Puppet Masters
The events in Ukraine and around the Crimea - "dust" from a long-running project - are part of a plan to eliminate Russia as the only barrier to the North Atlantic elites scheme to dominate the world. Those are the deductions of Andrew Fursov, the director of the Centre of the Russian Studies of MGU (Moscow State University), the director of the Systematic-Strategic analysis Institute, the scholar of the International Academy of Science (Austria), the main editor of the magazine "Востоковедение и африканистика" ("Orientalism and Africanism"), an often guest lecturer in European and American Universities.
(This is a slightly earlier interview with A.I.Fursov, but it goes into a lot more detail about the events in Ukraine. Please note that half a year has passed, and he was right and accurate, about the events which had already happened and are still unfolding - MR)
Q: Andrey Iliych, the main geopolitical question of today is the Russian geopolitics in Ukraine. Let's start our conversation with the analysis of that situation. What happened there?
A: The situation in Ukraine, I would put on a par with the situation in Syria. And if the Syrian question was met with conflicting views - the leaders of the world Capitalism, the Elite, did not want an escalation of the conflict in Syria and its transformation into a regional war - the Ukrainian question was met by the West as one. It is obvious that, economically, Ukraine is of no interest to the northern-Atlantic Elite. It is, rather, a geopolitical necessity to tear Ukraine from Russia, to turn it into an anti-Russian foothold.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a prostitute for the psychopathic elite!
"We are establishing four trust funds to finance concrete initiatives within four areas; logistics, command and control, cyber defence, and help to military personnel, including wounded personnel," Rasmussen said.
He also said that some NATO member-states "announced concrete financial contributions to these trust funds and it was signalled that more announcements may come forward at the summit in Wales next week."
"The whole purpose of these trust funds is to finance activities that can assist Ukraine in reforming and modernizing the armed forces with a view to making them stronger to defend Ukraine," Rasmussen said.
Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that his government would seek the cancellation of Ukraine's non-aligned status and resumption of the country's course for NATO membership.
Rasmussen also accused Russia of being involved in the Ukrainian conflict.
Comment: NATO shows that it is a heartless and soulless entity, that seeks conflicts and wars, rather than diplomacy and peace. It serves the interests of the military industrial complex for whom war, misery and destruction means profit. Will the Ukrainian population revolt against their new EU/NATO overlords, once they realise that joining the Western psychopathic club does not mean food, clothes, medicine or a rebuilding of their country, but just untold suffering with no future prospects?
What is expected to follow is an incremental expansion of US military intervention in eastern Syria that will include further arming and funding of the very terrorist networks it claims it is violating Syria's borders to attack, culminating in eventual military operations carried out against the Syria government itself.
The US' justification for directly intervening in Syria however, only further undermines the very "international norms" it claims to champion, and opens the door for other nations it is menacing to use more direct means to confront its agenda of global military aggression, including along Russia's border with Ukraine.
"With support from and under the influence of a number of well-known states the Kiev authorities have torpedoed all political agreements on settling the crisis in Ukraine, including the Geneva statement of April 17 and the Berlin declaration of July 2," Churkin said.
The Russian envoy remarked that President Pyotr Poroshenko's peace plan for settling the conflict in Ukraine "was a step towards further escalation, because it pegged armistice to the capitulation of militias."
Churkin recalled that just yesterday, when he was commenting on the results of the meeting in Minsk, Poroshenko said that Kiev's main goal was peace. In the meantime, "the Ukrainian forces in defiance of all norms of international humanitarian law and just moral principles are indiscriminately attacking cities, residential areas and infrastructures.
Comment: Churkin is right, but the West isn't listening. Just yesterday, Kiev targeted two buses carrying Ukrainian refugees -- including women, children, and disabled people -- to Russia.

Major General Mohammed Ali Jafari heads the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a full-blown army of some 300,000 personnel (not counting reservists)
Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said in a message on Friday that resistance by the Palestinians in the face of the 51-day Israeli military aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip was the starting point for the collapse of the Zionist regime.
The Iranian commander also said the "revolutionary people of Iran and the IRGC" will continue to provide "defense and social" support to the Palestinians.
Russian and Ukrainian leaders have concluded their first official face-to-face meeting in Minsk during which they discussed Ukraine's Association Agreement with EU and the crisis and humanitarian disaster in the east of the country.
Russia will do everything to facilitate a peace process in Ukraine, President Putin told the press following the 2-hour talks, which he described as "positive."
However, Russia did not and had never set forth conditions for settling Ukraine's internal conflict, Putin added, so a ceasefire agreement was not discussed during the talks in the absence of peace suggestions from Ukrainian leadership.
"We, Russia, cannot talk about any ceasefire conditions whatsoever, or possible agreements between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk," Putin stated.
"We can only facilitate the creation of an environment of trust in the course of this possible and much needed, in my opinion, negotiation process. This is what we talked about," Putin added.
Comment: As Robert Parry, who covered the Iran-Contra story in the '80s, writes below, it's difficult to fathom the fact that so many Americans can believe the audacious lies spouted by their government and media. It's a two-pronged problem: On the one hand we have the psychopaths in power who simply tell bald-faced lies, completely manufactured out of thin air -- the "Big Lie" -- and those in on the game who repeat the lie because it supports their interests, like the presstitute media. (E.g., "Russia invades Ukraine!") On the other, we have the people, who can't fathom that anyone could tell such a lie. "They must have some justification for believing that. They wouldn't say it otherwise!" That's exactly with the PTB are counting on. Facts and evidence be damned.
When even smart people like economist Paul Krugman buy into the false narrative about the Ukraine crisis, it's hard to decide whether to despair over the impossibility of America ever understanding the world's problems or to marvel at the power of the U.S. political/media propaganda machine to manufacture its own reality.
On Monday, Krugman's New York Times column accepts the storyline that Russia's President Vladimir Putin instigated the Ukraine crisis and extrapolates from that "fact" the conclusion that perhaps the nefarious Putin did so to engineer a cheap land grab or to distract Russians from their economic problems.
"Delusions of easy winnings still happen," Krugman wrote. "It's only a guess, but it seems likely that Vladimir Putin thought that he could overthrow Ukraine's government, or at least seize a large chunk of its territory, on the cheap - a bit of deniable aid to the rebels, and it would fall into his lap. ...Or you could look at the actual facts of how the Ukraine crisis began and realize that it was the West, not Russia, that instigated this crisis. Putin's response has been reactive to what he perceives as threats posed by the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the imposition of a new Western-oriented regime hostile to Moscow and Ukraine's ethnic Russians.
"Recently Justin Fox of the Harvard Business Review suggested that the roots of the Ukraine crisis may lie in the faltering performance of the Russian economy. As he noted, Mr. Putin's hold on power partly reflects a long run of rapid economic growth. But Russian growth has been sputtering - and you could argue that the Putin regime needed a distraction."
Comment: Dmitry Orlov, a Russian-American engineer, offers you the tools to navigate through the Western propaganda without becoming hostages to lies. Because there is a genocide going on and by believing and spreading lies, we become accomplices.
With regard to the goings-on in Ukraine, I have heard quite a few European and American voices piping in, saying that, yes, Washington and Kiev are fabricating an entirely fictional version of events for propaganda purposes, but then so are the Russians. They appear to assume that if their corporate media is infested with mendacious, incompetent buffoons who are only too happy to repeat the party line, then the Russians must be same or worse.
The reality is quite different. While there is a virtual news blackout with regard to Ukraine in the West, with little being shown beyond pictures of talking heads in Washington and Kiev, the media coverage in Russia is relentless, with daily bulletins describing troop movements, up-to-date maps of the conflict zones, and lots of eye-witness testimony, commentary and analysis. There is also a lively rumor mill on Russian and international social networks, which I tend to disregard because it's mostly just that: rumor. In this environment, those who would attempt to fabricate a fictional narrative, as the officials in Washington and Kiev attempt to do, do not survive very long.
There is a great deal to say on the subject, but here I want to limit myself to rectifying some really, really basic misconceptions that Washington has attempted to impose on you via its various corporate media mouthpieces.
How do we know that this is a lie? Is it because we have heard nothing but lies about Russia from NATO, from US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, from assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, from Obama and his entire regime of pathological liars, and from the British, German, and French governments along with the BBC and the entirety of the Western media?
This, of course, is a good reason for knowing that the latest Western propaganda is a lie. Those who are pathological liars don't suddenly start telling the truth.
But there are even better reasons for understanding that Russia has not invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops.
One reason is that Putin has invested heavily in diplomacy backed by unprovocative behavior. He would not risk his bet on diplomacy by sending in troops too few in number to have a decisive effect on the outcome.

EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger (R) attends a meeting with Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak (L) on August 29, 2014 in Moscow.
The gas situation is 'critical' Russia's Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said after meeting with EU energy chief Gunther Oettinger in Moscow on Friday. The minister expressed concern about Ukraine's preparations for the winter months as gas supplies dwindle, and warned Kiev might siphon off Europe-bound deliveries.
Russia said they will resume gas deliveries to Ukraine if they pay $1.45 billion of their gas debt, Aleksey Miller, CEO of Gazprom, said. Naftogaz, Ukraine's national oil and gas company, has a total debt of $5.3 billion.
Comment: Check out the article "Tilting at pipelines: Geopolitical madness at the end of empire" for a wider perspective of this messy situation:
Behind the 2009 crisis, a similar one in 2006 and the one happening right now, we find what can only be described as squabbling Ukrainian oligarchs vying for control over the profits from Russian gas that transits through and is sold in Ukraine. In addition, there is the ubiquitous presence of the USA as it pursues its decades-long 'strategic interest' in attempting to weaken the Russian-EU energy partnership.












Comment: Also see: Next step regime change: Will St. Petersburg suffer the next Western sponsored Colour Revolution?