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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Paul Craig Roberts

Satisfying A National Appetite For War: Before he became the 26th
president, Theodore Roosevelt (center) led the men of the 1st Cavalry
Volunteers, known as the "Rough Riders," on San Juan Hill during
the Spanish-American War in 1898. (Hulton Archive/Getty Archive)

The Spanish-American War was caused by three people: Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Randolph Hearst. The war, which killed a number of Spaniards and Americans, including some prominent Harvard “Swells,” was based entirely on lies and machinations of these three men and served no purpose other than their personal needs. Princeton University historian Evan Thomas calls these three monsters The War Lovers.

Hearst needed a war to build his newspaper circulation. Roosevelt needed a war to
sate his blood-lust and desire for military glory. Lodge needed a war to reinvigorate American manhood and to enlist American manhood in his “Large Policy” of American Empire. Between them, thanks to the ignorance and stupidity of the American people, they pulled it off.

Their adversary was Speaker of the House, Thomas Brackett Reed, “the Czar,” the most powerful politician in Washington. Reed, an honest and incorruptible politician, saw Lodge’s policy of “American exceptionalism” as naked imperialism that stood in total opposition and in great danger to American purposes. Reed saw Roosevelt’s war lust as a diversion of national purpose from the reconstruction of an economy that increasingly served a shrinking minority at the expense of the American people. But Hearst, Roosevelt, and Lodge made “peace” an epithet. The American people, whose gullibility is never-ending, were captivated by war-lust. Reed lost confidence in the American people whom he so well served. Reed could find no moral purpose in pushing the country toward war over nothing but fake news reports by “yellow journalism.”

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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

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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Eric London

In the nine days since Senator Dianne Feinstein revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency had spied on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers investigating CIA torture programs, the issue has been all but dropped by the political establishment and the media.

The White House and Congress, including Feinstein herself, are seeking to move any further discussion of the matter behind closed doors. The aim is to prevent any broader public airing of the fundamental democratic issues at stake in both the spying and the underlying crime, torture, which the CIA and the Obama administration are seeking to cover up.

Involved are impeachable offenses implicating the intelligence agencies and top officials in the administration, including the president. In her remarks on the Senate floor last week, Feinstein charged that the CIA violated the “separation of powers” principle embedded in the US Constitution as well as the Fourth Amendment and legal prohibitions against domestic spying. Since these remarks, the White House has publicly defended CIA Director John Brennan and acknowledged that the Obama administration deliberately withheld documents relating to the Senate investigation.

It is instructive to compare the actions of the CIA and the White House today to the Articles of Impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon approved by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974. Nixon was accused of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to steal Democratic Party documents relating to the 1972 elections from an office in the Watergate Hotel. He used the CIA and other intelligence agencies to cover up the break-in and intimidate political opponents in order to obstruct the investigation into the incident.

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Finian Cunningham

American geo-strategic planners are fond of the chess game analogy, as articulated foremost by former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. In the wake of the resounding vote for Crimean unification with Russia at the weekend, it may be said that this move by the Crimean electorate declares a «check» on Washington’s machinations in the Ukraine…

A reading of reactions from officials in Washington and their allies in Europe indicates that the game was not meant to turn out this way.

When the US and the EU started to ramp up destabilization of the Ukraine at the end of November, things seemed to go to plan. A concerted campaign of political interference from Western capitals, massive Western media distortion and the covert sponsoring of violence in the capital, Kiev, created unbearable pressure on the incumbent government of president Viktor Yanukovych.

With Western-backed covert terrorism claiming up to 100 deaths among protesters and police, as well as hundreds injured, and with anarchy descending on government buildings, the elected authorities capitulated on February 22. The unelected regime that came to power in Kiev, led by self-styled prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has quickly moved to implement the regime-change agenda of Washington and its European allies. Financial, trade and military pacts are already being drawn up with Washington, Brussels and NATO.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel Backs Far-Right Coup in Ukraine. The
government of Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu is backing the fascist-led putsch that
ousted Ukraines elected pro-Russian president,
Viktor Yanukovych...

On Tuesday, Simferopol snipers shot and killed a Crimean self-defense member and Ukrainian soldier. Another self-defense member and Ukrainian soldier were wounded. Gunfire came from a building under construction. It's near a military research center. What happened resembled Euromaidan sniper killings. Fascist thugs bore full responsibility. Kiev putschists apparently target Crimea. Expect similar incidents to follow. More on what happened below.

On Monday, Putin endorsed Crimean independence. He did so by decree. On Tuesday, he signed the Crimean reunification treaty. Expect overwhelming State Duma and Federation Council approval. On March 19, Russia's Constitutional Court chairman Valery Zorkin said: "The Constitutional Court recognizes that the Treaty corresponds to the Russian Constitution." Crimeans are going home.

Washington and rogue EU partners responded as expected. Slap-on-the-wrist sanctions were imposed. Russian and Crimean officials were targeted. So was Ukraine's legitimate president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denounced Western sanctions. He called them "unacceptable." A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said: Republic of Crimea "residents made their democratic choice in line with the international law and the UN charter, which Russia accepts and respects." "The sanctions introduced by the United States and the European Union are unacceptable and will not remain without consequences." White House press secretary Jay Carney warned "(m)ore (are) coming." He left unexplained what's intended.

Daily Beast contributor Josh Rogan suggested Russia intends sanctioning high-profile US senators, congressmen and administration officials. Perhaps Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland is targeted. She's a neocon hardliner. She was Obama's point person in charge of ousting democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych. She helped replace him with illegitimate fascist, ultranationalist putschist governance. Vice President Joe Biden wrongfully accused Russia of a "brazen military incursion." None whatever occurred.

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Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Why does Western media ignore critical information about the snipers that killed Euromaidan protesters in Ukraine?

Support it or oppose it, a coup d’état took place in Kiev after an EU-brokered agreement was signed by the Ukrainian government and the mainstream opposition on Feb. 21. The agreement called for power sharing between both sides through the formation of a national unity government and for an end to the opposition-led street protests in Kiev. President Viktor Yanukovych ordered the Ukrainian police and security forces to withdraw from their positions, and even earlier, he had made multiple concessions to the opposition leadership.

Instead of keeping its end of the bargain, the Ukrainian mainstream opposition executed a coup through the use of violence by organized ultra-nationalist gangs, which some analysts have compared to stay-behinds or secretive militias that were created by NATO during the Cold War.

These armed ultra-nationalist groups took over administrative bodies in Ukraine and fought until they managed to oust the Ukrainian government and opened the path for opposition leaders to take power on Feb. 25. The Ukrainian mainstream opposition used the EU-brokered agreement, which the Brussels-based European Commission deliberately refused to enforce, as a means of justifying the formation of a coup-imposed government.

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Finian Cunningham

The EU foreign policy chief was instrumental in lending credibility and legitimacy to what can only be described as a violent seizure of government. The criminal involvement of the American CIA and its various non-governmental incarnations in fomenting this coup is well documented. That makes Ashton a CIA collaborator.

With her demeanor of quiet diplomacy and down-to-earth style, some may see her as a fixer of diplomatic solutions. But, increasingly, it seems that the British appointed European bureaucrat is playing a more sinister role of finessing regime change on behalf of Washington and its NATO allies.

Ashton - whose official British title is "Lady Ashton" - was made a member of the House of Lords under Britain's archaic and undemocratic honors system back in 1999. She has never been elected by a popular vote, yet she has risen by political patronage to become Europe's top diplomat deciding the fate of foreign states and millions of lives.

Up to now, Ashton has enjoyed something of a benevolent image akin to a "well-meaning auntie figure". Mild-mannered and modest, she might be seen as an honest broker. For example, she is credited with helping to broker the P5+1 interim nuclear deal with Iran last November.

However, the covert involvement of Western governments in orchestrating the coup d'état in Ukraine and Ashton's de facto participation in this regime-change operation makes her much less a lady and more a cynical operator who is far from an honest broker. When the street protests sparked off in Kiev at the end of November, allegedly as a result of incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to sign a EU trade pact, Ashton was among the trail of top Western political figures who took it upon themselves to "mediate" in the ensuing political crisis.

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John Pilger

Washington's role in the fascist putsch against an elected government in Ukraine will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore the historical record. Since 1945, dozens of governments, many of them democracies, have met a similar fate, usually with bloodshed.

Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries on earth with fewer people than Wales, yet under the reformist Sandinistas in the 1980s it was regarded in Washington as a "strategic threat". The logic was simple; if the weakest slipped the leash, setting an example, who else would try their luck?

The great game of dominance offers no immunity for even the most loyal US "ally". This is demonstrated by perhaps the least known of Washington's coups - in Australia. The story of this forgotten coup is a salutary lesson for those governments that believe a "Ukraine" or a "Chile" could never happen to them.

Australia's deference to the United States makes Britain, by comparison, seem a renegade. During the American invasion of Vietnam - which Australia had pleaded to join - an official in Canberra voiced a rare complaint to Washington that the British knew more about US objectives in that war than its antipodean comrade-in-arms. The response was swift: "We have to keep the Brits informed to keep them happy. You are with us come what may."

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