Erdogan: Turkey's Facist Despot

JOAN (1922-2016)

Joan you were my big sister, 7 years older than me. When you were still in grade school you had a bad fall when skiing on Mount Royal in Montreal. Your back suffered multiple fractures and you ended up consigned to your bed in a full body cast. The doctors worried that you might not walk again. Up until then, I remember you as a carefree and popular young woman. The war was on and you and Margaret, joined the Officer's Club to socially mix with the young officers before they were sent overseas. Now in a body cast, our home became an open house with teachers, students and my mother helping you with your assignments and preparing for your tests. It turned you into a scholar and you never looked back. When the cast came off I thought at the time it should hae been plastered onto the wall because it was covered with signatures and mostly funny statements and drawings by your friends.

As your much younger brother I was proud of you, not because of your academic accomplishments,- I was too young to think about that-, but because you attracted so many men, mostly in uniform, and some academics including professors. You were a magnet. They were mostly nice guys and some gave me a penny or two to leave the room. I can say now that you combined a shapely beauty with with a happy intelligence that seemed to make all your male acquantances take you seriously, and many certainly smitten and developing a crush. Our mother was rooting for Bernie, a young man whose father was a General. Much to her dismay Stanley Jackson, from our high school, and now a navigator in the Canadaian Airforce, arrived from overseas.You knew he was the one. Mother was finally won over.

Later as I pursued my profession as an economist and management consultant I had occasions to visit with you and Stan in New Haven on several occasions and you arranged for me to attend lectures in Yale. I even had the rare privilege of meeting and listening to a lecture by the Nobel Prize-winning economist, James Tobin, just shortly before he died. When Stan died you invited me to share the pulpit in Yale's august halls to say our goodbyes. The hall was packed and in the line-up I learned of the deep affection employees and academics had for 'Joan and Stan', and the minister commented that in Yale you were always thought of as a team.

Joan many years have passed. We have talked daily and our affection for each other has grown. I will miss you terribly, but now it is time to say goodbye.

God, Voltaire, Huxley and doubt

• The secret of genius  is to carry the spirit and enthusiasm of the child into old age Aldous Huxley 
• Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy.Voltaire                                                                          

•  Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. Voltaire

• Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.Voltaire
• Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without  having tp believe there are fairies at the bottom of it too? Adams
•  Organizing atheists can be compared with herding cats who tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. Dawkin

 When the first cavemen began asking the questions; why are we here? how did we get here? and what happens when we die? they came to the inevitable conclusion some higher mystical power had some answers.  Man invented God. 

The Horrible Real Hillary

“Come on Bill, put your d**k up!  You can’t f**k her here!!”  “Inside the White House” by Ronald Kessler, p.243-Hillary to Gov. Clinton when she spots him talking with an attractive female.

•  "I read that Hillary's staff is starting to worry that her campaign still doesn't have an official theme. Then Hillary said, 'Yes it does – revenge.'" –Jimmy Fallon

• To listen to a Hillary stump speech is to hear a tale of endless confrontations with enemies. Matt Thabi, Rolling Stones
  
  Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/hillary-clinton-is-turning-into-richard-nixon-and-bill-belichick-20150314#ixzz40v6boqAJ
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Hillary has clearly shown poor judgment before and during her role as Secretary of State in the Obama administration and is totally unqualified to become the President of the United States. Here are some reasons why:

1. Many months after the Bush administration itself acknowledged that Iraq had neither WMDs nor ties to Al-Qaeda, Clinton declared in a speech at George Washington University that her support for the authorization was still “the right vote” and one that “I stand by.” Similarly,  in an interview on Larry King Live April 2004, when asked about her vote despite the absence of WMDs or al-Qaeda ties, she acknowledged, “I don’t regret giving the president (Bill, her husband) authority.”
Hillary Clinton voted to authorize George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq. As a result of that war, tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis died needlessly, trillions of dollars were added to the debt, and the Middle East was destabilized in a way that led to the rise of ISIS, the Syrian Civil War, and the European refugee crisis is now threatening to unravel the European Union.

And no Apologies but now admits that she made a mistake.
 The 2016 Democratic presidential campaign is coming down to a race between Hillary Clinton, who supported the Bush Doctrine and its call for invading countries that are no threat to us regardless of the consequences, and Bernie Sanders, who supported the broad consensus of Middle East scholars and others familiar with the region who recognized that such an invasion would be disastrous.

 Electing Hillary Clinton — or anyone else who supported the invasion of Iraq — would be sending a dangerous message that reckless global militarism needn’t prevent someone from becoming president
Latest announcement is that Robert Kagan, an extreme right-wing pundit and author, has endorsed Hillary for President.

2. It also raises this ominous scenario: If Clinton were elected president despite having voted to give President Bush the authority, based on false pretenses, to launch a war of aggression — in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, and common sense — what would stop her from demanding that Congress give her the same authority?

3. punctuated by disasters she supported U.S. intervention in Libya and Egypt, undermining governments that were no threat to American interests,

.John Kerry Could End Up Outdoing Hillary Clinton.” The New York Times chimed in with an article on the “tough comparisons with Kerry” Clinton is now facing, summing up the debate as one over whether she was anything more than a loud-mouthed “pantsuit-wearing globe-trotter” in her years as Secretary of State. Irresponsibly referring to Putin as Hitler is hardly a pronouncement for building good relationships with Russia.

•  
• 

Obama's policy confusion; Assad patriot or villain?

Farces and Fabrications

• After the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, rooting for the rebels was, for many in the West, synonymous with rooting for democracy and freedom.
•  goal was to train about 15,000 rebels in Jordan and other countries so they could return to Syria and fight. However, US defence officials admitted last month that only four or five of the recruits in the programme had actually returned to the battle.
•  “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia,” said General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., at Senate hearings on his nomination to be the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “And if you look at their [the Russians’] behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming.”Editor's note/ I suspect that Dunford (alias DR Strangelove) is alarming!!

Was ist der Dum Doozle???

Obama is calling for Regime Change in Syria. "Assad must go !" Why? Because Obama blindly  accepts the doctrine of Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan, co founders of the Project for the New American Century, that led to the disastrous and bloody US invasions of Iraq and Libya, support for Nazis in Kiev, and with Republican support, ambitions for a bloody repeat in Syria. She is truly a viscious and evil woman.  Putin at this point has defanged Washington by militarily supporting Assad in his battle against rebel forces within Syria and joining with him in his  declared war on ISIS and Al Queda terrorists.  

To add to the confusion Washington recently initiated the bombing of the Syrian army. Take 
the time to listen to this lengthy interview of Assad with the western press before passing US Media fed judgement.

One of the toughest critics of President Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat who represents his home state of Hawaii.
Gabbard, 34, one of the youngest members of Congress, is a Hawaii Army National Guard captain with two deployments under her belt, including a year in Iraq, where she served in a field medical unit. She is vehmently opposed to removing Assad, the legitimate leader of Syria, since there is no alternative and it would be simply allying US goals with terorists. She claims that we made this mistake in Iraq and Libya and would simply be repeating it again. Gabbard is clearly a brilliant and knowelgeable woman. Listen to her comments on this news clip and draw your own conclusions. https://www.youtube.comd /watch?v=329TFfPxZBU

Tulsi Gabbard

 A bit about her background:   Elected in 2012, she is the first American Samoan^[3] and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress. In July 2004, Gabbard Tamayo asked to deploy with her Hawaii Army National Guard unit, volunteering for a 12-month tour in Iraq, where she served in a field medical unit as a specialist with a 29th Support Battalion medical company Those experiences have shaped her views on the fight against ISIS and given her credibility as a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Gabbard says she simply disagrees with elements of Obama's foreign policy.
She  is an outspoken critic of regime change in Syria and like Putin believes that for now Assad must be supported since there is no credible alternative. His removal would simply play into the hands of Al Queda and would be a repeat of the drastic mistakes made by the US in Iraq and Libya.


US policy and strategy reads like a script out of the Keystone Cops.

Keystone Cops

The confusion arises because the US isn't sure whether the Syrian President and his three hundred thousand strong army or ISIS is their prime enemy target. Putin suffers no such confusion and with Assad has joined in a strategy to militarily defeat ISIS. He is bombing the supply routes of rebel forces. This has resulted in so called moderate rebels supported by the US, in their quest to unseat Assad, being bombed by Russia. In effect a proxy war is underway between Russia and the US, with Iran and Syria supporting Russia and  the US squandering its resources and unsure of it's intentions. 500 Million dollars wasted on a US acknowledged military fiasco to train non existent moderate rebels with only 5 rather than 5,000 soldiers admitted before Congress being trained. To add to the fiasco the equipment America is financing has already fallen into the hands of Al Queda terrorists.

Fortunately Rep. Gabbard and her supporters see the issues clearly but is Congress just listening to John McCain or following the script written in the NYTimes and Fox news? And where does Obama stand? His fog index is high.

Syria and Iran strongly support Russia's military efforts while Washington vacillates and flounders with the issues.  I think that the fundamental problem in Washington is their hegomonic ambitions threatening regime change in any state that opposes their objectives. NATO is their historical battering ram against Russia and a 60 Year legacy of the Cold War still exists and of late is intensifying. Proxy wars such as we are seeing in Syria will be the wars in the future since a major war with nuclear armed nations will be unthinkable unless a suicidal Dr Strangelove shows up.

Brain Dead conformity

 “People are sheep. TV is the shepherd.”
― Jess C. Scott, Literary Heroin (Gluttony): A Twilight Parody  

 “Why do you have to be the same as the others? ...Most of them are stupid.”
― Ken Follett, Winter of the World

  “The city was filled to overflowing with persons who had neither brains nor individuality, who bore no resemblance to men that live by bread, and had only their outward shape to distinguish them from sheep.”
― Lucian of Samosata

 “I don’t like the term “Average Joe.” I prefer “Dolly,” because not only is the Everyman a sheep, but he’s also a clone. They all think alike and act alike.”
― Jarod Kintz, 99 Cents For Some Nonsense


Pavlov and his experiments with dogs.
Pavlov Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was an eminent Russian physiologist and psychologist who devised the concept of the conditioned reflex. In his initial experiments, Pavlov rang a bell and then gave the dog food; after a few repetitions the dog started to salivate in response to the bell. Pavlov called the bell the conditioned stimulus because its effects depend on its association with food. 

Just like the dogs we all have Pavlovian responses to repetitive stimuli. French teenage girls are exposed repetitively to TV and film images of attractive people smoking and a very high percentage of them smoke. Russians have experienced a profound rise in their living standards under the leadership of Putin and experience a positive Pavlovian response to his name. Conversely Western media associate Putin with a rejection of our American leadership and in our media he is vilified. Just like the dog's salivating response on hearing the bell ring, many in the West have an instant negative response on hearing his name. Republicans have the same spontaneous bell ringing reaction to hearing Obama's name. 

Mindless Conformity
It logically follows that our Pavlovian responses can blindly lead us into collective herd-like and mindless conformity. A rush into a war in Iraq with flags waving. Oops!! a mistake based on lies that leaves a nation destroyed  including 5,000 American soldiers and as many as a million Iraqis dead.  Thomas Friedman, (described by Matt Taibbi of the Rolling Stones as light weight but popular columnist of the NYT) was a strong advocate for this war. 
This was a repeat that followed the disaster in Vietnam that killed an estimated 3.6 million in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and 6,500 American soldiers and ended up with an ignominious American defeat.

 The Lonely Crowd - Written in 1950 by David Riesman describes three main cultural types:  tradition-directed, inner-directed, and other-directed. If we can step aside from the herd and listen to mainly inner directed personalities it can give some hope to the human race. The Internet has opened a window to these voices all of whom reject mindless conformity. Their voices are now being heard and shared by millions through the Internet. The aren't so lonely anymore. My list is long but here are a few names: Chris Hedges, Matt Taibbi, Jon Stewart, Naomi Kline, Jesse Ventura, Michael Moore, Pepe Escobar, Elizabeth Warren, Edward Snowdon, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange (Wiki Leaks) Cenk Uygur (Young Turks), Erik Margolis, Peter Lavelle (RT).

Where does mindless conformity take us? There are many allegoric stories written about this human weakness such as

• Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick' where the crew blindly follows Captain Ahab's  obsession to kill the Great White Whale. Only the first mate rejects this maniacal obsession and survives to tell the tale.
• The fable 'The Pied Piper' tells the story of children listening to the leaders flute and blindly following him to their death. Dates back to an actual event in Hamelin in 1284 where 130 children were killed.
• Examples of modern day Pied Pipers for military interventions, including the disastrous wars in Iraq and Libya, include Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Fred Barnes of Fox News, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and influential Republican right wing policy advocates such as Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan with the backing of PNAC (Project for the New American Century).  She is currently busy in Kiev with a 5 billion dollar budget to realize her hegemonic goal to replace Putin with a US handpicked leader just as they  replaced Ukraine's elected leader with Poroshenko, a US handpicked stooge. 

What can we do to prevent being swept away by mindless conformity? Unfortunately the  controlling and wealthy interests need their armies of well cared for sheep. The Koch Brothers can  be included in this select group of 20 people whose wealth is estimated to amount to a total net worth of over a half-trillion dollars. 

Their collective investments run into the many millions to finance chosen politicians, conservative think tanks and media campaigns. Koch brothers for example promote the rejection of global climate change regulations related to oil and gas production and generously finance conservative politicians who support their causes. 

The history of the Koch family makes for some very interesting reading. The pile of money Fred Koch and his family made working for the Bolsheviks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil industry provided the foundation of wealth for Koch industries. Fred Koch (1900 - 1967) from this experience in Stalinist Russia became an ardent anti-communist and a founding member of the John Birch Society. He was convinced that the evil 'socialism' was taking over America through unions, colored people, Jews, homosexuals, the Kennedys and even Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had four sons who were all rabid conservatives; Charles and David who manage the Koch empire, and Frederick, the oldest brother a philanthropist who died in 2014 and William, the youngest brother an American businessman, sailor, and collector. William's  boat was the winner of the America's Cup in 1992.
Read about an unsavory Nazi past of Koch relatives.

Since Sheep rarely think about these issues, their complacent conformity lends a helping hand to the influence of the .00001% as they trash Obamacare and environmental protection. In my view only an economic upheaval can alter the course of this complacency.
 

I Can't Take it Anymore - Feb 2015 update

•  last week, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney sharply criticized austerity policies common to the Eurozone states, warning that the single-currency area was constrained by strangulating levels of debt that could plunge it into years of stagnation. 
•  Following Carney’s comments, UK economist and anti-austerity campaigner Michael Burke argued that debt burdens of struggling EU states such as Greece and Ireland are unsustainable, and must be largely written off if real growth is to occur in these states.

Jan 2015 update. The sweeping victory of Alexis Tsipras's left-wing Syriza party raises hope for a better life in Greece and dashes Merkel's demands for endless austerity.  Read on.

"The Tsolakoglou government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state. And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting (although if a fellow Greek were to grab a Kalashnikov, I would be right behind him), I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don’t find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance. I believe that young people with no future, will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945"
Dmitri  Christoulas

* * *

Our Capitalist Manifesto: Welcome to laissez-faire Global Capitalism!! Anything goes! We the bankers and international oligarchs own the system, enforce the rules, and the public must pay for it.  As personal profit is our sole motive we shelter our wealth off shore to hide it from Nation States, lend without discipline and constraints to create collapsing bubbles, day trade for speculation from tax havens sums that exceed by many times the world's daily GDP , and take ownership of the media and flood the political system with largess to ensure it does our bidding. We grab hold of an ever increasing share of the nation's wealth from a less worthy citizenry and accept that many will provide their inexpensive labour within a modern framework of serfdom.

In the US, Canada, Great Britain and the greater part of Europe the public, largely disillusioned and passive, have retreated from participation in the public debate. Demonstrations are scattered, lacking teeth and soon forgotten. France is currently an exception that raises hope for revolutionary reforms. This hope for change comes from a movement on the Far Left that has become the third force in the election battle. It is a revolutionary call for citizens to take charge to gain their rights and bring an end to laissez-faire capitalism. It's apparent that there is an awakening of a disillusioned public, many of whom in the past have retreated from voting. With more than 15% of the popular vote and not far behind the UMP(conservatives) and PS(Socialists) they have become a deciding factor in who will take power in France. It is also a cry that is reaching the public in Greece, Spain and other countries now facing years of brutal restraints to pay off the bankers who are largely responsible for creating the financial mess they are in.

This movement is being led by a fiery orator,  Jean-Luc Melanchon who is attracting audiences of  70, 000 or more wherever he speaks filling public squares and surrounding streets.  Here is a video of his oration in Toulouse. You don't have be bilingual to gain an impression of his passionate delivery and the audience's enthusiastic response. 

His critics, of which he has many, say that his programs for radical reforms are unaffordable, in conflict with France's trading partners and excessively idealistic. Clearly his is critics are right if France decided to go it alone, but I think Melanchon  is reaching out for an international audience to bring about unbearable pressures on laissez-faire capitalism and those fighting to maintain the status quo. 

The months ahead will determine whether this movement burns out from exhaustion or this is the beginning of a constructive and hopefully non-violent revolutionary movement that will spread.

Feb 2015 update.

Alexis Tsipras

Feb 2015 Update!! On Jan 25th the Greeks finally gave voice to "I can't take it anymore" and elected the left-wing party SYRIZA led by Alexis Tsipras winning a legislative election for the first time ever, securing 149 out of the 300 seats, 2 seats short of an absolute majority. On the other hand, conservative and then-ruling New Democracy lost 53 seats and obtained its worst result ever in terms of seats won.

 The above was written in 2012. With the election of Alexis Tsipras, Merkel's demands for endless austerity is being challenged and with it the overpriced Euro. In the months ahead we predict that southern European countries including France will rally around Greece's issues . Like Roosevelt before them, they realize  that austerity is the problem and not the solution.

Thomas Friedman,"Imperial Messenger''

The armchair warriors of Official Washington are eager for a new war, this time with Russia over Ukraine, and they are operating from the same sort of mindless “group think” and hostility to dissent that proved so disastrous in Iraq, 

How Ukraine Commemorates the Holocaust

Exclusive: Pundit Thomas Friedman says the new Ukraine regime “shares our values” but – as much of the world marked the 70th anniversary of the Nazi Holocaust finally being ended by Russian and U.S. armies – politicians in Kiev were busy honoring Ukraine’s Nazi collaborator so what does he believe? 

Robert Parry.

The Nitwits are in charge
Exclusive: Pundit Thomas Friedman laments that the new Cold War isn’t funny enough for him, but there really isn’t anything funny about the U.S. plunging into an unnecessary nuclear showdown with Russia over Ukraine while Friedman and his fellow VIPs misreport what’s happening, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Sometimes I wonder if today’s crop of U.S. pundits and pols could ever rise to meet some truly urgent need of the American people, let alone the interests of the world. Everything, it seems, is done with a snigger and an attitude – even as we stumble into a wholly unnecessary confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia over which batch of thieves and oligarchs gets to run Ukraine.

Friedman's position as one the world’s leading pundits is “testament to the degenerate state of the mainstream media”, and right to characterize him as a “mouthpiece for empire and capital” and “resident apologist for US military excess and punishing economic policies”.

 Belén Fernández, Verso

 “The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever been--but the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned.”

Matt Taibbi's  comments about  Friedman's prose:

“How the fuck do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened? Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?”

 

Though Thomas Friedman, a leading New York Times Columnist is clearly a shill and has been wrong again and again such as promoting the stampede into Iraq, He is still regarded as perhaps the preeminent foreign policy pundit in the U.S. media.  I find  him horribly glib and superficial. He is a booster of globalization and with it the spreading of the good will and intentions of US foreign policies and initiatives. He even sees the wars in Iraq, Aghanistan and other foreign interventions as beneficial, spreading American know how, and enlightenment to backward nations. The violence and killings are merely an inconvenient but  necessary shaking up of backward people. 

Here are a few a few of his observations and beliefs.

•  “to be a French educated Arab intellectual is the worst combination possible for understanding globalization. It is like being twice handicapped” 
• “the education of Hezbollah….the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians – the families and employers of militants – to restrain Hezbollah in the future”
• Friedman announces in 2003 that the reason for the invasion of Iraq was the need to burst a “terrorism bubble” that had emerged in “that part of the world”:
•  His complaint that American occupying forces in Iraq “are baby-sitting a civil war” is a direct echo of Barack Obama’s promise during the 2007 presidential election campaign that “we're not going to babysit a civil war”, as though the bloodbath engulfing the country was attributable to the infantilism of its people and not to the effects of it being violently invaded by a foreign power. Elsewhere, Friedman’s likening of the US occupation of Afghanistan to the adoption of a “special needs baby” 

In the Ukraine Friedman states as fact that 9,000 Rusian troops are in Ukraine. As usual Friedman throws around accusations without adequate evidence. The Guardian provides a much more balanced perspective while aware of thae dated photos and uncertainty of much of the evidence.

Which brings us to the issue of his views about Ukraine and Russia. As the United States rushes into a new Cold War with Russia, we are seeing the makings of a new McCarthyism, challenging the patriotism of anyone who doesn’t get into line. Friedman and Hilary likening Putin with Hitler is a pathetic cheap shot unworthy of a leader. It might be more rational to associate the very active Nazi's movement in Kiev with Poroshenko and his aid and support from the US's notorious Victoria Nuland, the famous 'regime change advocate' who when working for Dick Cheney promoted the disasters in Iraq and Libya and  hand picked the leadership in Kiev. Seems this would be worth Friedman's comments.

Poroshenko, a Disaster for Ukraine ?

 

 

Thirteen years after the end of the Soviet Union, the American press establishment seemed eager to turn Ukraine's protested presidential election on November 21 into a new cold war with Russia. Stephen Cohen                     Is Porosheko still working for his former masters in Washington, DC? Two diplomatic messages from the WikiLeaks Public Library on U.S. Diplomacy indicate that newly elected President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko was an agent for United States State Department.   The West created [Ukrainian] President [Petro] Poroshenko, but he is in many respects the tail that wags the dog, they cannot always rein him in. He is the rogue player, he is the joker in this hand,”  Martin Sieff  April 4th 2016 Update:https://www.rt.com/op-edge/338675-ukraines-petro-poroshenko-biggest-loser/ Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko: The biggest loser from the Panama Papers?  The outcome of the elections was known in advance - Poroshenko was declared the winner of the race. The results will further split the country. many regions refuse to recognize as President this cocolate king who is notorious for pocketing government money. Poroshenko has no chance to stop the bloody conflict even scrupulously carrying out all the orders given by Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt. Besidess,the mission of putting an end to the bloodshed has never been set by his US bosses... Gregory Kolyada

Democracy, which Kiev so much adores and venerates together with the “civilized countries”, as President Poroshenko puts it, is about learning to live with differences, by respecting and accommodating it. I do not see any sign of if coming from Kiev. What Ukraine really needs is a President and a government that listens to all Ukrainians and respects their right to be different. Yes, the majority of Ukrainians want to be part of Europe. But there is also the other Ukraine that wants to keep close ties with Russia. Any political project of state-building in Ukraine will succeed only if this other Ukraine is heard and accommodated.

Halyna Mokrushyna

It has become evident that Washington is using Ukraine as a battle ground to achieve their hegemonic goals against Russia. While Merkel and Hollande are attempting to negotiate a peace accord by meeting with Putin and Poroshenko, Kerry is deliberately undermining this attempt by independently asking Congress for funds to strengthen Kievs military capacity. Washington is not interested in peace because it doesn't fit with their battle to bankrupt Russia and unseat Putin. Porkyshenko is their loyal soldier in this battle and willing to sacrifice Ukranian lives. He sits in the command post in Kiev with his American allies, Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt.

Don Currie

A reenactment of 'Dr Strangelove' Starring Poroshenko

'Billionaire Poroshenko started his business by laundering the money of 'Soviet times’ administrators. He has never been an entrepreneur to start a business of his own. The story is invented. He made a head start thanks to the criminal connections of his father sentenced for large-scale theft in 1986. Having served the sentence, Poroshenko Sr. launched his own business and involved his son in the activities. Poroshenko Sr was rewarded for his merits in 2009 the Hero of Ukraine decoration bought for him by his son. The business was dirty, it all started with plundering state property. The Poroshenko family had plans to expand the activities beyond Ukraine.  Poroshenko is well known for misappropriating budget funds. He has the reputation of someone who knows how to make money out of thin air. Many times he has been accused of being involved in large scale corruption schemes, open lobbying, embezzlement of budget allocations, tax evasion, illegal operations to acquire shares, and physically threatening political opponents and competitors. '

Forbes lists Petro Poroshenko as the 130th wealthiest person in the world with 1.6 billion dollars. 

open lobbying
Poroshenko has received a hero’s welcome in the U.S. Congress, the Obama administration, and the media, as well including their counterparts in Canada. In fact, Poroshenko has recently addressed a joint session of Congress, an honor bestowed only on America’s closest allies, especially Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who has spoken twice to joint sessions. Netanyahu typically comes to Washington when he expects to return to Jerusalem with financial guarantees, military aid packages, and other largesse courtesy of the American taxpayers. Poroshenko and other leaders know this and try to emulate the influence of the Israel Lobby that ensures huge assistance packages for their client.

Corruption is a major problem for Ukraine. It has become a simple, effective and sometimes the only way to do things in a lot of cases: getting a medical certificate, the permit for construction or a job, entering a university. In most cases one has to grease the hand. Even to bury someone one must pay a bribe for a place at a cemetery.
 

Graft has become the main source of income for many public sector employees. This has largely eliminated the stimulus for the government and society to reform. Corruption has become the norm for governmental relations 

Depending on the region the bribe for avoiding being sent to war fluctuated from 500 euros to 2000 euros. Special pay is envisaged for a chance to choose the military service and the place of deployment. The failure to tackle the rampant and deep-seated corruption plaguing the Ukrainian people could quickly squash any optimism that the revolution and the recently signed EU Association Agreement herald a better future.

The speech to the joint session of Congress will place Poroshenko on the same level as other present and past U.S. allies. However, Poroshenko’s speech will be forgotten as soon at it is given. Today, few, if any, older members of Congress would recall similar addresses by NATO allies such as Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, Dutch Queen Beatrix, or Canadian Governor General Vincent Massey. All those speeches became, as will Poroshenko’s, insignificant footnotes of history.

Pavel Gubarev a leader of the Donetsk Republic (who was wounded and  hospitalized in an assassination attempt in October 2014) says: "We want to create a fundamentally new state based on social justice  and equality of people. We now have a chance, an opportunity to reboot . When people understand that the new state will protect their rights and interests, they will be happy and will support us. We wanted the new government to ensure the rights of the Russian-speaking population and to consider an autonomous status for the Donbas area. However, we never saw any desire of the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev to find a compromise. How will I explain to the families who have lost loved ones in the fighting what they died for if we negotiate with Kiev? For the return of the oligarchs?"

The yes vote in the self-rule referendum in the Donbas was born as much from a sense of difference between eastern and western Ukraine as from deep disillusionment about the extent to which the Ukrainian state symbolized the kind of social justice to which Gubarev aspires.

 Soviet-style egalitarianism mixed with cultural mythology,geography and the historical precedent of Donbas may not only appeal to those who supported the the referendum but is also an attractive geopolitical concept from Moscow’s perspective.

President Barack Obama during a meeting at the White House praised Petroshenko for signing the recent “Association Agreement” with the European Union and encouraging the military exercises being conducted in Ukraine by Ukrainian and NATO forces (also the Sea Breeze naval exercises recently completed with the US Navy in the Black Sea).

Canada Defense Minister Valery Heletey recently announced that NATO countries are delivering weapons to Ukraine for use against the Russian speaking population of eastern Ukraine. There are no guarantees that NATO weapons will not end up in the hands of ultra-rightwing Ukrainian militias from Kiev sporting Nazi helmets. These same miltias have entered eastern Ukraine with genocide in their foremost thoughts.

Putin has recommended forming a federal system of government in Ukraine that would give a freedom of expression between the different languages, and aspirations of the people in Kiev and those in the Eastern cities of Donestk and Luhansk.  Ukraine could successfully use this rational approach by following Canada's federal system that recognizes the distinct cultural and language differences of  it's French and English speaking  citizens.  Quebec where most of it's French speaking citizens live maintains strong cultural and commercial ties with France. 

The Kiev government is dysfunctional and bankrupt and is deploying Western taxpayer money to wage a vicious war on several million Russian-speaking citizens in the Donbas (Donestk and Luhansk region).This area is the traditional center of greater Russia’s coal, steel and industrial infrastructure. Donbas and Russia have been Siamese twins economically and politically for centuries. Under Poroshenko Kiev carries on with a senseless and murderous shelling and  bombing of these cities on it's eastern border with Russia. 

NATO is itching on the sidelines to enter the fray using the return of  Crimea to Russia as it's justification. The fact that Crimeans in an open vote overwhelmingly elected to leave Ukraine is of course viewed by Poroshenko as illegal even though there is precedence for such a vote in Kosovo's choice to declare independence from Serbia and Canada's referendum in 1995 on Quebec's choice whether to remain in Canada or become an independent state. 

Update Feb 24th 2015: Excerpts from Robert Parry's observations in Consortiumnews.com.

There is a madness to the Kiev regime that the West doesn’t want to recognize because to do so would upend the dominant narrative of “our” good guys vs. Russia’s bad guys. If we begin to notice that the right-wing regime in Kiev is crazy and brutal, we might also start questioning the “Russian aggression” mantra.The deputy foreign minister announced that Kiev is preparing for “full-scale war” against Russia and wants the West to supply lethal weapons and training so the fight can be taken to Russia.The deputy foreign minister, Prystaiko, announced that Kiev is preparing for “full-scale war” against Russia and wants the West to supply lethal weapons and training so the fight can be taken to Russia.Yet, what is perhaps most remarkable about Prystaiko’s “Dr. Strangelove” moment is that it produced almost no reaction in the West. You have a senior Ukrainian official saying that the world should risk nuclear war over a civil conflict in Ukraine between its west, which favors closer ties to Europe, and its east, which wants to maintain its historic relationship with Russia.

 No European government, since Adolf Hitler’s Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet, across the West’s media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality, even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established.

 Ask yourself why our mainstream media is hiding the truth from the American Public

 The New York Times and the Washington Post have spearheaded this journalistic malfeasance by putting on blinders so as not to see Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, such as when describing the key role played by the Azov battalion in the war against ethnic Russians in the east.

The Post’s stirring words fit with the Western media’s insistent narrative and its refusal to include meaningful background about the Azov battalion, which is known for marching under Nazi banners, displaying the Swastika and painting SS symbols on its helmets.

The New York Times filed a similarly disingenuous article from Mariupol on Feb. 11, depicting the ethnic Russian rebels as barbarians at the gate with the Azov battalion defending civilization. he Post’s stirring words fit with the Western media’s insistent narrative and its refusal to include meaningful background about the Azov battalion, which is known for marching under Nazi banners, displaying the Swastika and painting SS symbols on its helmets.

The New York Times filed a similarly disingenuous article from Mariupol on Feb. 11,2015 depicting the ethnic Russian rebels as barbarians at the gate with the Azov battalion defending civilization. The Times left out the salient and well-known fact that the Azov battalion is composed of neo-Nazis.

Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.
Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”


An Orwellian World
In a “normal world,” U.S. and European journalists would explain to their readers how insane all this is; how a dispute over the pace for implementing a European association agreement while also maintaining some economic ties with Russia could have been worked out within the Ukrainian political system, that it was not grounds for a U.S.-backed “regime change” last February, let alone a civil war, and surely not nuclear war.

 In our land of the free, there is no “official narrative” and the U.S. government would never stoop to propaganda. Everyone just happily marches in lockstep behind the conventional wisdom of a faultless Kiev regime that “shares our values” and can do no wrong — while ignoring the brutality and madness of coup leaders who deploy Nazis and invite a nuclear holocaust for the world.

 


Assistant Secretary of State for European/Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland of "fuck Europe" fame is  the wife of arch-neocon policy wonk Robert Kagan. While knowing full well Poroshenko's corrupt past she can be sure to line up Congress and the media to hype Porky as the “Saviour of Ukraine” while, at the same time heaping scorn on Russia. This is the same couple who advocated the disastrous wars in Iraq and Libya in the name of 'regime change' that destroyed those nations, leaving millions dead and clearly contributing to the birth of ISIS. They were only prevented from doing the same in Syria by Putin although they keep trying . Here she is handing out cookies in Ukraine. 

Who Shot Down Malaysian Flight MH17?

  
A lie gets half way around the World before the truth has a chance to put its pants on
Winston Churchill

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them
Galileo

telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

All truth goes through three phases. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third is is accepted as self-evident.
Schopenhauer 

Dutch Intellectuals Apologize to Putin for Lies on MH17

EDITOR'S CHOICE | 31.08.2014 | 01:29

 When a Malaysian Airlines flight carrying 289 civilian passengers was accidentally shot down in Ukraine the western press immediately accepted reports from Kiev that a rocket fired from Donetsk, a city located in the rebel sector of Ukraine blew up the aircraft.

 Only three days after the crash, Secretary of State Kerry did the rounds of the Sunday talk shows making what he deemed an 'extraordinary circumstantial' case supposedly proving that the rebels carried out the shoot-down with missiles provided by Russia. He acknowledged that the US government was 'not drawing the final conclusion here, but there is a lot that points at the need for Russia to be responsible.

The New York Times is filled with articles since the crash pointing the finger at Vladimir Putin. The Cold War is back. 


An August 7 article in the New Straits Times, Malaysia's flagship English-language newspaper, however charged the US- and European-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev with shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 in east Ukraine. The evidence in this article is substantial So where is the truth? Intelligence analysts in the United States have already concluded that Malaysia flight MH17 was shot down by an air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had something to do with it. This corroborates an emerging theory postulated by local investigators that the Boeing 777-200 was crippled by an air-to-air missile and finished off with cannon fire from a jet that had been shadowing it as it plummeted to earth."

 Some sections of the US intelligence have concluded that US Secretary of State John Kerry's claims that pro-Russian forces shot down the plane are lies.

 
Testimony by a Canadian-Ukrainian monitor for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Michael Bociurkiw was one of the first investigators to arrive at the crash site. Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on July 29, Bociurkiw said: "There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pockmarked with what almost looks like machine gun fire; very, very strong machine gun fire."

Another source the paper cited was an article, "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts," by former Associated Press reporter Robert Parry "Given the lack of any evidence supporting US charges that pro-Russian forces shot MH17 down with a Buk anti-aircraft missile some US intelligence analysts have concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault, and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these findings."

The US intelligence community lacked any satellite imagery supporting Kerry's allegations, and that the only Buk missile system in that part of Ukraine appeared to be under the control of the Ukrainian military."


Propaganda Value
This lack of transparency, of course, has a propaganda value since it leaves in place the widespread public impression that ethnic Russian rebels and Russian President Vladimir Putin were responsible for the 298 deaths, a rush to judgment that Secretary Kerry and other senior U.S. officials (and the Western news media) encouraged in July 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Once that impression took hold there has been little interest in Official Washington to clarify the mystery especially as evidence has emerged implicating elements of the Ukrainian military. For instance, Dutch intelligence has reported (and U.S. intelligence has implicitly confirmed) that the only operational Buk anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, were under the control of the Ukrainian military.
In a Dutch report released last October, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) reported that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian government.
MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. MIVD said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country.”
The intelligence agency added that the rebels lacked that capability: “Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude.”
One could infer a similar finding by reading a U.S. “Government Assessment” released by the Director of National Intelligence on July 22, 2014, five days after the crash, seeking to cast suspicion on the ethnic Russian rebels and Putin by noting military equipment that Moscow had provided the rebels. But most tellingly the list did not include Buk anti-aircraft missiles. In other words, in the context of trying to blame the rebels and Putin, U.S. intelligence could not put an operational Buk system in the rebels’ hands.
So, perhaps the most logical suspicion would be that the Ukrainian military, then engaged in an offensive in the east and fearing a possible Russian invasion, moved its Buk missile systems up to the front and an undisciplined crew fired a missile at a suspected Russian aircraft, bringing down MH-17 by accident.
That was essentially what I was told by a source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts in July and August 2014. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts” and “The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case.”]
But Ukraine is a principal participant in the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT), which has been probing the MH-17 case, and thus the investigation suffers from a possible conflict of interest since Ukraine would prefer that the world’s public perception of the MH-17 case continue to blame Putin. Under the JIT’s terms, any of the five key participants (The Netherlands, Ukraine, Australia, Belgium and Malaysia) can block release of information.
The interest in keeping Putin on the propaganda defensive is shared by the Obama administration which used the furor over the MH-17 deaths to spur the European Union into imposing economic sanctions on Russia.
In contrast, clearing the Russians and blaming the Ukrainians would destroy a carefully constructed propaganda narrative which has stuck black hats on Putin and the ethnic Russian rebels and white hats on the U.S.-backed government of Ukraine, which seized power after a putsch that overthrew elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014.
Accusations against Russia have also been fanned by propaganda outlets, such as the British-based Bellingcat site, which has collaborated with Western mainstream media to continue pointing the finger of blame at Moscow and Putin – as the Dutch investigators drag their heels and refuse to divulge any information that would clarify the case.

Finally, the New Straits Times and Parry both cited retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko, who has pointed to photographic evidence of MH17 wreckage suggesting that cockpit panels were raked with heavy machine gun fire from both the port and starboard sides. "Nobody before Haisenko had noticed that the projectiles had ripped through the panel from both its left side and its right side. This is what rules out any ground-fired missile," Parry wrote.

  These events also constitute yet another indictment of the Western media, who have completely blacked out the investigation of the crash of MH17. Instead, the elements in the CIA and their Ukrainian proxies driving the war in east Ukraine have been able to escalate the confrontation with Russia and demonize Putin, without any of their unsubstantiated accusations of Russian involvement in the MH17 crash being challenged.

"Silence denotes consent, and the deafening silence of the Western media on the issue of Kiev’s involvement in the MH17 crash testifies to the criminalization not only of the foreign policy establishment, but also of its media lackeys and the entire ruling class."

By Niles Williamson, WSWS

The US and European media have buried this remarkable report, which refutes the wave of allegations planted by the CIA in international media claiming that Russian president Vladimir Putin was responsible for the destruction of MH17, without presenting any evidence to back up this charge.

The media coverage is a classic example of turning a tragic accident into a tidy story that fits into a Cold War tirade supported by US and EU warriors that justifies destroying the Russian economy with relentless sanctions. 

Will the truth be finally sorted out?