Pepe Escobar
RTWed, 07 May 2014 10:00 UTC
© Unknown
The IMF has approved a $17 billion loan to Ukraine. The first $3.2 billion tranche has arrived on Wednesday.
It's essential to identify the conditions attached to this Mafia-style
"loan." Nothing remotely similar to reviving the Ukrainian economy is in play. The scheme is inextricably linked to the IMF's notorious, one-size-fits-all
"structural adjustment" policy, known to hundreds of millions from Latin America and Southeast Asia to Southern Europe.
The regime changers in Kiev have duly complied, launching the inevitable austerity package - from tax hikes and frozen pensions to a stiff, over 50 percent rise on the price of natural gas heating Ukrainian homes. The
"Ukrainian people" won't be able to pay their utility bills this coming winter.
Predictably, the massive loan is not for the benefit of
"the Ukrainian people." Kiev is essentially bankrupt. Creditors range from Western banks to Gazprom - which is owed no less than $2.7 billion. The
"loan" will pay back these creditors; not to mention that $5 billion of the total is earmarked for payments of - what else - previous IMF loans. It goes without saying that a lot of the funds will be duly pocketed - Afghanistan-style - by the current bunch of oligarchs aligned with the
"Yats" government in Kiev.
The IMF has already warned that Ukraine is in recession and may need an extension of the $17 billion loan. IMF newspeak qualifies it as
"a significant recalibration of the program." This will happen, according to the IMF, if Kiev loses control of Eastern and Southern Ukraine - something already in progress.
© Alexei Nikolsky/AP
Between the anti-Russian propaganda pouring forth from the Obama administration and the deeply biased coverage from the U.S. news media, the American people are being prepared to accept and perhaps even cheer a massacre of eastern Ukrainians who have risen up against the coup regime in Kiev.
The protesters who have seized government buildings in ten towns in eastern Ukraine are being casually dubbed "terrorists" by both the Kiev regime and some American journalists. Meanwhile, it's become conventional wisdom in Official Washington to assume that the protesters are led by Russian special forces because of some dubious photographs of armed men, accepted as "proof" with few questions asked by the mainstream U.S. news media.
The Latest and Biggest Battle Between East and West Converges in the UkraineThere have been many wars - terrible wars - fought on Planet Earth over the past 100 years. However, the greatest war of them all could literally be around the corner, unless it is stopped by the people of this planet. The epic confrontation in the Ukraine presents the most dangerous and unprecedented conflict between the world's superpowers since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Truly, this clash between East and West represents an economic, political and religious battleground that will dwarf every other war save WWI and WWII. If the conflict in the Ukraine is not resolved peacefully, it has the potential of evolving into a full blown World War III scenario.
That may sound like hyperbole until you read what is truly at stake for both sides of this War of the Titans. There is a very serious settling of scores going on with this intensifying skirmish that has multiple roots in history. On the one side, the real perpetrators want to get even as they so often do. On the other side, there is the inexorable force of destiny which compels them to assume a courageous stance toward a seemingly intractable situation.
The Ukraine conflict is fundamentally a war between East and West, between radically different cultures, different races, different religious orientations, and between very different people. Because of the profound lack of understanding on the part of the West, as well as the desperate agenda which they are fully committed to, it appears that this war will play out in some fashion no matter what. That doesn't mean the world will once again be drenched in a hail of bullets and bombs. The post-modern battlefield often migrates into the economic sectors and financial realms, as this one has with the imposition of the Anglo-American sanction regime.
Comment: Not a bad analysis. However, given what is known about the likely psychopathological state of mind of those engineering crises such as the latest in the Eurasian Heartland, it's improbable that they are
aware of the global dangers their actions present, and that they
actively seek out cataclysmic events to 'fend off the eventual collapse of society'.
Such things are the
consequences of their actions, consequences they do not foresee. They see them
when they happen, then blame others for them and institute even harsher punishments on others. But in their own minds, they are the perfect 'reality-creators'; it's
those other people (i.e., the masses of ordinary humans) who just don't understand their munificence, benevolence and all-around awesomeness.
We rather suspect that when things didn't turn out the way they expected in Ukraine, they went "Huh, that was unexpected. Oh well, send in the jackals (CIA and mercenaries)"... In other words, they are not so all-knowing that they foresaw what would happen. They just do what they do because they are programmed in a 'cold, rational' way. Then when something unexpected happens, they just react in the only way they know how. They have zero insight and so are unable to see the situation from others' shoes.
This part, for example,
Surely, Obama, Kerry, Biden, Nuland et al. understand the extremely serious position in which they are putting Putin and the Russian Parliament.
No, they don't. They don't understand, and they don't care. Conscience and understanding born of awareness go hand in hand, and these types have neither.
Here's another assumption:
This evolving geopolitical chessboard is actually being set up by the real powers that be so that Russia will fulfill its duties in upholding the dharma of world governance.
This again suggests some all-knowing, all-powerful elite that has set this up from the beginning. If all is pre-determined, what then is the point of anything? There is as yet
some free will in this world!
The question is, are Putin and others willing and able to put a brake on their greed? Putin, and any other leaders cooperating in this most delicate task of ending U.S. hegemony as peacefully as possible, has to approach resolution to this crisis from the point of view of 'stalking the petty tyrant', as don Juan Matus described it. The tyrant doesn't know reason, it must be corralled into a situation in which it destroys itself.
Putin's first responsibility will be towards the Russian people, but he does appear to have realized that he can only protect Russia's interests by getting others onboard and having them support
their own interests, thereby building a global consensus of 'NO!' to American hegemony.
RTSat, 03 May 2014 04:48 UTC
© Reuters/Valentyn OgirenkoMembers of the Ukrainian far-right radical group Right Sector
Over 10 people have died and around 40 have been injured after members of Right Sector opened fire on civilians in eastern Ukraine, the People's Mayor of Slavyansk has said.
Civilians had reportedly formed a human chain to protect their village from members of the right-wing group.
"In the village of Andreevka (suburb of Slavyansk) during the night people blocked entry to Right Sector members, forming a human chain along the road. Members of Right Sector opened fire, killing over 10 people," The People's Mayor of Slavyansk Vyacheslav Ponomarev told Russia's Interfax news agency in a telephone conversation.
According to the People's Mayor, members of Right Sector would not allow anyone to move the wounded and opened fire on people who tried to approach them.
RT's stringer, Graham Phillips, who is in Andreevka, said over 100 Ukrainian soldiers had set up camp in the village yesterday and had now left. He uploaded a video onto his YouTube feed showing the dead body of a man who had been shot dead by soldiers, according to local residents.
This is an impressive, comprehensive analysis of the February 2014 Ukraine coup from the perspective of a senior Russian academic. It details the interests and affiliations of the main Ukrainian domestic players - oligarchical clans many of whose leaders have dual nationality - with some shocking and little known detail. It exposes the glaring hypocrisies and double standards of the western sponsors of the coup and their Russian/Ukrainian '5th Column traitors'. It sees the coup and Russia's successful incorporation of Crimea as major game-changing events in the on-going, US-lead post-WWII machinations of the West to subdue Russia to its own agenda and outlines how Russia should now respond.
All-in-all a
must-read for westerners needing to understand what is really happening in both the Ukraine and the wider Anglo-US-NATO globalisation drive which it brings into sharp focus
Transcript below:
RTWed, 30 Apr 2014 04:53 UTC
© AFP Photo/Mandel NganKerry to Russia: 'Kneel before our magnificent empire'
NATO must return to its original goal of fending off Russia, seizing the chance presented by the Ukrainian crisis to sever Europe from Moscow and move it closer to America, the US secretary of state said. Or else the bloc's global leadership may be lost.
John Kerry delivered the confrontational call in a speech to the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, DC. He said the stand-off in Ukraine had resulted from a "uniquely personally-driven set of choices" and is "a wake-up call" for NATO. He added that now the military bloc must turn the page on two decades of focusing on expeditionary operations and take a stand against "Putin's Russia."
"After two decades of focusing primarily on our expeditionary missions, the crisis in Ukraine now call us back to the work that this alliance was originally created to perform," Kerry told the audience.
Comment: So, the Western military alliance, which the U.S. promised Russia would be disbanded with the end of the Cold War, not only expanded right up to Russia's borders, it blitzed numerous countries when its original raison d'état no longer existed, and now it's again being justified under the pretext of 'keeping the West safe from Russian aggression'.
Can there be any doubt that the Western alliance seeks world domination by 'containing Russia'?
Can there be any doubt that Russia gave the West a tremendous opportunity in 1990 to really end wars and build a humanitarian world system? But the U.S. regime instead took that opportunity to expand its domination - "full-spectrum dominance" - over the whole world.
All that has changed is that Russia now knows for certain that the U.S. regime is fundamentally untrustworthy.
"
It appears there is a direct correlation between GMOs and autism." --Arden Anderson, MD, PhD, MPH
Jeffrey Smith summarizes research that will make you avoid GMOs like the plague!
Physician Jennifer Armstrong admits, "Twenty years ago, I didn't even know what the word autism meant. It was rare." But then something shifted. Whether it was the food, medicine, environment, or some combination, by 2008, an astounding 1 in 54 boys suffered from autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the US
[1]. What is it that is damaging the health and well-being of so many of our children? Don Huber, PhD, professor emeritus from Purdue University, has an idea.
In October 2011, Dr. Huber gave a talk in Germany about the physiological, neurological, and behavioral symptoms of pigs, cows, and rats fed genetically modified (GM) feed. After his lecture, a physician and autism specialist approached him and said, "The symptoms you describe are exactly what we are finding in our autistic children."
The animals in those studies were fed the same GM soy and corn eaten by children and adults in the US. Both crops are outfitted with bacterial genes that allow them to survive being sprayed with herbicide, which kills plants. As a result, higher residues of toxic weed killer end up inside our food. In addition, some GM corn varieties have an even more unsettling characteristic: their inserted genes produce an insect-killing poison called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin in every cell - and in every bite. Although the biotech seed companies like Monsanto claim that their genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are harmless, that's not what the independent scientists are finding.
© unknown
Earlier this month, the New Hampshire State Senate deadlocked on a vote to repeal the state's death penalty, tying 12 to 12 and leaving the law in place. The vote, though a disappointment to opponents of capital punishment, was hardly a serious blow to the abolitionist cause. There is just one person on New Hampshire's death row, and it has no execution chamber. No one has been put to death there since Howard Long was hanged in 1939.
But in keeping its death penalty, New Hampshire did preserve a strange distinction: It is one of three states where hanging still is a legal method of execution.
If it seems surprising, even brutal, that hanging would still be technically legal in 2014, that's because the evolution of the death penalty in America has been so closely entwined with our belief in technological progress. As executions have evolved from one method to the next - from hanging to electrocution, from electrocution to lethal gas, from electrocution and gas to lethal injection - supporters have proclaimed the dawning of an era of more humane executions while denouncing previous methods as barbaric and unreliable. The story of execution in the United States is partly a story of technology making a final punishment less painful and cruel.
RTTue, 29 Apr 2014 03:04 UTC
© AFP Photo / John MacdougallKandahar Governor Gul Agha's chief of intelligence, Gulalai
Recruited to help run Afghanistan's security and intelligence operations in the aftermath of the US war against the Taliban, the country's most feared security official dubbed 'torturer in chief' now has settled in a pink two-story house in California.
Before his move to the US, Gulalai helped American troops retake Kandahar in 2001 and was tapped to run the intelligence program in the city. Later, he was put in charge of the long-term custody of prisoners at the National Directorate of Security's headquarters in Kabul.
According to a new report by the Washington Post, Haji Gulalai has "a substantial record of human rights abuses." On two separate occasions, United Nations officials convinced the NDS to set in motion orders to fire him from the agency, yet those efforts were stymied both times by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
"He was the torturer in chief," a senior Western diplomat, who was unnamed, told the Post.
RT.comTue, 29 Apr 2014 22:13 UTC
© AFP Photo/Alexey DruzhininRussia's President Vladimir Putin attends a session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Minsk, on April 29, 2014.
The US has been behind the Ukrainian crisis from the beginning, but was initially flying low, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. He added that
if sanctions continue, Russia will have to reconsider who has access to key sectors of its economy."I think what is happening now shows us who really was mastering the process from the beginning. But in the beginning, the United States preferred to remain in the shadow," Putin said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.
Putin stated that since the US has taken a lead role in resolving the political crisis in Ukraine, it is "telling that they originally were behind this process, but now they just have emerged as leaders" of it.
The "Maidan cookies" policy paves the way to a broader crisis, Putin warned, referring to US officials showing up in central Kiev and encouraging protesters during demonstrations.
"It is necessary to understand that the situation is serious and try to find serious approaches to the solution," he said.
Putin said that he has called on Kiev to start an all-Ukrainian dialogue, adding that other countries should not be blamed for the crisis.
"[They should] treat equally the rights of those living in other areas of Ukraine, first of all, I mean, the east and southeast, establish a dialogue, find a compromise," he told journalists while speaking about the measures necessary to put an end to the crisis. "Here's what you need to do; searching for the guilty outside Ukraine is wrong."
Comment: Not a bad analysis. However, given what is known about the likely psychopathological state of mind of those engineering crises such as the latest in the Eurasian Heartland, it's improbable that they are aware of the global dangers their actions present, and that they actively seek out cataclysmic events to 'fend off the eventual collapse of society'.
Such things are the consequences of their actions, consequences they do not foresee. They see them when they happen, then blame others for them and institute even harsher punishments on others. But in their own minds, they are the perfect 'reality-creators'; it's those other people (i.e., the masses of ordinary humans) who just don't understand their munificence, benevolence and all-around awesomeness.
We rather suspect that when things didn't turn out the way they expected in Ukraine, they went "Huh, that was unexpected. Oh well, send in the jackals (CIA and mercenaries)"... In other words, they are not so all-knowing that they foresaw what would happen. They just do what they do because they are programmed in a 'cold, rational' way. Then when something unexpected happens, they just react in the only way they know how. They have zero insight and so are unable to see the situation from others' shoes.
This part, for example, No, they don't. They don't understand, and they don't care. Conscience and understanding born of awareness go hand in hand, and these types have neither.
Here's another assumption: This again suggests some all-knowing, all-powerful elite that has set this up from the beginning. If all is pre-determined, what then is the point of anything? There is as yet some free will in this world!
The question is, are Putin and others willing and able to put a brake on their greed? Putin, and any other leaders cooperating in this most delicate task of ending U.S. hegemony as peacefully as possible, has to approach resolution to this crisis from the point of view of 'stalking the petty tyrant', as don Juan Matus described it. The tyrant doesn't know reason, it must be corralled into a situation in which it destroys itself.
Putin's first responsibility will be towards the Russian people, but he does appear to have realized that he can only protect Russia's interests by getting others onboard and having them support their own interests, thereby building a global consensus of 'NO!' to American hegemony.