Stephen Lendman

He's no diplomat. He's a world class thug. He mocks legitimacy. He disgraces the office he holds. He represents the worst of America's dark side. He's a serial liar. He's been caught red-handed lying numerous times before. He's at it again.

Big Lies infested his Monday Wall Street Journal interview. Truth was nowhere in sight. More on what he said below.

On April 28, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the following:

"Today, in response to Russia's continued actions in southern and eastern Ukraine, the United States is implementing additional restrictive measures on defense exports to Russia." "Accordingly, the Department of State is expanding its export restrictions on technologies and services regulated under the US Munitions List (USML)." "Effective immediately, the Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) will deny pending applications for export or re-export of any high technology defense articles or services regulated under the US." "Munitions List to Russia or occupied Crimea that contribute to Russia's military capabilities. In addition, the Department is taking actions to revoke any existing export licenses which meet these conditions." "All other pending applications and existing licenses will receive a case-by-case evaluation to determine their contribution to Russia’s military capabilities." "The United States will continue to adjust its export licensing policies toward Russia, as warranted by Russia’s actions in Ukraine." "We urge Russia to honor the commitments it made in Geneva on April 17 to deescalate the situation in Ukraine."

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Ron Paul

US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (R) takes her seat
prior to meeting with Ukrainian politicians (L-R), Oleh Tyahnybok,
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and Vitali Klitschko in Kiev on Dec. 10, 2013.

It was almost ten years ago when, before the House International Relations Committee, I objected to the US Government funding NGOs to meddle in the internal affairs of Ukraine. At the time the “Orange Revolution” had forced a regime change in Ukraine with the help of millions of dollars from Washington. At that time I told the Committee:

We do not know exactly how many millions – or tens of millions – of dollars the United States government spent on the presidential election in Ukraine. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – both American and Ukrainian – millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate…

I was worried about millions of dollars that the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its various related organizations spent to meddle in Ukraine’s internal affairs. But it turns out that was only the tip of the iceberg. Last December, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland gave a speech in which she admitted that since 1991 the US government has:

[I]nvested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine…in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good form of government.

This is the same State Department official who was caught on tape just recently planning in detail the overthrow of the Ukrainian government. That five billion dollars appears to have bought a revolution in Ukraine.

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Lyudmila Chernova / Paul Craig Roberts

A new round of sanctions announced by the White House will have unintended consequences and only benefit Russia, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts told RIA Novosti Monday.

“The sanctions are nothing but gratuitous propaganda. Obama himself acknowledged that it is uncertain whether the additional sanctions will have any effect,” Roberts told RIA Novosti. “Besides, the sanctions will encourage and hasten Russia’s withdrawal from Washington’s exploitative system, and the BRICS countries are likely to follow.”

US President Barack Obama levied the additional sanctions against Russia to target individuals and companies close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The sanctions were imposed on seven Russian government officials, as well as 17 companies.

“The Obama regime continues to pretend that a few Russian individuals and companies are responsible for Crimea’s return to Russia,” asserted Roberts, stressing that the evidence is completely clear that the return of Crimea to Russia was the result of the Crimean people and their self-determination. “People voted 97 percent in an amazingly large voter turnout to return to Russia, from which Khrushchev detached Crimea in the 1950s,” he explained.

Roberts foresees that the announced measures will only encourage the Russian government to withdraw from the dollar-based payment system that makes sanctions possible.

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Michael Scheuer

Once again Americans are watching their government involve itself in an issue in which the United States has nothing at stake economically and no genuine national security interest at risk. Ukraine is a place that is worth neither a single American dollar nor more than a brief scan of the headlines by US citizens. And yet Obama and his fellow European interveners and democracy mongers are conducting themselves in a bellicose manner that could lead to some kind of military conflict in eastern Europe. Indeed, they already are conducting warfare against Russia via economic sanctions, a punitive exercise they promise to make more severe in the next few weeks.

And for what? When all is said and done Obama and Team Democracy appear to prefer a war to publicly admitting that it was their democracy crusading last winter in Kiev that brought on this worrying and sharpening confrontation. Into an increasingly bitter political battle between the Kiev regime and its domestic opponents, the EU as an organization and individual European governments sent a steady flow of diplomats, officials, and money to help the Ukrainian opposition prevail over the Kiev regime. This foreign intervention in a purely internal domestic dispute was clearly designed to overthrow the legitimate Ukrainian government. It is the kind of imperialist exercise that the UN was created to condemn and stop, but that organization’s recent history shows that it now exists solely to support unjustified -- and usually unjustifiable -- US and Western political and military interventions.

We will never know how the internal Ukrainian dispute would have worked itself out if the Ukrainians had been allowed an exercise in self-determination, but what we do know is that the EU’s arrogant intervention in the country’s internal affairs tipped the scales in the opposition’s favor and led to the Kiev regime’s collapse. And we know that Obama, Kerry, and Biden steered clear of the problem until they saw that the EU’s intervention might succeed. Faced with that reality, these US leaders put their best interventionist foot forward and joined the Europeans to wreck both Ukraine and European stability in the name of a democracy that will never see the light of day in Kiev. Washington, NATO, and Brussels are now well on their way to creating in Ukraine the same kind of democratic paradise they previously delivered in Egypt, Libya, and South Sudan.

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Olga Shedrova

The «anti-terrorist operation» announced by the Kiev-based regime to quell the protests in the south-eastern parts of Ukraine is unpopular in the army.

The local police units in the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov and other south-eastern cities refused to take action after the administrative buildings were captured by Donbass protesters. In response acting Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov ordered to start the formation of new police units across the whole country. They should be trained for punitive actions. Billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, a citizen of Israel appointed governor of Dnepropetrovsk region by the Kiev interim regime, promised cash rewards for the capture of protesters.

The army is also involved into the operations in Donbass. Reservists began to dodge their duty and even switch sides from the very beginning. For instance, on April 11 the soldiers of Alfa security service special operations unit refused to assault administrative buildings in Donetsk and Lugansk captured by local people. One of commanding officers said, «We’ll act in strict accordance with the law. Our unit is created for the mission of liberating hostages and fight against terrorism». On April 24, the unit did not join combat as another attempt to re-capture the building was undertaken.

On April 14 the soldiers of the 25th airborne brigade deployed near Slavyansk switched sides to join the people’s militia. There was an internal revolt in the 93th mechanized brigade based in Cherkassy, the Dnepropetrovsk region.

Reservists called for 10-days active duty account for the major part of army personnel used for the mission of putting the protests down. The mobilization plans have failed, so the age limit for people to be called for active duty has been increased to 55 years. The employees are to hold reservists’ jobs for two weeks, but they are kept on active duty for over a month. Many of them lose employment and have no means to care about their families.

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Robert Parry

Any propaganda war starts by planting stories that your target is getting rich, whether he is or isn’t, the latest move in demonizing Vladimir Putin. But the larger question is what might happen if the neocons succeed in destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia.

Now that the demonization of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is in full swing, one has to wonder when the neocons will unveil their plan for “regime change” in Moscow, despite the risks that overthrowing Putin and turning Russia into a super-sized version of Ukraine might entail for the survival of the planet.

There is a “little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly” quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme.

If the Palestinians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel, you target their sponsors with “regime change” – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your “regime change” in Iraq goes badly, you escalate the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

Just when you think you’ve cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria – with a possible follow-on war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to agree to constraints on its nuclear program.

So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

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Alex Lantier

As the Obama administration and its allies in Europe escalate their threats against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, the American media plays its assigned role as propaganda mouthpiece.

Not a single critical voice can be found within the so-called mainstream media. The newspapers and television news programs are filled with lies, anti-Russian propaganda, and—preparing for the possibility that the crisis escalates out of control—apologetics for war.

The New York Times, the “newspaper of record,” sets the general tone for the media as a whole. The Times boasts of having 12 reporters in Ukraine, yet it provides no serious reporting on what is happening. This is all the more significant given the extraordinary implications of a major conflict between the United States and Russia that could quickly evolve into the first war between nuclear powers in world history.

Over the past two weeks, the Times has been caught in a series of fabrications. Last week, it ran a front-page lead story replete with photographs handed to it by the State Department and the US-backed Ukrainian government purporting to show that Russian Special Forces are directing the protests in eastern Ukraine.

The Times report was quickly exposed as a fraud, including by the WSWS. It took only a quick search on the Internet to expose the so-called evidence as either doctored or fabricated. Subsequent acknowledgements of the “controversy” over the photographs—exercises in damage control and cover-up—have been buried on the newspaper’s inside pages.

Far from being chastened by these exposures, the Times rapidly moved on to its next assignment from the State Department — a front-page article published yesterday alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin has a secret fortune of between $40 billion and $70 billion. The Times acknowledged in its own article that the allegations consist of “rumors and speculation” with “little if any hard evidence.” That did not prevent it from seeking to legitimize the gossip by elevating it to the status of a prominent “news” item.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The Obama regime, wallowing in hubris and arrogance, has recklessly escalated the Ukrainian crisis into a crisis with Russia. Whether intentionally or stupidly, Washington’s propagandistic lies are driving the crisis to war. Unwilling to listen to any more of Washington’s senseless threats, Moscow no longer accepts telephone calls from Obama and US top officials.

The crisis in Ukraine originated with Washington’s overthrow of the elected democratic government and its replacement with Washington’s hand-chosen stooges. The stooges proceeded to act in word and deed against the populations in the former Russian territories that Soviet Communist Party leaders had attached to Ukraine. The consequence of this foolish policy is agitation on the part of the Russian speaking populations to return to Russia. Crimea has already rejoined Russia, and eastern Ukraine and other parts of southern Ukraine are likely to follow.

Instead of realizing its mistake, the Obama regime has encouraged the stooges Washington installed in Kiev to use violence against those in the Russian-speaking areas who are agitating for referendums so that they can vote their return to Russia. The Obama regime has encouraged violence despite President Putin’s clear statement that the Russian military will not occupy Ukraine unless violence is used against the protesters.

We can safely conclude that Washington either does not listen when spoken to or Washington desires violence.

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article called Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a world class diplomat. John Kerry is polar opposite. He represents the worst of America's dark side. He's vying for Washington's worst ever Secretary of State top dishonor. He's what Paul Craig Roberts calls a "two-bit punk." He's a war criminal multiple times over. Demagoguery punctuates his comments. It exceeds the worst of Cold War rhetoric. He's been caught red-handed numerous times in bald-faced lies. He disdains rule of law principles. He supports war. He deplores peace. He's indifferent to human suffering. He's a monument to wrong over right. He disgraces his country, position and humanity. He belongs in prison, not high office. On April 24, he bashed Russia irresponsibly. He did so recklessly. He did maliciously. Big Lies infested his rhetoric. He turned truth on its head.

Four parties in Geneva "agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions," he said:

"We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms…We agreed to implement" objectives discussed. "From day one," he added, "the government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments - from day one." "From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings." "He suspended Ukraine's counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people."

Fact: Kiev putschists have no legitimacy whatever. They have no legal authority. They represent mob rule. Fact: "From day one," they violated agreed on Geneva terms. They did so straightaway. They deployed military forces and Right Sector thugs to Eastern Ukraine. They attacked nonviolent civilians. They committed cold-blooded murder. Fact: Yatsenyuk lied. He escalated conflict. Kiev buildings remain occupied illegally.

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Alex Lantier

On Thursday, US Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a lying brief for war aimed at justifying the crackdown by the Western-backed Kiev regime on pro-Russian protests in eastern Ukraine and possible military action against Russia. Declaring confrontation with Russia to be all but inevitable, he turned reality on its head, blaming the crisis entirely on Russia and clearing Kiev of all responsibility.

“The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid confrontation,” Kerry declared. Citing the April 17 truce talks in Geneva that halted the Kiev regime’s first attempted crackdown, he said: “One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real: the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation.”

He continued: “The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization.”

Let us, indeed, get real. These arguments have not a shred of credibility, and neither does Mr. Kerry.

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Stephen Lendman

It could happen any time. Kiev putschists said "second stage" operations were launched. Strategy calls for "completely isolat(ing)" Slavyansk. It's a freedom fighting stronghold. Self-defense forces prepared. Coop-appointed presidential administration head Sergey Pashinsky said:

"The aim is to…localize the problem." Operations remain ongoing. Pashinsky lied saying "terrorists have placed their key strong points in kindergartens and hospitals."

He called what doesn't exist "classic terrorism." Freedom fighters denounced him. They called his accusations "ridiculous."

Journalist Graham Phillips said area troops built up. Snipers in forests are positioned. Slavyansk was encircled. Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) first deputy head General Vasily Krutov lied saying:

"We will not go the length of (civilian) casualties to storm the city. We understand that this may lead to many people coming to harm."

Freedom fighters brace for the worst. Fascists give no quarter. Armored vehicles positioned around Slavyansk. Troops with no insignia were spotted. Onslaught could follow any time. So could massacring city residents.

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Wayne Madsen

I Was There. Just Ask The New York Times. (Got A Beard Now...)

A major Central Intelligence Agency conspiracy operation is currently playing out in Eastern Ukraine where, in an age of Photoshop and mail order credentials and military patches, photographs of the same bearded Russian "special forces" commando in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk in Ukraine this year and Georgia in 2008 are being successfully parlayed to the corporate media and by the Ukrainian ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) headquarters in Vienna. The conspiracy operation follows closely on the heels of CIA director John Brennan’s visit to Kiev where he provided intelligence advice to the unelected junta now governing the country…

The idea that an active duty Russian Special Forces soldier would have a long beard is laughable. No one in the Western corporate media has mentioned that long beards for any actual special forces commando is a strict taboo because any long hair can be detrimental in close hand-to-hand combat. Long hair of any type is not permitted for special forces unless a disguise is required for special missions, such as the beards grown by U.S. special forces personnel who entered Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks to make common cause with various anti-Taliban guerrilla forces. The U.S. Special Forces personnel were permitted to wear beards and grow their hair long because to have appeared in the tribal areas without such hair would have made them stand out as foreigners. Generally, however, the potential vulnerabilities inherent with any length of hair that can be pulled by an opponent, including facial hair, is why the Navy SEALS, Green Berets, and the Russian ALFA Group have strict standards barring any long hair among their active duty military personnel except in unusual circumstances like Afghanistan. In 2010, U.S. Special Forces units in Afghanistan were ordered to shave off their beards and conform to military regulation haircuts.

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Alex Lantier

Pro-Russian demonstrators barricaded a checkpoint near one of
the entrances to the city of Slovyansk, Ukraine, on Sunday.

The Western-backed regime in Kiev and fascist militias allied to it launched a bloody crackdown against pro-Russian protests across eastern Ukraine yesterday. With the Kremlin massing forces on Russia’s border with Ukraine, threatening to intervene defend ethnic Russians, the situation is on the brink of a war between Russia and Ukraine, which could escalate into a direct clash between Russia and NATO.

Deadly fighting broke out in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk, held by pro-Russian protesters. Ukrainian armored personnel carriers reportedly assaulted several checkpoints set up by pro-Russian forces, though protesters continued to hold the city. Five protesters were reported killed amid contradictory reports. Several Ukrainian armored vehicles were reportedly set afire in the fighting, and protesters rebuilt the checkpoints later in the day.

Thirty thugs armed with baseball bats from the fascist Right Sector militia, which led the February 22 putsch that installed the current regime in Kiev, stormed buildings held by protesters in the nearby port city of Mariupol.

Responsibility for this bloodshed lies above all with the United States and its European allies, who have pressed Kiev to launch these assaults in a policy calculated to provoke Moscow. A first attempt to organize a crackdown a week ago with Ukrainian regular troops came after CIA director John Brennan’s visit to Kiev. It quickly ground down, however, amid popular opposition and refusals by Ukraine troops to fire on the population.

This bloody crackdown underscores the filthy hypocrisy of the Western intervention in Ukraine. During the February putsch, Western governments and media denounced the pro-Russian regime’s attempts to crack down on the fascist groups leading the protests and denounced moves to mobilize the army. Now, after a visit to Kiev by US Vice President Joe Biden, the unelected, far-right puppet regime in Kiev is unleashing a new military crackdown with Western support. Aware of the lack of support more broadly in the army, it is relying directly on the fascists.

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Daniel Larison

Globalist warmongering degenerate Anne-Marie Slaughter
makes her rounds at the Fortune 500-funded Chatham House.
She is the author of the book "A New World Order" and be-
lieves foreign policy should be shifted into the unelected, un-
accountable hands of corporations, foundations, and NGOs.

Anne-Marie Slaughter reminds us why we’re glad that she doesn’t work in government anymore:

The solution to the crisis in Ukraine lies in part in Syria. It is time for US President Barack Obama to demonstrate that he can order the offensive use of force in circumstances other than secret drone attacks or covert operations. The result will change the strategic calculus not only in Damascus, but also in Moscow, not to mention Beijing and Tokyo.

It makes absolutely no sense to argue that bombing a Russian client in one place will change Russian behavior in another place for the better. Nothing would be more useful for Moscow as a matter of propaganda than to have the U.S. illegally attacking another country. The diversion of resources and attention required to start a war with Syria would make U.S. and allied warnings over Ukraine even less meaningful than they already are. Attacking Syria would distract the U.S. from the Ukraine crisis while wrecking whatever semblance of Western allied unity there is. It would potentially be political suicide for any European governments that went along with it, and it would needlessly open up a rift in NATO at the worst possible moment. Fortunately, it isn’t likely that the administration would be foolish enough to follow this advice, but if they did it would provoke a major backlash here at home. More to the point, while it would drag the U.S. directly into the war in Syria, it would have no beneficial effect on the Ukraine crisis, and would more likely cause Russian hostility to the U.S., our allies, and would-be clients in the region to spike even higher. I suppose it might influence how other governments see the U.S., but not at all in the way that Slaughter imagines. Treaty allies elsewhere in the world would be annoyed that the U.S. is wasting its resources on another unnecessary war in the Near East, and other major powers may conclude that our leaders are reckless and foolish.

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Nikolai Bobkin

Part 1: Washington’s Foreign Policy Tools or Biden Visits Kiev || Vice-President John Biden came to Kiev to see with his own eyes how the events unfold in the country. The second part of the article will be devoted to the results of the visit. Here it’s important to state the fact that Ukraine serves as an irritant for Moscow which may turn into its enemy and that’s the only thing Washington needs Ukraine for. The situation in the country has deteriorated to the point of bringing it to the brink of civil war, but Washington does not care. The main thing is to keep the puppet regime in power. Biden is an author of «color revolutions» policy and the person responsible for staging unrest in other countries, for him Ukraine is just another testing ground no different from North Africa…

Americans are not fantasy prone people, they always have a pattern to follow and they gauge all other nations with their own «democratic criterion» ignoring racial and religious specific features. The same thing is repeated in Kiev. The White House says that Biden will meet leaders of civil society to discuss their role in strengthening democratic institutions.

It’s not an occasion that NGOs are in the focus of his attention, billions of dollars are spent to keep them afloat and they are expected to produce the pre-programmed results. The Ukraine’s government has been using every occasion to stress its independence while it is quite docile and submissive towards all kinds of NGOs and foreign special agencies operatives acting on the Ukraine’s territory. No matter US NGOs always emphasize how open, democratic and transparent they are, in reality they act as close clubs with the criteria for personnel enlistment normally practiced by the CIA when it chooses the agents for the mission of strengthening American influence.

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