Stephen Lendman

“Time to grab guns and kill damn Russians.” –Former
Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko in leaked phone call

Jill Abramson is gone. Dean Baquet replaced her as executive editor. Deplorable policy remains unchanged. It's featured daily. It's done so in articles, commentaries and editorials. Disgraceful op-eds are standard practice. Scoundrels are invited. Truth-tellers aren't welcome. Misinformation rubbish is featured. What readers most need to know is buried. Lies, damn lies and Big Ones infest Times pages.

Yulia Tymoshenko is a former illegitimate Orange Revolution prime minister. She's billionaire mega-thief. She accumulated wealth the old-fashioned way. She stole 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 has presidential aspirations. She enjoys weak support.

Earlier she had dozens of secret offshore bank accounts in over two dozen countries. Reportedly most are closed. At least 13 worldwide remain open. They hide her ill-gotten wealth. She conspired with former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko among others. From the mid-1990s, enormous funds were stolen. They disappeared. They did so when Tymoshenko ran United Energy Systems (UES). Lazarenko awarded it monopoly rights to import Russian natural gas. In 2004, a US court convicted him of money laundering, theft, and hiding funds in foreign accounts.

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The Saker

Full text of the appeal of the commander of the militia of Donetsk People`s Republic Igor Strelkov (UPDATED WITH 2nd translation!) (Huge thanks to "CG" who found this text here. Translation by "E.K". - The Saker)

Citizens of the People's Republic of Donetsk, I appeal to you. With a request to rise in defense of your Motherland, your homes, your families, your people. It falls on me to ask you to do the thing that shouldn't need asking. After all, to rise for the Motherland and for the freedom in Russia always was an honourable thing. It is an honourable thing to answer the call, to which people that count themselves real men always willingly responded. Nevertheless, I should tell you the truth. Straight in your eyes. To tell harsh and, perhaps, even offensive for your dignity words.

For more than a month now, we, a small group of volunteers of Russia and Ukraine, having listened to the calls for help from the lips of leaders of the protest elected by you , arrived here and in the armed fight we resist all the Ukrainian army and the hired scum.

For the past month we heard many times a desperate appeal – give us the weapons! Give us the weapons so we could battle for the freedom, for the right to read and speak native Russian, for the right to honor our ancestors and heroes of the Great Patriotic War – not the henchmen of Nazi criminals. Having heard this appeal, we got the weapons. We took them from warehouses, took them away from the Ukrainian military and militia, bought them from underground dealers for unthinkable money. And now we have the weapons. They are not in the rear – they are not in Donetsk, Lugansk or Makeyevka, not in Shakhtyorsk or Anthracite. They are at the lines of defense - in the besieged city of Slavyansk, in Kramatorsk, in Konstantinovka. They are where they are needed most. They are where volunteers defend all of Donbass, and Donetsk, and Lugansk.

And here, around the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, Krasniy Liman and Konstantinovka – where our garrisons are located – the Kiev junta gathered the most capable and numerous forces. There are two thirds of castigators and the headquarters of so-called anti-terrorist operation.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Empire over life. That has always been Washington’s guiding principle.

Did you know that 85 to 90 percent of war’s casualties are non-combatant civilians? That is the conclusion reached by a nine-person research team in the June 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The deaths of soldiers who are fighting the war are a small part of the human and economic cost. Clearly, wars do not protect the lives of civilians. The notion that soldiers are dying for us is false. Non-combatants are the main victims of war.

Keep that in mind for July 4th, which is arriving in six weeks.

July 4th is America’s most important national holiday celebrating American independence from Great Britain. On July 4th, 1776, America’s Founding Fathers declared that the Thirteen Colonies were no longer colonies but an independent country in which the Rights of Englishmen would prevail for all citizens and not only for King George’s administrators. (Actually, the Second Continental Congress voted in favor of independence on July 2, and historians debate whether the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4 or August 2.)

In this American assertion of self-determination citizens of Great Britain were not allowed to vote. Therefore, according to Washington’s position on the votes in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine–the former Russian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk–America’s Declaration of Independence was “illegitimate and illegal.”

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