No comment.

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote 'They want to topple me': Netanyahu accuses Scandinavia of meddling in Israeli elections

    Benjamin Netanyahu has accused ‘Western governments, and mostly Scandinavian’ of trying to remove him from power by spending millions of dollars on meddling with Israeli upcoming elections where Israel's prime minister is facing a tough challenge.

    "Scandinavian governments have spent millions of dollars on a campaign to remove me from power," he said in an interview on the Kol Israel radio station.

    "Western governments, but mostly Scandinavian...They know perfectly well why they prefer Buji and Livni [his opponents in the elections] to me," Israeli PM added, as cited by The Local.
    Link: http://rt.com/news/240697-netanyahu-...use-elections/

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

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    A MUST LISTEN. The best 11 minutes of geopolitical history for todays comprehension

    bumping

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote RESOLUTION (H. Res. 162)

    Calling on the President to provide Ukraine with military
    assistance to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.


    Whereas the existence of an independent, democratic, and
    prosperous Ukraine is in the national interest of the
    United States;

    Whereas the Russian Federation under President Vladimir
    Putin has engaged in relentless political, economic, and
    military aggression to subvert the independence and vio-
    late the territorial integrity of Ukraine;

    Whereas this aggression includes the illegal and forcible occu-
    pation of Crimea by Russian military and security forces;

    Whereas this Russian aggression includes the establishment
    and control of violent separatist proxies in other areas of
    Ukraine, including arming them with lethal weapons and
    other materiel including tanks, artillery, and rockets that
    have enabled separatist militias to launch and sustain an
    insurrection that has resulted in over 6,000 dead, 15,000
    wounded, and more than a million displaced persons;

    Whereas military and security forces of the Russian Federa-
    tion have been infiltrated into these areas of Ukraine and
    continue to provide direct combat support to the sepa-
    ratist groups in this conflict;

    Whereas failure to stop this aggression by the Russian Fed-
    eration against Ukraine, especially its unprovoked and
    armed intervention in a sovereign country, illegal and
    forcible occupation of its territory, and unilateral efforts
    to redraw the internationally-recognized borders of
    Ukraine undermines the foundation of the international
    order that was established and has been defended at
    great cost by the United States and its allies in the after-
    math of World War II;

    Whereas Russian aggression against Ukraine is but the most
    visible and recent manifestation of a revisionist Kremlin
    strategy to redraw international borders and impose its
    will on its neighbors, including NATO allies;

    Whereas on September 18, 2014, President Petro Poroshenko
    addressed a Joint Meeting of Congress at which he
    thanked the United States for the military assistance it
    has provided to defend the freedom and territorial integ-
    rity of his country and asked for ‘‘both non-lethal and le-
    thal’’ military assistance, stating that ‘‘one cannot win a
    war with blankets’’;

    Whereas the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General
    Martin Dempsey stated on March 3, 2015, that ‘‘we
    should absolutely consider providing lethal aid’’ to
    Ukraine;

    Whereas Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter stated on Feb-
    ruary 4, 2015, during his confirmation hearing that he
    is ‘‘very much inclined’’ toward providing Ukraine with
    weapons to defend itself;

    Whereas Congress provided the President with the authoriza-
    tion and budgetary resources to provide Ukraine with
    military assistance to enhance its ability to defend its
    sovereign territory from the unprovoked and continuing
    aggression of the Russian Federation, including in the
    Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014, which was signed
    into law on December 18, 2014;

    Whereas the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014 specifi-
    cally authorizes the provision of anti-armor weapons,
    crew-served weapons and ammunition, counter-artillery
    radars, fire control, range finder, and optical and guid-
    ance and control equipment, tactical troop-operated sur-
    veillance drones, and secure command and communica-
    tions equipment;

    Whereas even as it faces a massive military assault, Ukraine
    is confronting an economic crisis that requires both long-
    term financial and technical assistance by the United
    States and the international community, especially the
    countries of the European Union and the International
    Monetary Fund, as well as fundamental economic and po-
    litical reforms by the government of Ukraine;

    Whereas the United States and its allies should provide as-
    sistance to support energy diversification and efficiency

    initiatives in Ukraine to lessen its vulnerability to coer-
    cion by the Russian Federation; and

    Whereas the United States and its allies need a long-term
    strategy to expose and challenge Vladimir Putin’s corrup-
    tion and repression at home and his aggression abroad:

    Now, therefore, be it

    1 Resolved, That the House of Representatives strongly

    2 urges the President to fully and immediately exercise the

    3 authorities provided by Congress to provide Ukraine with

    4 lethal defensive weapon systems to enhance the ability of

    5 the people of Ukraine to defend their sovereign territory

    6 from the unprovoked and continuing aggression of the

    Russian Federation.
    Link: http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/...AS_087_xml.pdf

    Votes; 348 - 48

    Link: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/114-2015/h131

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Crimea... What really happened?


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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    We live in a state of military alert

    Quote Source: http://cont.ws/post/78147/

    Rostislav Ishchenko

    Translated from the Russian by Robin

    For the second year in a row, almost uninterrupted military exercises are taking place in Russia. The number of troops involved is comparable to or even greater than the number of participants in the largest exercise held by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact military alliance – even though the Soviet armed forces totaled 3.5 million in 1991 and today the Russian Federation’s armed forces barely number 1.5 million.

    Strategic bombers are constantly on patrol. These aircraft have not only reverted to old areas of combat duty, but are also developing new ones. The navy is being strengthened at a rapid pace. To ensure a global presence for military aircraft and warships, a network of bases is being prepared, including in Latin America. When the Russian leadership asserts that it is not in talks about bases, that is most likely true.

    Thus Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay, which is used to refuel Russian bombers, cannot be called a Russian military base because it has no such status. But in effect it is. In fact, it is so effective that the United States demanded in a panic that Vietnam stop Russia’s bomber-refueling flights, only to meet with a refusal. Such a refusal detracts from the superpower’s prestige. The outcome was predictable, but the situation was so distasteful to the United States that it took the risk.

    Actually the attempt to prevent Russia from using Cam Ranh to refuel its aircraft is not the United States’ only attempt to counteract Russia. The Black Sea is regularly visited by NATO ships, with the obligatory participation of U.S. warships. NATO’s naval exercises in the Black Sea have also become a regular practice. No sooner does one group of ships leave the region than another shows up to take its place. In the Baltic states, the presence of NATO ground troops has been increased.

    Characteristically, it was U.S. troops and equipment that were sent there. Plans have been announced to strengthen the NATO forces in Poland by rearming the Polish army and by transferring additional troops there from other countries in the bloc (most likely they will also be Americans). There is also talk of a deployment of U.S. troops to Bulgaria and Romania.

    At the same time, the two sides are conducting media campaigns to intimidate each other. In the United States, the topic du jour is the provision of lethal weapons to the Ukraine, which is supposed to dramatically enhance the combat capability of the helpless Ukrainian army (sort of like giving the Aegis Combat System to a Zulu).

    Russia, for its part, is filling the media with information on electronic warfare devices that can be mounted under the fuselage of a plane or in the cockpit of a helicopter and used to disable any electronic system within a radius of hundreds of kilometers, destroy any quantity of airborne missiles, and maybe even make bullets fly backwards. Another favorite theme of the Russian media is the immense superiority of any given Russian arm over its foreign counterparts.

    All this indicates that Washington and Moscow are seriously considering a situation where the armies of the two nuclear superpowers come into direct contact. On the one hand, there is a hasty buildup of arms and moving of troops to the front lines, where possible. On the other hand, each side is trying to psych the other out to undermine its will to resist before weapons are even used. To that end, they talk up the latest super-powerful weapons that can kill “seven at one blow.”1

    It’s small wonder that Russia appears much more active in this regard. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which took into account the capabilities of NATO and the Warsaw Pact (after which all members of the Warsaw Pact and three former Soviet republics became members of NATO), placed restrictions on the signatories’ number of key armaments. As a result, in terms of tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery pieces with a caliber of more than one hundred millimeters, and attack helicopters, Russia’s armed forces are significantly outnumbered by their probable enemy in the European theater of war, without taking into account the United States’ ability to quickly transfer additional troops and equipment to Europe.

    Russia’s suspension of the CFE Treaty doesn’t change the situation. Thousands of pieces of military equipment cannot be delivered to the troops overnight, just as it is impossible to provide trained crews instantly. Therefore it is necessary to frighten the enemy with quality.

    That all this is not a joke is evidenced by the fact that, since January 2015, the word war is increasingly being used by world leaders. Note that it isn’t just U.S. senators who were damaged in Vietnam, such as McCain, who are talking about it, but major European leaders.

    Hollande spoke of the threat of war when he and Merkel rushed to Putin to beg for a truce in the Donbass. A Russian invasion is the subject of discussions, expectations, and the almost perverted lust of the Baltic political elites, who are all abuzz about reports that after the Ukraine they will be “Putin’s next victim.” Polish politicians talk about war as if it were a likely occurrence, with a former minister of foreign affairs advising his fellow citizens on live television that, if Russia decides to go to war, they should pack their bags and flee to Australia.

    All this is extremely dangerous, not only because Ilf and Petrov were spot on when they wrote that if everyone expects a fire, then the Rookery2 is bound to burn. Constantly keeping an army in a high level of combat readiness comes at a steep material and emotional cost. Moreover, if soldiers of two superpowers get close enough to see one another (i.e., to shoot at one another), the risk of an incident will increase. Finally, at some point military preparations escape politicians’ control and begin to dictate the agenda.

    No one wants war but everyone is getting ready for it. Just in case, additional forces are being deployed, an information war is being waged, attempts at financial and economic sabotage are being launched, and allies are being recruited. So far, it all amounts to a flexing of muscles designed to show that both sides are ready for anything. But as such a game advances, it leaves less room for maneuver. At some point, you have to take responsibility for your words, actions, hints, and promises to allies. Otherwise you will lose face and be defeated without going to war. As the confrontation escalates and the saber rattling grows louder, it becomes more difficult to retreat and to save face.

    We live in a state of military alert. Sometimes such circumstances are inconsequential; a compromise is found or one side concedes in time. More often than not, it is impossible to back down, and there is no room for compromise. Today, the confrontation between Russia and the United States has gone too far for either side to give way without suffering catastrophic consequences. There are no available resources to ensure a compromise; thus it must be achieved through a third party, but there are no willing parties. We are at a decisive point in the confrontation: it is clear that only one side will survive, but it is not clear whether the United States will give up without a fight or risk starting a military conflict.

    So far they have never left the battlefield without having tried all means. At some stage, it might occur to them that provoking a conventional (non-nuclear) conflict will frighten Russia, because it will show Moscow that the United States is not afraid of a direct military confrontation with it, and nuclear Armageddon will be avoided, because Russia will have to back down.

    I think that in such a case the United States will soon be faced with a choice: to surrender Europe to Russia or start a nuclear war itself. NATO’s quasi armies, although they have a significant quantitative advantage, are no match for the armed forces of the Russian Federation, and the United States does not have enough troops in Europe to seriously affect the course of events.

    In short, the most reliable way to avoid war is not to start thinking about it and preparing for it. We have already passed that stage. The only thing left is just not to start a war, although that is a very complex matter.

    1 Refers to Seven at One Blow, the Brothers Grimm story of a tailor who kills seven flies with one swipe.

    2 Refers to a communal apartment depicted in The Little Golden Calf.
    Link: http://thesaker.is/we-live-in-a-stat...ilitary-alert/

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Obama Refuses to Meet With NATO Secretary General in Washington

    Quote NATO’s new Secretary General is in Washington this week, but despite repeated requests, has been refused a meeting at the White House. Could this be another indication of rising tension between President Obama and European leaders over the proposed EU army?

    Nearly every NATO country has hosted the organization’s new head, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, since he took office in October. It’s part of a long tradition which has, until now, been enthusiastically followed by US presidents as a way to illustrate commitment to one of the country’s strongest treaty obligations.

    "The Bush administration held a firm line that if the NATO secretary general came to town, he would be seen by the president…so as not to diminish his stature or authority," Kurt Volker, former US representative to NATO, told Bloomberg.

    But as Stoltenberg continues a three-day trip to Washington, President Obama has failed to respond to multiple requests to meet with the secretary general.

    This is especially surprising given the alarmist attitude currently overtaking much of Europe. As NATO allies continue to issue concerns about a perceived threat from Russian aggression – a misleading narrative fully endorsed by the United States – one would think that President Obama would make time to meet with NATO leadership.

    "We are implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War," Stoltenberg said during the DC NATO Transformation Seminar.

    It’s also surprising given the president’s relatively light schedule this week, and given that he managed to find time to meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday.
    More at link: http://sputniknews.com/us/20150325/1020001617.html

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Quote Posted by Sophocles (here)
    Obama Refuses to Meet With NATO Secretary General in Washington
    ... the organization’s new
    figure-
    Quote Posted by Sophocles (here)
    head, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg,...
    Stoltenberg isn't an ounce better than his vile predecessor; both are mere figureheads.
    So, the potus puppet doesn't wanna see his Nato's Euro PR bile spiller? Who gives... an F?
    If he wants anything, he'll get Breedlove (who rather lives up to this [both name and title], than to his name), instead...

    The fact, though, remains quite... interesting.


    PS: Sorry for only venting, and not adding substance to this threat... erm, thread. I'll be now.
    Last edited by meeradas; 26th March 2015 at 08:28.

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Jens Stoltenberg and Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Denmark) can both be viewed as figureheads, I agree. And I think Norways bombing of Libya (where Norway was said to bomb the most, with some 500 bombs (I know, its disgusting)) could be part of why Jens Stoltenberg now is in the position he is in.

    Some old, but not well known «news»:

    According to norwegian msn (Nrk), among others, Norway sold heavy water to Israel in 1959/60.

    Link (in norwegian): http://www.nrk.no/fordypning/slik-sp...pen-1.12087184

    Wikipedia: «Israel admits running the Dimona reactor with Norway's heavy water since 1963.»

    Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear...6.E2.80.931965

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    Default Re: Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Putin, China, and World War III

    Yemen's President Hadi arrives in the Saudi capital Riyadh, as Saudi Arabia continues air strikes against Shia Houthi rebels.

    "Yemen's President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has arrived in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, according to officials, as Saudi Arabia continues to launch air strikes against Shia Houthi rebels.

    It is the first confirmation of his whereabouts since Wednesday, when he fled rebel forces in the city of Aden.

    Officials say he will now travel to Egypt for a two-day Arab league summit.

    Saudi authorities began air strikes in Yemen on Wednesday night, a step Iran called "dangerous".

    The jets targeted Houthi positions in the capital Sanaa, along with missile batteries and warplanes.

    Saudi Arabia says it is "defending the legitimate government" of President Hadi.
    Legitimacy

    Mr Hadi took refuge in Aden last month after fleeing Sanaa, where he had been under house arrest since the Houthis took full control of the capital in January.

    On Thursday a Saudi official said he had travelled to Riyadh, but would attend the Arab summit in Egypt as the "legitimate" Yemeni president. "

    The Saudi ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubair said the Saudi operation would begin with air strikes, and vowed: "We will do whatever it takes in order to protect the legitimate government of Yemen from falling."

    Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV reported that the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan were also sending aircraft, while Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Pakistan were ready to take part in any ground offensive targeting the Houthis.

    The US said it was providing "logistical and intelligence support".

    However, a Houthi official warned the coalition that it risked provoking a wider war.link


    Houthi rebels protested against the air strikes on Thursday



    love those Purple Shorts...

    Militiamen loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi have been unable to stop the Houthi advance

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