Ellen Brown

“As things stand, the banks are the permanent government of the country, whichever party is in power.” – Lord Skidelsky, House of Lords, UK Parliament, 31 March 2011)

On March 20, 2014, European Union officials reached an historic agreement to create a single agency to handle failing banks. Media attention has focused on the agreement involving the single resolution mechanism (SRM), a uniform system for closing failed banks. But the real story for taxpayers and depositors is the heightened threat to their pocketbooks of a deal that now authorizes both bailouts and “bail-ins” – the confiscation of depositor funds. The deal involves multiple concessions to different countries and may be illegal under the rules of the EU Parliament; but it is being rushed through to lock taxpayer and depositor liability into place before the dire state of Eurozone banks is exposed.

The bail-in provisions were agreed to last summer. According to Bruno Waterfield, writing in the UK Telegraph in June 2013:

Under the deal, after 2018 bank shareholders will be first in line for assuming the losses of a failed bank before bondholders and certain large depositors. Insured deposits under £85,000 (€100,000) are exempt and, with specific exemptions, uninsured deposits of individuals and small companies are given preferred status in the bail-in pecking order for taking losses . . . Under the deal all unsecured bondholders must be hit for losses before a bank can be eligible to receive capital injections directly from the ESM, with no retrospective use of the fund before 2018.

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Stephen Lendman

Welcome to police state Turkey. It's no democracy. Claiming otherwise is a convenient illusion.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is tyrannical. He's ruthless. He blames victims for his crimes. He's unapologetic. He heads Ankara's rogue government. Turkey is one of 28 NATO countries. Erdogan partners with Washington's imperial wars.

He's part of Obama's agenda to ravage and destroy Syria. At issue is ousting Assad. It's replacing him with pro-Western puppet leadership. It's denying Syrians all rights. It's exploiting them ruthlessly. It's stealing Syrian resources. It's eliminating an Israeli rival. It's isolating Iran before targeting its government the same way.

It's reckless. It's lawless. It's out-of-control. It risks regional war. It risks expanding it globally. It risks what no responsible leader would dare. It's happening in real time.

Obama wants a pretext for full-scale US-led NATO intervention. Last summer's false flag Ghouta chemical weapons attack failed. Hoped for popular US support didn't follow. Mass opposition emerged. Libya 2.0 was postponed. It wasn't cancelled. It remains another major false flag incident ahead.

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Stephen Lendman

'Ukraine's soul'? - Is there really such an ethereal thing as that? Maybe there is one; maybe not. Or maybe there's just nastiness and the vilest thuggery, depravity and unthinkable perversion. And...there's maybe even this: an evil that knows no bounds, free from all constraint, a willingness to plunge to unheard of depths...an evil from which, this time, not even the tiniest shaft of captured light could escape...

Ukraine remains a global flashpoint. Turmoil, possible internal power struggles and uncertainty reflect things. Plundering its economy is planned. Obama's Brussels speech was duplicitous. It was provocative. It stoked confrontation with Russia. Daily inflammatory Western headlines continue. Anti-Russian vitriol remains intense.

Lies substitute for truth. Friday's Wall Street Journal was typical. It headlined "Russian Buildup Stokes Worries."

No "buildup" whatever exist. Not according to Journal contributors. Propaganda substitutes for accurate reporting. Lies drown out truth. Unnamed US officials were cited. Credibility isn't Washington's long suit. Nor Journal editors and contributors. "Russian troops massing near Ukraine are actively concealing their positions and establishing supply lines that could be used in a prolonged deployment, ratcheting up concerns that Moscow is preparing for another major incursion and not conducting exercises as it claims," the Journal reported. "Such an incursion could take place without warning because Russia has already deployed the array of military forces needed for such an operation," it added.

According to US officials, Russia massed 50,000 troops on Ukraine's border. An unnamed Ukrainian official said 100,000. A "senior US official" said "(w)hat matters is the intent. And we don't have a clear sense of that." - False! No Russian buildup exists. No Ukraine invasion is planned. Putin isn't expansionist. He respects sovereign rights of other nations. His agenda is polar opposite Washington's. Don't expect Journal editors or contributors to explain. Russia bashing continues daily. Its intensity exceeds the worst of Cold War years. It shows no signs of ebbing. Lies, damn lies, and misinformation remain official Western editorial policy.

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Michel Chossudovsky

Into the blue (i.e. into Europe): "Welcome..." (to Paradise)

On March 27, Ukraine’s interim coalition government announced concrete policy measures as part of its agreement with the IMF: a 50 percent increase of the retail price of gas coupled with the deregulation of the foreign exchange market.

The hike in gas prices is required by the IMF as part of an 18 Billion dollar pledge, which was approved on March 27. The IMF has demanded that retail gas and heating tariffs be raised “to full cost recovery.”

It is worth recalling that following the instatement of a coalition government on February 23, the interim (puppet) prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk casually dismissed the need to negotiate with the IMF.

Yatsenyk intimated that Ukraine will “accept whatever offer the IMF and the EU made” (VoR, March 21, 2014)

Prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a draft agreement, Yatsenyuk had already called for an unconditional acceptance of the IMF package: “We have no other choice but to accept the IMF offer”.

In surrendering to the IMF, Yatsenyuk was fully aware that the proposed reforms would brutally impoverish millions of people, including those who protested in Maidan.

In an address to Parliament on March 27, following the confirmation of the IMF’s pledged $18 billion loan, prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk warned that Ukraine was “on the brink of the economic and financial bankruptcy”.

The proposed “‘solution” includes a significant increase in income taxes, a freeze on wages, curtailment of old age pensions and higher energy prices. “We have no choice but to tell Ukraine the truth,” said Yatsenyuk.

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Stephen Lendman

On Wednesday, Barack Obama spoke at Brussels' Palais des Beaux-Arts (Palace of Fine Arts). Lies, damn lies, and demagogic Russia bashing were featured. He duplicitously hailed Western "ideals." They're being "tested," he said. US policy is polar opposite deceptive rhetoric. His address was a beginning-to-end litany of lies.

[He outrageously said America] "believe(s) in democracy, with elections that are free and fair, and independent judiciaries and opposition parties, civil society and uncensored information so that individuals can make their own choices."

"Yes, we believe in open economies based on free markets and innovation and individual initiative and entrepreneurship and trade and investment that creates a broader prosperity."

"And yes, we believe in human dignity, that every person is created equal - no matter who you are or what you look like or who you love or where you come from."

"That is what we believe. That's what makes us strong. And our enduring strength is also reflected in our respect for an international system that protects the rights of both nations and people - a United Nations and a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international law and the means to enforce those laws."

US policy is do what we say, not what we do. Washington rules are enforced. We're boss, they reflect. What we say goes. Nonbelievers face harsh crackdowns. War is America's bottom line option.

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Patrick Martin

The speech delivered by President Barack Obama in Brussels Wednesday was a call to arms for a US-NATO confrontation against Russia. With a series of lies and evasions, Obama presented a world turned upside down in which the US and European imperialists, who backed the coup in Ukraine spearheaded by fascistic forces, are the defenders of democracy and peace.

US President Obama at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

There was little in the speech that could convince working people, either in Europe or the United States, that a policy of open-ended conflict with Russia was in their interests. That was not the purpose of the speech, which consisted of one propaganda lie after another, uttered with the assurance that there would be no serious criticism, let alone opposition, within the ruling elites of the US and Europe or from their media mouthpieces.

Obama sought to elaborate the basis for a major turn in US foreign policy—what one of his foreign policy advisers called a “strategic pivot” towards confronting Russia, deliberately employing the same term that the White House has used to describe its systematic anti-China policy in the Far East.

One aim of this strategy of confrontation is to provide a new political axis for the US-dominated NATO military structure, which has visibly frayed in the absence of the old Cold War framework.

Much of the speech was devoted to rehashing long-discredited claims that American imperialism and its European allies represent democracy, freedom and the popular will. Obama invoked the conflict between democratic ideals and the authoritarian view that “order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign.”

But the words rang rather hollow coming from a president who has claimed absolute and unreviewable power to order the drone-missile assassination of anyone he chooses, anywhere in the world, and whose government asserts the right to collect and store the e-mails, text messages and telephone calls of the entire human race.

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Xymphora

A Short Comment by Xymphora

Most Americans don't care about Ukraine, or are even aware there is an issue, but the American elites are energized by the possibility of resumption of the Cold War. The 80s were the last time Americans felt good about themselves. Since then it has been a series of financially and morally ruinous Wars For The Jews under ZOG and the debilitating Israeli-created 'War On Terror'. Under the Cold War, Americans were always right and good, and the Soviets were plain evil. Under ZOG, Americans slip further and further into a moral malaise that seems impossible to escape.

So it is ironic that the coup in Ukraine was just another War For The Jews. The entertaining apparent irony of the Americans arming al-Qaeda in Syria while financing neo-Nazis in Ukraine teaches us something about the realities of power and propaganda, but behind the incongruities there were no real American goals to the coup. The point of the coup was to weaken the Russian position in the Middle East and embarrass Putin personally for his thwarting Zionist goals, both of which were goals of World Jewry (the Jew-controlled media provided the propaganda basis by attacking Putin for his country's position on homosexuality, and denigrating the very successful Sochi Olympics). The fallback position of World Jewry, even of they didn't inconvenience Putin at all, was to play up the neo-Nazi element and spray a few swastikas on synagogues to scare the 200,000 Jews in Ukraine to move to Israel.

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Jim W. Dean

Image: Glorified Beyond Recognition. - Jewish Yulia Tymoshenko channeling Lilith, the evil female demon
in Jewish mythology (Babylonian Talmud). (Feminine Strategies in Ukrainian Politics...and the Case of Yulia Tymoshenko) (Painting by Illia Panyok. Oksana Kis)

When the first phone intercept came out with Victoria Nuland's famous F-bomb we knew the Russian security people must be sitting on a mountain of them, and how interesting things could get if they released one a week.

We also knew that all the other European heads and military leaders would have to start thinking about calls they have made ending up on YouTube...ones they would regret.

Tymoshenko's PR people at first claimed the phone call intercept was faked. Later on her Twitter she admitted it was real. But she claimed the part about killing 8 million Russians was not correct...as that was only referring to 'Ukrainian Russians'. I guess that makes a big difference, especially if you are a one.

The pretty blond lady wants to kill, and she seems to have a big appetite. My editorial line early on in this Ukraine madness was a dual track one. First, American leaders don't seem to be able to learn from past mistakes over fear of being held responsible and having to resign. Taking responsibility does not exist anymore. Our elitists don't really care what we think. That makes them very dangerous...really the biggest threat that we have.

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Pepe Escobar

U.S. President Barack Obama, center, listens to Rijksmuseum
director Wim Pijbes, seen from the back, in front of Dutch master
Rembrandt's The Night Watch painting during a visit to the Rijks-
museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday. Obama will attend
the two-day Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague.

Any (bureaucratic) doubts the New Cold War is on have been dispelled by the Group of Seven issuing a pompous, self-described Hague Declaration. Abandon all hope those who expected The Hague to become the seat of a tribunal judging the war crimes of the Cheney regime.

The G-7 also cancelled its upcoming summer summit in Sochi as a means of "punishing" Moscow over Crimea. As if this carried any practical value. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded with class; if you don't want us, we have better things to do. [1] Everyone knows the G-7 is an innocuous, self-important talk shop. It's in the G-20 - much more representative of the real world - where crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic issues gain traction.

The Hague Declaration comes complete with the kiss of death, as in, "The International Monetary Fund has a central role leading the international effort to support Ukrainian reform, lessening Ukraine's economic vulnerabilities, and better integrating the country as a market economy in the multilateral system." That's code for "wait till structural adjustment starts biting".

And then there will be "measures to enhance trade and strengthen energy security" - code for "we will destroy your industry" but "are not very keen on paying your humongous Gazprom bill".

All this in the sidelines of a supposed summit on nuclear security in the Netherlands, where US President Barack Obama, at the Rijksmuseum, in front of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, extolled Washington's "support of the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian people". Rembrandt's watchers have never seen anything like it in their glorious lifespan. It pays to be a Nazi after all; you just need to be in the right government, against the right enemy, and fully approved by the hyper-power.

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Stephen Lendman

“Beauty Will Save The World!”: Feminine Strategies in
Ukrainian Politics...and the Case of Yulia Tymoshenko

Yulia Tymoshenko's leaked phone conversation was damning. She spoke with former Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council deputy secretary Nestor Shufrych. She called for turning Russia to ashes. Her comments are available on You Tube. More on this below.

Weeks earlier, Assistant Secretary of State for European and European Affairs Victoria Nuland was caught red-handed on tape. Her leaked conversation circulated on You Tube. It's more evidence of America's dark side. She and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussed regime change. Current putschist prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was named as a Washington favorite. The leaked video was damning. It's four minutes long. It's titled "Maidan puppets." It refers to Kiev's Independence Square.

In early March, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet's conversation with EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton was leaked. He was heard saying "there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition." Maybe more damning leaked conversations will follow. Don't expect scoundrel media coverage.

Tymoshenko is a billionaire mega-thief. She heads the fascist Batkivshchya/All-Ukrainian Union (Fatherland) party. She and neo-Nazi Svoboda co-founder Andriy Parubiy co-led Washington's 2004 Orange Revolution. He heads Ukraine's National Defense and Security Council. She was an illegitimate Orange Revolution prime minister.

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Stephen Lendman

Winston Churchill once said a "lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Today it circulates instantly.

Joseph Goebbels said "(i)f you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." "(T)ruth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State," he added.

Goebbels operated in pre-television days. Media scoundrels embrace his doctrine. They echo official administration policy. They lie, distort, misinform, hype, stoke fear, and falsify information willfully. They bury truth. They suppress what readers and viewers most need to know. They one-sidedly support wealth, power and privilege. They cheerlead America's worst imperial crimes. They vilify its enemies maliciously. They endorse Israeli lawlessness. They blame victims for aggressors' wrongdoings.

Russia bashing rages daily. Putin is public enemy number one. Big Lies vilify him. They substitute for truth. Daily headlines are inflammatory. They're scandalous. They're abhorrent. They repeat with disturbing regularity.

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Wayne Madsen

To listen to the endless cacophony from American global interventionists who are regularly booked on the major American news networks to spew their neo-Cold War rhetoric, one might think that we are back in the 1960s during the dark days of fractious U.S.-Soviet relations. However, there are a growing number of voices in the United States who do not want to play the game of the neo-conservatives and «set back» the clock of Washington-Moscow relations to the Cold War era.

One of the voices of sanity is Dr. Stephen F. Cohen of New York University and Princeton and a veteran expert on Russian affairs. Although he has faced charges from the neo-con right and the Obama media sycophants, primarily the Daily Beast and New Republic, that he is a witting tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Cohen undauntedly continues to make the case for American understanding of Russia’s position with regard to Crimea and Ukraine.

Cohen has echoed Russia’s fear of being encircled and squeezed by NATO and the United States. In an interview with CNN, Cohen said, «What if, suddenly, Russian power showed up in Canada and Mexico and provinces of Canada and Mexico said they were going to join Putin's Eurasian economic union and maybe even his military bloc? Surely the American president would have to react at least as forcefully as Putin has».

Individuals like Cohen, who oppose a fracture in U.S.-Russian relations, are considered by the U.S. corporate media of being mouthpieces for the Kremlin. These voices of sanity are also facing another vestige of America’s past that is steadily but assuredly creeping into the American body politic: McCarthyism.

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Mike Head

“Beauty Will Save The World!”: Feminine Strategies in Ukrainian
Politics...and the Case of Yulia Tymoshenko (Oksana Kis)

Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister and leading backer of the new regime installed by last month’s coup, has called for Ukrainians to take up arms against Russians and for the Western powers to reduce Russia to ashes.

In a phone call leaked online, Tymoshenko urged the murder of Russians and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s about time we grab our guns and kill those katsaps [a derogatory Ukrainian word] together with their leader,” she said. (Available from the original source here and with RT’s English translation here).

Tymoshenko also advocated the nuclear slaughter of the eight million Russians who remain on Ukrainian territory. She confirmed the authenticity of the conversation on Twitter, while claiming her call for the use of nuclear weapons was edited.

The phone conversation with Nestor Shufrych, former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, was uploaded on YouTube on Monday by user Sergiy Vechirko. Shufrych had denied its veracity. The leaked tape is a damning exposure of the lies constructed by the US and its allies that the crisis over Ukraine and Crimea was triggered by Russian aggression. It reveals the real face of the regime installed with the support of fascistic forces in Ukraine.

The phone call took place on March 18, hours after the Crimea accession treaty was signed in the Kremlin, following the Crimean referendum vote to join Russia. Enraged by the referendum, Tymoshenko declared that she were in charge “there would be no f***ing way that they would get Crimea.” Tymoshenko, who plans to run in Ukraine’s presidential election, insisted that she would have found “a way to kill those a*****es.”

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Keith Jones

Stephen Harper is doing the rhetorical heavy lifting for the
West on Russia, Vladimir Putin and Crimea. (canada.com)

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Kiev for six hours Saturday to demonstrate the Canadian elite’s strong support for the fascist-spearheaded coup that ousted Ukraine’s elected president.

At a joint press conference with Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the interim prime minister installed as a result of last month’s coup, Harper repeatedly denounced and threatened Russia.

He hypocritically painted Russia as an aggressor, when it was the US and Germany that engineered the overthrow of Ukraine’s president, and he lauded those now wielding state power in the Ukraine for their “restraint.” In fact, Ukraine’s new government has mounted one provocation after another, including declaring the country to be at war and creating a new National Guard so as to give official sanction to the fascist militia that spearheaded the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Harper vowed that the western imperialist powers will not restore normal relations with Russia until it withdraws from Crimea—a strategic peninsula that was historically part of Russia and whose majority Russian-speaking population recently voted overwhelming to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.

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Diana Johnstone

“I sometimes get the feeling that somewhere across that huge puddle, in America, people sit in a lab and conduct experiments, as if with rats, without actually understanding the consequences of what they are doing.” – Vladimir Putin

Five years ago, I wrote a paper for a Belgrade conference commemorating the tenth anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In that paper I stressed that the disintegration of Yugoslavia had been used as an experimental laboratory to perfect various techniques that would subsequently be used in so-called “color revolutions” or other “regime change” operations directed against leaders considered undesirable by the United States government.

At that time, I specifically pointed to the similarities between the Krajina region of former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. Here is what I wrote at the time:

Where did the wars of Yugoslav disintegration break out most violently? In a region called the Krajina. Krajina means borderland. So does Ukraine – it is a variant of the same Slavic root. Both Krajina and Ukraine are borderlands between Catholic Christians in the West and Orthodox Christians in the East.

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Patriarch Kirill I of
Moscow (also Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church)

In the wake of Crimea's independence referendum, Hillary Clinton says Russian President Putin is a "new Hitler." Zbigniew Brezezinski, former National Security Advisor agrees, calling Putin not just another Hitler, but also a thug, a menace, a Mafia gangster, and a Mussolini. The Western mainstream media echoes this childish name-calling.

Why is the whole Western foreign policy establishment so afraid of Putin?

Because Putin is standing up against Western aggression – not only in Ukraine, but also in Syria and Iran. Ongoing Western attempts to destabilize these and other countries are just the most recent examples of a decades-old pattern of aggression. The long-term goal: Total destruction of traditional nations and values, and the creation of a New World Order global dictatorship.

Since the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup in Iran, the West has been using the same formula to overthrow legitimate but uncooperative leaders: First, sabotage the country's economy. Then bribe corrupt military officers and thugs and pay rent-a-mobs to create chaos in the streets. Next (this step is optional) incite violence by paying snipers to fire into crowds – and maybe set off some bombs. Finally, send the corrupt military units and gangsters to overthrow the target nation's legitimate leader, murder or imprison his supporters, install a Western puppet in his place – and announce that "order has been restored."

The CIA did it to Iran's democratically-elected Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953, to Indonesia's President Sukarno in 1965, and to Chile's Prime Minister Allende on September 11th, 1973. They did the same thing to Ukraine's legitimate president, Viktor Yanukovych, a few weeks ago. Neocon regime-change apparatchik Victoria Nuland (The assistant US secretary of state,) got caught admitting that the US had spent five billion dollars to overthrow Ukraine's democratically-elected government; and EU Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton was heard on tape discussing the "news" that the Maidan Square snipers were part of the US-sponsored coup.

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Mike Head

Arseniy ("Yats") Yatsenyuk (L) & Herman Van Rompuy

Amid intensifying US and European Union sanctions and military provocations against Russia, the EU and the Western-backed government in Ukraine yesterday signed a pact that paves the way for brutal austerity measures and free market “reforms.”

The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement is based on the deal that former President Viktor Yanukovych’s Ukrainian government rejected, leading to the US- and EU-instigated protests and violence that ousted him last month.

The pact, signed in Brussels, declares that the Ukrainian government must “embark swiftly on an ambitious program of structural reforms” and submit to “an agreement with the [International Monetary Fund].” The plans being drawn up are based on the “Greek model”—the savage cuts imposed on Greece by the IMF and the EU that have produced a massive growth in unemployment and poverty.

For all their claims of a “democratic revolution,” the EU leaders and Ukraine’s unelected regime of former bankers, fascists and oligarchs announced that they would delay finalizing the economic clauses of the EU association pact—and hence unveiling the austerity measures—until after elections in May.

The pact is another step toward realising the underlying objectives of the Ukrainian coup—Ukraine’s integration into the orbit of the Western powers, the transformation of the country into a cheap labour platform for global capitalism and the ratcheting up of economic and strategic pressure on Russia itself.

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William A. Cook

There he stands in his pin striped suit, Israeli star embossed on the US flag pin, glistening in the podium lights, smiling delightedly as he mouths lie after lie to the delighted listeners, including some 400 Congress members who find it a bit awkward as the klieg lights get brighter and brighter shining on them as stooges for this foreign government that commands them how to vote regardless of the desires of the American people. Netanyahu cannot preach truth to falsehood, he is the very face of falsehood.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the 2014
AIPAC Policy Conference

“Ladies and gentlemen, peace is Israel’s highest aspiration. I’m prepared to make a historic peace with our Palestinian neighbours — a peace that would end a century of conflict and bloodshed. Peace would be good for us. Peace would be good for the Palestinians” (B. Netanyahu before the 2014 AIPAC Conference)

There are those who stand in regal splendor in halls resplendent with brilliantly colored flags and emblems of rank testifying to their positions as leaders in the world, acknowledged with respectful applause, as the audience standing in adulation of that position, witness the entrance of the announced Lord of the realm as he ascends to the podium to declare his moral righteousness before the world spread out through the nations in the Temple of Television, and boldly, shamelessly lie before all humankind—they are the face of falsehood.

Yesterday that face was George W. Bush addressing the joint sessions of Congress as he announced vengeance against an unknown enemy as lie after lie fell from his lips. Today it is Netanyahu declaring his love for peace when he speaks for a nation led by Zionist ideology that has never sought peace as that word is known to the entire world and thus masks truth in obfuscation, for “peace” to the Zionist has been and continues to be “greater Israel” achieved by power not by peace as we know it.

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Mark Glenn

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill exchanges kisses with
President Dmitry Medvedev as Medvedev's wife, Svetlana,
and President-elect Vladimir Putin await their turn at an
Easter Sunday service in downtown Moscow. (S. L. Loiko)

What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many miraculous signs…If we allow him to go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then we will lose our place and our nation.” Then one of them named Caiphas who was High Priest that year spoke and said “You fools, you know nothing at all…Do you not realize it is better that one man die than that the whole nation perish?” — Book of John

The mood in Tel Aviv that day in early September 2013–specifically in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–had to have been absolutely electric. The news blaring out over the airwaves the world over was that more war (as if there weren’t enough already) was on its way to the Middle East, close enough to Israel in fact that gawkers and fans, if they so desired (as many did during Operation Cast Lead) could pull up lawn chairs and gigglingly watch the spectacle as if it were 2nd century Rome and Christians were being fed to lions.

The winning lottery ticket that had Chosenites the world over as giddy as schulgirls was the fact that Barack Obama had finally been Bar Mitzvaed, politically speaking, as virtually all American presidents inevitably must. Having experienced his ‘coming to Moses’ moment, the news was that he had finally decided to ‘get right’ with the god of Israel by surrendering his authority as leader of the free world to the genocidal demands of the Jewish state viz-a viz the obliteration of Syria. - Given the nature of what was involved then, how could such news have been greeted in Zionist circles in any fashion other than one of orgiastic celebration?

As stated earlier, ‘electric,’ and not just any old sort of AC/DC razzle dazzle/razzmatazz, but rather the kind of ‘high voltage’ energy one sees taking place every year during the Judaic festival of Purim…Handshakes, hugs, kisses, high-fives, throaty shouts of ‘Mazel Tov’, Magan David flowing like blood from a severed jugular vein and hearty backslaps between goombahs from Likud, Beiteinu and everything in between as they congratulate each other over the fact that, once again Jewish threats, Jewish needling, Jewish duplicity and of course the infamous kvetching for which this peculiar cult has been historically well-known had finally paid off, resulting now in the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse stampeding towards ancient Assyria faster than a swarm of Tomahawk cruise missiles bearing painted slogans on their sides such as ‘Bomb a sand nigger for Jesus’.

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Alex Lantier

(Then: "If Russia and the Communists should win the next world war, many American men would be sterilized. In case the Communists should conquer, our women would be helpless beneath the boots of the Asiatic Russians.") Now: Putin falsely accused of persecuting gay people. Connect the dots. -Oh, btw., American men already are sterilized. The US mainstream media has saved Putin the trouble. -Ah, one more thing, they're lobotomized and pretty stupid as well, "dumb, stupid animals". Kissinger was right. No, not just the soldiers, all of 'em. Their womenfolk too. Next thing you'll know is they'll obediently start responding to the neo-cons' evil hiss for war against Russia. ♫ "That'll Be The Day"...

The purpose of the ongoing propaganda campaign is to manufacture a new pro-war narrative.

Since Crimea voted last Sunday to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, US officials and the American media have mounted a deafening propaganda campaign, posturing as defenders of world peace, the rights of small nations and international law in opposition to Russia. In this campaign, no lie told to justify support for the Ukrainian regime that emerged from last month’s fascist-led coup is too absurd.

As he announced new sanctions against Russia yesterday, President Obama denounced Russia’s annexation of Crimea. “Basic principles between governments in the world must be upheld in the 21st century,” Obama intoned, such as “the notion that nations do not redraw borders simply because they are larger or more powerful.”

Writing along similar lines, the Washington Post editorialized that “Mr. Putin’s claim that Russia should have a say in the political orientation of its neighbors, and whether they join alliances such as the European Union or NATO, is entirely unacceptable.”

Who is supposed to believe this nonsense? The governing principle of US foreign policy is that it has an unchallengeable right to determine the political orientation of its unfortunate “neighbors” in the Western hemisphere and that of every other country in the world.

As far back as the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States claimed the entire Western hemisphere as its sphere of influence, dictating what relations it could have with European powers.

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