Stephen Lendman

A secretive neo-nazi military organization reported linked to NATO
played a decisive role in targeted sniper attacks and violence that led
to the collapse of the elected government. (F. William Engdahl)

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet confirmed it. On February 25 , he and EU foreign policy Catherine Ashton spoke. They were monitored. They didn't know it at the time. Their discussion was leaked. Paet talked to Ashton after returning from Kiev, he said. "At the time, (he) was already in Estonia," he added. On Wednesday, he held a press conference. He issued a statement saying Euromaidan killings demand an independent investigation.

Estonia's Foreign Ministry confirmed the leaked phone call's authenticity. "We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition's involvement in the violence," it stressed.

It's impossible reinterpreting what he meant. He only commented on what he heard in Kiev. He spilled the beans. Intentionally or not, he confirmed what's been independently believed all along. Ukraine's legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych was wrongfully blamed. He had nothing to do with Euromaidan killings. The operation was a classic false flag. It was staged to blame him. It's now exposed.

Cui bono matters most. Yanukovych's involvement had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Catherine Ashton's spokesperson, Maja Kocijancic, was silent. "(W)e don't comment on leaked phone conversations," she said.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Washington plotted against and overthrew an elected legitimate government and then lost control to neo-nazis who are threatening the large Russian population in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Gerald Celente calls the Western media “presstitutes,” an ingenuous term that I often use. Presstitutes sell themselves to Washington for access and government sources and to keep their jobs. Ever since the corrupt Clinton regime permitted the concentration of the US media, there has been no journalistic independence in the United States except for some Internet sites.

Glenn Greenwald points out the independence that RT, a Russian media organization, permits Abby Martin who denounced Russia’s alleged invasion of Ukraine, compared to the fates of Phil Donahue (MSNBC) and Peter Arnett (NBC), both of whom were fired for expressing opposition to the Bush regime’s illegal attack on Iraq. The fact that Donahue had NBC’s highest rated program did not give him journalistic independence. Anyone who speaks the truth in the American print or TV media or on NPR is immediately fired.

Russia’s RT seems actually to believe and observe the values that Americans profess but do not honor.

I agree with Greenwald. You can read his article. Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT’s Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times.

My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative “mainstream media.” My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda.

For example, Martin’s denunciation of Russia for “invading” Ukraine is based on Western propaganda that Russia sent 16,000 troops to occupy Crimea. The fact of the matter is that those 16,000 Russian troops have been in Crimea since the 1990s. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreement, Russia has the right to base 25,000 troops in Crimea. Apparently, neither Abby Martin nor Glenn Greenwald, two intelligent and aware people, knew this fact. Washington’s propaganda is so pervasive that two of our best reporters were victimized by it.

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Stephen Lendman

Famed journalist George Seldes (1890 - 1995) called them "prostitutes of the press." Paul Craig Roberts calls them "presstitutes." They're that and much more. They're propagandists, not journalists. They're charlatans. They're scam artists. They're blackguards. They're scoundrels in the worst sense of the term. They make street whores look respectable by comparison. They're paid to lie, distort, misinform, and blame imperial victims for horrendous crimes committed against them. They support powerful monied interests. They ignore popular ones. They march in lockstep with imperial lawlessness.

AJ Liebling (1904 - 1963) once said: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." He added: "People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news."

Western television is worst of all. It's a wasteland. Educator/media critic Neil Postman (1931 - 2003) called Americans "the most entertained and least informed people in the world." In 1950, Boston University President Daniel Marsh said: "If the (television) craze continues...we are destined to have a nation of morons." Comedian Ernie Kovacks (1919 - 1962) once said he knew why television is called a medium - "because it's neither rare or well done."

Media critic George Gerbner said mainstream media "have everything to sell and nothing to tell." Investigative journalist IF Stone (1907 - 1989) once said: "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed." The same holds for media scoundrels. Integrity isn't their long suit. Media scholar/critic Robert McChesney said "the corporate media system...generates a depoliticized society."

People are misinformed. They deliberately deceived. They're told what powerful interests want them to believe. They're fed a pack of lies, distortion and falsified rubbish. "The corruption of journalistic integrity is always bad," McChesney added. Today it's "obscene under conditions of extreme media concentration..."

When America seeks another imperial trophy, it's worst of all. Media scoundrels march in lockstep with lawlessness. They carpet bomb readers and viewers with managed news misinformation garbage.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Eastern and southern Ukraine are Russian-speaking former Russian territories added to Ukraine in the 1950s by the Communist Party leadership of the Soviet Union. These provinces are agitating to be returned to Mother Russia where they certainly belong. They are determined not to be part of a neo-nazi regime that will be looted by Western bankers and corporations and be forced to host US missile bases that will make western Ukraine a target for nuclear annihilation, like Poland and Czech Republic.

The propagandistic rhetoric issuing from the mouths of the White House Fool and the excrement that the Fool placed in charge of the Department of State is designed to cover up the abject failure of the Obama regime’s plot to install its puppets as Ukraine’s new rulers. The Obama regime is too stupid to comprehend that its rhetoric is preparing the gullible and ignorant American population for war with Russia. The neoconservative ideologues, who have been lusting for war with Russia ever since the 1980s when I was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, will take advantage of the war preparation, which the White House Fool and his State Department excrement are creating with their rhetoric, to start a war that will destroy life on earth.

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Joseph Kishore & David North

In the wake of the right-wing coup in Ukraine organized by the United States and the European powers, the American media is responding with a torrent of inflammatory war propaganda directed against Russia.

In the newspapers and on the airwaves, the demonization of Russia is unrelenting. The coverage of events follows a single simplistic story line. The actions of Russia are portrayed as the epitome of evil. Its president, Vladimir Putin, is the devil incarnate.

The historical background, the economic interests, the political context and the geo-strategic calculations that underlie Russia’s actions are ignored. No facts are allowed to get in the way of the programmed message. No lie is too absurd or ridiculous. The purpose of the propaganda campaign is not to convince public opinion, but to intimidate it.

Monday’s lead editorial (“Russia’s Aggression”) in the New York Times does not contain a trace of analysis. It consists entirely of denunciations, saber-rattling and limitless hypocrisy.

The Times begins by denouncing “Putin’s cynical and outrageous exploitation of the Ukrainian crisis to seize control of Crimea.” Reality is stood on its head. The United States supported right-wing and fascistic forces in Ukraine to bring about regime-change in a country on Russia’s border. These operations were exposed to the world in a telephone conversation leaked last month in which the US ambassador to Ukraine and the US assistant secretary of state discussed the composition of a new Washington-backed government. Of course, the Times makes no reference to this episode.

With breathtaking cynicism, the Times demands that Obama tell Putin that Russia “has stepped far outside the bounds of civilized behavior, and that this carries a steep price in international standing and in economic relations.”

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F. William Engdahl

Members of UNA-UNSO marching in Lviv.

The events in Ukraine since November 2013 are so astonishing as almost to defy belief.

An legitimately-elected (said by all international monitors) Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, has been driven from office, forced to flee as a war criminal after more than three months of violent protest and terrorist killings by so-called opposition.

His “crime” according to protest leaders was that he rejected an EU offer of a vaguely-defined associate EU membership that offered little to Ukraine in favor of a concrete deal with Russia that gave immediate €15 billion debt relief and a huge reduction in Russian gas import prices. Washington at that point went into high gear and the result today is catastrophe.

A secretive neo-nazi military organization reported linked to NATO played a decisive role in targeted sniper attacks and violence that led to the collapse of the elected government.

But the West is not finished with destroying Ukraine. Now comes the IMF with severe conditionalities as prerequisite to any Western financial help.

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Paul Craig Roberts

● The stupid Kerry, wallowing in his arrogance, hubris, and evil, has issued direct threats to Russia.
● The Russian foreign minister has dismissed Kerry’s threats as “unacceptable.”
● The stage is set for war.

In some quarters public awareness is catching up with Stephen Lendman, Michel Chossudovsky, Rick Rozoff, myself and a few others in realizing the grave danger in the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine.

The puppet politicians who Washington intended to put in charge of Ukraine have lost control to organized and armed neo-nazis, who are attacking Jews, Russians, and intimidating Ukrainian politicians. The government of Crimea, a Russian province that Khrushchev transferred to the Ukraine Soviet Republic in the 1950s, has disavowed the illegitimate government that illegally seized power in Kiev and requested Russian protection. The Ukrainian military forces in Crimea have gone over to Russia. The Russian government has announced that it will also protect the former Russian provinces in eastern Ukraine as well.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pointed out, it was folly for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to transfer historic provinces of Russia into Ukraine. At the time it seemed to the Soviet leadership like a good thing to do. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and had been ruled by Russia since the 18th century. Adding Russian territory to Ukraine served to water down the nazi elements in western Ukraine that had fought for Hitler during World War 2. Perhaps another factor in the enlargement of Ukraine was the fact of Khrushchev’s Ukrainian heritage.

Regardless, it did not matter until the Soviet Union and then the former Russian empire itself fell apart. Under Washington’s pressure, Ukraine became a separate country retaining the Russian provinces, but Russia retained its Black Sea naval base in Crimea.

Washington tried, but failed, to take Ukraine in 2004 with the Washington-financed “Orange Revolution.” According to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, since this failure Washington has “invested” $5 billion in Ukraine in order to foment agitation for EU membership for Ukraine. EU membership would open Ukraine to looting by Western bankers and corporations, but Washington’s main goal is to establish US missile bases on Russia’s border with Ukraine and to deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base and military industries in eastern Ukraine. EU membership for Ukraine means NATO membership.

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Finian Cunningham

American exceptionalism has gone into overdrive with stern warnings from US President Barack Obama to Russia to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and to not destabilize the region.

By "American exceptionalism" we mean Washington's seemingly unlimited capacity for exceptional arrogance and double think.

Obama has not yet accused Russia outright of "military invasion" in the crisis-torn country, but that was the clear inference from his weekend press conference. In a veiled threat of military confrontation, the American president warned that there would be "costs" for Moscow.

"Any violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity will be deeply destabilizing and the US stands with the international community to affirm that there will be costs [for this violation]," said Obama in a hastily arranged media statement in Washington on Friday.

The White House is obviously rattled by reports of Russian troop movements across Ukraine's southern Crimean Peninsula. Moscow says that its military presence in the autonomous Crimean republic of Ukraine is fully in accord with a long-standing legal agreement to have its soldiers stationed there as part of its Black Sea naval base.

That agreement was renewed in 2010 between Moscow and Kiev for a further 20 years, affording Russian military presence in the Crimea, particularly the naval base at Sevastopol, which is headquarters for Russia's Black Sea fleet.

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Ray McGovern

The President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and Assistant
Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria
Nuland/Nudelman - smiling before stabbing him in the back.

Consortiumnews Exclusive: Russia’s parliament has approved President Putin’s request for the use of force inside neighboring Ukraine, as the latest neocon-approved “regime change” spins out of control and threatens to inflict grave damage on international relations, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.

Is “regime change” in Ukraine the bridge too far for the neoconservative “regime changers” of Official Washington and their sophomoric “responsibility-to-protect” (R2P) allies in the Obama administration? Have they dangerously over-reached by pushing the putsch that removed duly-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has given an unmistakable “yes” to those questions – in deeds, not words. His message is clear: “Back off our near-frontier!”

Moscow announced on Saturday that Russia’s parliament has approved Putin’s request for permission to use Russia’s armed forces “on the territory of the Ukraine pending the normalization of the socio-political situation in that country.”

Putin described this move as necessary to protect ethnic Russians and military personnel stationed in Crimea in southern Ukraine, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet and other key military installations are located. But there is no indication that the Russian parliament has restricted the use of Russian armed forces to the Crimea.

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Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Atzmon interviews Trevor Labonte: Until two years ago, Trevor LaBonte was one of the most successful Jazz artists in Texas. He had been performing every night and in the most prestigious venues. He was the first-call guitar player for many of Austin’s prominent musicians. But then it all changed.

Gilad Atzmon: Trevor you were a local Jazz hero, what happened?

Trevor LaBonte: An activist named Craig Berlin, owner of Pro-Tape Staff in Austin, organized a campaign to destroy my career by terrorizing the entire Austin music community. He creates Facebook posts in which he tags 50 or 60 important people in town, and reports to them that I am a ‘Nazi,’ an ‘Anti-Semite,’ and a ‘holocaust denier.’ Berlin demands that everyone must do everything in their power to make sure I never play another note in public. At first, most people ignored him, but then others took up his cause, including the radio DJ Andy Langer from KGSR, helping to make sure I have become a hate figure and completely ostracized.

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Stephen Lendman

The Damn Fool in the White House

Geopolitical conditions today are incendiary. Obama's war on Syria rages. No end in sight looms. Washington manipulated peace talks to fail. Odds favor full scale US intervention. Doing so risks regional war. In late February, Israel bombed Hezbollah targets. It did so along Lebanon's border with Syria. Hezbollah vowed to respond "at the appropriate time." It justifiably denounced "blatant" Israeli "aggression." Washington and Israel partner in regional adventurism. Do Obama and Netanyahu want war on Lebanon? Are they planning regional conflict? Will Iran be targeted? Will US-orchestrated violence in Venezuela continue? Will other nations be targeted for regime change? The damn fool in the White House risks global war. Ukraine is a major flashpoint. Conditions today are the most dangerous since the 1962 missiles of October crisis.

Jack Kennedy was a real president. Early in his administration he changed from cold warrior to peacemaker. He wanted all nuclear weapons abolished. He favored "general and complete disarmament." He wanted all US forces out of Vietnam by December 1965. He wanted to "splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." After resolving the 1962 crisis, he said he "never had the slightest intention" of confronting Cuba or Soviet Russia aggressively. - The damn fool in the White House is no Jack Kennedy. Neocons infest his administration. Rogue elements make policy.

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Wayne Madsen

It was only a matter of time. The National Security Agency's British FIVE EYES partner, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has now made common cause with another creation of British intelligence, the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. From the time of its creation in 1921 under the aegis of the British Army's Bureau of Psychological Warfare to the present time, the Tavistock Institute has been at the forefront of research into and application of targeted and mass mind control techniques. The institute has cooperated with research entities, including the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Esalen Institute in the United States, that carry out psychological operations on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense.

The latest tranche of PowerPoint slides revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shows the similarities between the GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG)'s Human Science Operations Cell (HSOC). The very name «Human Science Operations» appears yanked right from the operational charter of the Tavistock Institute, which includes the ability to engage in «full spectrum domination» by U.S. and U.K. intelligence services, in other words, the two core members of the FIVE EYES alliance.

What is most alarming about the most recent disclosure of slides marked SECRET//SI//REL TO USA. FVEY [Special Intelligence, Releasable to USA and FIVE EYES] and UK TOP SECRET STRAP is that the FIVE EYES signals intelligence alliance of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are adding psychological operations (psyops) and Tavistock-developed mind control operations to its traditional signals intelligence (SIGINT) role. The blending of SIGINT and human intelligence (HUMINT) as part of cyber-warfare and computer network exploitation (CNE), with little or no actual oversight from legislative oversight authorities, is the closest proof revealed to date that the NSA and its partners have embarked on a policy of instituting «1984» Big Brother controls using the Internet as a primary weapon.

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Stephen Lendman

Obama heads the most recklessly dangerous regime in world history. It's ruthless. It's lawless. It's out-of-control. It's reincarnated Nazism writ large. War on humanity is the new normal. Crazed hegemonic ambitions drive policy.

A potential devastating East/West confrontation looms. Will Ukraine be the flashpoint igniting it? US-supported neo-Nazis usurped power. Anyone opposing them risks arrest, physical harm or death. Democracy is a dead letter. Fascists rule solely by diktats. Elections when held will be farcical.

Ukrainians haven't yet awakened to nightmarish conditions they face. How they'll react remains to be seen. Civil war may erupt. Most eastern and southern Ukrainians favor close ties to Russia. They reject neo-Nazi coup d'état Kiev governance. It has no legitimacy. Conditions remain incendiary.

Obama bears full responsibility for what's ongoing. Corrupt EU partners share it. Neocons run US policy. Unchallenged global dominance ambitions drive them. One war after another is waged.

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Justin Raimondo

One common reaction to Edward Snowden’s exposure of the National Security Agency’s pervasive surveillance of Americans and people around the world has been: Well, at least they aren’t doing what US government agents did in the 1960s and 1970s – targeting dissident political activists, spying on and disrupting their constitutionally-protected activities, and seeking to discredit them with programs like Cointelpro.

Except they are, as it turns out.

The latest revelations and newly-released documents, detailed by Glenn Greenwald in a shocking piece for his new outlet, The Intercept, show that’s exactly what they’re doing. Whereas J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI used old-fashioned methods – primitive bugging devices, poison pen letters, and physical infiltration of "suspect" groups – today’s Thought Police use the Internet to, as Greenwald puts it, "control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the Internet itself."

In a presentation by the British spy agency GCHQ to the NSA, and the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand intelligence agencies, the top-secret JTRIG unit instructed their allies in the methodology of targeting and destroying political dissidents, and countering their influence on the Internet. Their approach is oh-so-"scientific," citing social science theories about human motivation, giving the whole document the aura of an academic study – albeit one written by someone with a sensibility that veers from the playful to the downright sinister.

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