Welcome to Sott.net
Thu, 21 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Light Sabers

Ukraine: The price of internal division

Jack
Jack Matlock.com
Sat, 01 Mar 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Business Week
With all of the reports coming out of Ukraine, Moscow, Washington, and European capitals, the mutual accusations, the knee-jerk speculation, and - not least - the hysterical language of some observers, bordering on the apocalyptic, it is difficult to keep in mind the long-term implications of what is happening. Nevertheless, I believe that nobody can understand the likely outcomes of what is happening unless they bear in mind the historical, geographic, political and psychological factors at play in these dramatic events. The view of most of the media, whether Russian or Western, seems to be that one side or the other is going to "win" or "lose" Ukraine.

I believe that is fundamentally mistaken. If I were Ukrainian I would echo the immortal words of the late Walt Kelly's Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." The fact is, Ukraine is a state but not yet a nation. In the 22-plus years of its independence, it has not yet found a leader who can unite its citizens in a shared concept of Ukrainian identity. Yes, Russia has interfered, but it is not Russian interference that has created Ukrainian disunity but rather the haphazard way the country was assembled from parts that were not always mutually compatible. To the flaw at the inception of an independent Ukraine, one must add the baleful effects of the Soviet Communist heritage both Russia and Ukraine have inherited.
      Read More...
Cult

Confirmed: British Labour and Conservative governments in 1970s gave elite pedophile network nearly half a million quid

Paul Bentley
Daily Mail, UK
Sun, 02 Mar 2014 17:00 UTC
Image

A whistleblower has claimed Margaret Thatcher's Conservative administration, which took over in 1979, may have provided funding for PIE.

A vile paedophile group with links to senior Labour politicians was funded with huge amounts of taxpayers' money, it has emerged.

The Paedophile Information Exchange was allegedly given £70,000 by the Home Office between 1977 and 1980 - the equivalent today of about £400,000.

The astonishing claims made by a whistleblower are now being investigated by the police and the government.

They come after the Mail exposed shocking links between the paedophile group and the National Council for Civil Liberties, a pressure group run at the time by former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt and Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman.

Comment: So, the British government is singularly responsible for spreading and normalizing pedophilia in the UK. Disgusting.

See also: Leading British opposition party politicians under investigation for channeling public funds to elite pedophile network

      Read More...
V

Mess with Glenn Greenwald at your own risk

Danny Schechter
Information Clearing House
Sun, 02 Mar 2014 07:45 UTC
Image

Clearly, there's an officially sanctioned, if not supported, backlash underway to cast doubt on those who are disseminating the information that Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers are exposing to the global public.

What better way to respond to the evidence of government overreach and criminality in spying by the NSA and other agencies than to try to change the subject by smearing the people who are funding the reporting on it to us.

This latest round of the media battle should not be surprising. In fact, it's all too predictable.

In the latest round, lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald, the point person/interpreter for the majority of the Snowden disclosures, came under attack by indirection with a high profile smear on Pierre Omidyar, the E-bay billionaire funding his new venture, First Look Media.

Leading the charge publicly is one Patrick Ames, who writes for Pando News, a rival news agency funded by another Silicon Valley tech moneyman. He has gone after Greenwald before charging that he is profiting by selling state secrets.

Comment: When it comes to "full-spectrum information warfare", to quote the Project for a New American Century-inspired Bush-era Pentagon policy document, you cannot be 'paranoid' or 'delusional' enough - without actually feeling or becoming either paranoid or delusional, of course!

What we mean is that critical thinking requires just that: thinking critically about all the factors involved. If Greenwald is getting Big Bucks from a large corporation whose fundamental concern is Profit, then it IS interesting data that must be taken into consideration.

      Read More...
Chess

Rule by oligarchs: Kiev appoints billionaires to govern east


RT
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 08:36 UTC
Image
© RIA Novosti/Nikolai Lysenko
Businessman Igor Kolomoisky (left) and Serhiy Taruta, Ukrainian businessman
The self-proclaimed government in Kiev has appointed two of Ukraine's richest men to govern large industrial regions in the defiant east. One of the reasons for the Maidan protest was the influence the rich have on politics in the country.

The appointments of new governors of Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk Regions are among 18 made on Sunday by Kiev, which is struggling to consolidate power after the coup which ousted President Yanukovich last month.

The newly-appointed Dnepropetrovsk governor is Igor Kolomoysky, Ukraine's third-wealthiest man, with an estimated fortune of $2.4 billion. He co-owns the informal commercial group Privat, which includes Ukraine's largest bank Privatbank, which Kolomoysky heads, as well as assets in the oil, ferroalloys and food industries, agriculture and transport.

A former ally of Yulia Tymoshenko, Kolomoysky reportedly had a falling out with her and refused to finance her election campaign in 2010, which the ex-prime minister subsequently lost to Yanukovich. Kolomoysky was reported to be a principal sponsor of the UDAR party, which is one of the three fueling the street campaign to oust Yanukovich. Kolomoysky has a dual Ukrainian-Israeli citizenship and controls his business empire from Switzerland.
      Read More...
Candle

US funded regime change: 9 things you need to know about Venezuela and the recent violence

Pablo Vivanco
Venezuelanalysis
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 07:03 UTC
Pro-government student march in Venezuela
© Miguel Moya
Part of the Pro-Government student march on February 12th, 2014 - See more at:

1. The students marches are from the right-wing of the student movement

Unlike in places like Chile, there is no single or united student movement in Venezuela. Not only are students groups highly decentralized, but they are also divided along political lines.

Another unique feature of the student groups identifying with the opposition is that they do not organize around accessible or free education (since education has been made accessible to the sector of society that was previously excluded, resulting in an increase of 1,809,432 post-secondary students from 1999 to 2014).

The most recent opposition student demonstrations began in the western city of Tachira near the Colombian border. On the third day of student demonstrations about insecurity on the campus, the State Governor's house was attacked and four people were subsequently arrested (two of whom weren't students). These arrests led to student demonstrations in other cities - all of these demonstrations were not shut down by police - which led to the February 12th demonstration, where three people died.

On February 12, however, its important to know that there were thousands of Bolivarian students and youth marching for 'El Dia de la Juventud' (Youth Day), on the other side of Caracas. When speaking about the 'student movement' the logical question that has to follow is 'which one'?
      Read More...
Pirates

Staggering new depths of hypocrisy: Kerry tells Russia 'You don't invade a country on completely phony pretexts'


RT
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 12:09 UTC
Image

U.S. Sec. of State John Kerry pitifully latched onto bogus anti-Jewish leaflet to shore up his inherently weak position on Ukraine.
The US Secretary of State spoke today of the unacceptability of invading a sovereign country on phony pretexts in order to assert one's own interests in the 21st century. But no, he was not speaking about the United States, as one might have thought.

"You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests," John Kerry said during an interview with NBC's Meet the Press. "This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext. It's really 19th century behaviour in the 21st century."

Kerry has also threatened to isolate Russia economically and politically and warned of potential asset freezes and visa bans, adding to media and political hype that followed Russia authorization of sending a stabilization force in Crimea on official request from the authorities.

"There could be certainly disruption of any of the normal trade routine, there could be business drawback on investment in the country," he said. "There could even be ultimately asset freezes, visa bans."

Although Kerry was never challenged by the interviewer to comment in terms of that statement on Washington's own constant threats to use force and military invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, those who watched the interview immediately smelled the hypocrisy.
      Read More...
Green Light

Despite negligible authority,Yanukovych is still legitimate head of Ukrainian state: Russia


Press TV
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:40 UTC
Medvedev and Yanukovych
© Unknown
Medvedev says that if Yanukovych was guilty of crimes, an impeachment process should have been launched against him in Ukraine and "everything else is just arbitrary. A seizure of power."

Russia says Viktor Yanukovych is still the legitimate head of the Ukrainian state and that Moscow does not recognize the new leaders in Ukraine.

The comments were made by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev who posted them on his Facebook page on Monday. He added that while the authority of President Yanukovych is practically negligible, he is still the legitimate leader of Ukraine according to the country's constitution.

The Russian prime minister also said that Moscow does not recognize Ukraine's interim leaders, as they violated the country's constitution when they took power. He said those new leaders won't last long.

"Ukraine is not for us the group of people who shed blood... and took power in violation of the constitution and other laws of their state," said Medvedev.

The prime minister continued by saying thatif Yanukovych was guilty of crimes, an impeachment process should have been launched against him in Ukraine and "everything else is just arbitrary. A seizure of power."
      Read More...
Magnify

Ukraine, Egypt and the tale of two coups

Eric Walberg
Press TV
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:22 UTC
Putin and Merkel
© Unknown

US plans for Egypt and Ukraine are falling apart and Russia is scrambling to pick up the pieces.

In the latest color revolution, it was not an army but a rump parliament that pulled the plug on the elected president on wave of protest, pushing out Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovich on 22 February.

He apologized from exile in the Russian city of Rostov-on-the-Don for his weakness during the uprising, but his fate was sealed when he was disowned by his own Party of the Regions, the largest party in the fractious parliament. The rump parliament unsurprisingly ordered the release of Yanukovich's arch rival, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison, a condition for Ukraine's signing a European Union Association Agreement.

The collapse of authority in Ukraine led to what appears to be the breakaway of an already autonomous Crimea, now to be aligned with Russia. The frigate Hetman Sahaydachniy (the flagship of the Ukrainian Navy), on NATO maneuvers in the Gulf of Aden, refused to take orders from Kiev and raised the Russian naval flag as it returned to Simferopol. Simultaneously, Russian troops blocked three Crimean bases, demanding Ukrainian forces surrender, and high ranking Ukrainian military and security officials swore their allegiance to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, rejecting the new government in Kiev as illegitimate. Residents have announced they are going to hold a referendum on 30 March to determine the fate of Crimea.
      Read More...
Vader

Lebanon and Syria are actually the same country, and other absurdities the Middle East inherited from the West's divide-and conquer strategy

Robert Fisk
The Independent, UK
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 05:56 UTC
Image

British imperialist Mark Sykes: "The fuzzy-wuzzies are getting restless about us taking their oil. Let us divide and conquer them in perpetuity!"
Borders are becoming a bit odd in the Middle East. They always have been, of course. Ever since Mark Sykes and François Georges Picot - the latter a former French consul in Beirut, by the way, who cost a lot of brave Lebanese their lives by his carelessness in sealing their anti-Ottoman letters behind an embassy wall - divvied up the Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, etc, one lot of Arabs (or their grandchildren) found themselves living as hated refugees not many miles from their original homes, cursed and spat at and sometimes killed by another lot of Arabs who turned out to be - much to their own surprise, in some cases - Lebanese or Syrians.

Then we come to the question of a state called Israel which exists in a land that was called Palestine, 22 per cent of which - and the percentage is growing smaller by the day - is supposed to be called "Palestine". Well, maybe.

Which brings me to the point. For last week, the Strategic Affairs Minister - is there any other nation on earth which has such a ministry, I ask myself? - of Israel, warned Lebanon that it must prevent Hezbollah (Iranian-armed, Syrian-supported, you know the usual and true clichés) from attacking Israel in reprisal for Israel's attack on a weapons convoy - an attack which, as is often the case, Israel didn't actually admit to having carried out.
      Read More...
Info

Russia, China 'in broad agreement' on Ukraine despite G7 flap


Press TV
Mon, 03 Mar 2014 05:24 UTC
China and Russia's foreign ministers
© Unknown
Chinese Foreign Minister Want Yi (L) shakes hands with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov (file photo)

The Russian Foreign Ministry says Russia is in broad agreement with China on the situation in crisis-hit Ukraine.

The ministry's announcement followed a telephone conversation between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Monday.

"The foreign ministers have exchanged their views on the situation in Ukraine. They noted a broad overlap of the Russian and Chinese views on the current situation in and around this country (Ukraine)," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

In addition, the Russian ministry said the two ministers pledged to continue close contacts on the issue.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is expected to meet with Lavrov later in the day on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to discuss the spiraling crisis in Ukraine.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts