Obama’s Former Foreign Policy Adviser Said – In 1997 – that the U.S. Had to Gain Control of Ukraine

Washington’s Blog : March 16, 2014

The Battle for Ukraine Was Planned in 1997 … Or Earlier

Neoconservatives planned regime change throughout the Middle East and North Africa 20 years ago. Robert Parry correctly points out that the Neocons have successfully “weathered the storm” of disdain after their Iraq war fiasco. But the truth is that Obama has long done his best to try to implement those Neocon plans.

Similarly, ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. has pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran.

In 1997, Obama’s former foreign affairs adviser, and president Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser – Zbigniew Brzezinski – wrote a book called The Grand Chessboard arguing arguing that the U.S. had to take control of Ukraine (as well as Azerbaijan, South Korea, Turkey and Iran) because they were “critically important geopolitical pivots”.

Regarding Ukraine, Brzezinski said (hat tip Chris Ernesto):

Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.

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However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.

And now Obama is pushing us into a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine and the Crimea.

As Ernesto notes:

Late last year when Ukraine’s now-ousted president Viktor Yanukovych surprisingly canceled plans for Ukrainian integration into the European Union in favor of stronger ties with Russia, the US may have viewed Ukraine as slipping even further out of its reach.

At that point, with the pieces already in place, the US moved to support the ousting of Yanukovych, as evidenced by the leaked phone conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland [arch-Neocon Robert Kagan’s wife] and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. When peaceful protests were not effective in unseating Yanukovych, the violence of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party and Right Sector was embraced, if not supported by the west.

In today’s Ukraine, the US runs the risk of being affiliated with anti-Semitic neo-Nazis, a prospect it probably feels can be controlled via a friendly western media. But even if the risk is high, the US likely views it as necessary given the geopolitical importance of Ukraine, as Brzezinski mapped out in 1997.

(Read the full article and find source links at Washington’s Blog)

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Gaza’s only power station forced to shut down over fuel shortage

Gaza is bracing for a “humanitarian crisis” after its only power station was shut down due to a lack of fuel from Israel. The Israeli government closed the Kerem Shalom crossing this week, effectively severing the fuel supply to Gaza.

In the wake of a number of rocket attacks on Israeli territory on Wednesday, the Israeli government closed all borders with Gaza and suspended the delivery of all commercial goods to the region. As a consequence of the sanctions, Gaza’s only power station ran out of fuel Saturday.

“The plant has completely ceased to function due to a lack of fuel caused by (Israel’s) closure of the Kerem Shalom crossing,” said Fathi al-Sheikh Khalil, deputy director of the energy authority in the Palestinian territory ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement to AFP.

The Gaza power plant provides about a third of Gaza’s electricity needs, while the rest of the territory’s energy is provided by Egypt and Israel.

Fathi al-Sheikh Khalil told Turkish news agency Anadolu that the lack of fuel would lead to electricity being cut off 16 hours a day in Gaza.

“Gaza is bracing for a humanitarian catastrophe if the crossing remains closed,” said Khalil, who has urged the international community to put pressure on Israel to open up the Kerem Shalon border crossing.

(Read the full article at RT)

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RT: March 14, 2014

The recognition of Kosovo independence set a precedent that gives Crimeans, as well as Basques and Catalans, a right for self-determination, German opposition leader said, lashing out against Angela Merkel’s support of sanctions against Russia.

Gregor Gysi, a parliamentary head of the largest lower-house opposition party in Germany – the Left Party – has spoken out on Thursday against German Chancellor’s unquestioning support of the coup-appointed Ukrainian government.

“They formed a new government….. Immediately recognized by president Obama by the EU and German government as well. Miss Merkel! The vice- prime minister, the defense minister, minister of agriculture, environment minister, the attorney general.. They are fascists!” he stated.

Gysi was furious that Germany is doing nothing to address the extreme right threat in Ukraine.

“With fascists in Ukraine we are doing nothing. Svoboda party has tight contacts with NPD and other Nazi parties in Europe.. The leader of this party, Oleg Tyagnibok, has recalled that literally.”

The Left’s leader went on to read a quote from Tyagnibok, where he publically urged people in Ukraine to “Grab the guns, fight the Russian pigs, the Germans, the Jews pigs and others.”

“And with these Svoboda people we are still in conversation! I find it as a scandal!” Gysi told his fellow politicians.

Gysi said that NATO opened Pandora’s Box by recognising the unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo and that Crimea’s secession from Ukraine applies the same pattern of international law.

“With Kosovo, they opened Pandora’s box. What’s allowed for Kosovo, you should also allow for others. I told you this but you haven’t listened to me. Winning the Cold War has eclipsed everything for you, you forgot about everything else,” Gysi said.

“The Basques are asking why can’t they make their choice, whether they want to stay within Spain or not? Catalonians are asking, why can’t they decide whether they want to belong to Spain or not. Of course people living in Crimea are asking the same thing.”

“I think that Crimea breaking away from Ukraine is just the same as Kosovo. I knew Putin would use this argument, and he did,” the politician said. “It must be found, such status for the Crimea, which will be acceptable for Ukraine, Russia, and us.”

(Read the full article at RT)

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The difference in the Ukraine intervention from others the West has conducted is that the terminally adolescent political leaders who run the West have run smack dab into a decisive, realistic, and nationalistic adult, in the person of Vladimir Putin, and they do not know what to do.

Russia Annexing Crimea is the Cost of US/EU intervention in Ukraine

By Michael Scheuer
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity: March 13, 2014

One wonders how deep a hole the United States and the EU are going to dig for themselves in Ukraine. It was, of course, U.S. and EU leaders — and their media acolytes — who caused the problem we face today by intervening on behalf of self-styled “democrats” in Kiev who without foreign intervention could not have overthrown the Ukrainian president.

It is getting to be that any half-baked gaggle of protestors at any location on the planet need only to chant the word “democracy” and the West will come running to their aid with diplomatic assistance, money, and a fierce disregard for either the target nation’s sovereignty or regional stability. Indeed, it may well be that the whole Ukraine protest movement was primed for action by funds, advisers, and computer systems paid for by Hillary Clinton’s State Department in a program similar to those she ran in several Arab countries.

The difference in the Ukraine intervention from others the West has conducted is that the terminally adolescent political leaders who run the West have run smack dab into a decisive, realistic, and nationalistic adult, in the person of Vladimir Putin, and they do not know what to do. They are learning that the Ukraine is not Libya or Egypt in that Putin will not to let the West make of Ukraine — or at least of Crimea — the same unholy mess its earlier unwarranted interventions made of Egypt and Libya. Putin has a very clear view of Russia’s genuine national interests, and reliable access to the Crimean base of the Black Sea fleet is one of them, it has been for centuries, and it will remain so in the future.

Western leaders, on the other hand, have not a clue about what constitutes a genuine national interest. In this regard, their intervention in Ukraine speaks volumes. Neither the U.S. nor the EU can point to a national interest in Ukraine; their obsession with spreading “democracy” is childish, ahistorical, destabilizing, and potentially war causing.

Washington and its EU partners increasingly behave like the wildmen who ran the French Revolution. Those miscreants took that revolution’s cant — liberty, equality, and fraternity — and sought to use it to change governments in Europe and the United States if they did not bow to the demands of the French revolutionaries. They fomented insurrection across Europe and did so with incendiary propaganda printed in all the appropriate languages, as well as with covert action operations — like that conducted by Citizen Genet, with Jefferson’s acquiescence, in the United States. In the end, the practice of revolutionary French interventionism ignited what can be seen as world war that lasted most of fifteen years.

This French model — but today using the term “democracy” as its mantra — is now regularly applied by the United States and the EU around the world — Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Cuba, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran, Sri Lanka, North Korea, and now Ukraine — and it amounts to throwing gasoline on smoldering fires which tend to leap into flames that destroy governments and often regional stability. Such intervention-to-promote democracy is an arrogant, reckless, sophomoric, and war-causing method of conducting international relations, and it is a Satan that has spawned two other war-promoting interventionist causes — human rights and women’s rights. The U.S. and the EU commitment to endless intervention for unobtainable abstract ideals that have nothing to do with their legitimate national security concerns are today the greatest motivation for much of hatred and violence directed by non-Westerners at American and European citizens and interests.

Such intervention also is an additional drain on the already bankrupt treasuries of the United States and the EU. The democracy-addled U.S. congress and president threw a billion dollars into the hands of the amateurs now running affairs in Kiev, and the EU seems intent on providing those Potemkin democrats with $15 billion. For what purpose? Ukraine has one of the world’s worst fifty or so economies, so the money will not right the economy and there will be no way to account for how Western monies are spent — the Afghanistan and Iraq models of feckless U.S.-EU waste all over again. The only things certain in this Western policy are that the 16-plus billion dollars that Washington and the EU take from taxpayers will make their citizens poorer, will drive the donators’ economies further into debt, and will disappear into a well-developed maw of corruption, theft, and waste in Kiev.

(Read the full article at: The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity)

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Man-portable air defense systems could be stolen in Ukraine amid turmoil

RT: March 8, 2014

Highly dangerous type of weaponry – man-portable air defense systems (MANPADs) – have gone missing from two Ukrainian military units, according to a high-ranking official in Kiev.

Several, and maybe even several dozen 9K38 Igla (Needle) air defense systems (SA-18 Grouse in NATO’s classification) have been stolen, a Ukrainian military official, who wished to remain anonymous, told RIA Novosti.

The shortage was, according to him, registered in Ukraine’s 80th airmobile regiment, which had 54 MANPADs, and the 27th airmobile brigade, stationed 45 km away from Lvov, which possessed 90 Iglas.

The new leadership of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry is, according to the RIA source, taking measures to “camouflage the grave situation” by adding old and experimental items of the weapon to the stockpile.

(Read the full article at: RT)

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By Eric Margolis
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity: March 8, 2014

Soviet leader Josef Stalin used to shrug off critics by his favorite Central Asian saying: “The dogs bark; the caravan moves on.”

Russia’s hard-eyed president, Vladimir Putin, is following the same strategy over Ukraine and Crimea.

Putin swiftly moved his knight into the empty chess square of Crimea, thereby regaining full control of one of Russia’s four strategic port regions: Sevastopol, Murmansk, St Petersburg and Vladivostok.

Sevastopol, now firmly in Moscow’s hands, is Russia’s sole gateway to the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and Mideast. The vast, co-shared Russian-Ukrainian Sevastopol naval base was a shaky, awkward arrangement doomed to eventual failure.

Semi-autonomous Crimea, over 60% ethnic Russian, will hold a referendum on 16 March to decide to remain in Ukraine or rejoin Russia. A referendum is clearly the answer to the whole Ukraine-Russia problem.

Ukraine has been a corruption-ridden failed state since it separated from Russia in 1991. This writer has long suggested that partition of Ukraine into Western and Russian-oriented halves is the sensible solution, with Crimea returning to Russia.

Putin asks if Western-backed Kosovo can go independent of Serbia, why can’t Ukraine break its links with Crimea?

The temporary attachment of majority ethnic Russian Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 after 250 years of Russian rule was unnatural, a ticking time bomb. It has now exploded, triggered in part by the West’s successful effort to overthrow the elected but corrupt government in Kiev of Viktor Yanukovich.

Overturning regimes deemed uncooperative or hostile has long been a CIA specialty. Its first big success came in 1953 with the subversion of Iran’s democratic-nationalist leader, Mohammed Mossadegh by a combination of propaganda, rented crowds, and bribes. We saw this same technique used – enhanced by modern social media – in Ukraine’s first Orange Revolution, Georgia, again in Iran (unsuccessfully), and, with the help of US and British special forces, in Libya and Syria. Egypt came next, where a US-backed tinpot military dictator, the self-appointed “Field Marshall al-Sisi” claims he is “answering the people’s call.” Not a peep from Washington. Or about the crushing of opposition by Bahrain’s US-backed monarchy.

Russia, which used to be adept at subversion, has lagged in recent years but it still knows the signs. The Kremlin is convinced that Ukraine’s latest revolution was engineered by Washington. The US Undersecretary of State for Europe admitted Washington has spent $5 billion over recent years in Ukraine to bring it into the West’s orbit – aka “building democracy.”

Two points to note. Did Washington think that tough Vlad Putin would just take its coup lying down?

Second, it’s amazing how determined Washington’s cold warriors remain to tear down Russia. The bankrupt US, $17 trillion in debt, running on money borrowed from China, with bridges collapsing and 44 million citizens on food stamps, suddenly finds the money to offer bankrupt Ukraine a new $1 billion loan – just to compete with Moscow. A loan unlikely to be repaid.

America has a bad habit of personalizing foreign affairs and demonizing uncooperative leaders. Remember when Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser was denounced as “Hitler on the Nile”? “Khadaffi, Mad Dog of the Mideast”? Most Americans have little knowledge of geography, history, or world affairs so the easiest way to market overseas adventures to them is by creating foreign bogeymen like Khadaffi and Saddam.

Vladimir Putin is the latest. He is being hysterically demonized by the US and British media. Vlad the Bad.

Disturbingly, US Republicans and the usual media propagandists are heaping blame on President Barack Obama for “losing Crimea,” as if any of them knows where it was before last week. John McCain and his sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham have been demanding that Obama “get tough.”

Sure. Let’s mine Russia’s ports or blockade its oil and gas exports. Nothing like a nuclear war to show how weak the Democrats are. Thank God McCain did not win the presidency. The dolts at Fox TV can’t tell the difference between caution and cowardice.

President Putin’s ambition is to slowly reassemble some parts of the old USSR, Ukraine being the most important. Doing so is in Russia’s national interest, much as we may not like it. Nearly all Russians believe Putin is on the right track. By contrast, Washington wants to keep Russia weak and treat it as an obsequious, defeated nation, like postwar Germany or Japan.

The US won’t accept that Russia has any legitimate spheres of influence, while Washington’s span the globe. Last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who used to be a sensible fellow before becoming corrupted by power, blasted Russia: “you just don’t invade a country under a phony pretext!”

I guess Kerry has never heard of the US invasions of the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya. Or can’t remember Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin “incident.”

(Read the full article at: The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity)

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By: Kevin Gosztola
The Dissenter: March 6, 2014

In the past few days, the Russian state-funded media organization, RT, has had two of its staff members express some level of protest against the editorial line of the organization and how it is currently covering the Russia-Ukraine “crisis” that has been unfolding.

Abby Martin, anchor of “Breaking the Set,” a show with an editorial perspective of its own, declared at the end of her show’s broadcast on March 3, “Just because I work here for RT doesn’t mean I don’t have editorial independence. And I can’t stress enough how strongly I am against any state intervention in a sovereign nation’s affairs. What Russia did is wrong.”

Liz Wahl, who anchored a block of straight news each evening and technically did not have her own program, took a more drastic step and resigned on air. She could no longer bring herself to push “Putinist propaganda” on air. She said on “The Last Word” on MSNBC she felt someone needed to speak up about a network out to make “America look like the bad guy,” “make excuses” for President Vladimir Putin, who she referred to as a dictator and “whitewash his decisions.”

Her resignation stung RT worse than Martin’s expression of independence. It has animated neoconservatives like young James Kirchick, who took his own stand when he appeared on RT against “homophobic repression.” The reason being, as Kirchick wrote in his story on Wahl, is they believe RT “portrays every Western military intervention as an act of imperialism while depicting Russian ones as mere humanitarian attempts at ‘protecting’ local populations, as the network constantly describes Moscow’s role in Crimea.”

That is probably true. However, for people like Kirchick, this analysis is premised on the fact that most, if not all, Western military interventions have inherently good motivations. The United States must take action or failure to intervene will mean conflicts get worse without its moral leadership. Reality is somewhere in between—that both Russia and the US are superpowers which will employ, support or threaten the use of force to protect national interests.

CNN was eager to have Martin and Wahl on their programs because the protest at a state-owned media network that broadcasts to American and international audiences suggests that Putin is losing. It advances an anti-Putin narrative without seriously examining the issues of journalistic or editorial independence in media that are fundamental to these stories of protest at RT.

Piers Morgan’s show had them on to talk about what they did because, as CNN put it, “It may be a new Cold War between Russia and the rest of the world.”

Here’s the critical part of Martin’s appearance:

MORGAN: What is your specific criticism about the way RT America has covered this crisis?

MARTIN: You know, I just saw the higher media apparatus was covering it. I mean, RT was covering it in a different way that I didn’t agree with, and then I saw the corporate media coverage almost wanting to revive the Cold War. I mean, I felt like people were egging on Obama to attack militarily.

I mean, it’s insane living in a time where we have corporate media actually supporting military intervention and action against Russia. I mean, this is no joke here. We got to really take a step back and think about how we can do things peacefully and diplomatically and not continue to warmonger and fearmonger the American people about what’s going on.

MORGAN: And tell me this, I mean, you’ve — in the clip we played at the start when you made your dramatic statement, you conceded you weren’t an expert in what is going on in Ukraine or indeed in Ukraine itself.

I presume now you probably come up to speed pretty quickly given all the attention that you’ve had. What do you think with all your experience in broadcasting on RT America is the correct way for this crisis to be resolved?

MARTIN: I hope it resolves diplomatically, Piers, you know, you could imagine the last couple of days that have been pretty hectic, I hadn’t really been able to keep up with the day to day but I just hope for a peaceful outcome with no more military aggression, I hope the military aggression scaled back and I hope we can see a peaceful outcome.

But I think that the real question that should be asked is why do I have to work for RT to tell the truth about corporations and the U.S. government? I mean, seriously, you guys will be holding to advertisers that you cannot criticize and that’s why I work for a station that I can criticize …

MORGAN: Well, hang on, hang on …

MARTIN: Sure.

MORGAN: I’m free to say what the hell I like …

MARTIN: Sure.

MORGAN: … no one’s ever told me I can’t criticize advertisers or corporate entity. That conversation has never happened in the three years I’ve been on air in CNN.

MARTIN: Fair enough, Piers, but I think a lot of people deal with self-censorship all across the media spectrum.

MORGAN: I certainly don’t. That’s probably one of my problems. [emphasis added]

What is striking about this exchange is that Morgan does not think he has engaged in self-censorship at CNN. Both Morgan and Anderson Cooper, who covered recent developments at RT, omitted the fact that journalists have quit CNN because they were being asked to censor their coverage.

Amber Lyon, who worked for CNN, went to Bahrain to produce a one-hour documentary on democracy activists using social media and internet technology. CNN International refused to broadcast the documentary. And, as journalist Glenn Greenwald reported, CNN came under pressure from the Bahraini regime to include their claims “about the violence in their country,” even when Lyon knew with certainty those claims were false.

Greenwald explored in a related post how CNN International relied on “revenue from Middle East regimes,” including an arrangement to “market Lebanon as a tourism destination.” It aired programming on Kazakhstan that was sponsored by the Kazakh government. He highlighted how complaints from Bahrain or Saudi Arabia would be given deference because they are close allies of the US government.

As Jay Rosen, a media critic and New York University professor, described:

…The value of what CNN is trying to do to be this consensus news product around the world – not just in the western economic club but around the world – has many serious consequences. One of the consequences is that it puts you into business with ruling regimes in order to get on the air. Of course, there’s a relationship between what you broadcast, what you put out as news, and the likelihood of getting accepted by regimes…

However, viewers have no idea that CNN may have business interests that require it to tacitly endorse the actions of repressive regimes. This is understandably not something CNN advertises. On the other hand, viewers know full well what they are getting from RT: it will be news from a Russian perspective.

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There is this view in US establishment media that they are immune to advancing nationalistic narratives in the same way that the Kremlin-backed news organization RT does. However, the coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War was such a moment where independent journalism was forsaken for state-identified journalism that amplified a case for war that rested upon neoconservative propaganda.

Currently, there is minimal attention, if any attention, to the US government’s claimed authority to target and kill Americans or how President Barack Obama has embraced drones. (In fact, one might argue “The Daily Show,” a satirical news program, has had better coverage than most US media.)

And, consider how reluctant and difficult it was for news programs on television to confront the reality that the US government was engaged in torture or how they studiously avoid that there are over a hundred people being indefinitely detained at Guantanamo Bay (the vast majority of which have been deemed to pose absolutely no threat to the US yet have not been transferred home).

Any time journalists cover how another media outlet functions, they run the risk of unfairly suggesting in their critiques that what is happening at that outlet is unique to that outlet, that what is happening there could not happen where they work.

In the rush to impose sanctions or to consider sending a billion dollars of aid to Ukraine, is there any reflection on what this does to the crisis and whether it will de-escalate tensions? Is there any meaningful attempt to report on the extent to which US was funding and actively backing forces that were protesting and destabilized Ukraine?

No part of this post is intended to suggest that somehow RT has been fair and accurate in its portrayal of what has been happening with Russia and Ukraine (it hasn’t), but consider how much of the US broadcast news media coverage has been the inverse of RT’s editorial line.

—WOLF BLITZER, CNN: …When we come back, does Vladimir Putin have a double standard when it comes to military intervention in other countries? We’re going to take a closer look at his controversial strategy in this crisis… (March 4)

—FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN: …I’ve had a few chances to meet with him in small groups — very small groups. And he is — you — when it comes to process, very intelligent, very tough, and a deep sense of a Russian nationalism, a deep sense of the greatness of Russia if you were Russian exceptionalism.

So I think that, you know, you’re dealing with somebody with whom you cannot make appeals to international norms and laws that these things are not going to be as important. It is brutal understanding of Russia’s interest. And I think that the “Off Ramp” that we might find, it lies in — what Putin said in his press conference. The most important thing he said in that long, rambling press conference was that he does not intend to annex (ph) Crimea… (March 4)

—BILL NEELY, NBC News Chief correspondent: Words laced with menace from President Putin. “There is no need for further Russian military intervention in Ukraine,” he says. But the possibility still exists. It is a veiled threat…

…The US is looking at economic sanctions. But does Russia`s president care? Amidst the crisis, Russian war games, led by President Putin, a display of Russian power, the timing deliberate. Putin defiant as he redraws Europe`s map. The exercises are not over, the takeover of Crimea is not, nor is the standoff at Ukraine`s military bases… (March 4)

—DAVID GREGORY, NBC News host: (interviewing Sen. Marco Rubio) …You`re saying as you did in a piece that you wrote for Politico about how to confront Russia that we`ve got to the use blunt talk. So I ask you for some blunt talk. Is Russia an enemy of the United States now? (March 2)

All of US media is making comparisons to the Georgia-Russia conflict that occurred in 2008, but they inaccurately are suggesting that Russia started the war when, in fact, according to a study by the European Union, it was Georgia that “started the conflict with Russia with an attack that was in violation of international law.”

Here’s New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof cartoonishly asking, who is really the villain here?

Is Obama really to blame for the Ukraine crisis? My column finds a better villain http://t.co/sDkGSemiev pic.twitter.com/GS58hSjBwa

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) March 6, 2014

This would be laughed at if RT tweeted Obama on a bicycle and reduced the situation to a battle of good versus evil.

As Sam Knight, who once was a segment producer at RT, said during an interview for the National Journal:

…The corporate media is staffed with fleshy bags of walking sycophancy—pathetic excuses for journalists, really—and a lot of these stories about RT reek of projection and insecurity. These “Neo-nazis in Kiev are overstated,” or “Putin is just doing this because he can” stories are childish and absurd, boiling the entire conflict down to black and white “democracy vs. authoritarianism” or a cartoonish pantomime portrait of a guy, who, in reality, has support that can’t be easily dismissed—both at home and in Crimea. This doesn’t excuse RT’s coverage of the conflict. But it’s state-owned. What are these jingoistic American hacks’ excuses?

(Read the full article at: The Dissenter)

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Dennis Kucinich & Lawrence Wilkerson Expose US Role in Creating Ukraine Crisis

By Adam Dick
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity: March 6, 2014

Breaking through the mainstream media’s suppression of contrary voices regarding the Ukraine crisis, RPI advisors Dennis Kucinich and Lawrence Wilkerson this week expose, on Fox News and MSNBC respectively, the United States government’s role in creating the crisis.

Kucinich, who served eight terms in the United States House of Representatives and ran for president as a Democrat, pushes past host Bill O’Reilly’s interruptions to state a few sentences of analysis. Asked what he would have done differently as president regarding Ukraine, Kucinich explains:

“What I’d do is not have USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy working with US taxpayers’ money to knock off an elected government in Ukraine, which is what they did. I wouldn’t try to force the people of Ukraine into a deal with NATO against their interests or into a deal with the European Union which is against their economic interests.”

Kucinich adds that the Central Intelligence Agency also took part in US government efforts “to stir up trouble in Ukraine.”

Watch the complete Kucinich interview here:

Talking with host Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Wilkerson, a College of William & Mary professor and the former chief of staff to General Colin Powell, elaborates on US government actions behind the scenes in Ukraine:

“It goes back to George H. W. Bush and Jim Baker telling — at the end of the Cold War — Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would go not one inch further to the east and then a series of presidents coming in who not only took NATO further to the east — pushed by Lockheed Martin and others who wanted to sell weapons to Eastern and Central European countries — but hinted at Georgia and Ukraine.

Anyone who knows Russian history, anyone who knows the history of empire, anyone who knows about the raw politics of raw power, could have guessed that President Putin would move into Ukraine once we had formed a group there led by the NED and its affiliates that effectively pulled off a coup.”

Wilkerson concludes his analysis of the US government involvement in creating the crisis by commenting, “If I were Putin, I would have done exactly what Putin did, and anyone who says they couldn’t predict this was either a fool or lying.”

(Read the full article & watch the complete Wilkerson interview at: The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity)

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By: William M. Boardman
Reader Supported News: March 4, 2014

How crazy will Americans get over Ukraine?

If too many people get sucked in by the current, distorted media coverage of events unfolding now in Ukraine, then there’s a good chance life will get very ugly for a lot of innocent people, since one of the logical end points is the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone in power knows that’s a potential reality, but the urge to demagogue the Russians is presently overwhelming honesty and caution.

Ukraine is NOT a real place. Ukraine has never been a real place, not in the sense that Madascar or Cuba are both undeniably real places with real edges. Ukraine has no real edges, just lines on a map imposed by some treaty or army over the past several thousand years. To speak, as the more pompous do, of Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” is to speak of an imaginary construct, useful for blurring people’s minds for political purposes.

Ukraine in recent years has been what the power brokers of the disintegrating Soviet Union decided to let it be in 1991. Ukraine has no coherent history as a nation. First inhabited some 44,000 years ago, most of the region’s history is as occupied territory.

Russia’s history of maintaining a military presence in Crimea is older than United States history. The Russian Black Sea Fleet has been based in Sevastopol in Crimea continuously since 1783. For the Russians, this is a crucial warm water port, currently leased from Ukraine till 2042.

To understand what this means to the Russians, it probably matters more to them than the United States would care if the Cubans decided to threaten the Naval Base at Guantanamo, and we know that wouldn’t have a happy ending.

Is anyone involved in Ukraine NOT to blame for something?

In spite of its history as a subjugated non-state, Ukraine has managed something like a functioning democratic government from time to time in recent years. Now is not one of those times. The elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, was by all accounts corrupt, but he was elected. Although the process was somewhat messy, he was duly elected in 2010 with almost 49% of the vote, concentrated in Russian-populated eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

Now Yanukovych has been deposed, perhaps justly, but by an unjust process spearheaded by a street mob and a disenthralled parliament. The parliament has appointed an acting president and Yanukovych is in asylum in Russia. It’s not clear that Ukraine now has a legitimate government of any sort.

The Ukrainian presidential crisis, which is ongoing, is surely the result of longstanding, internal Ukrainian faultlines, ethnic, political, and economic. And the crisis is even more surely the result of deliberate, years-long interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine by the United States, the European Union, NATO, and other western forces, as Robert Parry has described. Ukraine appears to be the latest victim of those New American Century conspirators who brought the world such success in Afghanistan, Iraq, Honduras, and Syria (home to another Russian war water port and their only Mediterranean base).

“KREMLIN DEPLOYS MILITARY TO SEIZE CRIMEA” – N.Y. Times headline

That front page headline in the Times is, perhaps, less inflammatory than others elsewhere, but it was five columns wide and deploying “Kremlin” that way is pure Cold War journalism. As for accuracy, it’s close – even if it doesn’t acknowledge that Russian troops have long been based in Crimea and “seize” is a hyperbolic rendering of an unopposed deployment which may even have been welcomed by most of the population.

The subhead – “REBUFF TO OBAMA” – is essentially propaganda, as it tries to make the president personally relevant to a situation that has its own dynamic. It’s also propaganda insofar as it tries to make this an American crisis to which we’re supposed to respond, rather than one we promoted for reasons that remain obscure.

The Times offers some idea of why Russia might be wary, but that’s deep in an inside sidebar, not the front page story. The deadpan tone hides a host of implied threats to Russian stability and safety:

“Ukraine had accomplished some military reform with NATO advice, but since President Yanukovych said that Ukraine was not interested in full NATO membership, cooperation has lagged, the NATO official said. Ukraine has, however, taken part in some military exercises with NATO, contribute some troops to NATO’s response force and helped in a small way in Libya.”

In other words, the “pro-Russian” Yanukovych was contributing to NATO, albeit in a small way that might even have been part of a balancing act reflecting Ukraine’s unfortunate but inescapable geographic location bordering both Russia and NATO members Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland. As far as the NATO allies were concerned, Ukraine’s effort to be a buffer state with good relations with all its hostile neighbors was not enough. Both NATO and the European Union were pressuring Ukraine to choose sides, NATO’s side. How did they honestly expect Russia to react, sooner or later?

These provocations have gone on for years in different forms, apparently with President Obama’s blessing, since he apparently did nothing, or nothing effective, to mitigate or even stop the relentless instigation of Ukrainians toward violence. In mid-December 2013, former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich warned of the trap Ukrainian demonstrators in Independence Square were headed toward.

The fascist, neo-Nazi, ethnic cleansing forces in Kiev and western Ukraine do not control the government at this point, but they control the streets and they are the most armed and organized of the factions in Ukraine. They provided many of the shock troops in recent confrontations with police at Independence Square.

Concern about the possible rise to power of right-wing forces contributed to the decision by Crimean authorities to reject the legitimacy of the Kiev government and establish de facto control of Crimea as, effectively, a temporary independent and autonomous province of Ukraine. After that, Sergei Aksyonov, prime minister of Crimea, asked the Russians for help safeguarding the region.

Aksyonov also announced that Crimea would hold a public referendum on independence on March 30.

The government in Kiev mobilized the military to defend Ukraine and dispatched some troops to Crimea. There the majority of those troops reportedly joined the forces of the Crimean autonomous region.

“PUTIN GOES TO WAR” – New Yorker online headline, March 1, 2014

The usually brilliant David Remnick somehow sees this multi-faceted, low level, uncertain and ambiguous situation as a “war.” Since no shot had been fired by the time he wrote about what he called a “demonstration war,” that made it an especially interesting demonstration.

“Putin’s reaction exceeded our worst expectations,” Remnick wrote, suggesting that no one had realistic expectations. For this statement to be true, “we” must have been delusional. Remnick must know that a rational person’s expectations when provoking a huge nuclear power would have to be extreme – or detached from reality.

What did anyone expect Russia to do in the face of perennial probes affecting its vital interests, real or perceived? Writing with a Cold War approach that denigrates or omits anything that makes sense of Russian behavior, Remnick compares the Russian deployment in Crimea to Georgia in 2008, Afghanistan in 1979, Checkoslovakia in 1968. He omits any mention of Sevastopol or NATO. He argues instead that this is all about Putin’s psyche.

Without doubt, Putin’s Russia has its horrors, but not everyone is blinded by them, any more than they are blinded by American horrors. Writing in Haaretz on February 25, before Ukraine fully came apart, Amatzia Baram wrote with clear-eyed analysis of the developing situation:

“If Ukraine degenerates into chaos, Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol will be in danger. If that happens, Putin may have an interest in seeing Ukraine split, for he will have no choice but to seize control somehow – perhaps with the services of a loyal Ukrainian politician – of Sevastopol and the surrounding area, or even of Eastern Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula where it is situated.”

The United States does not bear the sole responsibility for de-stabilizing Ukraine and risking a nuclear power confrontation, but there is little doubt that if the United States had not been an eager co-conspirator in twenty years of increasingly reckless global expansionism we wouldn’t be in this current quandary.

But here we are, headed into another media wonderland where the actual context of putting missiles near another country’s borders is expected to elicit a reaction different from the one the Russians would get if they tried to finagle Mexico into a military alliance or base missiles in Canada.

Come on, people, keep your wits about you. American exceptionalism isn’t always such a good thing.

Source: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/22381-focus-us-provokes-russia-acts-surprised-to-get-a-nasty-reaction

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