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Bullseye

Best of the Web: The war for Ukraine: What's the real story?

The Latest and Biggest Battle Between East and West Converges in the Ukraine

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There 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.


Stormtrooper

Best of the Web: Anti-Russian ethnic cleansing operations underway: NATO-trained Right Sector fascists kill 10 civilians in East Ukraine, 40 in South Ukraine

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© 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.


Map

Best of the Web: Battleground Ukraine: A comprehensive summary

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:

Vader

Best of the Web: The mask comes off as duplicitous Kerry says West's 'Trans-Atlantic' global hegemony is at stake in Ukraine, NATO should 'return' to its original mandate of 'fending off Russia'

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© 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: "Our expeditionary missions"?! Wow, is that statement ever dripping with imperialistic hubris! In one phrase, Kerry has let slip the mask of 'humanitarian intervention', 'Right to Protect', 'War on Terror' and all the other BS Western liberal paramoralisms to acknowledge that the bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere were in fact military operations 'out there on the periphery of our empire'.

As regards "what this alliance was originally created to perform", NATO was originally the military occupation by the U.S. of Western Europe once WW2 ended. The only thing that has changed is that its sphere of influence has extended right up to Russia.


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.


Popcorn

Best of the Web: Are GMOs promoting autism, anti-social and cannibalistic behaviors?

"It appears there is a direct correlation between GMOs and autism." --Arden Anderson, MD, PhD, MPH
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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.


Sheriff

Best of the Web: Capital punishment: A gruesome spectacle of suffering and a messy display of incompetence

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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.

MIB

Best of the Web: Afghanistan's 'torturer in chief', Haji Gulalai, settles down in California with a dozen of his relatives thanks to CIA connections

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© 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.

Megaphone

Best of the Web: Putin: Washington behind Ukraine events all along

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© 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."

Star of David

Best of the Web: What destruction of Israel? The demonization of Hamas

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When, in response to the threat of potential Palestinian reconciliation and unity, the Israeli government suspended "negotiations" with the Palestine Liberation Organization on April 24 (five days before they were due to terminate in any event), Prime Minister Netanyahu's office issued a statement asserting: "Instead of choosing peace, Abu Mazen formed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel."

In a series of related media appearances, Mr. Netanyahu hammered repeatedly on the "destruction of Israel" theme as a way of blaming Palestine for the predictable failure of the latest round of the seemingly perpetual "peace process".

The extreme subjectivity of the epithet "terrorist" has been highlighted by two recent absurdities - the Egyptian military regime's labeling of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has won all Egyptian elections since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, as a "terrorist" organization and the labeling by the de facto Ukrainian authorities, who came to power through illegally occupying government buildings in Kiev, of those opposing them by illegally occupying government buildings in eastern Ukraine as "terrorists". In both cases, those who have overthrown democratically elected governments are labeling those who object to their coups as "terrorists".

It is increasingly understood that the word "terrorist", which has no agreed definition, is so subjective as to be devoid of any inherent meaning and that it is commonly abused by governments and others who apply it to whomever or whatever they hate in the hope of demonizing their adversaries, thereby discouraging and avoiding rational thought and discussion and, frequently, excusing their own illegal and immoral behavior.

USA

Best of the Web: 9/11 WTC Attacks Disinfo: "Terrorist body found in plane cockpit wreckage"

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, "law enforcement sources" apparently told Fox news that a body, possibly one of the "terrorists", had been found in the "cockpit ruins" of one of the planes. The same "sources" also said that a body of a flight attendant had been recovered from the wreckage at the WTC with her hands tied behind her back with wire.

These claims were quickly dismissed when it became apparent that no complete bodies were recovered from the passengers or crew of either plane that hit the Twin Towers. Indeed, given the fact that both planes exploded inside the twin towers and then both towers completely collapsed into dust and rubble, it seems highly unlikely that a complete or partial cockpit with a recognizable body inside could have been found. This raises the question of which "law enforcement sources" were spreading this kind of information, that can only have been entirely fabricated, and why.

The answer seems clear; as soon as the 9/11 attacks occurred (or indeed beforehand) a narrative about "hijackers" had already been prepared and disseminated to the mainstream media.