By Mark Taliano
Huffington Post: March 12, 2014

The Bolivarian revolution itself, initiated by late president Hugo Chavez in 1998 and continuing with president Nicolas Maduro, is emblematic of the US’ s “problem”, even as the legitimacy of the revolution is beyond dispute:

Chavez, who died of cancer on Tuesday, March 5, 2013, won 18 of 19 contested elections in a country whose electoral system was described by former US president Jimmy Carter as “the best in the world”.

An icon of the Bolivarian revolution, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans mourned the loss of their leader at his funeral.

Though Maduro, Chavez’s successor, isn’t as popular, he still managed to win two national elections within the last year, including 76 per cent of mayoralties two months ago.

Corporate media, a core agency of western propaganda, has demonized Chavez for years, and continues to ignore or minimize the matrix of converging impulses that make the Bolivarian revolution an on-going success, so a list of the revolution’s stellar accomplishments will surprise many people who live in North America.

Some of the Bolivarian Revolution’s accomplishments are listed below:

-Between 1998 and 2011, the poverty rate dropped from 49% to 27.4%

-Venezuela’s extreme poverty rate dropped from 11.4% to 6.9% in ten years

-Venezuela reduced its extreme poverty rate from 6.3% to 5.5% in 2013 alone

-Venezuela now boasts the lowest Gini coefficient in Latin America (a measure of income inequality, lower numbers mean less inequality)

-Venezuelans have access to free and universal healthcare

-Access to quality education (at all levels) is guaranteed for all

-Food is deemed affordable

From 2006 to 2011, Venezuela moved up 7 spots in the United Nations’ Human Development Index , to 73 out of 187 countries

Unfortunately though, the U.S. is notoriously persistent, and quite expert in the arts and sciences of illegal regime change. Consequently, they are engaging in destructive, anti-democratic efforts to unseat the Maduro government, by employing “soft coup” strategies — for the benefit of the U.S, and the Venezuelan “elites”.

The CIA, in partnership with local elites/oligarchs, is orchestrating the coup, as they most recently did in Honduras, and as they have done for decades throughout the world.

The objective of coups is to create destabilization in the target country which creates popular discontent, a precursor to illegal regime change. Tactics employed include these:

-Economic destabilization

-Media manipulation

-Violent protests

Economic destabilization occurs when foodstuffs are hoarded, burned, or sent out of the country, as is currently happening. It also occurs when capital leaves the country (i.e the wealthy move their monies to other countries), when prices are falsely inflated, and when the power grid is disrupted.

Media is manipulated when peaceful protestors are depicted as being violent (through the use of misleading videos or doctored photos), when the number of opposition protestors is mischaracterized as being larger than it is, or in a myriad of other ways in which media messaging communicates false perceptions, as it does everywhere.

Opposition protests are always violent (in keeping with the coup formula), they have starting and ending times, and they occur in the wealthier areas, (because they do not have the support of the less affluent). Likewise, opposition protestors, sometimes armed, barricade streets, and occupy public spaces.

All of the destabilization tactics are designed to convey the impression that the government is incompetent, and that it needs to be changed. Ultimately, though, widespread support is needed, and in this respect, the opposition — though well-funded by the U.S. — has so far failed.

If the coup does succeed, it will be another victory for graft and corruption over democracy and the rule of law.

(read the full article at Huffington Post)

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By Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek
Truthdig: March 19, 2014

For her public act of protest against Russia Today’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory, and for supposedly advancing the agenda of Vladimir Putin in Washington, D.C., previously unknown news anchor Liz Wahl has suddenly become one of the most famous unemployed people in America. After her on-air resignation from the cable news channel, Wahl appeared on the three major American cable news outlets—CNN, Fox News, MSNBC—to denounce the heavy-handed editorial line she claims her bosses imposed on her and other staffers.

“What’s clear is what’s happening right now amid this crisis is that RT is not about the truth,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “It’s about promoting a Putinist agenda. And I can tell you firsthand, it’s also about bashing America.”

Wahl’s act of defiance eventually earned her invitations from “The View” and “The Colbert Report,” offering her the opportunity to introduce millions of Americans to a Russian government-funded network whose Nielsen ratings have been too low to measure, but which commands a massive following on YouTube. Wahl was the toast of Washington, winning plaudits from a variety of prime-time pundits, from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes (“remarkably badass”) to the conservative Amanda Carpenter (“Liz Wahl is proud to be an American and in the last five minutes I think she made everyone else proud to be one, too.”)

The celebration of Wahl fed directly into a BuzzFeed expose on “How The Truth Is Made at Russia Today,” with writer Rosie Gray painting a portrait of an “atmosphere of censorship and pressure” on American staffers toiling in RT’s D.C. offices. RT had long been the subject of criticism and ridicule for its promotion of Zeitgeist-style trutherism and libertarian paranoia, but Wahl now placed RT under unprecedented scrutiny, with mainstream U.S. media sounding the alarm about a bulwark of soft Russian power situated just blocks from the White House.

Behind the coverage of Wahl’s dramatic protest, a cadre of neoconservatives was celebrating a public relations coup. Desperate to revive the Cold War, head off further cuts to the defense budget and restore the legitimacy they lost in the ruins of Iraq, the tightknit group of neoconservative writers and stewards had opened up a new PR front through Wahl’s resignation. And they succeeded with no shortage of help from an ossified media establishment struggling to maintain credibility in an increasingly anarchic online news environment. With isolated skeptics branded as useful idiots for Putin, the scene has been kept clean of neoconservative fingerprints, obscuring their interest in Wahl’s resignation and the broader push to deepen tensions with Russia.

Through interviews with six current RT employees—all Americans with no particular affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin or his policies—and an investigation into the political forces managing the spectacle, a story has emerged that stands in stark contrast to the one advanced by Wahl, her supporters and the mainstream American press.

It is the story, according to former colleagues, of an apolitical, deeply disgruntled employee seeking an exit strategy from a job where, sources say, she was disciplined for unprofessional behavior and had been demoted. Wahl did not return several voice and text messages sent to her cellphone.

At the center of the intrigue is a young neoconservative writer and activist who helped craft Wahl’s strategy and exploit her resignation to propel the agenda of a powerful pro-war lobby in Washington.

The story began at 5:07 p.m. Eastern time on March 5.

PR From PNAC 2.0

It was a full 19 minutes before Wahl resigned. Inside the offices of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative think tank in Washington D.C., a staffer logged on to the group’s Twitter account to announce the following:

“#WordOnTheStreet says that something big might happen on RT in about 20-25 minutes.”

Then, at 5:16, exactly 10 minutes before Wahl would quit on air, FPI tweeted:

“#WordOnTheStreet says you’re really going to want to tune in to RT: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/ #SomethinBigMayBeGoingDown”

Up until two minutes before Wahl’s resignation, FPI took to Twitter again and again to urge its followers to tune in to RT.

And finally, at 5:26 p.m., at the very moment Wahl quit, FPI’s Twitter account broke the news: “RT Anchor RESIGNS ON AIR. She ‘cannot be part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin.’ ”

The tweets from FPI suggested a direct level of coordination between Wahl and the neoconservative think tank. Several calls to FPI for this story were not answered.

Just over an hour later, an exclusive interview with Wahl appeared at The Daily Beast. It was authored by James Kirchick, a 31-year-old writer whose work has appeared in publications from the neoconservative Commentary to the liberal Israeli paper Haaretz.

Kirchick acknowledged having been in contact with Wahl since August, but cast himself as a passive bystander to the spectacle, claiming that they merely “stayed in touch periodically over the past 6 months, and I always encouraged her to follow her conscience in making a decision about her professional future.”

Kirchick wrote that by quitting, Wahl paid “the price real reporters—not Russian-government funded propagandists—have to pay if they are concerned with quaint notions like objectivity and the truth.”

Later that evening, Kirchick tweeted a photo of himself with Wahl, hashtagging it as a “#FreedomSelfie.” The two had apparently gathered to celebrate.

By March 7, Kirchick and a camera person stationed themselves outside the office building on D.C.’s G Street housing RT America’s headquarters. On a self-proclaimed mission “to find out more about RT,” he badgered dozens of random passers-by with questions like the following: “What is a more appropriate punishment for the women of Pussy Riot: two years in a Siberian labor camp or public whipping by Cossacks?”

Kirchick says RT staffers called the D.C. police department to remove him from the premises. However, several RT staffers told us that a security guard notified the police because Kirchick had mistaken employees at two adjacent law firms for employees of RT—“the wannabe thugs at 1325 G St,” he called them—and began harassing them. (An update inserted at the bottom of The Daily Beast summary of the incident noted that it was building security and not RT staffers who called the D.C. police.)

So who was Kirchick, and what sort of commitment did he maintain to “objectivity and the truth?”

In fact, Kirchick was a senior fellow at FPI, the neoconservative think tank that had hyped up Wahl’s resignation minutes before she quit. Launched by Weekly Standard founder William Kristol and two former foreign policy aides to Mitt Romney, Dan Senor and Robert Kagan (the husband of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland), FPI grew directly out of the Project for a New American Century that led the public pressure campaign for a unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq after the Bin Laden-orchestrated 9/11 attacks.

In 2010, when FPI rose from the ashes of PNAC, whose name had become synonymous with warmongering, mendacity and strategic blundering, it pivoted away from Iraq toward “rising resurgent powers, including China and Russia,” according to its mission statement. Through a series of letters and manifestos urging President Barack Obama to take a more confrontational stance toward Russia, FPI has assiduously sought to establish the groundwork for a new Cold War.

On March 14, in The Weekly Standard, Kristol laid out FPI’s goals, writing that recent geopolitical crises could be exploited to reverse America’s “war-weary” post-Iraq attitude and prevent further cuts to defense spending.

“All that’s needed is the rallying,” he insisted. “And the turnaround can be fast.”

The echo chamber

Kirchick worked for part of 2011 out of Prague for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a media network funded by Congress (formerly backed by the CIA) that functions like the American answer to RT in Russian-aligned Eastern European countries. In November 2011, he accepted a fellowship at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an FPI-allied neoconservative think tank at the forefront of the campaign for U.S. military strikes and a draconian regime of sanctions against Iran. FDD has received at least $1.5 million from Sheldon Adelson, the pro-Israel casino baron and Republican mega-donor who suggested that the U.S. drop an “atomic weapon” on the Iranian desert. While Kirchick has occasionally trained his fire on critics of Israel, where Adelson promotes the political fortunes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and various Likud-linked organizations, he generally focuses on Russia and Eastern Europe, revising the militaristic positions established during the early days of neoconservatism.

“Neoconservatives have long had Russia as one of their main targets,” explained Jim Lobe, the Washington bureau chief of Inter Press Service and a leading expert on the neoconservative movement. “Since the end of the Cold War, they’ve been somewhat nostalgic for the Manichean framework in which enemies could be described as evil and allies could be described as on the right side no matter how authoritarian they were. That antipathy has been driven by the rise of Putin and the FPI has followed a consistently anti-Russian position, urging the U.S. to take hawkish positions vis-a-vis Russia over any number of issues, from the 2008 Russian-Georgian war to the Magnitsky Act to the current situation in Ukraine.”

Located in an office in Washington D.C.’s Dupont Circle, FPI exists at the physical heart of the neoconservative movement. Its office is, in fact, the same space listed as the home of the Emergency Committee for Israel, a Likud-oriented public relations group that wields Israel as a political wedge issue, routinely attacking Obama for being insufficiently supportive of Netanyahu’s policies and baselessly trashing Occupy Wall Street as a haven for anti-Semites.

Among ECI’s advisers is Michael Goldfarb, the 33-year-old founder of The Washington Free Beacon, a neoconservative online journal that churns out a relentlessly pro-Israel narrative, advocating war on Iran while vigorously defending Adelson against his detractors. At the same time, Goldfarb has worked as a lobbyist for D.C.-based Orion Strategies. And it was through that lobbying firm that he cultivated Kirchick and a cadre of neoconservative writers to generate commentary promoting the aims of the Republic of Georgia, a foreign client under the control at the time of the U.S.-oriented government of Mikheil Saakashvili.

With direct coaching and promotion from neoconservatives in Washington, Saakashvili adopted a confrontational stance toward Putin. In 2008, his American-trained military briefly intervened in the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, then retreated after a crushing defeat at the hands of the Russian military. Back in Washington, where Saakashvili’s government had pumped more than $1 million into the coffers of Orion Strategies since 2004, Goldfarb wined and dined his neoconservative pals on the Georgian government’s dime. As a result, a steady stream of columns and reports hyping the Russian menace appeared in targeted media outlets.

“Orion seeks to create a media echo chamber on Georgia and Russia,” journalist Ken Silverstein wrote in 2011. “Orion is friendly to and works with government officials and politicians who its reporter friends regularly cite. … Orion also works very closely with experts and organizations cited by these reporters, like the Foreign Policy Initiative. …”

According to Foreign Agents Registration Act documents filed by Orion with the Department of Justice, Goldfarb fed Georgian PR to Eli Lake, now a national security correspondent at The Daily Beast; Matthew Continetti, the Weekly Standard editor whom Goldfarb would hire to edit the Free Beacon; Jen Rubin, currently a Washington Post columnist who went on to take an ECI-sponsored trip to Israel; and Rosie Gray, the BuzzFeed reporter who produced the recent expose on RT. Ben Smith, who hired Gray to work at BuzzFeed, and who worked alongside Lake at the neoconservative New York Sun, was also named as a frequent Orion contact on Georgia. (BuzzFeed Foreign Editor Miriam Elder moderated a State Department-sponsored town hall featuring Secretary of State John Kerry on March 17).

Lake’s reporting on Georgia, documented in detail by Silverstein, offered a perfect prism into how the neocon echo chamber operated: Orion arranged seven interviews and numerous meetings with Georgian officials for him. In return, Lake ran a series of thinly sourced reports alleging dastardly deeds by Putin’s inner circle, including a bombing near the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi. In an interview with Lake, Saakashvili told him that “the bombings … were ordered at the most senior levels of the Russian government.” Days later, a U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that even if a Russian official was behind the bombings, he was not targeting U.S. interests and may have been acting in a rogue capacity.

As with Lake, Orion peddled interviews with Georgian officials to Kirchick and hosted him at multiple lavish, Georgian-funded dinners in D.C. where he kibitzed with members of the Georgian government. In May 2010, Kirchick traveled to Tbilisi on a trip sponsored by the government of Georgia, returning with a dispatch for Radio Free Europe describing the country as “a small, embattled democracy in a tough neighborhood”—a descriptor traditionally applied to the state of Israel by its hard-core supporters.

Kirchick’s zealous participation in a public relations campaign sponsored by a foreign government did not deter him from publishing a piece attacking U.S. lobbying firms ginning up PR on behalf of Russia. Any sense of irony was superseded by the single-minded determination to bring simmering tensions between Washington and Moscow to a boiling point. Thanks to the growing authoritarian tendencies of Putin, that goal appeared more achievable by the day.

Target: RT

On June 30, 2013, Putin signed into law a bill unanimously passed in the Russian Duma that banned the distribution of “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors.” By equating homosexuality with criminal pedophilia, the law was the culmination of an ongoing assault on the rights of Russia’s LGBT community. Crafted in deliberately ambiguous language, the legislation authorized fines for Russians found guilty of the new crime and mandated the deportation of foreigners accused of violations.

Exactly one month later, Kirchick published a thunderous condemnation in the New York Daily News—though not of Putin’s anti-gay law. His target was U.S. Army whistle-blower Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Accusing Manning of treason, Kirchick argued that Manning should have been executed, and that her supporters were consumed by “a vengeful, anti-state dogma directed mostly at one state: the United States.” Later that year, in a breathless, 10,674-word essay for right-wing Commentary, Kirchick branded NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden a traitor and suggested the label might apply to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill as well—“far more than a drop of treason runs through their veins,” he wrote.

On Aug. 21, Kirchick accepted an invitation to appear on RT to discuss his op-ed calling for Manning’s execution. But as soon as he appeared on air, the openly gay Kirchick slapped on a pair of rainbow-colored suspenders and delivered a tirade against Russia’s new anti-gay legislation.

“Being here on a Kremlin-funded propaganda network, I’m going to wear my gay pride suspenders and I’m going to speak out against the horrific anti-gay legislation that Vladimir Putin has signed into law,” he declared.

When the RT host asked Kirchick whether he had anything to say about Manning, he replied, “I’m not really interested in talking about Bradley Manning. I’m interested in talking about the horrific environment of homophobia in Russia right now.”

He proceeded to filibuster the panel, berating his host about media repression in Russia. “You have 24 hours a day to lie about what’s happening in the United States and to ignore what’s happening in Russia,” he exclaimed. “You have 24 hours to do that; I’m gonna take my two minutes and tell the truth.”

Rather than cut Kirchick off, an RT panelist attempted to engage him on Manning, then allowed him to hold forth for 20 seconds more.

Recorded off-air moments later, Kirchick removed his mic and remarked, “I only go on that station to fuck with the Russians.”

In an op-ed he wrote a day later for The Washington Post, Kirchick marveled that RT “allowed me to go on like this [about Russia’s anti-gay law] for more than two minutes.” Nevertheless, Goldfarb’s Free Beacon framed Kirchick’s RT appearance in a bold headline published exactly one hour after his on-air protest: “Gay Reporter Kicked Off Kremlin Network After Protesting Anti-Gay Law.” The narrative held firm in mainstream coverage of the incident, with CBS claiming Kirchick was “kicked off the air of a network funded by the Russian government. …”

Wahl watched with intense interest as Washington’s pundit class erupted in praise for Kirchick. The impudent young writer had become an overnight sensation while she had just been suspended from the anchor desk. In short order, according to RT sources, she and Kirchick began to plan her exit strategy.

Off the Wahl

Six current employees of RT were interviewed for this investigation. All are Americans who made no secret of their qualms with the network’s coverage of Russia-related issues. Some said they bristled at an increasingly suffocating atmosphere rife with heavy-handed editorial imposition, while others in different positions at the network said they still enjoyed a modicum of independence. All insisted on speaking anonymously for fear of repercussions. Four of the sources were personally acquainted with Wahl and worked or interacted with her on a regular basis.

Each of those who knew her described her as apolitical.

“She’s never had a political bone in her body,” said one RT employee.

“Liz has always been apolitical and without any clear principles,” said another. “She didn’t talk about any politics outside of work.”

An RT employee who worked closely with Wahl added that Wahl rarely voiced objections about the network’s news coverage. “We do have editorial meetings in the morning to bring up questions comments or concerns, an opportunity Liz rarely took,” said the employee.

Before joining RT, Wahl interned for the right-wing Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Last spring, according to four former co-workers, Wahl was suspended for two weeks without pay and then demoted from anchor to correspondent after a series of outbursts in the office. She had become disgruntled about her salary, the sources said, then began complaining that she was receiving insufficient assistance from producers in writing her monologues.

“Liz wasn’t disgruntled about anything editorially. It was entirely about payment,” one ex-colleague remarked. “She learned that another correspondent who has since left had made more money than her. But that’s because this correspondent had had six more years more experience than her.”

Wahl expressed her outrage at co-workers, often berating them, according to her former colleagues, and by “screaming” at management. She was ultimately suspended without pay for her unprofessional behavior, they told us, and demoted from anchor to correspondent until her duties were restored this past January. A review of RT America’s YouTube page shows that Wahl did not appear at the anchor desk during the latter half of 2013.

After Kirchick’s on-air performance on Aug. 21, RT employees said Wahl gushed about his actions—one of the few times they could remember her expressing a political opinion. As Kirchick revealed in his Daily Beast exclusive, it was around this time that he and Wahl became friends.

According to her former co-workers, Wahl traveled to New York City to interview for a position at the newly founded Al-Jazeera America. In December, she confided in a friend at RT that she was “super bummed”—she had been rejected for the job. She became despondent, according to a former colleague, bemoaning that she had not appeared at the anchor desk for a full six months because of her demotion.

At the time, the former colleague said Wahl told the same employee that she had been approached by an unnamed person who wanted her to help undermine RT. “Liz said to me, ‘I’m working with someone right now who wants to take down RT and wants me to write this hit piece,’ ” the employee told us. “She asked me what I thought and I told her it would be really messed up and not to do it. She said, ‘You’re right.’ ”

The employee added, “[Kirchick’s] obviously been trying to charm her into doing this for a while.”

The overthrow of Ukraine’s Russian-oriented government on Feb. 22 and the Russian invasion of Crimea five days later sent shockwaves through RT’s Washington bureau. Abby Martin, a host of the RT program “Breaking the Set,” who was known for her trenchant critiques of mainstream U.S. media and denunciations of American militarism, was among the staffers who bristled at Putin’s actions.

In the final segment of a March 3 broadcast of her show, Martin lashed out at the invasion: “I can’t stress how strongly I am against any state intervention in any sovereign nation’s affairs. What Russia did is wrong. … I will not sit here and defend military aggression.”

She continued: “My heart goes out to the Ukrainian people who are wedged as pawns in a global power chess game. They’re the real losers here. All we can do is hope for a peaceful resolution and prevent another Cold War between multiple superpowers.”

But Martin did not resign. Instead, she appeared in the coming days on American cable news networks chiding mainstream hosts for their own self-censorship around U.S. military interventionism and blasted the six corporations that control 90 percent of the U.S. media. “You guys are beholden to advertisers that you cannot criticize,” she told CNN’s Piers Morgan. “And that’s why I work for a station I can criticize.”

Martin would not be a useful tool for American interventionists, nor would she accept RT’s offer to travel to Crimea.

Martin’s minute-long commentary put Wahl on the spot. Two days later, Wahl decided it was time to pull the string on her parachute and hope for a safe landing. She cited RT’s alleged censorship of an interview she conducted with former Republican Rep. Ron Paul as her final straw, however Paul insisted that “what [RT] reported was exactly what I said.”

(Read the full article at Truthdig)

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By Philip Giraldi
Antiwar: March 18, 2014

On March 6th President Barack Obama signed an executive order “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine” which permits Washington to seize the assets of any “United States person” who opposes current US policies vis-à-vis that country. The order claims absurdly that the status quo in Ukraine and the Crimean referendum constitute a “national emergency” for the United States. Anyone who directly or indirectly is involved in “actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine” can have his or her assets seized. That means if you think a referendum by Crimeans that might result in union with Russia is not necessarily a bad idea and you write a letter to the local paper saying so it could be good-bye bank account. There is no appeal mechanism in the executive order.

Obama’s transition to the tin hat brigade is eerily similar to an order signed by George W. Bush in 2007, the “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.” Taking both orders together, it is a clear indication of how low we have sunk so as to penalize any dissent over policies that have never been openly debated or voted on by the American public, but I suppose Bush would explain proudly that he “brought democracy” to Iraq while Obama would change the subject by noting that he killed Usama bin-Laden. Either way, the criminalizing of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights ends up making the rest of what happens relatively unimportant, nothing more than what our war masters refer to as collateral damage.

I am no expert on what is going on in Ukraine, apart from speaking a little Russian, an ability which many Ukrainian citizens reportedly also have. But it is clear that some unfortunate patterns relating to the past twenty years or so appear to be resurfacing in spite of the fact that most observers would likely agree that Washington has made a complete hash of the post-bipolar world that has prevailed since 1991. We are already seeing Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, demonized for years in the mainstream media, compared to Hitler by no less than Hillary Clinton and a supporting chorus of neocons. We are back in the bunkers and it is 1938 in Munich. Again we are being called on to oppose evil, the same clarion call sounded over every overseas crisis for the past twenty years.

But the evil is us. We started the Ukraine problem by meddling with a democratically elected Ukrainian government which was admittedly corrupt and autocratic, but legal nonetheless. We openly provided the type of support that enabled a diverse group of demonstrators to bring President Viktor Yanukovich down and US diplomats spoke on a phone about who might head an alternative government that would be to Washington’s taste.

And the seeds of the conflict, one of a series that have roiled Eastern Europe for the past twenty years, were actually planted earlier when the United States violated an understanding with Moscow not to take advantage of the fall of the Soviet empire by advancing its zone of influence. Nearly all Eastern Europe states now have a relationship with the western dominated European Union, some as full members, and most are also in NATO, a defensive alliance aimed at Russia. If Moscow is alarmed, it has a right to be so.

Ukraine, once referred to as “little Russia” because of its cultural similarity to its larger neighbor is the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox faith, and sits squarely on Russia’s border. Putin, a Russian nationalist, could not ignore a threat to Moscow’s national security, just as the United States would never look the other way in the event of a takeover in Mexico by a mob aligned with either Russia or China, so how this crisis has been playing out should not surprise anyone.

A little history is in order. The Crimea, part of Ukraine only since 1954, was a Tartar Khanate under the protection of the Ottoman Empire until it was annexed by Catherine the Great in 1783. It became part of Russia, its capital Sebastopol the only Russian ice free naval base, operating on the Black Sea. Most Crimeans identify ethnically as Russians rather than as Ukrainians and Russia continues to operate its major naval base, complete with a large garrison, under a long term bilateral agreement with the Ukrainian government. Russia sees its ability to use the Crimea as a vital national security interest and it is hard to deny that Moscow has a legitimate stake regarding what occurs in Ukraine.

In post-Soviet Europe there were indeed good practical reasons to encourage the transition to popular government of some kind for nations that had suffered under totalitarianism for forty-five years, but the process has both gotten out of hand and has focused too much on introducing western democratic norms without any regard for local ability to absorb such an development. This has meant that aspiring politicians who are good at talking democracy (and often speak English) generally get Washington’s support in their pastel revolutions and then out to be either completely corrupt or hopelessly incompetent leaders. This process is currently playing out in Ukraine, as it played out earlier in places like Georgia. As in the case of Georgia, which was the aggressor in a war with Russia, we Americans are being told that we must stand by Ukraine with military support, a short hand way to suggest that the US must stop Russia now even if it does mean starting World War III. Senator John McCain is, as usual, leading the charge, claiming that Russia is a “gas station masquerading as a country.” If I were Putin I might well respond that McCain is a psychopath pretending to be a statesman.

All of the above would seem to indicate that Washington would be wise to pause and consider its actual interests in Ukraine. I would suggest that there are no actual American interests, not even the good old Obama tried-and-true universal excuse to intervene “Responsibility to protect” or R2P, as there are no massacres taking place.

So here is the simple truth about Ukraine – we have no genuine national interests there and we are needlessly provoking Russia which does have legitimate interests. Putin might not be Adlai Stevenson, but he is a reliable actor on the world stage who will do what he thinks is best for his country and will do it regardless of what Europeans or Americans think. He also, not irrelevantly, has enough nuclear weapons and delivery systems to destroy both the United States and the rest of the world. Washington, meanwhile, has little leverage over what is happening anyway and it has to be a complete mystery why there is a passion to “do something,” particularly when doing something will no doubt make most things worse, just as it has almost everywhere since 1991. Slapping on sanctions and pouring billions of dollars we don’t have into a bottomless pit is not rational. Risking bringing back the Cold War just because we can in support of a group of Ukrainian new “leaders” that we understand as poorly as we do the leaders in the Syrian insurgency is folly.

(Read the full article and find source links at Antiwar.com)

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By Iskandar Arfaoui
Global Research: March 18, 2014

As the US and the European Union impose sanctions on 21 officials from Russia and Ukraine for helping the people of Crimea to make a democratic choice to become a part of the Russian Federation, one specific question arises – where were all the sanctions when the West was carrying out genuinely illegal wars and interventions that resulted in destruction and thousands of innocent civilians being killed?

Unlike Russia, which has not fired one single shot in Crimea, nor has been seen as an invader by the people of Crimea, the West, primarily the United States and NATO countries, have caused havoc and destruction all over the world with little or no repercussions. Below are just three examples which warrant toughest sanctions to be imposed on Western powers.

The Iraq War

The Lancet journal in 2006 published an estimate of 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths related to the war of which 601,027 were caused by violence. In terms of financial costs, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the US will have spent almost $802bn (£512.8bn) on funding the war by the end of fiscal year 2011, with $747.6bn (£478bn) already appropriated. The dire consequences of Western invasion continued way beyond 2003. Sectarian violence in the conflict began to grow from early 2005. But the destruction of an important Shia shrine in February 2006 saw attacks between Sunni and Shia militias increase dramatically. This caused many Iraqi families to abandon their homes and move to other areas within the country or to flee abroad. The International Organization for Migration, IOM, which monitors numbers of displaced families, estimates that in the four years 2006-2010, as many as 1.6 million Iraqis were internally displaced, representing 5.5% of the population.

Libyan Bloody intervention

The intervention in Libya was supposed to be about saving lives and protecting civilians from the murdered Colonel Gaddafi. Instead it quickly became a catastrophe. Firstly, it is important to note that NATO acted completely outside its mandate. Secondly, just as currently in Syria, the West supported vile and blood thirsty rebels who took it upon themselves to create massacre after massacre. Amnesty International has produced compendious evidence of mass abduction and detention, beating and routine torture, killings and atrocities by the rebel militias Britain, France and the US have backed. Throughout that time African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. What is now known, is that while the death toll in Libya when NATO intervened was perhaps around 1,000-2,000 (judging by UN estimates), eight months later it became more than ten times that figure. Estimates of the numbers of dead range from 10,000 up to 50,000. The National Transitional Council puts the losses at 30,000 dead and 50,000 wounded. Currently, Libya continues to be in a state of anarchy with frequent assassinations, complete lack of security and towns controlled by aggressive militia.

US Drone Strikes

The impact of President Barack Obama’s drone strikes has been devastating to many communities in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan. In Pakistan alone, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals. Where media accounts do report civilian casualties, rarely is any information provided about the victims or the communities they leave behind. Furthermore, current US targeted killings and drone strike practices undermine respect for the rule of law and international legal protections and may set dangerous precedents. There is clear doubt on the legality of strikes on individuals or groups not linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and who do not pose imminent threats to the US. The US government’s failure to ensure basic transparency and accountability in its targeted killing policies, to provide necessary details about its targeted killing program, or adequately to set out the legal factors involved in decisions to strike hinders necessary democratic debate about a key aspect of US foreign and national security policy.

(Read the full article at Global Research)

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Institution that ignores its own citizens’ referendums decries Crimea vote as undemocratic

The EU’s Stunning Hypocrisy on Crimea

By Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars: March 17, 2014

The European Union’s characterization of the Crimean vote to join Russia as “undemocratic” is laced with stunning hypocrisy given that the EU ignored its own citizens when they rejected the European Constitution on numerous occasions.

Following yesterday’s referendum in which people in the black sea peninsula voted 97% in favor of becoming part of the Russian federation, the EU responded by slapping sanctions on 21 Russian and Ukrainian officials, declaring the referendum to be “illegal”.

That’s standard operating procedure for the European Union, which habitually denigrates the will of its own people by ignoring popular votes and referendums if it doesn’t like the result.

When voters in both France and the Netherlands rejected the EU Constitution in 2005, instead of accepting the outcome, the European Union simply re-named the Constitution and re-introduced it as the Lisbon Treaty, forcing Europeans to vote once again.

Even when Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, the EU simply changed the rules which mandated that the treaty could only be passed with a unanimous vote from all member states and passed it anyway, flying in the face of any notion of democracy.

In brazenly declaring that the EU would ignore referendums, Giscard d’Estaing even went on record to admit that the Lisbon Treaty “had been carefully crafted to confuse the public.”

By denouncing Crimea’s vote as undemocratic and illegal, the EU is displaying its usual brand of jaw-dropping hypocrisy. This is an institution that has repeatedly violated the democratic will of its own citizens by holding recurring referendums until Europeans simply gave in and accepted the result the bureaucratic parasites in Brussels were pushing for all along.

The United States and the EU’s denunciation of the Crimean vote is also beyond a joke when one considers the fact that the initial Euromaidan uprising, which led to the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government, was bankrolled by the United States itself via the State Department in concert with groups such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy.

(Read the full article at Infowars)

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RT: March 17, 2014

President Vladimir Putin has signed an order that Russia recognizes Crimea as a sovereign and independent state. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea held a referendum on Sunday with over 96% voting for integration into Russia.

“According to the will of the peoples of the Crimea on the all-Crimean referendum held on March 16, 2014, [I order] to recognize the Republic of Crimea, in which the city of Sevastopol has a special status, as a sovereign and independent state,” the document reads.

The order comes into force immediately.

Crimea was declared an independent sovereign state, the Republic of Crimea, on Monday, the autonomous Ukrainian regional parliament’s website stated.

Crimea also addressed the UN seeking recognition as a sovereign state.

“The Republic of Crimea intends to build its relations with other states on the basis of equality, peace, mutual neighborly cooperation, and other generally agreed principles of political, economic and cultural cooperation between states,” the parliament said.

The Crimean parliament also unanimously voted to integrate the region into Russia.

The parliament’s resolution comes after Sunday’s referendum which resulted in over 96 percent of voters answering ‘yes’ to the autonomous republic joining Russia. The overall voter turnout in the referendum was 81.37%, according to the head of the Crimean parliament’s commission on the referendum, Mikhail Malyshev.

(Read the full article at RT)

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By Patrick Armstrong
Ron Paul Institute For Peace & Prosperity: March 16, 2014

If, as seems to be generally expected, today’s referendum in Crimea produces a substantial majority in favour of union with the Russian Federation, what will Moscow’s reaction be?

I strongly expect that it will be……

Nothing.

There are several reason why I think this. One is that Moscow is reluctant to break up states. I know that that assertion will bring howls of laughter from the Russophobes who imagine that Putin has geography dreams every night but reflect that Russia only recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after Georgia had actually attacked South Ossetia. The reason for recognition was to prevent other Georgian attacks.

Behind that was the memory of the chaos caused in the Russian North Caucasus as an aftermath of Tbilisi’s attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the 1990s. Russia is a profoundly status quo country – largely because it fears change would lead to something worse – and will not move on such matters until it feels it has no other choice. We are not, I believe, quite at that point yet on Crimea let alone eastern Ukraine.

Moscow can afford to do nothing now because time is on its side. The more time passes, the more people in the West will learn who the new rulers of Kiev are (finally, the news has reached the USA: “It’s become popular to dismiss Russian President Vladimir Putin as paranoid and out of touch with reality. But his denunciation of ‘neofascist extremists’ within the movement that toppled the old Ukrainian government, and in the ranks of the new one, is worth heeding.” Sanctions cut both ways. Driving Russia and China (and the rest of the BRICS) together is not a triumph of “smart power”; especially if they decide that US securities are not, in fact, a reliable investment.

The cost of supporting even the western rump of Ukraine is one that no one wants to pay. Militarily the mighty West can do little short of starting a nuclear war which would even-handedly destroy everyone. Western populations have lost their enthusiasm for glorious little wars for human rights. The propaganda line is not selling as well as it did in 2008 and one can see this reading the disbelieving comments on news items: see here, here, here, here for recent examples. China is clearing its throat.

The more time passes, the more Western elder statesmen come out against the rhetoric – the most recent being Gerhard Schroeder and Helmut Kohl. The sniper phonecall intercept has now been bolstered by the testimony of the former chief of the Ukrainian Security Service. Because the story is still mostly on the Russian media, the Western MSM can continue to ignore it; but it may be too big in a week to ignore. For all these reasons, Moscow won’t lose anything by waiting a week or two or three.

Then there are the hollow threats. US Secretary of State Kerry is quoted as saying: “There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself… If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue … there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” But, typically, he is already backpeddling: “We hope President Putin will recognize that none of what we’re saying is meant as a threat, it’s not meant in a personal way. It is meant as a matter of respect for the international, multilateral structure that we have lived by since World War II, and for the standards of behavior about annexation, about succession, about independence, and how countries come about it.” Suppose, come Monday, Moscow says nothing at all. Then what? More threats unless Moscow stops doing nothing? The truly powerful never make threats; they make promises. There is simply no comparison between the competence and determination of Putin’s team and those on the American and EU side.

The fact is that Russia hasn’t actually done anything. It hasn’t “invaded” Crimea; why even the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn’t have evidence they are Russian troops. It certainly hasn’t “annexed” Crimea. It hasn’t invaded eastern Ukraine or even threatened it. It has held some “long-scheduled” military exercises (one of which will probably come to a “long-scheduled” ending on Monday). It has issued statements (which are “promises” not “threats”) and refused to recognise the new regime in Kiev. It knows that the US/EU case is crumbling and losing support; it knows that to win, it need only do nothing and do it calmly and determinedly – a sort of zen judo.

If, on the other hand, tomorrow’s referendum produces a majority for staying in Ukraine, what will Moscow’s reaction be?

I strongly expect that it will be……

Nothing.

And the same for any other result.

Let the West fume and issue cheap threats, Moscow is in the stronger position.

The chickens light-heartedly thrown aloft by Washington and Brussels are coming home and no one can stop them from roosting.

(Read the full article at Ron Paul Institute For Peace & Prosperity)

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By Patrick Cockburn
Independent: March 16, 2014

The Libyan former prime minister Ali Zeidan fled last week after parliament voted him out of office. A North Korean-flagged oil tanker, the Morning Glory, illegally picked up a cargo of crude from rebels in the east of the country and sailed safely away, despite a government minister’s threat that the vessel would be “turned into a pile of metal” if it left port: the Libyan navy blamed rough weather for its failure to stop the ship. Militias based in Misrata, western Libya, notorious for their violence and independence, have launched an offensive against the eastern rebels in what could be the opening shots in a civil war between western and eastern Libya.

Without a central government with any real power, Libya is falling apart. And this is happening almost three years after 19 March 2011 when the French air force stopped Mu’ammer Gaddafi’s counter-offensive to crush the uprising in Benghazi. Months later, his burnt-out tanks still lay by the road to the city. With the United States keeping its involvement as low-profile as possible, Nato launched a war in which rebel militiamen played a secondary, supportive role and ended with the overthrow and killing of Gaddafi.

A striking feature of events in Libya in the past week is how little interest is being shown by leaders and countries which enthusiastically went to war in 2011 in the supposed interests of the Libyan people. President Obama has since spoken proudly of his role in preventing a “massacre” in Benghazi at that time. But when the militiamen, whose victory Nato had assured, opened fire on a demonstration against their presence in Tripoli in November last year, killing at least 42 protesters and firing at children with anti-aircraft machine guns, there was scarcely a squeak of protest from Washington, London or Paris.

Coincidentally, it was last week that Al-Jazeera broadcast the final episode in a three-year investigation of the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people in 1988. For years this was deemed to be Gaddafi’s greatest and certainly best-publicised crime, but the documentary proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of carrying out the bombing, was innocent. Iran, working through the Palestinian Front for The Liberation of Palestine – General Command, ordered the blowing up of Pan Am 103 in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane by the US navy earlier in 1988.

Much of this had been strongly suspected for years. The new evidence comes primarily from Abolghasem Mesbahi, an Iranian intelligence officer who later defected and confirmed the Iranian link. The US Defense Intelligence Agency had long ago reached the same conclusion. The documentary emphasises the sheer number of important politicians and senior officials over the years who must have looked at intelligence reports revealing the truth about Lockerbie, but still happily lied about it.

It is an old journalistic saying that if you want to find out government policy, imagine the worst thing they can do and then assume they are doing it. Such cynicism is not deserved in all cases, but it does seem to be a sure guide to western policy towards Libya. This is not to defend Gaddafi, a maverick dictator who inflicted his puerile personality cult on his people, though he was never as bloodthirsty as Saddam Hussein or Hafez al-Assad.

But the Nato powers that overthrew him – and by some accounts gave the orders to kill him – did not do so because he was a tyrannical ruler. It was rather because he pursued a quirkily nationalist policy backed by a great deal of money which was at odds with western policies in the Middle East. It is absurd to imagine that if the real objective of the war was to replace Gaddafi with a secular democracy that the West’s regional allies in the conflict should be theocratic absolute monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. This is equally true of Western and Saudi intervention in Syria which has the supposed intention of replacing President Bashar al-Assad with a freely elected government that will establish the rule of law.

Libya is imploding. Its oil exports have fallen from 1.4 million barrels a day in 2011 to 235,000 barrels a day. Militias hold 8,000 people in prisons, many of whom say they have been tortured. Some 40,000 people from the town of Tawergha south of Misrata were driven from their homes which have been destroyed. “The longer Libyan authorities tolerate the militias acting with impunity, the more entrenched they become, and the less willing to step down” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Putting off repeated deadlines to disarm and disband militias only prolongs the havoc they are creating throughout the country.”

Unfortunately, the militias are getting stronger not weaker. Libya is a land of regional, tribal, ethnic warlords who are often simply well-armed racketeers exploiting their power and the absence of an adequate police force. Nobody is safe: the head of Libya’s military police was assassinated in Benghazi in October while Libya’s first post-Gaddafi prosecutor general was shot dead in Derna on 8 February. Sometimes the motive for the killing is obscure, such as the murder last week of an Indian doctor, also in Derna, which may lead to an exodus of 1,600 Indian doctors who have come to Libya since 2011 and on whom its health system depends.

Western and regional governments share responsibility for much that has happened in Libya, but so too should the media. The Libyan uprising was reported as a simple-minded clash between good and evil. Gaddafi and his regime were demonised and his opponents treated with a naïve lack of scepticism and enquiry. The foreign media have dealt with the subsequent collapse of the Libyan state since 2011 mostly by ignoring it, though politicians have stopped referring to Libya as an exemplar of successful foreign intervention.

(Read the full article at Independent)

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About 93% of Crimeans in referendum voted to join Russia – exit poll

RT: March 16, 2014

About 93 percent of voters in the Crimean referendum have answered ‘yes’ to the autonomous republic joining Russia and only 7 percent of the vote participants want the region to remain part of Ukraine, according to first exit polls.

Polling stations closed in Crimea after the referendum where residents were to decide on the future status of the region.

“The results of the referendum exit polls in Crimea and Sevastopol: 93 percent voted for the reunion of Crimea with Russia as a constituent unit of the Russian Federation. 7 percent voted for the restoration of the 1992 constitution of the Republic of Crimea and Crimea’s status as part of Ukraine,” the Crimean republican institute for political and social research said in a statement as cited by RIA Novosti.

The overall voter turnout in the referendum on the status of Crimea is about 85%, according to the republic’s prime minister Sergey Aksyonov.

The preliminary results of the popular vote in Sevastopol are expected to be announced at 2030 GMT during a meeting in the center of the city that hosts Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Over a half of the Tatars living in the port city took part in the referendum, with the majority of them voting in favor of joining Russia, reports Itar-Tass citing a representative of the Tatar community Lenur Usmanov.

About 40% of Crimean Tatars went to polling stations on Sunday, said Aksyonov.

In Simferopol, the capital of the republic, at least 15,000 have gathered to celebrate the referendum in central Lenin square and people reportedly keep arriving. Demonstrators, waving Russian and Crimean flags, are watching a live concert and awaiting the announcement of preliminary results of the voting.

International observers are planning to present their final declaration on the Crimean referendum on March 17, the head of the monitors’ commission, Polish MP Mateush Piskorski told journalists. He added that the voting was held in line with international norms and standards.

Next week, Crimea will officially introduce the ruble as a second official currency along with Ukrainian hryvna, Aksyonov told Interfax. In his words, the dual currency will be in place for about six months.

Overall, the republic’s integration into Russia will take up to a year, the Prime Minister said, adding that it could be done faster. However, they want to maintain relations with “economic entities, including Ukraine,” rather than burn bridges.

(Read the full article at RT)

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