Eric Walberg
Press TVMon, 03 Mar 2014 06:22 UTC
© 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.
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.
© 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.
RTSun, 02 Mar 2014 21:07 UTC
A number of high ranking Ukrainian military and security officials in Crimea have sworn their allegiance to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, as Simferopol pushes for its autonomy from the self-imposed government in Kiev.
The head of the Security Service of Crimea Petyor Zima, Chief of Department of Internal Affairs in the Crimea Sergey Abisov, the head of Service for Emergency Situations Sergei Shakhov and acting Chief of the Border Guards of Crimea Victor Melnichenko all took an oath of allegiance to the people of Crimea.
Tom Watkins
CNNMon, 03 Mar 2014 03:04 UTC
© AP
Police outside Kunming railway station after the coordinated attack.
A day after
men armed with long knives stormed a railway station in the southwest Chinese city of Kunming, killing dozens of people and wounding more than 100, authorities described what happened as a premeditated terrorist attack.
Police shot dead at least four of the attackers -- who numbered more than 10 -- and were looking for the others, officials told the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
Premier Li Keqiang asked that security in public places be tightened.
But for Chen Guizhen, that request came too late.
The 50-year-old woman told Xinhua at the hospital that her husband, Xiong Wenguang, 59, was killed in the attack.
"Why are the terrorists so cruel?" asked Chen, her husband's bloody ID card shaking in her hands.
The attackers gave no warning.
Comment: The death toll has since gone up to 33 in this horrific attack.
This does indeed seem different from incidents in recent years where 'lone knife-wielders' went off and slashed classrooms-full of schoolchildren.
Whoever this organized unit was, at this point it's known that the separatists in Xinjiang are being radicalized in Afghanistan by the CIA:
US trained Uighur terrorists for eventuality of war with China
RTSat, 01 Mar 2014 02:55 UTC
© Reuters/Alaa Al-Marjani
Mourners carry the coffin of a victim who was killed in a mortar attack, during a funeral in Mussayab, 60km (40 miles) south of the capital Baghdad, February 21, 2014.
Over 700 people were killed in violence in Iraq this February with the capital city of Baghdad worst affected by the wave of violence.
Iraq has been hit by a surge of violence over the last year, the worst since 2008. The Iraq government put the total of dead in February at 790, while the UN said that 703 people perished in the bloodshed.
Josh Gerstein
PoliticoMon, 03 Mar 2014 02:44 UTC
Seriously sick people
Without fail, the release of secret Clinton documents serves as irresistible catnip for the press and the Clintons' political opponents.
Every page holds out the possibility of a salacious, even scandalous revelation that could dash the political ambitions of Hillary Clinton - or at least render her a mere mortal in discussions of possible 2016 presidential candidates, ending her reign as a kind of superhuman figure who dwarfs other potential White House contenders.
Comment: And we know what the painstaking "legally mandated review process is." It basically makes the paper worthless.What will end up happening is a few edgy discussions will come out. They won't be deal breakers; more likely they will paint the picture of Hilary as an Iron Lady to weak-willed and weepy Bill, and a chaotic bunch of frat boys. If anything, any revelation in these papers will serve to further her political agenda. We wouldn't put it past the "legally mandated reviewers" to even make some emendations.
Dana Davidson
CNNMon, 03 Mar 2014 01:11 UTC
As the crisis in Ukraine escalates, with Russian troops moving into the Crimean peninsula on Saturday, U.S. lawmakers are pushing for decisive action against Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the violence in the region and respect Ukraine's independence.
Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Sens. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, made the case for congressional sanctions and a suspension of Russian membership in the G8 and G20.
Obama's warning
Graham, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said there needs to be more than threats coming from the White House, and called President Barack Obama "weak and indecisive" on matters of foreign policy.
Comment: You see, none of this is gonna make much sense unless you translate this to a situation that you have had experience with, or could have experience with. Nations, and the agreements between them, are a bit like a Homeowners Association. Each nation is a house, and groups of nations are blocks. So there's the North American Block, and the European Block, and so on.
Russia is a house next to another one called Ukraine. Russia has rented a room in the Ukrainian house, and part of the Russian family has moved in there. The mother in the Ukrainian house recently divorced her husband, and on the rebound has shacked up with an abusive psychopath. So the dad from the Russia house has sent a couple of his sons over to the room rented in the Ukrainian house to protect his other kids who are sub-letting the room from the Ukrainian Mom who now has the abusive psychopathic boyfriend who's taken over.
At this point, the Homeowners Association is the G8, and the Neighborhood Watch is NATO.
The American House has been strong-arming people for the last 13 years and buying up property like mad, breaking into peoples houses, beating up families, and extorting protection money. On the European Block, the English, French, Spanish, and German houses represent the 'oldtime money' people on the block, they flip-flop back and forth based on their own self interest and a hypocritical sense of noblesse oblige, and plain old inbred recalcitrance.
Now the Ukrainian house is on a big plot of land that borders all the well-moneyed European Block people, and they (the Europeans) covet it for themselves.
The greedy American House has a long-standing grudge against the Russian House - Daddy Russia and Daddy America don't like each other - and this is exacerbated by the fact that Daddy Russia just got a new car, has hit the gym, and is mowing the yard shirtless and showing off. Also, Daddy Russia's latest Christmas Lights Display (Sochi) was way better than Daddy America's.
It turns out that the America House got the Ukrainian House's Daddy drunk and paid a woman of ill-repute to lay next to him while he was passed out to get some incriminating photos which he showed to Momma Ukraine to get her to leave him, and then took her out on the town and hooked her up with the psycho boyfriend as part of a plot to get back at Daddy Russia.
The European Block got wind of this, and coveting the land owned by the Ukrainian House, decided to support the play tentatively (they may turn at any moment when things go south).
So that is where we are at. Daddy America, out of spite, tried to pull a fast one. The Self-Interested Europeans backed it, but Daddy Russia wasn't fooled. Now that they've been caught out, and Daddy Russia isn't backing down, it's time to make as much noise as possible to cover up the fact that America failed to achieve its goal, got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, and Daddy Russia is giving them a big wedgie for it.
Sarah Muller
MSNBCSun, 02 Mar 2014 23:03 UTC
Hypocrite
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to Kiev on Monday night for discussions on the movement of Russian troops into Ukraine's Crimea region.
On Sunday, he condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin's "act of aggression" for his choice to invade Ukraine and warned of "very serious repercussions," including trade sanctions.
"It's really 19th century behavior in the 21st century," Kerry said Sunday on NBC's
Meet the Press. He suggested Putin is "possibly trying to annex Crimeam," saying,
"You just don't invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests."
Comment: Wow, just wow. Kerry, you remember him from such hits as:
John Kerry: The Ugly American and
Code Pink protesters hold faux-bloody hands behind Kerry at house Syria hearing. This is the same guy that was pushing for military action in Syria.
This is all just B.S. posturing. If anything, it shows how worried they are. Diplomatic solution? Kerry and the Obama administration's track record is a
shoot first, ask questions and we'll shoot again type of game. So why are there such sour grapes over Russia right now? It's like poker, when you have the nuts, you don't talk smack. America is so used to killing primitive natives and civilians that the prospect of actually having to duke it out with someone ( Russia ) who can give as well as it gets scares the
beejeezus out of 'em.
RTSun, 02 Mar 2014 09:07 UTC
© Reuters/Alex Kuzmin
The self-proclaimed president of Ukraine Aleksandr Turchinov
The self-imposed president of Ukraine Aleksandr Turchinov will be considered a "war criminal" in case he uses military force against the population of south-eastern part of Ukraine, Russia's lower house Speaker Sergey Naryshkin reportedly warned.
Naryshkin held a phone conversation with Aleksandr Turchinov from the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, who is leading a self-proclaimed government in Kiev. During the conversation Naryshkin reportedly warned Turchinov against deploying forces against Ukrainians resisting Kiev, a source told RIA Novosti.
The Ukrainian side has stated that it has no plans to resort to use of force against citizens.
Russia's Federation Council unanimously approved on Saturday President Vladimir Putin's request to use Russian military forces in Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians following a request from authorities in Crimea.
Turchinov has ordered a full mobilization of Ukraine's armed forces and ordered to boost security at nuclear power plants, airports and other sites citing threat of
"potential aggression
" from Russia.
It is unlikely that the interim government in Kiev will send troops to Crimea, believes political commentator Aleksandr Nekrasov, but even their rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions.
"Ever since they have seized power in Kiev, I think they were getting desperate by the day because they have suddenly realized that they are not getting that money which they hoped to get at once," Nekrasov told
RT. "And this desperation showed the fact that they have repeated all those warnings about Russian invasion, Russian aggression and so on and so forth and now we see them desperate enough to make all sorts of provocative statements and basically implying that the danger of war is rising."
Comment: The death toll has since gone up to 33 in this horrific attack.
This does indeed seem different from incidents in recent years where 'lone knife-wielders' went off and slashed classrooms-full of schoolchildren.
Whoever this organized unit was, at this point it's known that the separatists in Xinjiang are being radicalized in Afghanistan by the CIA:
US trained Uighur terrorists for eventuality of war with China