Paul Craig Roberts

Cecily McMillan is an Occupy protester who was seized from behind by a goon thug cop–a goon thug with a long record of abuse of authority–by her boobs. One was badly bruised. Cecily McMillan’s elbow reflexively and instinctively came up, and Cecily was arrested for assaulting a goon thug. The goon thug was not arrested for sexually assaulting a young woman.

False arrests of this sort are common in the US. Indeed, they are more common than justified arrests. The police and the courts are completely corrupted institutions that reek of injustice and evil.

Cecily was locked up in Rikers Island without bail by the judge who sees his role as protecting the abuse of police and prosecutorial power. The judge would not allow evidence in behalf of Cecily to be presented to the jury.

Nevertheless, the jurors, or 75% of them, understood that something was wrong and although they were coerced into convicting the young woman they sent a letter to the judge requesting that no prison time be imposed on Cecily. Nonetheless, the judge for whom all must stand in respect in the courtroom, gave the goon thug’s victim 90 days in prison and 5 years probation. This was Amerika’s sendoff of an idealistic young woman who was about to receive a master’s degree from an important educational education.

America’s injustice is a unique kind. American injustice has actually managed to completely destroy the achievements dating from Magna Carta that made law a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of the state. Today America is pre-Magna Carta England.

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The Saker

I think that we can all agree that the situation in the Ukraine is one of total chaos.

● Renat Akhmetov, the local oligarch-mobster, had declared that his companies will go on a "warning strike" for 3 hours per day because Akhmetov was angered that the authorities of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) had taken over the control of the railways which resulted in losses for his company.
● One of the officials of the DRP reacted to Akhmetov's threat by declaring that the DRP authorities have begun the process of nationalization of the companies located on the territory of the DRP, in other words, Akhmetov's holdings.
● The military forces of the neo-Nazi junta have begun shelling several cities in the eastern Ukraine destroying several buildings
● The military commander of the DRP forces, Igor Strelkov, has made a poignant and blunt appeal for a much bigger mobilization of men, especially officers, in the volunteer forces defending the DRP against the junta's military.
● Ukrainian death-squads have, yet again, kidnapped a team of Russian reporters, this time of the TV station LifeNews, accusing them of being the "information-component" of a terrorist movement.
● The Russian government has indicated that the military forces which had been on maneuvers had returned to their bases. NATO denied that.
● The Russian military has completed the building a network of pipelines which are now fully supplying Crimea with fresh water.
● The leader of the Ukie Nazis, Iarosh, has announced that if he is elected he would launched a guerrilla war in Crimea.

So what is really going on? I think that while it is premature to make grand conclusions and predictions, we can begin by agreeing on a number of basic facts.

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Israel Shamir

It is not much fun to be in Kiev these days. The revolutionary excitement is over, and hopes for new faces, the end of corruption and economic improvement have withered. The Maidan street revolt and the subsequent coup just reshuffled the same marked deck of cards, forever rotating in power.

The new acting President has been an acting prime minister, and a KGB (called “SBU” in Ukrainian) supremo. The new acting prime minister has been a foreign minister. The oligarch most likely to be “elected” President in a few days has been a foreign minister, the head of the state bank, and personal treasurer of two coups, in 2004 (installing Yushchenko) and in 2014 (installing himself). His main competitor, Mme Timoshenko, served as a prime minister for years, until electoral defeat in 2010.

These people had brought Ukraine to its present abject state. In 1991, the Ukraine was richer than Russia, today it is three times poorer because of these people’s mismanagement and theft. Now they plan an old trick: to take loans in Ukraine’s name, pocket the cash and leave the country indebted. They sell state assets to Western companies and ask for NATO to come in and protect the investment.

They play a hard game, brass knuckles and all. The Black Guard, a new SS-like armed force of the neo-nazi Right Sector, prowls the land. They arrest or kill dissidents, activists, journalists. Hundreds of American soldiers, belonging to the “private” company Academi (formerly Blackwater) are spread out in Novorossia, the pro-Russian provinces in the East and South-East. IMF–dictated reforms slashed pensions by half and doubled the housing rents. In the market, US Army rations took the place of local food.

The new Kiev regime had dropped the last pretence of democracy by expelling the Communists from the parliament. This should endear them to the US even more. Expel Communists, apply for NATO, condemn Russia, arrange a gay parade and you may do anything at all, even fry dozens of citizens alive. And so they did.

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