Official Washington draws the Ukraine crisis in black-and-white colors with Russian President Putin the bad guy and the U.S.-backed leaders in Kiev the good guys. But the reality is much more nuanced, with the American people consistently misled on key facts, writes Robert Parry.

If you wonder how the world could stumble into World War III - much as it did into World War I a century ago - all you need to do is look at the madness that has enveloped virtually the entire U.S. political/media structure over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats vs. black hats took hold early and has proved impervious to facts or reason.

The original lie behind Official Washington's latest "group think" was that Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis in Ukraine as part of some diabolical scheme to reclaim the territory of the defunct Soviet Union, including Estonia and other Baltic states. Though not a shred of U.S. intelligence supported this scenario, all the "smart people" of Washington just "knew" it to be true.

Forget about alleged Russian aggression and land grabbing in Ukraine - the real problem for the United States is Vladimir Putin. To be more precise, the real problem is a strong, independent Russia under the leadership of President Putin, a Russia that stands up for its national rights, respect for international norms and which is not prepared to simply roll over to placate American hegemonic selfish interests, like propping up its bankrupt dollar.

As the American-led NATO military alliance meets in Wales this week, it is obvious that Washington and its European minions are thrashing around trying to find a new purpose for an organization that was formed 65 years ago during the Cold War. The summit in the Welsh city of Newport is being billed as «the most important meeting of NATO since the end of the Cold War» - might we wonder why? - more than two decades ago.

US President Barack Obama is in attendance with 60 world leaders, including those of the 28 NATO member states. Shamelessly, there is much high-flown rhetoric about «defending Europe from Russian aggression». NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen even had the gall to state, at the opening of the conference, that «Russia is attacking Ukraine».


«So we continue to call on Russia to pull back its troops from Ukrainian borders, and stop the flow of weapons and fighters into Ukraine», said Rasmussen without a modicum of evidence, or even a semblance of citing evidence.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned Russia may shut its air corridors to Western airlines if the next round of European sanctions hit Russian energy companies.

"If there are sanctions related to the energy sector, or further restrictions on Russia's financial sector, we will have to respond asymmetrically," Medvedev said in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper, published on Monday.

EU ministers will gather on Monday to discuss new sanctions against Russia and are rumored to be introduced on Tuesday. The prime minister promised a strong retaliation if the West slaps Russia with more sanctions.

"We could impose transport restrictions," Medvedev said, adding, "We believe we have friendly relations with our partners, and foreign airlines of friendly countries are permitted to fly over Russia. However, we'll have to respond to any restrictions imposed on us," the prime minister said.

After sanctions hit Aeroflot's low-cost subsidiary Dobrolet in late July, Medvedev discussed with ministers the possibility of limiting, of even completely blocking, European flights to Asia that overfly Russia.

"If Western carriers have to bypass our airspace, this could drive many struggling airlines into bankruptcy. This is not the way to go. We just hope our partners realize this at some point," he told Vedomosti.

All colonial settler states are based on the violent dispossession of the native peoples - and as a result, their fundamental and overriding aim has always been to keep those native peoples as weak as possible. Israel's aim for the Palestinians is no different.

Palestinian statehood is clearly an obstacle to this goal; a Palestinian state would strengthen the Palestinians. Genuine sovereignty would end Israel's current presumed right to steal their land, control their borders, place them under siege, and bomb them at will. That is why Netanyahu's Likud party platform "flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river."; that is why Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for even suggesting some limited self-governance for the Palestinians; and that is why every proposal for Palestinian statehood, however limited and conditional, has been wilfully sabotaged by successive Israeli governments of all hues.

Dear friends,

Thanks again to the fantastic work of the Russian Team I can share with you the English translation of an article I find most important at a time when so many commentators and analysts are completely misreading the situation in Novorussia. This article (translated by Marina and proofread/edited by Alex, John and Michael - thanks guys!) addresses some of the most prevalent arguments used by what I would call the "Dugin camp" to, yet again, stir up a panic when there is no reason for it (but then, Dugin has been having panic attacks as soon as he realized that Putin would not send the military into the Donbass). Frankly, while I never liked Dugin very much, I now am beginning to find him outright dangerous and I am delighted to be able to share with you a sober-minded analysis of what took place in Minsk. This analysis has been written by Yuri Baranchik, candidate of philosophy, director the Information-Analytical Internet Portal "Imperia" and former director of the State Scientific Research Institute of the Academy of Theory and Practice of Government of the President of Belarus. He is a regular contributor to the website Vzgliad where I found this article (original Russian text here).

Kind regards,

The Saker

PS: there is one good thing about Dugin's latest panic campaign: it puts to rest the theory mantrically put forth by the western MSM about Dugin being "Putin's ideologue" or "Putin's ideological advisor" and any other such nonsense. This was never true (unlike Dugin, Putin never was a Bolshevik), but at least now this is obviously and undeniably untrue.

-------
Novorussia - Surrender or victory?

by Yuri Baranchik

So, what happened in Minsk? Surrender or victory? This is the kind of argument that not only the average citizen of our immense territory is currently having, but unfortunately, also a significant part of the expert community. There is no simple answer to this question without considering what had happened a week earlier in Brussels at the EU summit and at the NATO summit on the 4th and 5th of September in Newport, Wales.
Russia won a political victory in Brussels: the EU (Germany and the countries of the Old Europe) refused to impose new sanctions against Russia under pressure from the United States and its most loyal vassal states (Britain, Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine). Thus, the EU chose not to escalate the conflict with Russia on the eve of winter. Furthermore, the EU itself has advised a way out of the situation on the South Stream and remove it from the sanctions of the Third Energy Package: to apply the same rules that apply to offshore projects of the EU; for example in Bulgaria, to allow Gazprom to buy them and connect them to the "South Stream".

In his profound and prophetic essay 13 years ago, "The Debasement of World Currency: It is Inflation, But Not as We Know It" --

http://www.gata.org/node/8303

-- the British economist Peter Warburton realized that central banks had abused their unlimited power of money creation and that this had impelled them into comprehensive commodity market rigging and price suppression to save the financial system they had perverted.

"What we see at present," Warburton wrote, "is a battle between the central banks and the collapse of the financial system fought on two fronts.

Encircling Russia and Arming Ukraine Are What's Provoking the Bear

Jack Matlock, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, says that the U.S. and NATO are to blame for the Ukraine crisis:

The fact is they are going to intervene until they are certain that there is no prospect of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. And all of the threats by NATO and so on to sort of increase defenses elsewhere is simply provocative to the Russians. Now, I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's the way Russia is going to react. And frankly, this is all predictable. And those of us who helped negotiate the end of the Cold War almost unanimously said in the 1990s, "Do not expand NATO eastward. Find a different way to protect eastern Europe, a way that includes Russia. Otherwise, eventually there's going to be a confrontation, because there is a red line, as far as any Russian government is concerned, when it comes to Ukraine and Georgia and other former republics of the Soviet Union."

There needs to be an understanding between Russia and the Ukrainians as to how to solve this problem. It is not going to be solved militarily. So the idea that we should be giving more help to the Ukrainian government in a military sense simply exacerbates the problem. And the basic problem is Ukraine is a deeply divided country. And as long as one side tries to impose its will on the other - and that is what has happened since February, the Ukrainian nationalists in the west have been trying to impose their will on the east, and the Russians aren't going to permit that. And that is the fact of the matter. So, yes, there simply needs to be an agreement.

And most of the - I would say, the influence of the West in trying to help the Ukrainians by, I would say, defending them against the Russians tends to be provocative, because - you know, Putin is right: If he decided, he could take Kiev. Russia is a nuclear power. And Russia feels that we have ignored that, that we have insulted them time and time again, and that we are out to turn Ukraine into an American puppet that surrounds them. And, you know, with that sort of psychology, by resisting that, in Russian eyes, he has gained unprecedented popularity. So, it seems to me that we have to understand that, like it or not, the Ukrainians are going to have to make an agreement that's acceptable to them, if they keep their unity.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO. And why we react as if it is and has any claim on our cooperation in defending them from Russia, this is simply not the case.

The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close "to the point of death" by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a security source has told The Telegraph.

The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or "simulated drowning" so far admitted by the CIA.

"They weren't just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth," said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. "They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture."

The account of extreme CIA interrogation comes as the US Senate prepares to publish a declassified version of its so-called Torture Report - a 3,600-page report document based on a review of several million classified CIA documents.

Publication of the report is currently being held up by a dispute over how much of the 480-page public summary should remain classified, but it is expected to be published within weeks.

It appears there is another nation on planet Earth that is becoming isolated. One by one, Russia and China appear to be finding allies willing to 'de-dollarize'; and the latest to join this trend is serial-defaulter Argentina. As Reuters reports, China and Argentina's central banks have agreed a multi-billion dollar currency swap operation "to bolster Argentina's foreign reserves" or "pay for Chinese imports with Yuan," as Argentina's USD reserves dwindle. In addition, Argentina claims China supports the nation's plans in the defaulted bondholder dispute.

Having met 'on the sidelines' in Basel, Switzerland in July, Argentine and Chinese central banks agreed to a currency swap equivalent to $11b that Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich said could be used to stabilize reserves.. (as Reuters reports)

Argentina, which defaulted on its debt in July, will receive the first tranche of a multi-billion dollar currency swap operation with China's central bank before the end of this year, the South American country's La Nacion newspaper reported on Sunday.

The swap will allow Argentina to bolster its foreign reserves or pay for Chinese imports with the yuan currency at a time weak export revenues and an ailing currency have put the Latin American nation's foreign reserves under intense pressure.

La Nacion said Argentina would receive yuan worth $1 billion by the end of 2014, the first payment of a loan worth a total $11 billion signed by Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez and her Chinese counterpart in July.

In adition, Bloomberg reports

People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan expressed his support for Argentina in its legal fight against holdout bondholders

* * *

Isolated, indeed... as China and Russia roam the world making friends with every nation that the US is "involved" with...

A $4.9bn diamond mine will open on September 5 in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the ancestral land of Africa's last hunting Bushmen, exactly ten years after the Botswana government claimed there were "no plans to mine anywhere inside the reserve."

The Bushmen were told they had to leave the reserve soon after diamonds were discovered in the 1980s, but the Botswana government has repeatedly denied that the illegal and forced evictions of the Kalahari Bushmen - in 1997, 2002 and 2005 - were due to the rich diamond deposits. It justified the Bushmen's evictions from the land in the name of "conservation".

In 2000, however, Botswana's Minister of Minerals, Energy & Water Affairs told a Botswana newspaper, "the relocation of Basarwa (Bushmen) communities from [the Central Kalahari Game Reserve] is to pave way for a proposed Gope Diamond Mine"; and in 2002, the Bushmen told Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples' rights, "Foreign Minister General Merafhe went to the reserve and told us we had to be moved because of diamonds."

The mine opening has also exposed Botswana's commitment to conservation as window dressing. The government falsely claims that the Bushmen's presence in the reserve is "incompatible with wildlife conservation," while allowing a diamond mine and fracking exploration to go ahead on their land.

And while conservation organizations have heralded Botswana President Ian Khama's conservation efforts, they have remained silent on the persecution of the Bushmen and the mining activities in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

A Bushman whose family was evicted told Survival, "This week President Khama will open a mine in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Do those organizations who have been awarding President Khama for his work with the flora and fauna still believe he is a good example to the world? The residents of the Reserve are not benefitting anything from the mine. The only benefits go to communities living outside the reserve, while our natural resources are being destroyed. We strongly oppose the opening of the mine until the government and Gem Diamonds sit down with us and tell us what we will benefit from the mine. "