RTWed, 06 Aug 2014 18:49 UTC
© RIA Novosti/Pavel Lisitsyn
Moscow slammed NATO and Pentagon claims that Russia is amassing military near the border with Ukraine calling them unsubstantiated, according to a statement made by a Ministry of Defense spokesman.
"In Russia's Ministry of Defense such statements only raise sympathy for the speakers of the Pentagon, the US State Department and NATO. It seems the people are serious,
but they have to constantly improvise during their speeches to somehow add seriousness to their statements," said Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the ministry Major General, on Wednesday.
Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, told reporters on Tuesday that Russia has at least 10,000 troops on Ukraine's border.
Following this, on Wednesday, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu stated that Russia has already amassed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on the border.
Konashenkov said that "we would like to explain to the Pentagon and NATO officials that it is impossible to perform such a manoeuver with thousands of soldiers with weapons and military equipment in such a short time, all the more
to keep it secret from OSCE observers now in the region."
In late July, the OSCE deployed sixteen observers to two border-crossings in Russia - Gukovo and Donetsk, following a request to the organization by the Russian government.
The regular "tales" of Russian troops amassing near the border with Ukraine are reminiscent "of an auction selling soap bubbles, where the main goal is to set the price higher before the bubble bursts."
Paul Richter
LA TimesWed, 06 Aug 2014 18:09 UTC
© Andrey Kronberg / AFP/Getty ImagesRussian combat helicopters take part in a military drill August 1st
The State Department on Monday warned Moscow that a large Russian military exercise underway near the border with Ukraine could sharpen tensions as Russian-backed separatists battle Ukrainian troops nearby. U.S. officials are "deeply concerned" by the aviation operation, which has already begun and is expected to continue until Friday, said Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman.
"Exercises of this kind are provocative and only serve to escalate tensions," she told reporters. The exercise is expected to involve dozens of fighters, bombers and attack helicopters.
The Obama administration has accused Russia of sending military personnel and heavy arms into Ukraine to help the separatists and of shelling Ukraine from across the border. It has also accused Russia of providing the air defense system that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last month.
Comment: Calling Russia a stagnant power with a resource-dependent economy seems like a lot of projection on Obama's part.
© Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty ImagesUkrainian troops patrol near Donetsk where they are fighting to hold positions on the edge of the city.
R
ussia has began major military exercises involving more than 100 aircraft near the border with
Ukraine.
The war games on Monday came as the
conflict intensified around Donetsk, a city of a million people held by the pro-Russian rebels who have been fighting Kiev government forces since April. Heavy artillery fire continued there on Sunday night, according to the city administration. Ukraine's national security council said on Monday that government troops had begun "liberating Donetsk from the north after encircling the city".
The headquarters of Kiev's "anti-terrorist operation" said rebels had intensified artillery fire at its positions overnight. Both sides have reportedly fired low-accuracy artillery such as Grad rockets in populated areas during the conflict, in which at least 500 civilians have been killed.
A map published by the national security council showed government forces had made significant gains, cutting the rebels in Donetsk off from those in Lugansk. Ukrainian troops had taken back three-quarters of the territory formerly controlled by the rebels, the council said.
UK manufacturing continues to decline. Small businesses are not seeing an improvement in the economy. The jobs numbers are falling but spending is declining, Walmart is concerned that the economy is not recovering. Obama asking for 3.8 billion for the illegal immigrant problem that the administration caused. US kidnaps Russian MP, might be used to trade with Edward Snowden. Ukraine waging full out war on the Ukrainian people and the central bankers/US government approve of this action. ISIS threatening all embassies around the world. Back in May the US state department sent explosives to embassies across the world. The US has a plan for civil unrest in the United States.
Be prepared for a false flag event.
© ITAR-TASS / Alexei Nikolsky
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a decree on countermeasures to Western sanctions.
The document entitled "On the Application of Certain Special Economic Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation"
prohibits or restricts, for one year, the import of certain kinds of agricultural products, raw materials and food originating in a country that has imposed economic sanctions against Russian companies and (or) individuals or has joined such sanctions.A list of goods the import of which may be restricted in response to the Western sanctions is being prepared and will be approved by the Russian government, its spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said on Wednesday.
"The document is being prepared for signing," she told ITAR-TASS.
Five-year accord will see Russia help Iran organise oil sales, but government denies it has violated international obligations
© Agence France-PresseA picture released by the Iranian President's website shows Iran's first offshore oil platform in the Caspian Sea
Vladimir Putin has agreed a $20bn (£11.8bn) trade deal with Iran that will see Russia sidestep Western sanctions on its energy sector.
Under the terms of a five-year accord, Russia will help Iran organise oil sales as well as "cooperate in the oil-gas industry, construction of power plants, grids, supply of machinery, consumer goods and agriculture products", according to a statement by the Energy Ministry in Moscow.
The Russian government issued a new statement on Wednesday after mysteriously withdrawing a similar release on Tuesday.
Comment: Of course it is a matter of "serious concern" for Washington! It means that their economic hegemony is seeing its last days, and it's about time!
© Respectparty.org
George Galloway has announced that he will establish his own public enquiry into the BBC's role in reporting the events of the past few weeks in Gaza.
The Bradford West MP had previously announced that he is refusing to pay his licence fee until the BBC demonstrated a more impartial standard of broadcasting on the conflict. Galloway has been openly critical of the its editorial standpoint on the conflict, arguing that the BBC has a duty, as a publicly funded organisation, to adopt an unbiased approach to such major stories.
Many in the country were outraged when the BBC failed to report on the July 19th national demonstration which had been attended by tens of thousands of demonstrators. It belatedly addressed this with a hastily-arranged piece on its website, for which it had to borrow an image from a rival broadcaster. It has also been commented that since the outcry, the BBC's reporting had apparently become more balanced. This was in part down to the reporting of Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen from the front-line in Gaza. Strangely - indeed, inexplicably - Bowen is absent from the reporting this week as he is, according to Twitter, 'on holiday'.
RTTue, 05 Aug 2014 19:13 UTC
© downtrend.comA new mystery leaker...Secret Government Watchlist Rules
CNN reported on Tuesday.
Earlier that day,
The Intercept published a
new article based off of disclosures provided to them by an unnamed source pertaining to the US government's use of watchlists to monitor known and suspected terrorists.
Previously,
The Intercept has worked closely with top-secret National Security Agency documents admittedly provided to journalists by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA.
Tuesday's leak, however, is of a document dated August 2013 - weeks after Snowden chose to identify himself as the source of the NSA leak and had already arrived in Moscow where he later received asylum and remains today."An August 2013 slide from the National Counterterrorism Center called 'TIDE By The Numbers' lays out the scope of the Obama administration's watchlisting system, and those it is targeting," Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux wrote for
The Intercept. "The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama administration has presided over
an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system."
© firstlook.orgScreenshot from The Intercept
Tuesday's
Intercept article came one day after the agency reported on previously unpublished NSA documents, but also barely two weeks after Scahill and Devereaux wrote of another NCC document provided to them by
a source within the intelligence community.In the 14 months since Snowden's documents first began to surface online, the US intelligence community has time and time again condemned the leaking of classified information, charging the ex-contractor with espionage and reportedly going to great lengths to prevent another major breach on par with the NSA disclosures, or the release of documents a few years earlier by WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning. In less than three weeks' time, however,
The Intercept has managed to obtain government documents without authorization from most presumably another source.
Comment: The "terrorist" definition de jour? Whew...how to keep up? How did we ever survive before we had the NSA, DHS, NCC, ODNI, ONSI, FPS, DIA, NGA, NRO, AFISRA, MI, MCIA, ONI, OICI, I&A, CGI, FBI, DEA, INR, TFI and the CIA taking such good care of us? Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. President. Only knowledge, truth, and un-compromised information keep us safer.
© Thelibertymill.com
Russia has been quiet, too quiet, since the EU and US unleashed their latest set of sanctions. However, as military drills and troop build-ups occur on Ukraine's borders,
Reuters reports that Russian Prime Minister Medvedev is considering a significant retaliation, "any unfriendly measures by the EU, including those in the area of air transportation, we'll be studied and won't remain without a response."
Russian business daily
Vedomosti quoted unnamed sources as saying the foreign and transport ministries were discussing possible action which might force EU airlines into long and costly detours and put them at a disadvantage to Asian rivals by restricting or banning European airlines from flying over Siberia on busy Asian routes. Costs? Over $1.3bn for every months for Lufthansa, BA, and Air France...
As Reuters reports,
The Russian business daily Vedomosti quoted unnamed sources as saying the foreign and transport ministries were discussing possible action which might force EU airlines into long and costly detours and put them at a disadvantage to Asian rivals.
Russia may restrict or ban European airlines from flying over Siberia on busy Asian routes, a newspaper reported on Tuesday, following Western sanctions which have grounded one Russian carrier and a billionaire's private jet.
Unlike previous centuries and epochs, modern warfare is not restricted solely to the battlefield. Rather, it extends into the information sphere where the dissemination of propaganda and the construction of narratives are of equal importance to weapons and soldiers. For today, the legitimacy of a war in the eyes of public opinion in many ways determines victory or defeat. It is here, in the realm of public opinion, that an organization such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) becomes indispensible to the Empire, not so much for the facts that it presents, but the narrative that it shapes.
Put another way, HRW serves as intermediary between the facts on the ground and the western public who rely on the organization (and similar NGOs such as Amnesty International) to accurately tell the story of a given conflict. It is precisely this position as an "information middleman" that makes HRW both relevant and dangerous for the simple fact that the manner in which it presents information, along with the critical facts it chooses to omit or otherwise distort, can have a tremendous impact on how the world views a conflict and, consequently, how the world responds.
By examining the way in which HRW documented, investigated, and presented findings from the conflicts in Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, and Venezuela, it becomes clear that the organization, though theoretically objective and "disinterested," is in fact an integral part of the western imperial system. Though HRW has done some good work, and likely will in the future, this cannot be taken as evidence that the organization is somehow not a part of the Empire. On the contrary,
without HRW and similar organizations, Washington and its allies would not be able to champion themselves as "defenders of human rights," "beacons of democracy," and "humanitarian powers."
Comment: Calling Russia a stagnant power with a resource-dependent economy seems like a lot of projection on Obama's part.