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Best of the Web: When the dust settles: The US-Russia Ukrainian deal

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 02:41 UTC
Kerry and Lavrov
© AP
By the time you read this Russia will have invaded Ukraine. Well, that's what the Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, is spinning. Breedlove Supreme says the Russians are "ready to go" and could easily take over eastern Ukraine. Western corporate media have already dusted off their Kevlar vests.

Now compare Breedlove Supreme with a grown-up diplomat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has called on NATO to please de-escalate the "unreasonable" warmongering rhetoric, which also includes officially ending all civilian and military cooperation with Russia and planning more military moves in Eastern Europe.

While NATO - shorthand for the Pentagon's European division - freaks out, especially via its outgoing secretary-general, Danish patsy Anders Fogh Rasmussen, let's see where we really stand on the ground, based on leaks from both Lavrov's and US Secretary of State John Kerry's camps.

The heart of the matter - obscured by a rainbow bridge of hysteria - is that neither Washington nor Moscow want Ukraine to become a festering wound. Moscow told Washington, officially, it has no intention of "invading" Ukraine. And Washington told Moscow that, for all the demented rhetoric, it does not want to expand NATO to either Ukraine or Georgia.
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Arrow Down

Best of the Web: Creativity and non-conformity now listed as a mental illness by psychiatrists

Code Breaker
Ready Chimp
Thu, 27 Mar 2014 20:03 UTC
DSM
© Wikimedia CommonsDSM-IV-TR, the predecessor to the most current DSM edition, the DSM-5.

What happens to a society when thinking outside of the box or being righteously enraged about your government going in the wrong direction becomes an excuse to be sedated and re-educated? It seems we don't have to go too far back in history to find out.

The Soviet Union used new mental illness for political repression.

People who didn't accept the beliefs of the Communist Party developed a new type of schizophrenia.

They suffered from the delusion of believing communism was wrong. They were isolated, forcefully medicated, and put through repressive "therapy" to bring them back to sanity.

Now thanks to thought policing by the American Psychiatric Association the latest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is setting up the dominoes for arbitrary diagnosis of any dissenting individuals.

Listed as new mental illnesses are above-average creativity and cynicism. The manual goes on to identify a mental illness called "oppositional defiant disorder" or ODD.

Defined as an "ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior," symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.
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V

Best of the Web: An idea whose time has come: Boycott the USA!

Rodney Shakespeare
Press TV
Sat, 29 Mar 2014 14:45 UTC
boycott usa
Boycotting the US could happen as people realize that the USA is the key part of an Axis bringing unlimited evil.
Boycott the USA! You read it here first.

"Impossible!" you say. "The USA leads the "international community;" boycotting the USA is silly fantasy."

Yet such a boycott could happen as people realize that the USA is the key part of an Axis bringing unlimited evil. Indeed, USA policy is so malign with such contradiction, that the men in white coats will soon be on their way to visit American leaders.

At present the USA is leading the movement to boycott and sanction Russia.

"You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests," says American Secretary of State John Kerry.

Oh really? So which country -- on phony pretext (weapons of mass destruction) -- invaded Iraq in 2003?

And who, eight months ago, was screaming for an attack on Syria on another phony pretext (that the Syrian government had made a gas attack on civilians)?

And which government was, and still is, part of the biggest deception in modern history, a deception which leads to endless war, on phony pretexts, against Islamic states? (Those who do not know that 9/11 was/is the biggest deception in modern history should visit any YouTube video of WTC Tower Number Seven in freefall collapse even though it had not been touched by an airplane).

And which country, just after 9/11, proposed invading seven Islamic countries on phony pretexts (look up General Wesley Clark on the subject)?
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Hourglass

Best of the Web: Anger with the 1%, not envy, is raising Americans' ire

Paul Krugman
TruthOut
Sat, 29 Mar 2014 12:24 UTC
occupy wall street
© Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
More than 2,000 Occupy Wall Street protesters marched near New York’s Bryant Park in May 2012. The movement was formed partly as a reaction against the deepening level of income inequality in the United States.
Suddenly, or so it seems, inequality has surged into public consciousness - and neither the 1 percent nor its reliable defenders seem to know how to cope.

Some of the reactions are crazy - "it's Kristallnacht," "they're coming to kill us" - and the craziness is quite widespread.

Notice how many billionaires, plus of course The Wall Street Journal, rallied around the venture capitalist Tom Perkins (who compared public criticism of the 1 percent to Nazi attacks on Jews in a letter to the editor of The Journal in January).

But even the saner-sounding voices evidently have a hard time wrapping their minds around the notion that anyone might find 21st-century finance capitalism a bit, well, unfair.

A case in point: a recent New York Times op-ed by Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Brooks is deeply worried about changing popular attitudes toward wealth:
"According to Pew, the percentage of Americans who feel that 'most people who want to get ahead' can do so through hard work has dropped by 14 points since about 2000," he wrote on March 1. "As recently as 2007, Gallup found that 70 percent were satisfied with their opportunities to get ahead by working hard; only 29 percent were dissatisfied. Today, that gap has shrunk to 54 percent satisfied, and 45 percent dissatisfied. In just a few years, we have gone from seeing our economy as a real meritocracy to viewing it as something closer to a coin flip."
And what does he think is the reason for this sea-change in attitudes? Why, it must be about growing envy of the rich, which is a terrible thing.
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War Whore

Best of the Web: Obama's latest retarded statements at E.U.-U.S. summit: "Freedom isn't free, it costs folks like you and me, and if we don't all chip in, we'll never pay that bill"


RT
Thu, 27 Mar 2014 07:51 UTC

Comment: Is anyone else noticing how low the US has fallen as a result of their Ukrainian misadventure? Someone needs to tell them to stop digging, although we don't think they know what else to do other than keep on "catapulting the propaganda".

True, President Obama didn't quite say the above, but he did say "Freedom isn't free" at the E.U.-U.S. summit today, as part of a really weak effort to convince his reluctant NATO allies to "chip in" for the "collective security" of its members in Eastern Europe.

Obama's statement is nearly identical to the lyrics from a song in 'Team America: World Police', a movie that lampooned American special forces going around the world and blowing it up in order to 'save it'!

Have a listen:



Image
President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (aka Barry Obama): "Now y'all listen to me, this how is gonna be..."
NATO must have a sustained presence in countries that feel "vulnerable" to Russia, US President Barack Obama said at a meeting with EU leaders in Brussels. He added that neither Ukraine nor Georgia was currently being considered for NATO membership.

Obama insisted that contingency plans had to be examined and "updated" to guarantee "that we do more to ensure that a regular NATO presence among some of these states that may feel vulnerable is executed." The comments came during a four-day trip to Europe by the US president.

However, Obama expressed concern that defense spending in Europe had fallen in several countries across the continent. "If we have collective defense it means everyone has to chip in, and I have concern about diminished efforts by some in NATO," he said.

"Our freedom isn't free," he said, adding that it was necessary to "pay for the assets, the personnel, the training... for deterrent force."

Comment: This comes on the heels of another rather cringe-worthy moment yesterday, March 26th 2014, when a room full of international journalists and European diplomats responded to Obama's resounding reaffirmation of the USA's apocryphal principles of "privacy, rule of law and individual rights", with....well...complete silence.


Obama also claimed today that "Russia is completely isolated".

In his 'reality-creating' reality, perhaps.

In the real world, it's the United States that is fast becoming isolated as the world collectively watches its implosion.

The reason why no one applauded was because Obama said that America's values were "PRIVACY" (NSA wiretapping of everyone), "RULE OF LAW" (illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere), "INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS" (meaning the ones the PATRIOT act took away).

That's something to laugh at, not applaud. In fact, the only reason his nonsense wasn't met with raucous laughter was probably because the audience's collective jaw was sitting on the floor, making it hard to laugh.

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Arrow Up

Best of the Web: EU Parliament member and election observer of the Crimea referendum speaks out: EU and U.S. lies are humongous!

Sophie Shevardnadze
RT
Sun, 23 Mar 2014 11:16 UTC
The region of Crimea has voted to join the Russian Federation in a referendum that was branded illegitimate and undemocratic by the West - even before it took place. But, not everybody in Europe agrees and today Sophie talks to someone who witnessed the vote - Austrian member of the EU Parliament Ewald Stadler, a firsthand observer of the Crimea referendum in Yalta.

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War Whore

Best of the Web: U.S. seen as greatest threat to world peace, voted three times more dangerous than the next country in 2014 Gallup international poll

Carl Herman
Washingtonsblog.com
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
Hat tip: RT
"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in [war], that we have been detrimental to the life of the [target nations'] people." - Martin King, Beyond Vietnam
Gallup International's poll of 68 countries for 2014 found the US as the greatest threat to peace in the world, voted three times more dangerous to world peace than the next country.

Among Americans, we overall voted our own nation as the 4th most dangerous to peace, and with demographics of students and 18-24 year-olds also concluding the US as the world's greatest threat.
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Gear

Best of the Web: Search for an external enemy will only briefly prolong the agony of Kiev's authorities - 'Soon no Putin will help you'

Translation by SOTT
Plato Besedin for KM.ru
Sat, 22 Mar 2014 09:35 UTC
putin
© Laurence Griffiths
Putin is everywhere. Everyone talks only about him. He is on the receiving end of all the aspirations and curses. It's not even a cult of personality - it's more like schizophrenia.

If you try to talk to someone, especially if it's a someone who is dedicated to the "Euromaidan", he will give you a lengthy list (in a size of a half-meter check at the supermarket) of grievances toward Putin. He grabbed Crimea, conquered the country, bought provocateurs, etc.

Fear and Loathing in Ukraine - all because of Putin. The more they talk about it, the more excited and fierce they become. They even invented a nickname for him: Putler, and added a mustache.

One enemy, one hate, one fear. Here is something many Ukrainians are united about.

Yes, it's Putin who hung Russian flags around Ukraine at night. And earlier, it was he who helped to bring to power armed Bandera people. It's Putin who drove the bulldozer and threw "Molotov cocktails" and burned tires. He drove around the cities, smashed the monuments and painted swastikas. It was Putin who beat the hell out of Rabbis and desecrated Ukrainian synagogues. It was he who broke into the offices of the Ukrainian TV channels to establish such an information dictatorship that Goebbels would be green with envy.
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Snow Globe

Best of the Web: Western international diplomacy is a joke - Western politicians stuck in total "lala land" or "bizarro world"


Vineyard of the Saker
Fri, 21 Mar 2014 09:31 UTC
Image
I have just been watching the news and, frankly, I ended up laughing.

First, I saw the Eurobureaucrats adding another 12 or so names to a list of 20 or so (sorry, I was not paying attention) names which are going to be on the sanctions list. The US did something similar yesterday. Looking at that circus, I was wondering: does these imbeciles really believe that these puny sanctions of 30-40 individuals will make Russia suddenly change course, apologize and leave Crimea? Have they forgotten that during WWII Leningrad was blockaded by German forces for nine hundred (900! Not 33 like Hezbollah or 78 like the Serbs - 900) days and that it was pounded by the German Air Force and artillery during each one of these 900 days, that most men died and that the city at the end was defended by mostly women, that hunger was so bad that people were making "soup" from glue used to put up posters, that medicine had run out and that the winter colds were brutal and yet that the Russian people did not surrender?! Don't they understand that for Russians Crimea is at least as important as Stalingrad was? Do they seriously think that their stupid little sanctions will affect a country which was - and still is - willing to go to war over Crimea?

Amazing. Just amazing...
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Bride of Feinstein: The monstrous hypocrisy of the U.S. Congress vs. NSA/CIA

The Young Turks
You Tube
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:33 UTC
Image
© Wonkette

Sen. Dianne Feinstein's bombshell accusation about the Central Intelligence Agency Tuesday set off a scramble on Capitol Hill - with Democrats and Republicans ignoring the usual party lines in response to her claim that the agency improperly interfered in a congressional investigation.

Feinstein (D-Calif.) won immediate backing from top Democrats like Majority Leader Harry Reid and Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy while some Republicans, including Lindsey Graham and John McCain, began to echo her concerns. Have these same Senators supported the NSA spying on average Americans? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
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