Willy Wimmer

Willy Wimmer was state secretary at the German Defense Ministry and vice president of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). This is what this well-informed member of the European Establishment told RT. The translation is not very good, but the message comes through. (Paul Craig Roberts)

Western powers are following an agenda to partition the map of the European region under which a portion of the Black Sea territory will be under US domination, former vice president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Willy Wimmer, told RT. The veteran German politician, who served as a Defense Ministry state secretary, reminded that no Western government is talking about the extreme right element of the government in Kiev.

RT: More than a decade ago, you told your country’s leadership of a disturbing connection between NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia and plans for the alliance’s expansion. We have some extracts from the letter you wrote to then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder after a conference organized by the US State Department. You raised concerns over some of the conclusions reached, such as: “It would be good, during NATO’s current enlargement, to restore the territorial situation in the area between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) such as existed during the Roman Empire…” Do you think these plans still exist? And, if so, could the Ukrainian crisis be playing a role?

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Joseph Kishore

A new imperialist carve-up of Eastern Europe and the slide toward World War III

Plans for a secession referendum in Ukraine’s Crimea region on Sunday are the focus of ramped-up attacks on Russia from the Obama administration and its European allies. Additional military forces are being shifted to the region and new threats of sanctions are being issued.

The US, Germany and Britain have denounced the referendum in the majority Russian-speaking autonomous republic as a violation of Ukraine national sovereignty and territorial integrity and a breach of international law. The US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, said Monday that the US would not recognize the “so-called referendum.” He charged that “gangs of pro-Russian thugs” were patrolling the area and there was “an active campaign to stir division in Ukraine.”

Pyatt’s comments echoed those of Obama, who has declared that any referendum would “violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law,” and top officials in Britain and Germany. Following a meeting Sunday night between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, a statement from Downing Street declared that the proposed referendum “would be illegal and that any attempt by Russia to legitimize the result would result in further consequences.” Cameron earlier declared Russian actions to be “in flagrant breach of international law.”

Such comments bring the level of lying and hypocrisy by the Western powers to new heights. Governments that feel in some way dependent on mobilizing a broader base of public support beyond the military-intelligence apparatus and narrow financial interests concern themselves with matters such as internal consistency and coherence. This is not the case with the supposed proponents of international law in London, Berlin and Washington. The United States has systematically violated the national sovereignty of Ukraine to unconstitutionally overthrow an elected government and install a far-right regime that includes neo-Nazis whose thugs served as the shock troops for the February 22 putsch.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: Yatsenyuk ("Yats") has been in Washington before. Here he is with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007. As Ukraine's Foreign Minister at the time, Yatsenyuk assured Rice that his country would adhere to democratic standards in resolving its (then) current political crisis. "We have to stick to democratic values, democratic standards - it's obvious for us," he said. "His Excellency" Arseniy Yatsenyuk must have forgotten all about his professed ideas about democracy because now he'll be in Washington again, this time as an illegitimate prime minister of a country taken over by State Department's putschists, a raggle taggle band of right-wing thugs and Nazis. - So much for his assurances of democracy!

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland calls him Yats. He's coming to Washington. He'll arrive on Wednesday. He'll meet his new boss. He'll do so at the White House. He'll get marching orders. He'll learn more about Obama's plans for Ukraine. More on his visit below.

He's Ukraine's illegitimate prime minister. He serves its xenophobic, ultranationalist, neo-Nazi, hate-mongering, anti-Semitic, coup d'état regime. A rogue's gallery of societal misfits runs it. He's a natural. He's super-rich. He's a former central banker/economy/foreign minister and parliament (Verkhovna Rada) speaker. He betrayed his people. He sold out for greater wealth and power. He's a Batkivshchya/All-Ukrainian Union (Fatherland) leader.

Billionaire mega-thief Yulia Tymoshenko heads it. She was imprisoned for embezzlement and serious "abuse of public office." Charges included illegally diverting $425 million meant for environmental projects into pension funds. A second case involved stealing around $130 million for personal use. Putschists freed her. They did so lawlessly. She was an illegimate Orange Revolution prime minister. She has presidential aspirations. She may head Ukraine's illegitimate government after sham May elections.

Yatsenyuk's job is serving Western bankers. Paying them comes first. Ukrainians bear the burden. Force-fed austerity is planned. IMF larceny features it. Harder than ever hard times loom. Ukraine heads toward becoming another Greece. One zombie country will replicate another.

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Stephen Lendman

Paul Craig Roberts: Putin Speaks

He gave a wide-ranging interview. It's the first extensive one he's given. He did so forthrightly. He did it responsibly. He covered important ground.

Ukraine is the most serious geopolitical crisis since WW II. Kiev neo-Nazis usurped power. They reckless. They're dangerous. Putin understands well. He knows Washington and EU partners back them. East/West tensions head toward exceeding the worst of Cold War years.

Putin met with media representatives. He suggested a format. "Let's have a conversation, rather than an interview," he said. He spoke forthrightly. He tried addressing as many vital issues as possible. He assessed what's happening in Kiev and Ukraine overall.

There's only "one," major issue, he stressed. What happened "was an anti-constitutional takeover, an armed seizure of power." "Does anyone question this? Nobody does." An unanswered question remains, he added. "(W)hy was this done?"

He knows full well. He posed the question largely rhetorically. He threw it out for open discussion.

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Paul Craig Roberts

You may read an English translation of Vladimir Putin’s March 4 press Conference here. In Russian, here. The video is here (in Russian) (Please also check out Stephen Lendman: Putin on Ukraine)

Americans have not experienced political leadership or an independent media for such a long time that they will be amazed at the straightforward answers from the Russian President and by media asking real questions, some of which show the influence of Washington’s propaganda.

Americans will also be struck by how greatly the facts of the Ukraine situation diverge from the constant stream of lies that flow from Washington, its European puppets, and presstitute media.

Putin’s calm leadership, the absence of provocative statements and threats, and his insistence on legality and will of the people stand in stark contrast to the West’s threats and support for violent overthrow of a democratically elected government. It is astonishing that the only leadership the world has comes from Russia, China, and three or four countries in South America. The Western world no longer has diplomatic capability. Instead, the Western world relies on propaganda, threats, force, and schemes to overthrow governments that it first demonizes.

Notice that Putin repeatedly asks why the West created the crisis in Ukraine. He makes the important point that in post-Soviet countries, legality and democracy are fragile. Democracy and legality are not furthered by overthrowing democracy before it has taken roots and placing in office an unelected government by force and illegality. It is impossible to argue with this point.

Why, indeed, did the West murder democracy and constitutional order in Ukraine?

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Stephen Lendman

The Middle East Monitor (MEM) reported it. More on what it said below.

Fascists run Israel. Democracy is verboten. Peace is a convenient illusion. Ongoing talks are a sham. Chance for peaceful conflict resolution is ZERO. Militarism defines Israeli policy. Belligerence enforces it. So does state-sponsored terrorism. Human and civil rights abuses are extreme.

Arabs are a target of convenience. They're considered subhuman. They're ruthlessly persecuted. Institutionalized racism shows it. Occupied Palestinians bear the greatest cross. They're terrorized. They're marginalized, denied, persecuted and brutalized. Multiple daily neighborhood incursions target them. Illegal arrests follow.

World leaders able to make a difference turn a blind eye. Israeli lawlessness is ignored. Media scoundrels are longstanding apologists. They're mindless of Israel's worst crimes. An entire population is held hostage. Every day is Kristallnacht in Palestine. Israeli forces terrorize Palestinians daily. They do with impunity. Anything goes is policy. Gross hypocrisy whitewashes truth.

Collective punishment is institutionalized. Peaceful demonstrations are assaulted. Free expression and movement are prohibited. Population centers are isolated. Borders are closed. Normal daily life is denied. Economic strangulation and state-sponsored racism are imposed. So are curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, separation walls, electric fences, and other barriers. Neighborhood incursions, land, sea and air attacks, bulldozed homes, land theft, ethnic cleansing, slow-motion genocide, targeted killings, mass arrests, torture, and gulag imprisonment reflect daily life.

Fundamental civil and human rights are denied. Crimes of war and against humanity repeat without redress. Wanting to live free in sovereign Palestine is called terrorism.

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Nick Kollerstrom

The coup-inspired Ukrainian government, recognized by the Western powers, includes several members of explicitly Nazi organizations, including two leaders who have distinguished themselves by fabricating false images of violence and torture aimed to convince Western public opinion of the cruelty of the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych.

On March 6th President Obama passed an Executive Order banning anyone critical of US Ukraine policy from entering the US, phrased as “actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine.” This does not allude to the Nazi skinhead thugs who have seized power in Kiev by NATO-backed bloody violence.

Paul Craig Roberts, The Looting of Ukraine
● According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. It is Greece all over again. ● Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated coup against the legitimate, elected Ukraine government, the Western looters are already at work. Naive protesters who believed the propaganda that EU membership offered a better life are due to lose half of their pension by April. But this is only the beginning. ● The corrupt Western media describes loans as “aid.” However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev’s acceptance of an IMF austerity plan. ● Remember now, gullible Ukrainians participated in the protests that were used to overthrow their elected government, because they believed the lies told to them by Washington-financed NGOs that once they joined the EU they would have streets paved with gold. Instead they are getting cuts in their pensions and an IMF austerity plan. ● The austerity plan will cut social services, funds for education, layoff government workers, devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, thus electricity, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations. ● Ukraine’s agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness. ● One part of the Washington/EU plan for Ukraine, or that part of Ukraine that doesn’t defect to Russia, has succeeded. What remains of the country will be thoroughly looted by the West.”

Yats (Yatsenyuk) has been installed to make sure Ukraine and its public infrastructure, including its natural gas pipelines, are sold off to the banksters and their corporatist buddies.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Rank militarism is presented as “defending democracy.”

The White House Fool has repeatedly declared erroneously and foolishly that it is “against international law” for Crimea to exercise self-determination. Self-determination, as used by Washington, is a propaganda term that serves Washington’s empire but is not permissible for real people to exercise. On March 6 Obama telephoned Putin to tell the Russian President again that only Washington has the right to interfere in Ukraine and to insist against all logic that only the “government” in Kiev installed by the Washington-organized coup is “legitimate” and “democratic.”

In other words, the elected government in Crimea pushed by the people in Crimea to give them a vote on their future is “undemocratic” and “illegitimate,” but a non-elected government in Kiev imposed by Washington is the voice of self-determination and legitimacy.

Washington is so arrogant that it never occurs to the hubris-infected fools what the world thinks of Washington’s blatant hypocrisy.

Since the Clinton regime, Washington has done nothing but violate international law–Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia.

Does Russia have an Africa Command? No, but Washington does. Is Russia surrounding the US with military bases? No, but Washington has used the NATO organization, whose purpose disappeared 23 years ago, to organize western, eastern, and southern Europe into an empire army with forward bases on Russia’s borders. Washington is determined to extend the boundaries of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Georgia in central Asia and to Ukraine on the Black Sea. Both Georgia and Ukraine are former constituent parts of both Russia and the Soviet Union.

Washington is doing the same thing to China and Iran. Washington is working to establish new air and naval bases in Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, with which to block the flow of oil and other resources into China. Iran is surrounded by some 40 US military bases and has US fleets standing off its coastline.

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William Blum

When it gets complicated and confusing, when you’re overwhelmed with too much information, changing daily; too many explanations, some contradictory … try putting it into some kind of context by stepping back and looking at the larger, long-term picture.

The United States strives for world domination, hegemony wherever possible, their main occupation for over a century, it’s what they do for a living. The United States, NATO and the European Union form The Holy Triumvirate. The Holy Triumvirate has subsidiaries, chiefly The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, International Criminal Court … all help to keep in line those governments lacking the Holy Triumvirate Seal Of Approval: the IMF, WB, and WTO impose market fundamentalism, while foreign leaders who act too independent are threatened with being handed over to the ICC for heavy punishment, as the United States imposes sanctions on governments and their leaders as only the King of Sanctions can, lacking any sense of hypocrisy or irony.

And who threatens United States domination? Who can challenge The Holy Triumvirate’s hegemony? Only Russia and China, if they were as imperialistic as the Western powers. (No, the Soviet Union wasn’t imperialistic; that was self-defense; Eastern Europe was a highway twice used by the West to invade; tens of millions of Russians killed or wounded.)

Since the end of the Cold War the United States has been surrounding Russia, building one base after another, ceaselessly looking for new ones, including in Ukraine; one missile site after another, with Moscow in range; NATO has grabbed one former Soviet Republic after another. The White House, and the unquestioning American mainstream media, have assured us that such operations have nothing to do with Russia.

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Robert Parry

Special Report: The Ukrainian crisis – partly fomented by U.S. neocons including holdovers at the State Department – has soured U.S-Russian relations and disrupted President Obama’s secretive cooperation with Russian President Putin to resolve crises in the Mideast.

President Barack Obama has been trying, mostly in secret, to craft a new foreign policy that relies heavily on cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to tamp down confrontations in hotspots such as Iran and Syria. But Obama’s timidity about publicly explaining this strategy has left it open to attack from powerful elements of Official Washington, including well-placed neocons and people in his own administration.

The gravest threat to this Obama-Putin collaboration has now emerged in Ukraine, where a coalition of U.S. neocon operatives and neocon holdovers within the State Department fanned the flames of unrest in Ukraine, contributing to the violent overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and now to a military intervention by Russian troops in the Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine that historically was part of Russia.

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Thomas L. Are

It’s been a half a year and Chris Christie is still in the news. At least his administration is in trouble because they shut down two of three access lanes to the George Washington Bridge. Last August, a deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, emailed David Wildstein, the governor’s appointee to the Port Authority, saying, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Wildstein responded, “Got it.” And, “it” caused a huge traffic jam for days and the question remains, “Did Christie know about it?”

Americans just won’t put up with dirty tricks like deliberately causing people to wait in lines for hours to get to New York and if Christie knew about it, he is not fit to be president of the United States. We have high standards.

On the other hand, people in Gaza wait in their cars all day, every day, or stand in line for six to twelve hours, holding a jug, hoping to get enough fuel oil to cook supper for their children. Standing in line is a deliberate tactic in Gaza and everyone, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, and Barack Obama, President of the United States knows who is responsible. We just don’t care enough to discuss it. Our standards for Israel are pretty low.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs tells us:

Fuel shortages are a chronic problem for Gaza’s 1.7 million imprisoned residents. Israel controls the entry of all fuel supplies into the Gaza strip. Israelis living just a few miles away enjoy plentiful supplies and easy access to fuel, while in Gaza fuel for heating, emergency generators, vehicles and cooking are dependent on infrequent deliveries. Often only smuggled fuel is available --- and fuel coming through Israel is unaffordable.[1]

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Paul Craig Roberts

Today former US Treasury official, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, spoke with King World News about the ongoing danger the world faces because of the crisis in Ukraine. Dr. Roberts also warned “the Chinese government regards Washington as an insane asylum.” The interview ends with an ominous warning for the entire world. Below is what Dr. Roberts had to say in Part III of this remarkable series of interviews.

US navy confirms missile destroyer USS Truxtun approaching
the Black Sea. The US Navy said in a statement that the USS
Truxtun left Greece on Thursday on the way to the Black Sea.

Eric King: How far will Putin go to defend those interests in Ukraine, and to put a stop to another set of missiles ending up in Ukraine? Is that going to be allowed, or does he have to put a stop to it?

Dr. Roberts: Putin has already said that he reserves the right to protect the Russian people in Ukraine as well as Russian strategic interests in Ukraine, and he means it. He wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it...

And there is nothing the U.S. can do about it on a conventional basis. We can’t put an army over there to engage the Russians that far away from our supply lines and expect to be on anything close to equal terms with the Russian Army.

Now if the moderates get back control of Ukraine, then Putin will arrange some deal with them. Putin has far more diplomatic skills than anybody we’ve got. He’ll try to arrange something that works for them both. But if this Ukrainian government agrees to have missile bases on the border, Putin may decide to simply occupy the territory. The Ukrainians wouldn’t be able to do anything about it and neither would the United States.

It will depend on how Putin sees the threat. It will also depend on whether he sees that the Americans have been chastened at all from their mistakes, or whether they remain as crazy as they show themselves to be.

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Margaret Kimberley

The corporate media are a key component of the U.S. imperial machine. Although styling themselves as watchdogs, they are in fact the dogs of war, whose mission is to hide Washington’s aggressions behind a fog of lies. War “crimes are committed with impunity in part because presidents get a helping hand from their corporate media partners.”

Prominent journalists in the United States may as well be on the White House payroll. They are consistent cheerleaders for whoever occupies the oval office and the corporate corner office. They make no attempt to hide their allegiance to power and their lack of interest in informing the public.

The rotten state of affairs becomes all too obvious whenever a president threatens action against another country. Reporters act more like press agents and spring into action shielding and protecting the aggressors. They make it clear to those few who gain access that questions, criticisms or anything else that smacks of independent thought will not to be tolerated. The American decision to use Ukraine as a means of attacking Russian influence is the latest effort to prop up the empire, and the corporate media obligingly show their approval.

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Paul Craig Roberts

This supporter of the Ukraine joining the EU has received
her reward: a 50% cut in her pension...

Washington and its EU puppets, who proclaim their support for self-determination, are only for self-determination when it can be orchestrated in their favor. Therefore, Washington [now] is busy at work suppressing self-determination in eastern Ukraine.

According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. It is Greece all over again.

Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated coup against the legitimate, elected Ukraine government, the Western looters are already at work. Naive protesters who believed the propaganda that EU membership offered a better life are due to lose half of their pension by April. But this is only the beginning.

The corrupt Western media describes loans as “aid.” However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev’s acceptance of an IMF austerity plan.

Remember now, gullible Ukrainians participated in the protests that were used to overthrow their elected government, because they believed the lies told to them by Washington-financed NGOs that once they joined the EU they would have streets paved with gold.

Instead they are getting cuts in their pensions and an IMF austerity plan.

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Julie Hyland

Photo: Fascism is like a fashion now with more and more people getting involved. (Sergey Kirichuk) It has helped to revive 1930s Ukrainian nationalist chants, which even Vital Klitschko has now adopted, shouting "Glory to Ukraine!", to which the crowd reply "To heroes, glory!". Svoboda flags have been a permanent fixture in Independence Square, with pictures from clashes also revealing the presence of militant far-right groups carrying neo-Nazi flags and the red and black Ukrainian "insurgent army" flags. (channel4.com)

A politically sinister propaganda offensive is underway in the media to either deny the involvement of fascists in the US-backed coup in Ukraine or present their role as a marginal and insignificant detail.

The New York Times, for example, asserted, “Putin’s claim of an immediate threat to Ukrainian Russians is empty,” while Britain’s Guardian dismissed as a “fancy” claims that events in Crimea were an attempt to “prevent attacks by bands of revolutionary fascists,” adding that “the world’s media has [not] yet seen or heard from” such forces. — This is an obscene cover-up.

The reality is that, for the first time since 1945, an avowedly anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi party controls key levers of state power in a European capital, courtesy of US and European imperialism. The unelected Ukrainian government, headed by US appointee Arseniy Yatsenyuk, includes no fewer than six ministers from the fascist Svoboda party.

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