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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