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Russia's offer to Greece

Alexander Mercouris
Russia Insider
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 13:09 UTC
Russia Greece BRICS
© Russia Insider
Greek Prime Minister meets with Vladimir Putin
Russia's offer of a pipeline came with an offer of a $5 billion prepayment. This was intended to buy Greece time to apply for a loan from the BRICS Bank. However the Greeks don't seem to be embracing the offer.

In the article about how Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's dealings with Moscow are putting at risk Greece's traditionally friendly ties to Russia, I said that the gas pipeline proposal the Russians have floated is intended to help Greece, not achieve some grand Russian pipeline strategy. In this article I will explain why.

It is first necessary to say something about Russia's gas export policies.

Western paranoia about Moscow's supposed "pipeline politics" has distorted understanding of Russian gas policy to a quite extraordinary degree, even among commentators who are generally favourable to Russia.

Comment: Greece has been subjected to shock doctrine measures, and those are intended to make it a loyal vassal to Washington. As a young government, Syriza is undoubtedly under enormous pressure. There is a financial war being waged in Greece, and the stakes are high:
The Greek government is currently locked in a life and death struggle with the elite which dominate the banks and political decision-making centers of the European Union. What are at stake are the livelihoods of 11 million Greek workers, employees and small business people and the viability of the European Union. If the ruling Syriza government capitulates to the demands of the EU bankers and agrees to continue the austerity programs, Greece will be condemned to decades of regression, destitution and colonial rule. If Greece decides to resist, and is forced to exit the EU, it will need to repudiate its 270 billion Euro foreign debts, sending the international financial markets crashing and causing the EU to collapse.

James Petras: The Assassination of Greece
Also see:

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Bullseye

Russian official: Events in Armenia are identical to the first stage of Ukrainian coup


Sputnik
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 08:18 UTC
Image
© AFP 2015/ Karen Minasyan
Current protests in Armenia are completely identical to the first stage of the state coup in Ukraine and might be orchestrated by the United States, Igor Morozov, member of the Federation Council's International Affairs Committee, said Wednesday.

Mass protests against the rise in household electricity prices erupted in Armenia's capital of Yerevan on Friday, and on Monday and Tuesday thousands of protesters attempted to march to the presidential residence. On Tuesday morning, police dispersed the crowd using water cannons. Almost 240 people, including journalists, were brought to police stations, and 25 have sought medical assistance. According to city officials, all those detained were subsequently freed.

According to Morozov, the events in Armenia are a repeat of those in Ukraine with exact precision. Thus, he concludes that Armenia is close to an armed coup.

"This will happen if the country's President Serzh Sargsyan fails to learn lessons from the Ukrainian Maidan... At that time, the Ukrainian opposition also refused to have a meeting with President Viktor Yanukovych and started to appeal to the European community and politicians arriving from Europe also started addressing the demonstrators," he said.

According to Morozov, at the time of the Maidan protests it was obvious that the scenario was orchestrated by the Embassy of the United States in Kiev.

"The American Embassy in Armenia is also taking an active part in the current developments in Yerevan. It should be noted that the US mission in Armenia is one of the largest US diplomatic missions abroad.... Even though Armenia is quite a small country," Morozov said.

A political crisis erupted in Ukraine in November 2013, after the Cabinet of Ministers halted the country's European integration. Mass protests started on Kiev's Independence Square, or Maidan, and resulted in the overthrow of then President Viktor Yanukovych, on February 22, 2014.

Comment: See also:

'Electric Yerevan' is Sliding Out of Control
Geopolitical Ends

Like all Color Revolutions, the backers of 'Electric Yerevan' are motivated by concrete geopolitical interests. They want to install an anti-Russian government that would withdraw Armenia from the Eurasian Economic Union and break the historical friendship between both states, following the model spearheaded by EuroMaidan's post-coup authorities. Pashinyan is highly critical of all aspects of Armenia's special relationship with Russia and has experience with anti-government organizing, hence his present designation as de-facto leader of the Color Revolution. The US also wants to drag Russia into a renewed military conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, using post-coup newly installed nationalists like Pashinyan to aggravate the situation with Azerbaijan to the point of open warfare, which Russia, with its Collective Security Treaty Organization obligations to Armenia and its 102nd military base in Gyumri, would inevitably be sucked into. The US failed to coax a disastrous Afghan-esque military intervention out of Russia in Ukraine after the EuroMaidan events, but it doesn't mean that it won't try to do the same thing in the Caucasus after a potentially successful 'Electric Yerevan'.
Is it just coincidence that US 'Secretary for War in Eurasia' Victoria Nuland was just recently touring the Caucasus?

How the West plans to prevent the SCO from mediating in Nagorno-Karabakh

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Play

South Front Crisis News 23-24 June: Kiev kills 2 civilians in Donetsk, U.S. charges teen with helping IS


South Front
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 00:58 UTC
south front
Two civilians were killed in the Ukrainian shelling of the town of Dokuchayevsk and a neighborhood of Donetsk, the defence ministry of the Donetsk People's Republic has reported. The ministry confirmed the use of artillery and mortars by Ukrainian troops. More than 30 ceasefire violations by Kiev forces were registered on Tuesday.

Canadian military instructors will come to Ukraine in August. According to source in Canada's Defense Ministry, a planning team that recently arrived in Ukraine will be tasked with preparations for stationing the main contingent. Canada plans to send around 200 instructors to Ukraine. The specifics of the two-year mission have not been disclosed. Last week, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper told that Canadian military instructors will stay in Ukraine until 31 March 2017.

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Stock Down

'F**k the U.S.!' EU economy facing major blowback from anti-Russia sanctions

Aeneas Georg
Sott.net
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 15:14 UTC
Russia as monster
© Michel Phillipsen
The peace-loving EU watches helplessly as the monstrous Russia devours Ukraine with thousands of tons of humanitarian aid... This is an illustration in a school textbook in The Netherlands, where children are being taught the American way of life.
As Sott.net reported earlier this month, this photo from a Dutch school textbook for 15 and 16-year-olds, portraying Russia as a monster with claws and fangs trying to devour Ukraine, while Europe extends a helping hand - in complete contravention to the truth - encapsulates the full-spectrum madness emanating downwards from the Atlanticist elites.

Five months back, I wrote an open letter to the leaders of the EU:
An open letter to Europe's leaders: "F*ck the EU" was an insult, not a command!
And now they have replied - sort of - with actions that make it abundantly clear that the spineless, pusillanimous pond-froth parading as 'leaders of the EU' have not changed tack one bit. The EU extended its sanctimonious sanctions against Russia, thereby ensuring more suffering for Europeans in the name of US global hegemony. The sanctions were extended on June 22nd, which just so happens to be remembered in Russia as the day Nazi Germany invaded in 1941. As a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said:
We would like to believe that it is a coincidence, and not by design."
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Dollar

Will the collapse of the dollar be hastened by seizure of Russian assets?

Ron Paul
Ron Paul Institute
Sun, 21 Jun 2015 17:38 UTC
Image
While much of the world focused last week on whether or not the Federal Reserve was going to raise interest rates, or whether the Greek debt crisis would bring Europe to a crisis, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague awarded a $50 billion judgment to shareholders of the former oil company Yukos in their case against the Russian government. The governments of Belgium and France moved immediately to freeze Russian state assets in their countries, naturally provoking the anger of the Russian government.

The timing of these actions is quite curious, coming as the Greek crisis in the EU seems to be reaching a tipping point and Greece, having perhaps abandoned the possibility of rapprochement with Europe, has been making overtures to Russia to help bail it out of its mess. And with the IMF's recent statement pledging its full and unconditional support to Ukraine, it has become even more clear that the IMF and other major multilateral institutions are not blindly technical organizations, but rather are totally subservient lackeys to the foreign policy agenda emanating from Washington. Toe the DC party line and the internationalists will bail you out regardless of how badly you mess up, but if you even think about talking to Russia you will face serious consequences.
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Gold Seal

Why China won't get sucked into a pointless war with the U.S.

Mike Whitney
Counterpunch
Tue, 23 Jun 2015 17:08 UTC
Image
"China is reaching deep within the world island in an attempt to thoroughly reshape the geopolitical fundamentals of global power...... Its two-step plan is designed to build a transcontinental infrastructure for the economic integration of the world island from within, while mobilizing military forces to surgically slice through Washington's encircling containment.......If China succeeds in linking its rising industries to the vast natural resources of the Eurasian heartland, then quite possibly.... "the empire of the world would be in sight."

— Alfred McCoy, The Geopolitics of American Global Decline, The Unz Review
"The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action."

— Former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, "America's Pacific Century", Foreign Policy magazine.
China's meteoric rise has Washington worried, not because China is a threat to its neighbors or to US national security, but because China's influence is expanding across the region. It's creating the institutions it needs to finance its own development (AIIB and New BRICS Bank), it's building the infrastructure needed to connect the continents with state-of-the-art high-speed rail (New Silk Road), and its attracting allies and trading partners who want to participate in its plan for growth and prosperity.

This is why Washington is worried; it's because China has transformed itself into an economic powerhouse that doesn't conform to the neoliberal model of punitive austerity, pernicious privatization, and madcap asset inflation. China has slipped out of the empire's orbit and charted its own course, which is why Washington wants to provoke Beijing over its negligible land reclamation activities in the South China Sea. Washington thinks it can succeed militarily where it has failed economically and politically.
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Megaphone

How will Greece "unpivot" from Russia after capitulating to the Troika?

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:20 UTC
Image
While Greece is collectively scratching its head why Tsipras et al were at loggerheads with Europe for 4 months, during which time the Greek economy entered a recession and saw its banks not only depleted of all cash but become de facto wards of the ECB, just to reach an "agreement" that could have taken place back in February, and attention shifts to just how Tsipras will pass last night's impromptu capitulation through hard-line leftist parliamentarians, Greece now has another problem: how to unpivot the aggressive pivot toward Russia in the past few months, which culminated with the signing of an energy deal last week in St. Petersburg.

It goes without saying that if Greece is scrambling to go back into the Troika's good graces, Belgium will make it very clear that any overtures to Putin are to be "cease and deceased" (sic) immediately. Which opens a can of worms for the Marxists in government: how to slam shut the door to their ideological Plan B, when everyone knows the Grexit fiasco will repeat again in a few months, and Greece will again be knocking on the Kremlin's door.

For now, however, the situation is as follows, courtesy of Kathimerini: a rift appeared to have emerged Monday between Energy Minister Panayiotis Lafazanis and Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias as regards the country's energy policy, with the latter declaring that the government is fully in line with European policy in spite of a recent Russian gas deal that has ruffled feathers in Brussels.
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Quenelle

Putin's approval rating hits 89 percent, his highest-ever in recorded history


RT
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 14:37 UTC
Putin T-shirt
© CNews Canoe
Russian independent pollster, the Levada Center, says the share of Russians who are happy with Vladimir Putin's work as president has reached 89 percent, which is his highest-ever approval rating. The poll was conducted over the period June 19-22, with the Levada Center releasing its results on Wednesday.

The number of Russians who expressed dissatisfaction with Putin's work was 10 percent.

Sixty-four percent think the current policies of the Russian authorities are correct - also the highest in history.

Sixty-six percent of responders said they approved of Dmitry Medvedev's work as prime minister and 33 percent expressed disappointment with it. At the same time, the government in general has earned the approval of 62 percent of Russians and the disapproval of 37 percent.

The Lower House of Parliament was less popular, with 54 percent of those polled approving the MPs' actions and 44 percent saying their efforts weren't good enough.

When researchers asked the Russian public to name five or six politicians they trusted most, Putin again ranked first with 64 percent of responders naming him their favorite. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu was second with 28 percent and third place was split between PM Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who each garnered 21 percent.

Opposition party leaders claimed significantly less - only 11 percent of Russians said they trusted the head of the Communist Party Gennadiy Zyuganov, nine percent gave Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovskiy the nod, and just four percent said they trusted the head of the Fair Russia party, Sergey Mironov.

Comment: Man of the Year for sure! How about Man of the Decade?

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Megaphone

Ex-German Finance Minister slams 'warmongering U.S. imperialism' - 'F**k US imperialism'


RT
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 15:04 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Tobias Schwarz
Oskar Lafontaine
Left-wing German politician and former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine had some harsh words for the US on its politics concerning Russia and Ukraine. He has also called on the EU to oppose Washington.

In a Facebook post which cannot be quoted fully quote due to strong language, Lafontaine, whose latest political post was co-chairman of the democratic socialist party The Left, called US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter the "Secretary of War", and Washington's policies "imperialism."

"The US Secretary of War calls on Europeans to confront the Russian 'aggression'," Lafontaine writes after a strongly-worded introduction. "The Europeans have every reason to oppose the US aggression."

Ashton Carter has paid a visit to Tallinn, where he pledged a new batch of 250 tanks and armored vehicles to European nations near the Russian border. His counterparts from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were eager to accept the deployment, indicating they see it as a message to Russia over what they call its "aggression."
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Stock Up

Russia becomes China's biggest oil provider, overtaking Saudi Arabia


RT
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 14:52 UTC
Image
© Reuters / David McNew
In May China imported a record 3.92 million metric tons of crude oil from Russia, which is equivalent to 927,000 barrels per day. Russia has become Beijing's top crude supplier for the first time since October 2005.

"Russia is using its good relationship with China to increase supplies and has now taken the top spot," Gao Jian, an analyst at Shandong-based energy consultant SCI International told Bloomberg in a phone interview.

Last month Saudi Arabia delivered only 3.05 million tons to China overtaken also by Angola, which sold 3.26 million tons in May reports Bloomberg, citing data from the Chinese General Administration of Customs published Tuesday.

Comment: Slowly but surely, the alliance between Russia and China is increasing in strength.

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